Social Media Intensive features each discipline, presenting on:

• Pinterest
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Blogging
• Inbound Marketing
• Twitter

But these things don’t operate in silos.  So we’re also going to show you how to best integrate all of your online activities for maximum impact.

The event is held over two days, with 3 hours of webinars each day.  If you can’t make it live, not to worry. The events will be recorded and you’ll be sent a link to watch the replay!

Best of all, we’re not charging anything.  All we require is that you make a small donation to the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

For more information on the speakers and topics, head over to Social Media Intensive.

The event promises to fill up VERY quickly, so be sure to sign up today!

Everyone, at one point in time, has heard that phrase. They’ve heard it because it’s the truth.

It is the golden rule in today’s landscape of internet and social media marketing.

If you are a contractor and you want to increase your business then you need to have a website and you need to create new blog content on a regular basis.

People need a reason to come and visit your business’s website, and then to return over and over. The content you create is that reason.

The more content you have the more visitors you get.

It doesn’t have to be any harder than that.

Create good content and you will increase traffic to your site. Increase traffic to your site and you will increase your business, providing that you have a unique business proposition.

There are of course several other things that play into it but none are as big as creating quality and informative content.

Yet, how do you create all that good content while you are busy working in the field and running your company? What should you, as a contractor, blog about that will be of value to potential customers?

One great way to demonstrate your expertise and to create strong content on a regular basis is to blog about your jobs.

Each job that you complete is a unique opportunity to discuss the issues that occurred during the course of the work. You should go through the aspects of each job, highlighting all the challenges that were involved and how you were able to overcome them.

No two jobs are alike. This is what will keep your content unique and fresh.

Be sure to take Before, During and After pictures of each job. Then turn these pictures into blog posts, discussing the various phases of the project and how your company tackled the job to exceed your client’s expectations.

As boring as it may sound to blog about the jobs you have completed, your prospects will see otherwise. If you are truly a valuable resource then your community will come to your site to become educated on the areas you are knowledgeable in.

Most contractors know an array of tips that would help out a homeowner (or builder) from time to time.

If you are a contractor whose jobs are large in duration then you should consider writing a blog post about every job you do.

If you are contractor whose jobs are smaller in time frame, then pick a few jobs that seem worthy of highlighting throughout the month and write about them. Try and turn out a blog post on a weekly or bi-weekly basis.

Posting blogs regularly also lets Google know that your site is fresh, and will provide you with an edge over your competitor’s stale sites.

At the very least, taking pictures of all your jobs provides the opportunity to churn out lots of content with very little effort. If you take pictures of your jobs not only will you have a ton of material to post but it gives your community a chance to see the type of work you do.

To some contractors, developing and posting content may seem like pulling teeth.  But it doesn’t have to be.

Sit down and plan out a simple schedule of what jobs you are going to write about, and when you are going to publish your posts to your site.

Over time you’ll see a dramatic increase in traffic to your site and qualified leads.

They’ve known that Google prominently displays the best listings on page 1 for local searches.  It’s been a fantastic way to really dominate the first page of Google.

If you’ve followed our blog for long, you know that we strongly advocate a strategy where you focus on holding at least 4-5 positions on the first page for your targeted keywords. (for more on that click here)  Simply working on your website is but one component.

Google Places listings have long been a key component of this strategy:

Yesterday some big changes came down that will certainly be keeping a lot of contractors wondering what the hell happened.

Google has replaced all Google Places listings with Google+ Local pages.  It’s a big change.

We told you many months ago that you need to add Google Plus to your internet marketing mix.   Now this strategy is even more important.

Google is automatically converting all former Places listings into Google+ Local listings.  So don’t worry too much that you’ll simply disappear.

(That said, you should definitely stay on top of it to make sure your business is still properly represented. For more analysis on the technical details, check out this article: Google Places Is Over, Company Makes Google+ The Center Of Gravity For Local Search)

So what does this mean for contractors?

It is both an opportunity and a threat.  It is a great opportunity for those who have already been actively work a Google+ business page.

It is also an opportunity for those who get started now.  It’s certainly not too late.

But at the same time, it’s a threat.  If you had a supercharged Google Places page that dominated your competitors, there’s a chance that you’re going to lose some of that mojo.

If you’re not willing to invest in maintaining a somewhat active Google+ business page, then you’re going to suffer as well.  

Here’s what we’re doing for our clients, and what we’d recommend that you do:

1. Daily monitoring of the current situation.  Google didn’t just flip the switch on this thing.  It’s taking some time for it to all flush out, and the total impact is not yet known.
2. There are new opportunities and a whole new process for leveraging these new Google+ Local pages into real leads for contractors.  We’re all over it.
3. We’re doubling down on Google+ activity and interaction on our client’s G+ business pages.

Let’s hope that the new format is a more business-friendly platform.  Google Places really was poorly designed on a number of levels, and too easy to manipulate for better or worse.

