(Photo : Search Schematic)

There are 3,784,293 Construction businesses in the United States as of 2022, an increase of 3.4% from 2021, according to IBISWorld. Fast-growing technology has not only advanced the construction process but has also completely changed how contractors bring new business. Search Schematic is an award-winning digital marketing agency that has been helping contractors adapt to the latest digital marketing channels that bring in solid leads. We contacted them to find out how they achieve results for their general contracting clients. Here are our findings:

Tell us about your contracting clients and their challenges.

The Majority of the contractor clients that come to us are still using traditional marketing methods like mailing and word of mouth. Most do not have a website or have a basic non-interactive website that is as good as a business card. Especially after Covid 19, more people search for renovation or contracting services on the internet. And traditional marketing methods no longer bring in the leads as they did a decade ago. Contractors, too, must invest in digital marketing to get new business.

At our digital marketing agency, we focus on getting our general contracting clients established on the internet. We achieve this by building an interactive website, optimizing their social media, and creating Pay Per Click PPC, SEO, and Email marketing campaigns to get consistent quality leads.

Contracting Services Website Design

Unlike many other businesses when it comes to general contracting, their clients trust them to build or fix their homes, commercial places, garages, patios, and more. These projects are not only costly projects but also dear to clients. Therefore building a website that is aesthetically pleasing and interactive and that also generates trust in its users is essential.

The best way to achieve trust is by showcasing the contractor's completed projects in detail, including the before and after photos and work-in-progress photos. Ideally, a contractor's website will have a page dedicated to showcasing their projects and displaying three of the best projects on their website homepage. You can see the example by visiting high-performing websites like the home renovation contractors in New York and Masonry Contractors in New York. The other important features a contractor's website must focus on are as follows:

• A mobile responsive website

• Fast loading speed

• Content created to address potential client's needs

• Well-structured with a phone number displayed in the header.

• Get A Estimate button placed where necessary.

• Creating a Company profile page with information on the history of the contracting company and information on the contractor's licenses and insurances.

What Digital Marketing Channels Best Work for Contractors?

Building an interactive website for a contracting business is only a part of the overall marketing strategy for capturing leads. The other part is to have relevant traffic land on the website. Traffic that is interested in hiring a contracting company. We utilize various digital marketing channels and build the contracting company's reputation online to achieve that.

Digital Marketing Channels

Our approach is we focus on a long-term strategy and a short-term strategy.

Our long-term strategy includes working on optimizing SEO for the contractor's website to improve their organic rankings on search engines for the popular keywords related to their services. Our Local SEO Company team optimizes their Google Business Profile and performs work on optimizing all factors that matter to the Google Local Search algorithm. Gradually, the organic rankings of our contracting clients improve on Google and other search engines, and they receive leads without paying for ads.

By our short-term strategy, we mean getting instant leads. Depending on how much SEO work was performed on the contractor's website previously, it could take a long time to see results from the SEO campaign. In the meantime, we run high-performing Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns to garner leads for our contracting clients. We utilize Bing Ads and Google Adwords. Depending on our contracting client's services, we also use Facebook & Instagram ads to find new business for our clients.

Building Trust & Reputation

Word of mouth has always been the best way to build trust for a contracting company. If homeowners in your area are happy with your work, they will tell their friends and family about you. But in today's digital world, word of mouth has taken on a whole new meaning. Homeowners are no longer just talking to their friends and family about you- they're also posting online reviews, tweeting about their experiences, and sharing photos of your work. As a result, it's more important than ever for contractors to ensure that their online presence is strong. Other than visiting the contractor's website, the potential clients will look up their company on the internet and social media.

Therefore, to further our efforts in building trust and reputation online, we create social media accounts for the contracting company and regularly post on them, gather reviews from contracting clients on reputable platforms, and respond to reviews. We also create PR campaigns to get high-quality backlinks, create helpful, relevant content, and post it on reputable blogs.

Conclusion

Technology shouldn't only be restricted to advance the construction process but must also be utilized for marketing your contracting company. Contractors need to evolve and take advantage of technology to find new business.