Marketing Your Services as a Commercial General Contractor

Marketing is important in service-oriented businesses, even for commercial general contractors, because it helps professionals share their services with a target audience. The good news is that there are many marketing strategies that commercial roofers can use to increase awareness about their services, get more leads, increase sales, and experience overall business growth. Read on to learn more about them.

1. Create a Website

There are many reasons to create a website and one of them is to market your contracting business. A website will serve as your business’s online home. It can easily increase your brand awareness, enable potential customers to find you, and demonstrate what your business offers.

Approximately 75% of consumers say they judge a company’s credibility by looking at its website design. That said, your website should stand out to attract more customers. Use contrasting colors to make it more appealing. The colors should match your company’s color themes. Use legible fonts and make the website easy to navigate.

Your website should also be fast. Customers tend to leave web pages that take too long to load. You can make yours fast by increasing shortcuts, reducing redirects, compressing content, and using cache.

The website should also be mobile-friendly because most online traffic comes from phones and tablets. It would also help to make the website more user-friendly by including photos of previous works, instant-chat features, and click-to-call options. Keeping users engaged is paramount in increasing leads and promoting sales.

Your website should provide a clear description of who you are and the services you offer. You should include your address and contact information. Also, provide testimonials from previous customers and add links to other social media platforms belonging to your contracting company.

2. Invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Most consumers search for products and services online before purchasing them. Over 90% of online searches start with a search engine, and about 50% of these users click on the first three search outcomes on the first page. Concerning contractors, about 1.6 million searches are attributed to searches for contractors and general contractors every month in the United States. Optimizing your website and listings for SEO will help potential customers who do these searchers find your website with ease.

You can easily market your services using SEO to get more leads and contacts. Optimization will enable you to outline your services and service area, reach more potential customers, and get leads for specific services corresponding with your keywords.

To make your SEO strategy work better for your business, use the right keywords, don’t overstuff your website with the keywords, publish high-quality content on a regular basis, and build links to your sites. Also, get social by interacting with online users and measure results to determine if there is a need for any adjustments or changes.

The strategy may take longer to bear fruits. However, if done correctly, it can improve the rank of your company’s website and make your business highly competitive in the market. It would help to work with SEO for general contractors to help you get started.

3. Use Email Marketing for New and Return Clients

Email marketing is not dead as many people assume. In fact, it remains one of the most efficient and cost-effective ways of marketing products or services to new or returning clients. About 80% of retail professionals believe that email marketing is more effective in acquiring new customers than social media. That is primarily because many people take time to read emails instead of social media posts.

Leveraging email marketing can help you communicate with more target audiences and grow your business. It is an effective marketing tool that will help you keep in touch with customers, do advertisements, and improve your company’s brand awareness. Email marketing also promotes more interactions and conversations than other marketing tools.

To make your email marketing effective, be sure to create a subscriber list, encourage readers to reply, customize the emails to make them personal, and keep them out of spam folders. Also, make the brief and concise and include calls to action to encourage readers to take some form of action after reading the email.

Send emails to your subscriber list regularly. Follow up with readers by sending additional emails guiding them on making purchases or trying services. Your business will benefit more from email marketing if it is done correctly.

4. Include Video Marketing

Nothing attracts more people to contractor websites than engaging video content. Videos will add authority to your website and enable you to increase your business’s conversion rates. Video content will help you increase online engagement, create a brand personality, and become competitive in the market. It will also educate your audience and allow you to reach them via a new medium.

However, video marketing involves more than just recording videos and posting them online. You should limit your videos to three minutes or less. Incorporate the videos on blogs and put them on popular websites.

You can create videos doing different things, such as sod installation and or other service-based industries. Such videos will give potential customers a sneak peek of what to expect when working with you. Fortunately, creating videos is quite easy. All you need is an electronic device with a good camera like a phone or tablet. The video can be shot out of the blue and doesn’t require too much preparation or scripts. For example, if you’re a roofing service, you can just bring a camera along to the job and record a timelapse of your day’s work.

Only creativity can limit you when it comes to the type of content you can create on video marketing. Be sure to mix educational videos, company culture videos, product or service videos, and testimonial videos in your video marketing content.

5. Conduct Social Media Marketing

Given the prominence of social media today, it is imperative for your business to incorporate social media marketing into its marketing strategies. Social media marketing uses social media and social networks for marketing a business’s products or services. It provides businesses with a simple yet effective way to reach new customers and engage with current ones.

