Dialing In Your 2022 Contractor Marketing Plan

The new year is in full swing, and for the past few months I’ve been help­ing clients around the coun­try map out their 2022 mar­ket­ing bud­gets. You’ve got to know what you’re spend­ing, where you’re spend­ing it, where the best ROI lives, and how to effec­tive­ly cost your jobs so you can stay on a healthy growth trajectory. 

But your plan­ning can’t stop there.

Hope­ful­ly a cer­tain per­cent­age of your bud­get is ded­i­cat­ed to mar­ket­ing, and you have a real, clear plan in place for what that mar­ket­ing will look like. 

Ask your­self:

1. What mar­ket­ing items will you focus on?

2. How much will you spend? 

3. What are your key per­for­mance indi­ca­tors (KPIs)?

4. What worked last year that you can do more of this year? 

Mar­ket­ing plans need to be agile, but they also need to be built on data. And that data comes from con­sis­ten­cy, plan­ning, and tracking. 

With that said, let’s take a deep­er dive into a few key ele­ments of any con­trac­tor mar­ket­ing plan. What should you be focus­ing on this year?

Social media man­age­ment tips for contractors

For some con­trac­tors, social media is seen as a nec­es­sary evil. It can be hard to know how to do it right, what to spend, and if it’s even worth it. ​“They” say you should be on cer­tain chan­nels like Face­book or Insta­gram, but is it worthwhile? 

Here’s my brief take­away: if you’re going to be on social media, do it well. Be all in. Oth­er­wise you’ll just be lost in the noise and spin your tires. Define who you are as a com­pa­ny, what you want peo­ple to know about you, and offer val­ue. Lead gen­er­a­tion is tough since it can be a cold­er audi­ence, so focus on brand­ing and rela­tion­ship build­ing as a top pri­or­i­ty. Leads will fol­low, and you can always get more aggres­sive down the road.

Here are a few more tips.

• Be con­sis­tent. Don’t just post on hol­i­days with an oblig­a­tory graph­ic. Whether it’s once a week or five times a week, get inten­tion­al about it. 

• Add val­ue. Nope, not just offers (believe it or not, they got lost in the noise too!). Answer ques­tions, share tips, share project ideas, and give away infor­ma­tion for free. No strings attached. Trust me: you aren’t going to feed your com­peti­tors or fuel an urge to do-it-your­self. You’re going to estab­lish cred­i­bil­i­ty as a brand and build your rep­u­ta­tion as a local author­i­ty and resource. 

• Don’t over­think it. I’ve seen con­trac­tors doing incred­i­ble work, but they’d wait until they had a pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er or video­g­ra­ph­er lined up before cap­tur­ing con­tent. The pho­tos turned out great, but one or two pho­to shoots a year isn’t going to fuel a suc­cess­ful con­tent mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy. Show­case your work well, but social media is all about being authen­tic. Peo­ple can go to HGTV for the 4k visu­als: show off your work well and con­sis­tent­ly and you’ll be miles ahead of your competitors.

• Don’t neglect videos. You do NOT need to be the host of a show, or offer 10 – 15 minute episodes. Don’t take it per­son­al­ly, but nobody would watch it! Video on social media today is typ­i­cal­ly 10 – 15 sec­ond clips that live on Reels or Sto­ries. Quick, snap­py footage of your team at work, or a quick tran­si­tion to show a before/​after perspective. 

• Face­book Ads. Spon­sored ads on Face­book and Insta­gram are an essen­tial way to get in front of a wider audi­ence. My rec­om­men­da­tion here would be to care­ful­ly craft your tar­get audi­ence so that you’re get­ting in front of peo­ple with­in your ser­vice areas who are like­ly to be inter­est­ed in your work. Are you a roofer? You prob­a­bly don’t need to waste mon­ey reach­ing 18-year-olds. How about tar­get­ing high­er-val­ue com­mu­ni­ties by zip code, reach­ing home­own­ers over the age of 35? 

Man­age your expec­ta­tions on social media. Have a goal, go after it the best you can, and be con­sis­tent. It WILL pay off, even if it’s just in local brand aware­ness and not in truck­loads of qual­i­fied leads.

