As the Marketing Director at Alchemy-Spetec, one of the most common questions I get from contractors is how to get leads for jobs. Since it’s in OUR interest for YOU to get as many leads as possible, we’ve put a lot of thought into that question. In addition to the technical tips we share in the majority of our blog posts, we try to include business and marketing tips on occasion in order to help you find those leads. This article is about a marketing method that we’ve found extremely helpful – blogging. We know it works from our own experience and in this post, I’ll explain how you can promote your contracting business with a blog.
Cast a Wide Net with Lots of Posts
The more pages you have on your website, the more chances there are for someone to find it when searching a specific phrase or term. Search engines are scanning your page names, heading text and page text when someone searches a term to see if there are any matches. So, it’s in your best interest to have as many pages full of relevant content as you can. A blog is the perfect way to accomplish that goal.
Say, for example, that you are a slab lifting contractor in San Pedro, California. You can write up case studies of jobs you’ve performed in your area. Make sure your blog titles include terms people will likely search for. For example, a post about a warehouse floor job could be titled, “Warehouse Floor Slab Lift in San Pedro”. You get the idea, right?
Share Your Knowledge and Build Trust
You can also use a blog as way to share your knowledge and experience with potential customers who are looking for answers. Take some time to consider all that you’ve learned over the years and jot down ideas for blog posts that potential customers may find helpful. In addition to case studies, you can write posts instructing people how to spot problems on their property, comparing your repair costs to the costs of replacing a structure, educating people about the materials you use, etc.
You can get quite a few ideas by browsing the posts in our blog. While our articles are aimed more at contractors than property owners, you’ll still find many useful subjects to get your brainstorming started. The more useful knowledge you share, the more trust you can build with potential customers. People are much more likely to buy a service from a known expert, than from a complete stranger.
Offer More Value in Exchange for Contact Info
Driving up web traffic is a good thing. Establishing yourself as an authority by creating useful content is also very helpful. If you just do those two things, you should get more people calling you and filling out the contact form on your website. But if you REALLY want to jumpstart the leads, you need to offer something of value in exchange for your reader’s contact info. At the end of every article, include a link to a relevant brochure – or something else of value – and ask for their contact info in exchange. For an example, see the button at the bottom of this blog post and the form that it leads to.
The Gift That Keeps on Giving
The great thing about a blog post with a lead capture form at the end is that, once you set it up – it’s there forever. We still get leads from blog posts we put up years ago. If you consistently write articles, you can create a compounding effect with more and more leads coming in each month.