Online Marketing for Tradies
Tradies don’t always take online marketing seriously. They have their network of local customers and they stick to that, only occasionally taking the trouble to advertise their services locally.
A simple Google search via your smartphone for ‘Melbourne plumbers’ will present you with a list of results cluttered by directory sites, and with plenty of badly designed websites that bombard you with information you don’t really need. In that jumble it’s really hard to find what you are really looking: prices and contact information.
If you run a Trade business yourself, or take care of the marketing for one, you shouldn’t ignore online marketing. Follow the tips below and you will increase your online visibility and dominate local searches. The sooner you grow your business, the sooner you can employ others to do the work while you sit on the beach!
- Build a simple and accessible website that provides the information or the solutions your customers need. For example, a carpenters website shouldn’t be loaded with timber information or pictures of the latest tools purchased. Your customers don’t give a stuff about your tools. All they care about is the finished product, how quickly they can have it and at what cost.
- Provide a quick way for visitors to ask for a quote. Put your phone number on your homepage and on all other pages of your website for that matter. A lot of customers will research online at night so they can’t call you right away. To make sure you don’t miss these guys you need to get them to fill in a form online so you can follow them up later. A simple contact us for a quote form will do the trick.
- Optimise your website for search engines. Choose keywords that best define your business and include them in your headlines, titles, content, image titles, alt tags, and so on. A good web developer will do it all for you. (Hint: Call Omnific Design)
- Include your location whenever you can since you probably only work in the local area anyway. For example if you service ‘Melbourne’ there’s no point having visitors from ‘Sydney’. A lot of people include location when searching for a service so you may need to include a number of suburbs where you can, in order to show up in search engines for these locations.
- Use social media networks like Facebook and Twitter to spread the word about your business. Social sites are free to use but they cost you time, so use them appropriately and don’t expect them to be a substitute for advertising.
- Hire a professional SEO expert to optimise your website. They can do it all for you so you can focus on what you do best, your trade. The good news is it’s often more affordable than you think.
- Make sure you business has a Google Places listing. It free and easy to add. Do it now!