We’re excited to see how it all plays out.

What’s your take?  Are you happy about these changes?  Do you think your business will suffer or benefit?

It’s not always about price. Actually, if you’re good it’s almost never about price.

It should be about the value you provide and the relationship you build.

So what does this have to do with your internet marketing efforts?

Your Website is an Opportunity to Shake Hands with a Prospect

You have to stop thinking about your website as an online flyer, and start thinking about it as an opportunity to shake hands with a prospect.

When somebody stumbles upon your site, they’re assessing whether or not to contact you for their project.

Take a look at your site traffic, compare that to the number of leads your web site is generating, and that will give you a fairly close idea as to your “conversion rate” from web traffic.

If you’re like most contractors, you are getting a relatively low amount of leads compared to the overall traffic at your site.  There is a very powerful strategy you can use to fix this problem.

I often talk to contractors who say “When I just get a shot at it, I can close over 50% of the projects I look at!”  There is something really telling in that statement.  Clearly people like this contractor.  He does well in sales meetings.  So how can the success in these meetings be copied and translated onto the website, to increase conversions?

One great way to do this is with video.

Why are you successful in sales meetings?  Do any of these answers come to mind?

• I’m trustworthy.
• People just like me.
• I can really communicate the value that my company offers.
• I am great at walking clients through the process and getting them to really understand things.

The list could go on and on.  The key here is that you need to identify these things for yourself.  Next, come up with your own list.  Yes, write them all down!

Once you’ve come up with your list, design a video in which you can convey all of these qualities.  Often times, the video can be a huge success if you just take a normal, conversational approach to it.

Find a setting that’s professional, but not too polished.  And just talk like you’re having a conversation with a potential client.

Don’t worry about looking at the camera or memorizing a script.  Just have a conversation.

If you can’t edit or shoot the video yourself, find somebody to do it for a few hundred bucks.

Then, embed the video on your home page.

Done properly, a video like this will really increase the number of leads generated by your website. Further, when you actually meet these prospects, they will feel as if they already know you, because they spent 10 minutes watching your video. 

This is how you turn every lead into a warm lead, and it’s an extremely powerful way to gain the upper hand on your competition.

Twenty years ago it seemed like an effective marketing plan meant having a well-placed ad in the yellow pages. That kind of marketing tactic just isn’t going to cut it anymore. The game has changed.

Not only are phone books dying,  very rarely will a person call a contractor because of any physical off-line ad. More people use the internet to find contractors now, plain and simple.

So what does this mean for your business?

Your marketing tactics need to be focused online if you are going to get the maximum mileage out of your efforts.

Here are four tried and true methods to bolster your online presence without breaking your pocketbook.

They may seem simple and obvious but spending time on each of these items will help your business.

Yes, these are the basics.  But ask yourself honestly, are you taking care of all of them effectively?

1. Optimize your website for search engines

This is commonly referred to as SEO. To understand SEO for contractors, you need to first research what keywords people use to find you, for example: “Plumber St. Louis” or “Drywall Repair Chicago,” and so on.

Next go to Google (they’re the most powerful search engine but you can use others) and see where you rank for those keywords. If you are not within the top three search results then you need to optimize your website and focus on off-site SEO tactics to rank better for those keywords.

If you need more information on the tried and true tactics for rising in the search rankings, download our report : How to Get On the First Page of Google in Five Different Places

2. Angie’s List

Angie’s List is such a powerful tool for contractors. One thing that is great about the site is that members pay to be a part of it, but for contractors it is free. Angie’s List finds that this helps improve the quality of the reviews by their users…millions of users that are constantly looking for contractors. Not only that, but only trustworthy businesses are listed in Angie’s List and that greatly improves the validity of your company just by mere association.

3. Placing well designed ads on Craigslist

Hundreds of contractors post their services on Craigslist every day and while most are glossed over there is still a benefit to posting your company info there. The key is to not place an ad like this:

That ad isn’t helping anyone and is extremely uninviting. There’s no link to a website, no pictures of their work, and there’s not even a a name given so you know who to ask for when you call. This type of ad took all of 30 seconds to create and will probably lead nowhere.

It is so easy to stand out from all the other posts on Craigslist if you just spend a little bit of time crafting something that looks more like this: I guarantee you the person who made the second ad was not a design major in college and to make a decent ad on Craigslist you don’t have to be a design major either. What you do need is to spend 20-40 minutes on an ad that cuts to the point of who you are, what you do and how to get to your website for further contact.

Between the two ads the latter one is way more inviting for a prospect.  You’ll get better results with the second example, I promise.

4. Online Business Directories

Google Places is certainly at the top of this list. Anything that has the name “Google” next to it is something you are going to want to have your business listed in. Yellow Pages online and Yelp are probably the next two to go join but there are literally dozens of worthwhile directories out there.

