You may be the best electrician in town and you may be having a loyal customer base who hire you for all their projects. Through your high-quality service delivery and unmatched experience in the field, you have been able to build the name and reputation that you have today. You have worked really hard to get where you are today.
It is a pretty difficult thing to do and if you are in the electrical works contracting business surviving for more than 2 years you have already done your bit of making a name for yourself. And if you are able to survive for a few more years, then you are already doing better than more than 50 percent of your competitors.
Having said that, merely having a good name in the market is not going to be enough to win new clients and increase your business. Just on the basis of experience and expertise, you may get some business initially but after a certain time, you will feel the stagnancy.
It will become difficult to get new clients due to the cutthroat competition. Moreover, the world is gradually moving online, and as such everyone goes online to look for business information and reviews.
You may be the best electrician in town and you may be having a loyal customer base who hire you for all their projects. Through your high-quality service delivery and unmatched experience in the field, you have been able to build the name and reputation that you have today. You have worked really hard to get where you are today.
It is a pretty difficult thing to do and if you are in the electrical works contracting business surviving for more than 2 years you have already done your bit of making a name for yourself. And if you are able to survive for a few more years, then you are already doing better than more than 50 percent of your competitors.
In this piece, we will walk you through everything that you will need to get your electrical business. We will talk in detail about:
Understanding the Modern Buyer’s Journey.
Various Electrical Contracting Services
Different Online Marketing Strategies.
Let us now look discuss all these aspects one by one. To being with, let us talk briefly about the buyer journey.
Understanding the Modern Buyer’s Buying Journey:
Whether you are selling your own products or are a part of the service industry like that of the electrical contracting services business, you will need to understand the buyer mentality well.
That is because the buyer mentality has shifted paradigms since the last few decades owing to the advent of the internet and the trend of businesses moving online. The modern buyer’s first and the last resort to make any buying decision is the internet. Having said that the modern buying journey can be divided into the below four phases:
Phase 1: Awareness
In this phase, the buyer is still determining and coming to terms with his own requirements. This requirement can be anything such as installing a new chandelier or need the wiring of a certain room done or installation of a generator.
So this is the phase in which they have the awareness or realization that they have a problem that needs to be resolved as soon as possible.
Phase 2: Consideration
This is the phase in which the customer launches a search online. He comes across your business website along with all other competitors. He does thorough research about your and your competitor’s services, checks all the customer reviews and testimonials online, and then shortlists the services that he finds to be the best and suiting his requirements.
Phase 3: Purchase
This is the phase in which the customer buys or books your services. This is followed by the consideration phase where the purchasing decision was made.
Phase 4: Post-Sales Experience
This is the phase in which your customers have already used your services and based on their experience they are either too delighted or not too satisfied with their experience.
If you have been able to do a good job with your service delivery, you can get your customers to leave a positive review about your services and increases the chances of having this as a loyal returning customer. Now, that you are aware of the buyer journey, let us see some common services that come under electrical contractor services. Let’s have a look.
Various Electrical Contracting Services
When it comes to electrical works it can range from anything starting from simple electric fittings in your living room to complete wiring of the home. Since electrical works can be of a variable nature, not all electricians will get the amount of work they need in order to grow as a business.
The various services that are done by electricians and electrical contractors include but are not limited to:
Generator installs – Installation of your generator for home and offices.
Panel/Service Upgrades – Servicing and upgrades of solar panels.
Tesla charging stations – Installing the charging stations of your Tesla Electric Vehicles.
Rewires Electrical safety inspection – Safety checks and inspections of your home circuits before rewiring work.
HVAC hookup and control – Setting up HVAC systems and home and ensuring seamless control of the HVAC systems
Outdoor and Indoor lighting – Installing and setting up outdoor and indoor lighting.
Pool wiring – Wiring in and around your pools.
Hot tub wiring – Wiring work in your bathroom hot tub.
Pool wiring – Wiring in and around your pools.
Solar panel installation – Installing solar power panels on your rooftops and setting up feeder lines to your home circuit.
