5 Practical Marketing Tips For Time-Poor Trades
You’re a builder, carpenter, decorator, roofer, plumber, electrician, heating engineer, landscaper and you’re trying to grow your business. How can you do that when you’re busy on-site though? We know that you might run your business on your phone but also that you’re not glued to a screen, so we’ll keep it simple and practical. Build your brand using these simple pointers You are an expert at what you do and your customers love you. You can spot a dodgy roof tile or a leaky pipe from a mile away but when it comes to marketing, things can get a bit… well, confusing. Don’t worry though, you don’t need a marketing degree to get your name out there. We’ve put together this list of our top five things you can do to get your marketing working harder for your business: 1. Don’t Tell Them, Show Them: Visual Content is King Forget long, wordy adverts. People want to see what you can do. That means snapping photos and videos of your projects. Before-and-after shots are gold! A quick video showing you fixing a tricky plumbing issue? That’s going to grab attention. Think about it, if you needed a new bathroom fitted, wouldn’t you want to see examples of a company’s past work? 2. Get Local, Get Found: Google Business Profile is Your Best Friend When someone searches for “plumber near me” or “builder in [your town],” you want to be at the top of the list. That’s where your Google Business Profile comes in. It’s a free tool that lets you list your business on Google Maps and search results. 3. Social Media: More Than Just Cat Videos And Holiday Snaps Pick a few key social media platforms and do them well, understand which ones your potential clients are using and use them too. Facebook and Instagram are great for visual content. LinkedIn is fantastic for connecting with other professionals and potential commercial clients. 4. Ask for Reviews and Recommendations We all know a good recommendation goes a long way. But these days, people look online for reviews. Platforms like Google, Facebook, and Checkatrade are vital. 5. Keep it Mobile-Friendly: Everyone’s on Their Phone Most people will find you on their phone. If your website is hard to navigate on a mobile device, you’ll lose potential customers. The Bottom Line: You don’t need a huge marketing budget. Focus on showcasing your work, getting found online, and building trust with potential customers. By keeping it simple and focusing on what matters, you can grow your business and keep those projects coming in. And if you need any more help then why not contact your friendly specialist marketing agency!
Is Marketing Really The Most Stressful Job In The World?
And if it is, what are some easy ways to give your online presence a boost? April is Stress Awareness Month and according to careercast.com research, when asked to rate their job stress out of ten 78% of marketers rated it at seven or higher. So it’s no wonder business owners find it extremely difficult to run their marketing alongside their day-to-day job. One of the main things business owners are always trying to do is use their marketing to improve their search engine rankings. So what are some easy wins that small to medium business owners can do to maximise their SEO efforts with the least amount of stress? Here are our top three: 1. Replace images on your website One of the easiest ways to give your SEO a boost is to do some small updates on your website and replacing images is a good place to start. We recommend doing this every six months to make sure your images are up to date and to give Google a nudge to rearrange your site’s ranking. Although stock imagery is okay to use, adding authentic images of your own work or staff is best. If you don’t have any photos of your own, give us a call on 01903 686858 to speak to our team about how we can help. Top tip: On top of replacing the images on your site, make sure that the new images you add have ALT text. Search engines can’t see images so using ALT text describing the image is the only way to get that image ranked. Adding new images without ALT text will flag up as an update, but adding ALT text will also allow the search engines to understand what your image is and show it in relevant search results. 2. Make sure you’re using the right title tags While websites need to be created to be helpful to your target consumer, it’s also important to make sure search engines can read your website too. We’re certainly not saying to ‘keyword stuff’ or use other black hat SEO tactics, but what we are saying is to make sure your website is formatted correctly. The main thing to do is use Headings properly (known as H1’s, H2’s and H3’s) in the right way. These are the three main types of title tags. Although there are more, generally speaking, you’ll only ever need the first three: H1 – A title and the biggest of the title tagsH2 – A smaller heading used to title subsectionsH3 – An even smaller heading usually used for subheadings Why are title tags important for SEO? Title tags are crucial for SEO as they allow search engines to understand what content is the most important. Which, in turn, enables it to understand what the webpage is about. Since Google’s new algorithm update, it is focusing more on producing helpful results to users. Making sure that your website uses title tags correctly will help Google place your website in relevant search results. So setting aside some time to go through your website and making sure that all the right headings have the right tags could really boost your website up the search rankings. Top tip: Where you can, make sure that your H1’s include a focus keyword. 3. Update and republish old blog posts There’s a lot of pressure now to always be creating new and unique content but when it comes to SEO, this isn’t essential. In fact, re-using old content can be just as effective if you spend just a small amount of time ‘top and tailing’ it. What is top and tailing? Top and tailing simply means to write (or re-write) the start and end of a piece of written content. In this context, it means to give it a refresh and potentially make it more current. In other circumstances, you may ‘top and tail’ a piece of writing to make it more effective: Top and tailing an old piece of content will take less time than writing a whole new piece of content and it can still be used as if it’s new. So, by all means, republish it as a new blog post and talk about it through your marketing channels. If you feel it’s appropriate, you can explicitly say that the ‘new’ article is an updated version of a previous article. Just like we did with our networking blog post. If you’re finding that you just don’t have the time to try these quick wins, it might be time to ask for some help with your marketing. Which is where we come in! Give our marketing experts a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk to find out how we can help.
Improving Your Digital Marketing
As we’re sure you’ll know, technology is constantly changing and there’s no exception for digital marketing channels. So it’s no surprise that, in order to be successful at digital marketing in 2023, you need to continually evolve your digital marketing strategy. The beginning of 2023 is a good time to make some changes. Here’s what we suggest: Streamline the social platforms you’re on A lot of businesses make the mistake of being on every social media platform in fear of not reaching everyone. Unless you’re a government or global consumer brand, this is the wrong approach to take – you don’t want to reach everyone you want to reach your target audience. So ask yourself – what platforms are they on? Think of social media platforms as news channels. There are lots of different ones out there; Sky News, BBC News, Channel 4 News, ITV News etc. Each of them is essentially telling the same stories, they’re just doing it in a slightly different way. As a result, people have their preferences – some always watch Sky News and don’t like BBC News. While others prefer BBC News over everything else. So what social media platform does your target audience prefer? Once you know that, you can start removing your business from other social channels and focusing on the audience’s favourite/s. Top Tip: Make sure that you don’t leave your social media accounts to become dormant. It’ll reflect badly on your business and may make potential customers turn away thinking your business is not operating anymore. Instead, either delete the social account completely or – if there’s an option to – make the account invisible to the public. Build relationships with your customers One of the main goals of any marketing efforts that you do should be to build relationships with your customers. Very few consumers are going to decide to buy from you simply because you asked them to. What many will do is shop around, look at alternatives and ultimately choose the business that resonates with them the most. Making sure that your business has a good relationship with the consumer will give it a good chance of being the one that consumers choose. Make sure you’re consistent Whatever digital marketing efforts you’re doing, making sure you’re consistent is a constant rule. While changing things up is important, it’s equally as important to make sure that you’re giving things ‘a good go’ before deciding that they’re not effective for your business. Here at Constructive Marketing, we’ve got years of experience managing a diverse range of businesses digital marketing strategies. Whether you’re not sure where to start, or you already have goals in place, we can help. Give us a call on 01903 686858 or email us at info@constructivemarketing.co.uk to arrange a meeting with us and get your digital marketing back on track for 2023.