If you want to spend a few dollars to help speed up and automate the process of joining these directories than you can head over to Yext and sign up for their services.

I know most of those tactics, so now what?

These items are probably not foreign to most contractors and seem like the most basic things to do. The fact of the matter is that most contractors do not use all four of these tools on a regular basis.

The goal here is to now take these tactics and create a marketing plan where you spend a small amount of time every week focusing on each of them. Every one of these items needs to constantly receive attention and updates.

Don’t let these tactics fall by the wayside because of how obvious they are.

Start investing more time in your online marketing efforts, and you’ll see your sales increase.

Incoming search terms:

• free ways to market a construction business

You may have the top spot for now but if you back off the work you have been doing you will certainly open the door for competitors to come in and take that top spot from you, and take it they will. Now is not the time to ease off the gas, it’s time to stomp that pedal right to the floor.

Who’s Competing For My Keywords?

For every worthwhile keyword that is out there, there are potentially hundreds or thousands of people competing to rank for the same keywords. Once you get that keyword you will have to keep fighting to hold on to your top ranking.

Your competitors certainly won’t be taking a break so neither can you. Not to mention Google’s algorithms that determine how your site is ranked change regularly, which means you need to be working to keep up with it.

Now that you’re on the top ranking for one of your keywords why not try for another? Then another? The more keywords you hold the top spot on the more your site will flourish and since you already know how to get to the top spot for one keyword, there’s a good chance you are going to know how to get to the top with another keyword. Rinse, wash and repeat.

What’s Next for My SEO Campaign?

That doesn’t mean you should just stick to the tried and true though. Web marketing for contractors is an ever-changing art. Adding to your craft will only make you stronger. There’s always room to improve your rankings via microsites, videos, local listings, staying up to date with changes Google makes, etc. The list goes on and on.

If you really do have solid rankings for all your keywords then it’s time for you to go out and find some new keywords to rank highly for. SEO for contractors is a marathon and you need to keep adding to your arsenal of search terms as you go.

If your business has plenty of work going on then that’s great, but if you have some gaps in your schedule then there is definitely no way you should be slowing down at all on your SEO efforts. You need to be aiming for 10-15 of your jobs per month coming from the internet. And it certainly never hurts to have too much work on your plate.

All in all it’s pretty difficult to try and come up with a reason to back off your SEO work. You could reap your benefits short term and take a break from your SEO activities, but you’ll eventually be overtaken by your competitors and left to start your campaign again. Instead, celebrate getting to the top of Google by doing it again.

The short answer, as often as possible.  But practically speaking, adding new blog posts, articles, and videos on a daily basis just isn’t going to happen for most contractors.

If you are just getting started, anything is better than nothing.  Start out by committing to once a month, at a minimum.  Then when you get the hang of it, pick up the pace.

For most of my clients, an ideal number is 1 to 2 new articles or videos each week.  Here’s why this is so important:

• Content signals to search engines that your site is very much alive.  Sites that are frequently updated are generally given preference in search rankings.
• The more content you have, the more keywords your site will rank for.  This might seem like a small benefit at first, but if you can keep a long-term vision, it has huge benefits.  A year from now, when you have 400 articles on your site, your traffic will be through the roof.
• Articles are a great place to promote your targeted keywords and search phrases.  Not only can articles themselves rank for certain keywords, but within these articles you can link to other pages on your site.  This “internal linking” can promote your overall SEO efforts in a big way.

Be sure to keep your targeted keywords in mind when you’re creating articles and videos.  If you aren’t sure how to properly optimize content for keywords, search around the internet and you can find plenty of resources on this topic.

Here’s what I want you to do next:

1. Take a look at your competitors and determine how active they are in content creation on their site.  Note: Most contractors don’t do a good job in this department.  If your competitors are passing on this, it’s a huge opportunity for you.
2. Determine for yourself a realistic goal for how many new articles or videos you will create each month.
3. Schedule time on your calendar each week to create content.  I recommend setting aside an hour each week.

If you’re still not sure if this makes sense for your business, send me an email and I’d be happy to give you my thoughts on your specific circumstances.

For everybody else, stay tuned for next week’s article which will provide you with a ton of tips for coming up with ideas for valuable content. One of the biggest stumbling blocks is always coming up with ideas for articles and videos that your potential clients will care about.  I’ve been doing this for years, and have some really actionable ideas to help you in this area.  Look for that next week.

Saturday morning I had breakfast with a local client to discuss a video we were shooting.  As we were eating, he exclaimed “Oh, I forgot to tell you I got a great lead the other day off the website!”  Before you can understand the significance of this, let me provide a little background.

