9 min read
Contractor Marketing: Tips and Tricks
Working as a contractor has become increasingly common with the rise of the internet, social media, and eCommerce shopping. Whether you are a full-service contractor, a home contractor, or an independent contractor working in a variety of fields, knowing the best marketing for contractors is a must.
In order to effectively grow your business and generate leads as a contractor, you will need marketing for home contractors or independent contractors that is not only well-received, but also effective. Even if you are new to contractor marketing, it is possible to create marketing for home contractors that delivers the results you need to stay on track to achieving success.
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Carve Out Your Professional Vision
There is no one best way to market to contractors or to market as a contractor, as contract work varies and can range from local marketing to home repairs and build jobs. Before you can begin pitching your services to prospective clients, it is important to carve out a professional vision that you have for yourself and your future as a contractor. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What type of contractor am I interested in working full-time or even with a full-service business of my own?
- How will I reach the clients I want to work and provide for? What type of problems can I solve with the contracting work I deliver?
- What are the best methods I can appeal to my clients both locally as well as online? Based on the demographics I want to reach, which marketing vehicles are most likely to result in lead generation and garnering new clientele?
- What are my short and long-term goals working as a contractor? How do I intend to set and achieve the goals I set for myself as a contractor? What methods will I use to track my productivity and overall accountability?
Consider Your Professional Abilities and Skills
Whenever you intend to go solo as a contractor, it is imperative to brainstorm your current abilities and professional skill set. Diving into independent contractor work is not always easy, especially if you lack skills or work experience with previous clients.
If you are unsure of how to go about breaking into the world of contractors, create a list of your professional abilities and skills. Consider how your abilities and skills can be put to work to help your clients solve problems while addressing their individual pain points.
Achievements, Certifications, and Degrees
Do you have achievements, degrees, or certifications you have worked for, earned, and been awarded? You can use these to highlight your skills and abilities with your resume as well as your online presence, once you have developed and launched it.
The more achievements, degrees, awards, and certifications you have to your name, the easier it will be to appeal to a wider audience. When you are new to the realm of independent contract work, it is essential to boost your professional image as much as possible, especially as you are establishing yourself for the first time on your own.
Defining Your Target Clientele
A major part of service contractor marketing involves identifying and defining your target clientele and the audience you want to appeal to with your services. Entering highly competitive markets such as contract work is extremely risky if you do not know who you wish to attract and represent. When you are working to figure out who you want to reach as a contractor, ask the following questions to help along the way:
- What are the demographics I am targeting? What age range, gender, and location am I targeting that is most likely to deliver optimal results?
- Who is most likely to need the help that I have to offer?
- How can I identify prospective clients who are in need of independent contract work?
- What methods of contact and communication work best to appeal to the audience or demographic I intend to reach with my portfolio and/or contract business?
- How will I measure the success of my efforts? How will I attract referrals and repeat business from previous clients?
- How can I ensure that the audience I am targeting is the optimal clientele I should be trying to reach with my contract experience?
Create a Personal Online Presence
Establishing a personal online presence is pivotal for any contractor, regardless of the market or field you work in and represent. Without a personal and professional online presence, attracting new clientele and appealing to a more expansive audience becomes much more tedious, time-consuming, and competitive.
Using a personal online presence can help you to maximize your online reach and visibility, even if you are new to working as an independent contractor. With the right online marketing strategy, branch out and build a professional name and reputation for yourself locally as well as internationally. The opportunities become virtually endless with the right online presence and network of professional associates and potential clients.
Build a Portfolio and Official Website
Even after you begin to establish your personal pages and accounts online, it is highly advisable to launch a portfolio and/or an official website to showcase your work, experience, and testimonials you have received. Using an online portfolio or website can quickly help you to build and solidify a professional and reputable reputation online and off. For example:
(Image Credit: Design Shack)
Building a portfolio and official website is a way for you to spread the word of your services via search engine results with the use of SEO, or search engine optimization. With the use of keywords, titles, and specific trends, you can help to optimize your website and online presence for search engines including Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and DuckDuckGo.
Making a positive and professional lasting impression is also key to building loyalty and attracting clients with a website and online presence. Using your portfolio and official website, appeal to prospective clients who have a genuine interest in learning more about the services you offer but are unfamiliar with your work. Your website can be one of the best vehicles to help convey your messaging and your portfolio while also providing you with more opportunities to build and establish a professional reputation as an independent contractor.
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Use Blogging and Guest Blogging
After creating an official website or portfolio to showcase your skills, experience, and work, launch a blog to help become an even more authoritative source online. Blogging is an excellent tool for establishing an authoritative voice and brand for any individual or business. With a blog, hone in on specific keywords, hashtags, trends, and topics that are most interesting and relevant to your visitors and prospective customers.
Use your blog to inform your readers of various topics that are most relevant to the contract skills you have and the services you offer. Create unique and engaging content that is intriguing and useful to your readers to keep them coming back for more. An informative and interesting blog is also extremely useful in garnering followers and piquing the interest of those who may be in the market for an independent contractor in your field or niche.
Guest blogging is another marketing technique that can be highly beneficial for independent contractors. Using guest blogging is possible by working with other blog owners and authors to swap links and to share posts on one another’s blogging platform or website. By cross-promoting one another’s content, you can significantly boost your website’s overall search engine optimization, or SEO in less time. Here is an example of a guest blog post:
(Image Credit: Ahrefs)
Guest blogging also provides the opportunity to implement backlinks to third-party websites while also receiving links back to your website from other blogs. The more incoming and outcoming high-quality links you share and receive, the faster your website’s URL will climb the ranking within search engine results.
Create a Brand for Yourself
Use your website to create a brand for yourself with professional logos, headers, titles, and color schemes. Streamlining the imagery, graphics, and overall branding of your website, blog, and social media can help to gain the trust of your users and prospective clients even if you are new to contract work.
