Marketing your electrical contracting business needs a strategy to help you stand out from competitors – here’s five essential steps you can take today.
Marketing is about helping people find out about your business and tempt them into giving you a call. A potential customer won’t call you for a quote if they don’t know you exist.
1. First impressions count – Get your logo and branding right
When it comes to marketing your business your company brand and how it looks matters. Having a quality brand can immediately set your business apart from competitors.
Your branding is the first thing potential customers see and can decide if they call you or a competitor.
A logo may not seem important when it comes to carrying out electrical work, but it is important to ensuring your business looks professional and well run at first glance.
This means that if your logo is hard to read, or is poor quality, it will negatively impact your customers perceptions. Professional looking business branding can convince a new customer to give you a call, whereas a logo that looks like it has cut corners, customers may do the opposite.
It may not be at the top of your list when setting up a new electrical contracting business but engaging a quality designer could be one of the most important steps you take.
Remember that first impressions count. Your logo and branding might seem less important than other expenses when establishing a new business, but they might be the difference between a customer calling you or someone else.
2. Make sure you’re found – Register you Google My Business profile
In the digital age customers turn to the internet first. With a few clicks of a button, they can find a local electrician and pick multiple contractors to contact for a quote.
Having your business details listed on Google is free to do and simple to set up. Setting up a Google My Business profile is an easy marketing win. One of the most important parts of having your business listed, is that it gives social proof.
One way people make decisions on whether they’re going to use your business is reading reviews on your Google My Business profile. By having a profile set up, not only have you got more of a chance to rank on Google, but people can actually click and see what other people are saying about you.
If searching for an electrician near them a consumer is more likely to use a business with who’s got fifty five-star reviews than somebody who doesn’t have a profile.
If you haven’t already registered your business on Google, it only takes a couple of minutes and you can do so here.
3. Get specific – Be clear on your offer and who your customer is
Clear messaging is an essential part of marketing your business.
A mistake many new business people make when starting out is the idea that everyone is a potential customer. If you try to be everything to everybody, you end up being nothing to nobody.
When you’re establishing your business make sure you take the time to define what your Unique Selling Point (USP) is, that is what makes you unique to your competitors? Once you have established that you need to clearly explain that to your customers in your marketing.
If you are experienced in high voltage electrical in the mining industry be specific that this is what you do on your website. That way you ensure you attract more of this work and the right customers. If you just say ‘commercial electricians’ you run the risk getting calls, but for jobs you aren’t equipped to carry out.
Once you’ve established what your selling point is and who your ideal customers are, you can then develop targeted communication for your marketing. By clearly communicating your offer, you’ll have far greater success in converting leads to customers.
4. Your website – your 24/7 shopfront
Your website is the chance to show people who you are, what you do, and highlight your selling point and convince potential customers that you are the right person for the job.
Websites are an expectation from customers, but they are also a chance to communicate with your clients. Your website gives you the ability to create a self-sustaining flow of quality leads and booked jobs that will boost your bottom line and confirm the credibility of your business.
Make sure you have a website with a strategy designed to target your target customer.
If you’re a residential contractor and targeting home owners, a website with a strong Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy is going to be key. That ensures your website will appears in Google searches. Without strong SEO you may not even appear in the search results.
In this competitive space though, where you’re competing against other residential electricians, a website is the starting foundation for which you build your marketing strategy on.
5. Give it a go – but make sure you track it
When you start spending money on advertising you want to make sure you know when it working and when it is not.
The benefit of digital marketing is that you can track what activity is performing well and what is not. This allows you to make sure you’re getting the best possible return on your investment.
By focusing on one thing initially, you can test and learn what works on that particular channel and then optimise your results.
The Master Program can help you become as good in the office as you are on the tools. Phone 1300 889 198 to speak to MEA about joining the Master Program today.
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