If you're a tradesman and you're starting a new business, you need to forget about being a tradesman for a minute! This might seem strange but what you actually need to focus on, is being an entrepreneur or a marketer. You've learnt your trade and you're great at your job, the problem is, to do a great job you first need customers.
This fact is missed by most trades people who fail to understand their first role as a business owner is a marketing manager, rather than being an electrician for instance. So what can you do to get your business recognised and get customers coming to you?
Google Business Profile
Depending on where you live, the one most important thing for your business is getting a "Google Business Profile". The good news is it's free and it gets you the best exposure on the best platform, "Google".
Depending on where you live will depend on how many customers you have the potential in reaching. If you live in a city you will have the potential to reach a large number of customers. If you live in a small village, your reach will be less so.
A Website an Electrician
A website is a great way to showcase your work and get customers to contact you. Be warned, no two websites are the same. When you open your business, you will be harassed by many agencies who say they can build you a website and get you to the top of "Google". Do not listen to this and we will go into this in more detail in another article. A cheap one page website which is not optimised for your area or your services is only as good as a business card.
To get customers contacting you, requires a website tailored to you and your business, built in a specific way to rank high on Google. Why do you need to rank high on Google? If you're not ranking high on Google then no one will see your website. The internet is like having a shop. If you have a shop in the middle of a desert, no-one will find it. Whereas you have your shop on the high street and the customers will come to you.
Business Booklets
Local business booklets are a great way to get in front of people. For £50-£100 a month you can get your business in front of 10'000 people and that's great value. The other added benefit is that a lot of OAPs aren't online. This puts you in front of an audience who else wouldn't find you.
Google Ads
Google ads or otherwise called Pay Per Click, is another good way to get customers to your website. This is especially useful for new business's with little online presence. The aim with this is to usually start higher and reduce over time as your website begins to get ranked higher on Google. There are strategies to reduce spend over time will we will discuss in another article.
Flyers
Flyers can be great depending on your business. If done well, they get a fast response similar to the business booklets. The advantage is they are low cost and can be delivered yourself to keep costs down.
At Small Business Website Designs, we specialise in helping tradesman get customers in a variety of ways. We're not simply a marketing company, we look for all types of ways to get customers coming to you, whether that's online / in the post / or word of mouth. Paid advertising but especially free or low cost advertising. We work with you to reduce advertising spend over time and help you and your website become self sufficient.
We've used various methods with various success and we help you from doing this for our own trades businesses. Yes that right, we run our own trades business ourselves so we know the demands of trying to get customers. The aim is to get more customers than you need, so you can increase prices and not have any quiet days.
If you'd like to discuss the options, contact us here or look at our website for examples.
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