Should you be on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn has evolved in some pret­ty excit­ing ways. If you’re a con­trac­tor with a com­mer­cial client base, a LinkedIn com­pa­ny page is a no-brain­er. Much like any oth­er social media strat­e­gy, focus on adding val­ue, answer­ing ques­tions, and shar­ing your best project-relat­ed content. 

Also, you can pay to pro­mote your con­tent as well with ​“boosts” from your com­pa­ny page (just like Face­book). You can also spon­sor ads for lead gen­er­a­tion, but I’d real­ly rec­om­mend leav­ing that in the hands of a pro­fes­sion­al. Cost can add up quick­ly with very lit­tle fruit unless you know the ins and outs of the platform. 

You can also get a lot of trac­tion on LinkedIn organ­i­cal­ly by get­ting your team involved. Be sure that every­one shares and engages with your com­pa­ny page posts, and is also active­ly build­ing their own net­works at the same time. 

Main­tain strong client relationships

Does all that social media talk have your head spin­ning? Let’s take a break from the super techie stuff and dig into good olé fash­ioned client rela­tion­ships. What’s new for 2022, and what’s not-so-new but still valuable?

• Email cam­paigns. Sure, open rates have gone down in recent years over­all, but email is still a pow­er­ful way to stay in touch with your clients. My sug­ges­tion would be to have a rou­tine email (mabe once per month, to start) that goes out to a strong, ​“clean” (up to date) list of clients. Don’t bom­bard them with offers, but just share quick, engag­ing con­tent: maybe an awe­some project pho­to, sea­son­al­ly rel­e­vant tip or insight, or links to recent edu­ca­tion­al arti­cles you’ve writ­ten. Emails writ­ten like this per­form the best. Occa­sion­al offers are just fine, but keep the super sales-dri­ven mes­sages to a minimum.

• Text cam­paigns. Send­ing batch­es of text mes­sages to client lists can be extreme­ly effec­tive. Since it is more direct and could be con­sid­ered inva­sive, just be sure to keep them to a min­i­mum (maybe 6x/​year, or quar­ter­ly). Very short, per­son­al­ized mes­sages with a clear offer. Peo­ple don’t want to chat. For exam­ple: ​“Hi Bob! This is Shawn from XYZ Con­struc­tion. We have 15% off new projects this month, and I thought of you. What can we help you with?”

• Refer­ral mar­ket­ing. Far and away, the award for best lead vol­ume and clos­ing rates goes to exist­ing cus­tomers and refer­rals. Let your clients know that you’re ready to take on more work, and thank them in a tan­gi­ble way for refer­rals that turn into won jobs. Gift cards, a dis­count on future ser­vices… Any­thing that acts as an incen­tive and express­es gratitude. 

• Reviews. Feed­back is always impor­tant, but in this era of online/​digital mar­ket­ing, reviews are more impor­tant than ever. Prospects don’t just pick up the phone and call any­more. They check your web­site, check your social media, and check reviews. There are plen­ty of slick pro­grams and plat­forms you can use to fol­low up with clients and win those 5‑star rat­ings, but the best plan is con­sis­ten­cy. Make ask­ing for feed­back part of your process, even before the team leaves a job site. It has to be fresh on the client’s mind, and you need to tell them why it’s so important.

Don’t aban­don print mar­ket­ing for your con­trac­tor business

We may live in a dig­i­tal world, but print is still high­ly effective! 

• Prox­im­i­ty mail­ers. Let folks know that you’ll be ​“in the neigh­bor­hood!” Maybe include a spe­cial offer for new cus­tomers, or for a lim­it­ed time while you’re right near­by. This can be accom­plished by plan­ning out a few upcom­ing jobs in valu­able neigh­bor­hoods, then send­ing mail­ers pre­emp­tive­ly. It’s a fun way to get in front of new prospects while also adding a lit­tle urgency. 

• Door hang­ers. Old school, but still effec­tive! Have a team mem­ber drop door hang­ers in the neigh­bor­hood that con­cise­ly share your ser­vices and con­tact info. 

