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How Tradespeople Can Get More Clients With Social Media
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If you are a tradesperson, contractor or construction company you have no doubt at some point considered, or even tried to use Facebook to market your brand and find new clients.
If you have tried using social media, I would estimate that your results were probably limited
If you haven’t tried using social media, I’m going to guess you are nervous to spend time and money on something you are unsure of. Well, don’t worry. If I tried to build a house or building, it would probably leak and fall down within a week. Luckily, I’m not a builder. But I am highly skilled at is generating business for companies using Facebook and other social media channels. Recently, I have been focussing my time on the construction and trades industries and realised that you guys are pretty behind the curve when it comes to digital marketing. Why? Part of the problem seems to stem from the fact that historically it was very easy to rely on ‘word of mouth’ and repeat business to keep afloat. This means that in many cases active marketing was not always necessary to keep the majority of construction businesses and builders afloat. But that’s not the only reason. The fact is, being a builder means that you’re not constantly sat behind a screen or staring at a phone during your working day. This means that opportunities to use social media are often outside of your general working day. But as you may have noticed, the amount of competition in the building industry is reaching fever pitch today.To stand out and keep your company afloat you need to do more than just hope for new work to come to you, or pay for a questionable ad in a paper or magazine.
Building an army of social media fans is not like many classic forms of marketing, it requires a knowledge and a plan, it requires consistent effort and attention. Although the idea of being present and active on social media for your brand may seem daunting, it really doesn’t have to be. At the same time, adding a few pictures and writing a post telling people to ‘book a quote’ simply will not get the results you want. So where do you start? If you stick around for a few more minutes I am going to give you a few tips that will not only help you, they will also prevent you from wasting time on the things that won't help!Create new habits
The first rule of getting results on social media is that you have to be prepared to incorporate some basic habits into your day so a professional marketer can do their job.
This doesn’t mean your day has to be filled with you being on social media but you will need to be prepared to do the following things:
- Consistently take pictures of your work (before, during and after)
- Encourage reviews from your happy clients
- Document your companies activity (pictures of new vans or equipment, get images of your staff or you hard at work
- Ensure your staff are prepared to provide images and media as well
- Check you business page for enquiries or questions and respond to them like you would an email.
Does this mean you need to be getting your phone or camera out at every opportunity? No, but you will need to be prepared to get at least a few images a week that can be shared, even if you have someone else employed to manage your social media.
Images and videos are the best way for you to showcase your work, your team, your warm personality and your professionalism to people who look you up on Facebook or any other social media channel you are using.
Whether you are managing your page personally or you have someone managing it for you, you need to provide them with ammunition to show off your work and brand effectively.
Be patient
If you are just starting out on social media, you will need to build up a local engaged following before you can expect new enquiries to start coming in directly through social media.
Your first goal needs to be to create a page you can be proud of, with consistent content that attracts your target market.
Social media can take time to build up, how long it takes depends on many factors but in any case it would be highly unlikely that a brand new page will generate new enquiries for at least a few months or more.
With all that said, don’t discount the fact that clients who may be already considering you will almost certainly check you out on Facebook before contacting you for a quote, just like they would visit your website. If they come looking and find a poorly managed page, with little effort being put in, what does that say about your business?
Be consistent
If you want to dominate social media, just look around at what companies that dominate are doing. They are keeping a consistent flow of fresh content to their page on a weekly basis.
If someone comes to your page and sees that you haven't bothered to post for weeks or months, do you think they will think you are a proactive, proud company? No, it just looks lazy! Needless to say, that is not good for business!
Unlike a static website, social media needs to be updated constantly to keep your followers engaged and visitors interested.
But it’s not about just throwing any old update up, make sure that it’s valuable and useful to your audience and shows them what your key business values are all about (clean, honest, organised).
Know your customer
A successful social media strategy revolves around one specific thing, your ideal customer.
Everything you post should be posted through your customers eye. You need to ask, what value does this provide our customer or potential customer?
Examples of value your posts can provide might be:
- Social proof you are good at your work
- Testimonials to create trust
- Advice or tips to show your knowledge of your industry
- Information of services your provide
- Videos or images of you and your team to show the human side of the company
- Examples of equipment you use that shows you are at the cutting edge
So this is all very well, but reading this will not do anything if you don’t take some action!