One thing you should do is to put our business on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram by creating respective accounts. Add your business’s name, location, and other information describing your business. You can use your company’s logo as the profile picture for all the accounts.

 

Another social media site you can use is LinkedIn. Unlike other social media sites, LinkedIn is associated with professionals in different fields. Get noticed on LinkedIn, use hashtags to grow your client base, and post your services on different LinkedIn groups related to your line of business.

Content on social media is extremely significant in creating your business’s first impression to online users and potential customers. People make assumptions by just looking at the quality of your social media content. Creating the best content for your social media marketing strategy starts with knowing your audience and the purpose of your marketing strategy.

 

Therefore, post engaging photos and images on your social media platforms. Pleasing images and videos allow customers to visualize your contracting services. Be authentic and engage with customers. It would help to be consistent and post the same things on all platforms. That way, you will be communicating the same thing to your potential, new, and returning customers.

 

Post regularly, say three times a week, and share photos or videos of ongoing or recently completed contracting jobs. Start debates and ask questions if you are running low on content to post. Track and monitor results to determine if social media marketing is working for your business. Make the necessary adjustment and be patient for results.

6. Rely on Referrals

Referrals are also a smart way to market your commercial general contracting business. If you have a strong customer base, ask them for referrals. Referrals from satisfied customers are one of the most significant ways to get new customers. You will worry less about getting a new project because clients will keep contacting you. Promise your customers discounts on their next services for every referral they make.

Besides your customers, you can also ask your employees to do referrals. By becoming your brand representatives and ambassadors, your employees can recommend your services to their family, friends, neighbors, and other people. The referrals will positively impact marketing and sales in your business. In exchange for the referrals, you should provide your employees with incentives. The incentives could include a referral bonus, a day off, or a treat. Rewarding employees with incentives will motivate them to advocate for your services actively.

Another type of referral you can use is business to business (B2B) referral. In the case of B2B referrals, you will partner with related businesses like tile roof contractors and stump removers to refer customers. If clients contact you and your business does not offer the service they want, you can refer them to the businesses you have partnered with for B2B marketing. So if you’re a landscaping company but do not offer a stump removing service, you would refer them to the stump removers you know. The businesses will do the same thing. Also, you can seek the services of B2B sales lead generation companies to help you with your B2B marketing strategy. These companies do lead generation manufacturing and help you to get more leads to your business.

7. Business Signage

Do you have a physical premise where your offices are located? Or do you provide your services on-site? If the answer is at least one yes, the business signage is a reliable marketing strategy that you can use to create more awareness about your commercial general contracting business. You can put the sign in front of your business, construction site, or both.

You can use signage for advertising your business, sending promotional messages, or updating your target audience about your upcoming projects. A business signage is a great way to market your services because it is cheap and markets your business continuously so long as it is still mounted.

Nevertheless, there is more to creating business signage than meets the eye. A good business signage should be visible and effective for sending promotional messages to the target audience. The signage should also provide information about your company.

Therefore, you should include your contact information, including phone number, email address, physical address, and business website. This information will enable potential customers to find you. The signage should also dispense a clear message regarding your business, services, working days, and hours. The content should be brief and simple. Use legible words and fonts. Also, use graphics and symbols to make the signage eye-catchy. More people are prone to read visualized signage than a dull one.

8. Create a Marketing Team

Being a business owner, you don’t have to do everything. Therefore, you should consider creating a marketing team to handle all aspects of your marketing strategy and allow you to focus on what you do best. A marketing team is responsible for identifying ideal customers and creating, distributing, and managing promotional messages to the customers. Specialization will increase productivity in your company and enable it to grow.

Before creating a team, you need to determine if your need in-house marketers, freelancers, agencies, or a mix of all of them. Next, you will determine the purpose of your marketing campaign. Once you have done this, start creating a marketing team. Consult web hosting services to refer you to marketers if you have problems doing it. Be sure to create a marketing department in your business and hire a CFO for small businesses to manage them.

The tasks of your marketing team will include listening to customer needs, monitoring trends and competition, and searching for new marketing tools for marketing your services. They will also coordinate marketing efforts with your partners and create innovative marketing campaigns to attract the attention of many potential customers. Overall, these roles will enable your business to conduct robust marketing, reach more customers, and increase sales.

Start Using These Marketing Tips Today

Start using these tips to market your services as a commercial general contractor. They will enable you to increase awareness about your business and services, reach more target audiences, and grow your business. Consult marketing professionals if you need help or have any questions.