• Sig­nage and brand­ing. Your vehi­cles and trail­ers are rolling bill­boards! Make the most of it with pro­fes­sion­al­ly-designed wraps. Keep the text min­i­mal, with clear brand­ing and con­tact infor­ma­tion above all else. Flashy and super clever can be fun, but the goal is for peo­ple to imme­di­ate­ly know what you offer and how to get in contact. 

• Yard signs. Still a strong lead source and great brand­ing tech­nique. Make sure your team puts them out on every job site unless the client has a clear objection. 

Keep your web­site fresh

Let’s get a lit­tle techie/​nerdy again. 

I can’t over­state how impor­tant it is to have a clear, mod­ern, well-designed web­site. Look­ing at the ana­lyt­ics of my clients’ sites, I can see thou­sands upon thou­sands of vis­i­tors come through, some organ­i­cal­ly, some from social media, and oth­ers from paid search. A high per­cent­age are on mobile devices too, mak­ing it essen­tial to have a respon­sive site that can instant­ly adapt to what­ev­er the view­er is using at the time. 

Aside from the over­ar­ch­ing design and func­tion­al­i­ty, here are a few more tips:

• Tar­get spe­cif­ic mar­kets. It can be tempt­ing to just share that you’re great at what you do, but you need to flip that equa­tion and talk to spe­cif­ic audi­ences. Sure, your home­page might offer a more broad overview, but craft inter­nal pages that reach dif­fer­ent types of clients. Do you serve med­ical facil­i­ties? Cre­ate a page just for them. Office build­ings? Church­es? New con­struc­tion? Get spe­cif­ic and strategic. 

• Make it all about your cus­tomer, not you. Yes, it’s impor­tant to share cre­den­tials or capa­bil­i­ties that prove you’re the right fit for the job, but more than that it’s impor­tant to build a con­nec­tion with your read­er. Make them and their needs the dri­ving pri­or­i­ty, rather than a com­pul­sion to do all the talking. 

• Reflect your val­ues. What is true of you that’s not true of your com­peti­tors? How much do you build into and care for your team? Do you give back to the com­mu­ni­ty, or have a pas­sion project? Be real with your read­ers rather than just shar­ing how you’ve ​“offered qual­i­ty ser­vices since _____…”

• Blog! Well-writ­ten arti­cles that address client ques­tions or pain points can be invalu­able. From a search engine opti­miza­tion per­spec­tive, keep­ing this fresh con­tent pump­ing on your web­site helps improve how eas­i­ly you’re found online by peo­ple search­ing for your ser­vices. A blog arti­cle enti­tled ​“How much does a new roof cost in Lex­ing­ton, KY?” will like­ly do quite well! Plus, it’s easy and valu­able to share else­where, like on social media or in your next email campaign. 

Using paid search to grow your con­trac­tor business

Effec­tive paid search cam­paigns have the poten­tial for huge returns. In case you aren’t famil­iar with the term, paid search refers to ads craft­ed and pro­mot­ed on search engines that are served up to peo­ple who are search­ing for spe­cif­ic ser­vices or key­words. The heavy hit­ter, as you can imag­ine, is Google. 

Stick­ing with our pre­vi­ous exam­ple, let’s say that you’re a roofer in Ken­tucky. You could launch paid search cam­paigns around very spe­cif­ic search terms that relate to your ser­vices (roof­ing, roof­ing con­trac­tor, met­al roof, stand­ing seam roof, etc.), tar­get­ing your spe­cif­ic ser­vice areas. Then, when some­one is search­ing for one of those terms, maybe because they need a met­al roof in the Lex­ing­ton area, your ad will ide­al­ly show up right at the top of their search engine list. 

Cost can vary pret­ty dras­ti­cal­ly depend­ing on your bud­get, key­words, and the nature of your cam­paign, but paid search still tends to be one of the lead­ing lead gen­er­a­tion sources for clients who have an ade­quate bud­get and strong cam­paign in place.

What’s the takeaway?

Don’t be over­whelmed! This new year brings a lot of new oppor­tu­ni­ties, and if you can lean into it and get the help you need, the div­i­dends will be excit­ing. Stay flex­i­ble, push your com­fort zone, and stay con­sis­tent. But most of all, start with build­ing a strate­gic mar­ket­ing plan to guide your efforts and keep you on track.