Generate more interest and leads for your business.
If you’re like most electricians, you take pride in your work. You’ve spent hours learning, training, and doing the best you can for your clients, and you’re passionate about the service you provide. But in 2020 being good just isn’t enough. This guide will help you tackle what many people feel is the toughest part of the job…Marketing.
Marketing isn’t as simple as asking a happy client for a referral or getting a flashy wrap for your work vehicle. Marketing is a strategy to get the word out about the quality work you do, introduce you to new prospects, and make their decision to do business with you fast, easy, and painless. Check out these ways to help bring your Electrical Contracting business to the next level.
1. Make it easier for your customers to find you
97% of customers surveyed said the first place they go to look for a business is online. But having a basic website, or being listed on a few directories like Google or Yahoo is just scratching the surface.
You want to make sure the information is the same on each and every platform, which means your phone number, address, hours, contact information. This can take hours, if not days, to list your business on the internet’s top listing sites.
To save time consider using a Local Listing management solution. This can update 60 platforms at once, saving you time so you can focus on your business.
2. Capture reviews from happy customers
A potential client is looking online for an electrician, but there are several in the area to choose from. How are they going to choose? Are they going for Company A with a 4.1-star rating and 6 reviews, or Company B with a 4.9-star rating and 86 reviews? Most likely Company B wins the business. The takeaway here is to not only get as many reviews as possible but to make sure that only the best ones get posted.
A good Reputation Management solution that makes it easy for your customers to leave reviews, makes them more likely to do so. The ability to manage these reviews not only gives you feedback on your business but also gives you an opportunity to filter out the bad ones, and to resolve any issues before the review goes public.
3. Have a professional-looking website
Think of your website as your digital storefront. If a prospect is visiting your website this is their way of “interviewing” you, and this first impression is going to be how your business is perceived by them. 57% of people research businesses on their mobile phones, so it’s important to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. You want the website to be simple and easy to navigate, and you want the site built well so it’s fast and your customers aren’t waiting long for pages to load. The goal is to provide a seamless experience to your customers visiting your webpage.
4. Optimize your website to appear higher in search results
People are far more likely to visit websites at or near the top of their search results. When someone searches for “Electricians in my area” wouldn’t you want to be among the top results? That’s where Search Engine Optimization (SEO for short) comes in.
Without getting too technical, SEO is a way of optimizing your website using relevant keywords to make your website appear higher in search results. A well-built website should have SEO already built in, however, Google has been known to constantly adjust their search algorithms so it’s important to constantly monitor your website’s SEO to ensure you’re staying on top of these changes.
5. Make it easy for your customers to contact you
If you’ve gone through the steps to make sure your listings are clean and consistent, your reviews are good, your website looks professional, and is appearing at or near the top of search results then you should have increased traffic on your website. The question becomes “what to do with this traffic?” We want to convert this traffic into leads, and “how do we do this?”
Tools like Chat Boxes where customers with questions can quickly get answers are a great way to convert traffic into leads, also offering something of value to your customers in exchange for their contact info could be a great strategy to generate more leads for your business.
6. Use social media to connect with your customers
Social media isn’t just a place to post pictures of last night’s dinner or your most recent vacation. More and more customers are using social media to learn about the companies they do business with.
Did you do an awesome job on your latest home rewiring? Post on your company’s social media. Do you have a thankful customer who wrote you an email thanking you for the work you did? Share it with the community (with the customer’s permission of course).
The takeaway here is that you want to share your customer’s positive experiences in a personal way. If posting multiple times a day on several platforms sounds overwhelming consider taking advantage of a Social Media Management team to help with this.
7. Harness the power of Email
Most everyone uses email on their phone, so it’s safe to say that includes your customers as well, but how do you connect with customers via email without seeming like spam? Sending appointment confirmations via email is a good start to engaging your customers, they’ll expect emails from you and be more receptive to receiving them.
This invites the opportunity to send discounts for birthdays, or special events. Re-marketing those who requested quotes that never resulted in a sale can also be an effective way to use email marketing. While there are several ways to do this, it can be frustrating and time-consuming which is why many electricians will let the pros handle Email Marketing.
