You have a website, you have a Facebook page, you Tweet, you send out email campaigns and you have a blog for your contractor marketing business, all of which are important variables of an effective marketing campaign to boost contractor leads. However, all of that is great, but if you don’t have compelling and intriguing content that engages your audience to include within all of these marketing venues, the chances of hooking people and getting them to inquire further about your services aren’t what they could (or should) be.

So, how can you create compelling content to attract contractor leads and customers to keep them coming back for more?

Think Pull vs. Push. For starters, in today’s world of marketing, with the overwhelming number of advertisements in addition to all the methods of getting marketing out to people, it’s better to focus on pulling in readers with the right content vs. exhausting energies in pushing out information in hopes that someone will read it. If you do your research and understand your audience, you can provide content that will attract your target market and keep them coming back for more.

Be Informative. Again, what does your target market want in regards to information? We find the most success in providing clients with newsworthy content and promotions that they want to know about, which is the type of content you want to be sharing, as well.

Be Conversational. Keep a personal (yet professional) and conversational flow to your content. This engages readers more than if you use big words and sound too technical. Think about what you like to read and what pulls you in and use that as a guide.

Proofread and Edit. It appears very unprofessional when you have grammatical and spelling errors throughout your written contractor marketing content, so be sure to proofread and edit everything before you post or publish it for the world to see. You may be surprised at how many we see who don’t do this, and you don’t want to be like them!

Hire a Writer and Editor. Often, for a relatively low cost, you can hire a ghostwriter and editor to take care of your writing needs for you, from blogs to articles to web site content. Similar to hiring an IT person to do your IT work, you hire a writer to support your writing needs. A good ghostwriter will be able to represent you and your personality for your contractor marketing business.

Having powerful and effective content for your contractor marketing campaign is critical to pull in and attract new leads and customers, in addition to attracting referrals and repeat contractor marketing business. Use a pull vs. push approach by providing informative, conversational content that’s free of grammatical errors and misspellings, and hire a writer if you need to in order to support your writing content needs.

Let’s face it. Most contractors are not web designers; and they don’t want to be. That’s cool. However, implementing the right marketing strategies, combined with a great design, is key to making a great website! A website that converts traffic to leads and sales needs real attention by someone who knows your business and customers very well (someone like you)…on an ongoing basis

Key Idea:

You can’t completely abdicate website development without suffering the consequences in lost leads, customers and revenue.

The fact is, most contractor business owners don’t take the time and/or don’t have the personnel to properly guide the development of an integrated marketing plan. So, we get a website designer who typically knows nothing about marketing, especially in your business niche. They end up creating a website fairly autonomously because you figure they are the experts and have done this numerous times before. Even worse, other key elements of your online marketing like social media is built by low budget/no budget designers (or relatives) and SEO companies are managed like some black box strategy you just don’t want to know about.

Ok, enough of the rant, let’s just stick with building a killer website that converts traffic for now.

Building and optimizing a website that becomes a customer magnet involves three interdependent principles;

1.     Good Design- It’s about creating a look and feel that represents your brand identity. Also, using color, minimal flash elements and standard design principles to attract the viewers eye to actions you want them to take. Visitors usually pattern their view of a website from the top left, to the middle right and then back to the bottom left. You want to place important content in that line so your website has a higher likelihood of engagement.

2.     Marketing Hooks- What are we trying to do with our website? What do we want our viewers to do? In many cases, we want to build a list and generate new leads. So, what is the “link bait” that will attract viewers to your site? Also, how will we get them to “convert”? Meaning, why will they exchange their personal contact information with you so you can follow up? No contact info, no lead!

3.     Site Structure- You need to plan site structure around keywords and phrases. What are the 5-10 keywords or phrases that your business is trying to rank for, and create specific pages for each of these keywords or phrases. Then use the keywords and phrases (as well as long tail versions) in the title,  sub-headlines and body copy. Make sure you use the “link bait” that is right for each landing page based on the keywords you are using.

Building a website that generates traffic and leads is possible if you follow these principles. The key is you need someone who knows your business, and customers, very well to be involved in the process.

How is your website performing?