Did you know? Updating and republishing old blog posts with new content and images can increase organic traffic by as much as 106%.
Showcase and Highlight Client Testimonials
Another way to put your official website, blog, and portfolio space to use is to showcase testimonials and reviews you have received from satisfied clients. Highlighting testimonials from happy and satisfied clients helps tremendously when establishing yourself as a professional independent contractor. The use of verifiable testimonials proves your ability and reliability, which is extremely important for clients who are currently in search of a professional contractor they can trust. The image below shows a few showcased testimonials:
(Image Credit: HubSpot Blog)
The Power of Networking
Networking is one of the most powerful marketing tools used by both major corporations as well as independent contractors. Knowing how to effectively network with prospective clients, associates, partners, and even investors can help to take any business venture you have in mind to the next level of success. As an independent contractor, there are many different methods and techniques available to help expand your own network for future opportunities and possibilities.
Use Professional Social Media Platforms
Becoming known as a professional and trusted independent contractor is rarely an overnight accomplishment. Time, effort, and a true understanding of your market is key to truly succeeding independently on your own. One way to break into the realm of professional networking is to use a professional social media platform such as LinkedIn to help establish yourself.
LinkedIn is the world’s largest online professional social media networking platform, reaching millions of users around the globe. With LinkedIn, flesh out your digital resume while networking with others who may be beneficial to have in your circle of contact. Using LinkedIn is also a way to spread the word about your business and the services you offer while also boosting your website’s SEO.
(Image Credit: TheNextWeb)
Join Online Groups and Communities
Immersing yourself in the online communities and groups for independent contractors can quickly help you to become comfortable with the clientele you will be working with as well as obstacles you may face. Use message boards, forums, and even social media groups to discover various pain points and problems you may have missed or overlooked for your own marketing strategy.
Learn more about how to captivate the attention of protective clients and how to keep clients coming back for more repeat business in the future. Use online groups and communities to mingle, network, and even connect with potential associates, partners, investors, and even clients themselves. Here is an example of a Facebook group dedicated to contractors:
Social Media Marketing
With the advent of social media marketing, the realm of marketing has changed significantly, especially for those working solely online. Social media has opened the door to virtually boundless opportunities and possibilities when it comes to attracting new clients and generating leads and sales with the use of a website, blog, or even an eCommerce storefront. Using social media can help you to not only establish yourself and your website within search engines, but it is an extremely powerful networking and fan-building tool.
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Developing Your Social Media Presence as a Contractor
Begin developing your social media presence as a contractor by registering the same username or the same name for your brand and/or business across all platforms of your choice.
Branding Your Social Media Presence
Branding is a major element involved in creating an effective online presence and digital marketing strategy. Upload and use the same high-quality logos, photographs, and professional graphics to advertise your products or the services you provide. Avoid using low-quality, blurry, or outdated graphics and imagery when it comes to presenting your work or promoting your brand.
If you do not currently have high-quality photos of your work for your portfolio, it is best to wait for higher quality results or to have your current portfolio images reworked and edited for an optimal outcome.
Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms
Choosing social media platforms that are right for you highly depends on the type of contract work you provide as well as your location and the demographics you want to reach. If you are interested in targeting locals in a specific region or neighborhood, using a platform such as Facebook is best. With Facebook and Facebook Ads, pinpoint and target specific groups of people based on their age range, gender, location, and even specific interests or hobbies they have.
For a visually-oriented audience, consider targeting Instagram and Pinterest users depending on the services you offer as well as your target audience. Once you establish an aesthetic and overall look and feel for your brand, choosing which social media platforms are likely to work in your favor is much easier.
Communication and Transparency Are Key
In order to build and maintain a professional reputation, it is important to remember that communication and transparency are essential. Establishing a professional reputation and name for yourself as a business or as an independent contractor is tough enough offline, and it is overwhelmingly competitive online.
Communication can help to establish trust and to pique the interest of those who may be in need of a contractor for any reason. Use social media, your blog, email newsletter, and official website to maintain open and honest communication with followers and clients at all times.
Transparency also goes a long way in highly competitive and saturated markets such as independent contract work. Allowing users to leave comments, critique, and even negative reviews is extremely important when first creating an online presence for yourself. Always address criticism and negative reviews in a straightforward and professional manner. Use negative reviews or comments about your business to help showcase transparency and to promote the type of customer service you provide to all of your clients, even if they are dissatisfied. For example:
(Image Credit: Vendasta)
Remain Consistent at All Times
Always remain consistent when building and establishing your online presence. Update your website at least once a week with a new blog or news for your visitors. Use your social media platforms at least once a day to communicate with followers and to promote or share deals you are offering. Connect with those who message or email you directly to help solidify your reputation and abilities as a professional contractor.
Knowing the best way to market to contractors and understanding the best service contractor marketing techniques is extremely handy when representing your own contract work and clients. With goals and visions for yourself and the clients you intend to reach, you can maximize the contractor marketing services you use with ease.
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FAQ’s
There are several things you can do to improve your general contractor business. 1) Be sure your phone number is easy to find. 2) Claim your Google My Business listing. 3) Set up local ads. 4) Make your website helpful for your customers. 5) Be active on social media.
First off, make sure you have a marketing objective and perform a SWOT analysis (learn more about SWOT analysis here). Analyze the current market and create a budget. Be sure and monitor the results and change up your strategy if needed.
A general contractor is someone who manages a team of subcontractors that do different types of projects in home construction. A building contractor specializes in building custom homes and sees this one project from start to finish.
Physical social networking and email campaigns are the most effective marketing strategies for home builders. Social media is getting to be increasingly popular and worthwhile.
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