My client is a basement finishing contractor.  Prior to hooking up with me, he had decided to go with a web/seo firm that promised the world at unrealistic prices.  $500 for a website, and $199/month thereafter for ongoing hosting and SEO services.  For that, he got a crap website built in html, very poorly optimized and nearly impossible to make changes to in an efficient manner.  I mean, this website could not have sucked much more.  Poorly optimized, terrible copy, no chance to convert visitors to leads, the list goes on and on.

And $199/month for ongoing seo work?  I told him from the get-go, this is not enough money to actually do the work it takes to improve your search rankings.  There’s no way they’re actually doing anything for you.  After three months and still buried 10 pages deep in Google, he called me to make the switch and invest in a real internet marketing effort.

I got started almost exactly one month ago.  Already his site is moving up the rankings quickly, and in fact has over 58 keywords already on the first page of Google, Yahoo and Bing.  That’s not even counting the long tail keywords that we haven’t begun tracking yet.

We worked hard to make some big changes to his site, not just for SEO purposes, but to make the copy more effective.  All the traffic in the world does you no good if you don’t have copy that converts website visitors into real sales leads.

Internet marketing and SEO efforts take time, and I typically tell clients to anticipate that it could take a few months to start seeing solid results.  But sometimes it happens quicker, as in this case.

The day after my client told me that he had received a great lead off the website, he emailed me to say that he had signed the contract.  It amounts to several thousand dollars of profit hitting his bottom line.  I don’t have to tell you how even a few thousand dollars of extra cash can change somebody’s financial picture.

But here’s the cool thing, we just got started.  As I told him from the beginning, the annual return on his internet marketing investment will be six figures.  It’s a life changing amount of money.

Helping people like this makes the hard work well worth it.

A few months ago, I started hearing some buzz around the web that Google was really investing in the future of Google+, their newest social networking platform which now stands as the greatest competitor to facebook.

But what does that mean?  Well, the most powerful tool Google has at its disposal is their very own search engine.  If they want to promote something, you better believe they are going to integrate it heavily into their very own search engine.

I initially went out and found some small contractors who were on Google+, looked for some content on their page, and quickly verified that it was all being indexed on google’s search engine.  This was a huge discovery.

Why is this important?

For starters, the closed nature of facebook means that the only thing google indexes is your business page.  None of your posts, pictures, comments, etc. are indexed.  That is not to say they don’t matter to the search engines, as it’s become clear that Google does indeed monitor your “social graph” in determining your rankings.

Google has also had a very public dispute with Twitter over the fact that Google does not index tweets.

But everything on G+ is being indexed.  And it’s become abundantly clear that G+ content, posts and pages are being given very liberal preference in search engine rankings.

This is a big opportunity for you, because your competitors are almost certainly ignoring this.  SEO for contractors can be a tough game, because you simply have so many competitors.  This is a great opportunity to be a first mover and gain the upper hand.

For an even greater look at why this all matters, how it’s all working behind the scenes, and how you can start taking advantage, check out this awesome video from SEOMoz:

• Why Every Marketer Now Needs to Employ a Google+ Strategy

If you don’t know much about how Google+ pages work for businesses, here’s a brief introduction:

Can you win work without being low bid?

You know the answer is yes, because you’ve done it in the past.  But it still remains difficult in today’s competitive climate.

Yet, following a certain formula can still lead you to more relationships that result in higher margin work.  Even in today’s climate.

Marketing Subcontractor Services – Always be Marketing

Subcontractors by nature do most of their work for general contractors.  It’s a captive market that you sell to.  In other words, you have a finite amount of prospects.

The good news is that it’s a pretty damn big number and most subcontractors could never even come close to marketing to all of the general contractors in their area.  In fact, most need only a small group of contractors that they have a great relationship with.

A very smart mentor and friend of mine once said “You have to always be marketing, because no client lasts forever.”  That statement is true for any business, especially the construction industry.

So how can you go about marketing your services to more general contractors and building more rock solid relationships with prospective clients?

A client and friend of mine recently passed along this article from the February 1986 edition of Construction Dimensions magazine.  It’s remarkable how little has changed since then.

Check it out here: Marketing Subcontractor Services to General Contractors

The article might as well have been written yesterday.  Here are just a few valuable highlights from the article, on how you can differentiate and build more meaningful relationships with your prospects and clients:

• Identify upcoming jobs to the general contractor—bring valuable leads
• Assist the general contractor with presentations to owners.
• Participate in a team approach to bidding/negotiating the job.
• Point out change order potentials.
• Publicize training programs you offer to ensure a skilled work force.
• Point out legal liabilities and areas of exposure in your field of expertise.
• Build relationships with general contractors—reinforce by your performance on the job.

If you’re beating your head against the wall, I think this article might give you some ideas to help you improve your margins and gain some more valuable clients.  You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

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If you’re new to my site, I encourage you to check out my pages on SEO for Contractors and LinkedIn Marketing Services.  These are both great resources that can help you improve your marketing efforts and generate more business.

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