Troubleshooting & repair – Visiting the site and troubleshooting the problem and preparing and planning all repair work.
Aluminum wiring replacement – Removing the old and outdated aluminum wiring and replacing it with copper wiring.
Troubleshooting & repair – Visiting the site and troubleshooting the problem and preparing and planning all repair work.
Ceiling fans – Installation and servicing of ceiling fans.
Home Surge Protection – Installation of MCB’s for protection against power surge in your homes.
Motion Detectors – Installing smart motion detectors that are nowadays used as sensors to light up bulbs and power on other devices at homes
Remodeling & Additions – Remodelling homes and adding new parts to your homes and electrical circuits
Smoke Detectors – Installing smoke detectors as fire protection equipment.
As stated earlier, the above list is an indicative list of various services that are available but there can be many other services and work that you as an electrical contractor will have to take up from time to time.
No matter what service you provide or what you specialize in moving online and adopting a good marketing strategy is only going to help you grow your business. We will talk about the different marketing strategies now in detail
Different Online Marketing Strategies and Steps to Promote & Grow Electrical Business
The growth of any business is based primarily on getting quality leads. And lead generation is only possible if you have a good business and promotion and marketing strategy in place.
You should also know that no particular strategy is perfect, rather a combination of various strategies need to be used to get the desired results. Let us look at these strategies and steps in detail:
1. Create and Maintain a Strong Brand.
This is one of the basic things to do if you want to ensure the growth of your business online. If you have been in the electrical contracting business for a few years, you may have already carved and created that name for your business amongst your customers.
But the important thing is to strengthen and maintain this name. This is what is known as building and maintaining the brand name. It is one of the vital aspects of building your business name.
If you already have a presence in the market, the idea is to build a positive impression of your business in the minds of potential customers. This can be achieved by showcasing all the good work that has been done by your business so that your business can stand out from the rest.
In the world of marketing, building your brand is an extremely vital step. You must know how to maintain a strong brand and here is how you can do that. Here are the steps to do that:
- Determine your target audience and target customers.
- Establish a mission statement for your brand.
- Create a key outline of the qualities of your brand.
- Research the other brands in your service niche.
- Integrate your business functions with your brand.
- Take steps to ensure your brand stands out and apart
Now that you know about the steps involved to create a brand, you should now ensure that your brand is visible and accessible to your customers.
2. Build a Website Showcasing Your Services.
It is no more a secret that the entire world is now online. You may have built a good brand but your good brand should look good as well. And the best way to make your business and your brand look good in front of your customers is through your website.
The website is like the face of your business. Any potential customer who is looking for the services that you offer would form their first impressions and perceptions through your websites.
As such building Electrician Websites is the first step towards making your brand and your services visible to your potential customer base.
As per a survey, users take only about 50 milliseconds to form a perception about your website and about 38 percent of the people will never return to your website if your website content and layout is not as per their expectations or is unattractive.
It is therefore to make sure you have a good website as per your business niche so your potential customers can remain on the page. In building the website, you need to make sure, your website, is fast, focused on your niche, and is flexible enough. The most vital part of any website is the landing page.
Ensure that your website landing page is both engaging and interesting and has a call to action with buttons placed tactfully on the landing page to lead to service offerings or contact information page.
Your website should be easy to navigate and should have contact and inquiry forms and contact information available. This would ensure you never miss a lead.
3. Set and Manage the Marketing Budget
You now have an engaging website showcasing all your expert professional electrician services. But the problem is there are hundreds of other electrical contractors and electricians who may have similar websites.
Like you may not be aware of such websites existing so will be the customers – unaware that an amazing electrician services provider and a website like yours exist. To ensure that your website is visible and recognized by the customers you will now have to chalk out a promotion and marketing strategy.
The first and the most important step towards doing that is to ensure you have a budget allocated towards marketing strategies. As pointed out earlier any one market strategy is not the key to success in generating business leads and sales but a good blend of all strategies is what would be required.
And when we talk about strategies, these may be related to investing in marketing campaigns such as Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, etc. We will be talking about all these strategies in detail in the next points, however, if you fail to set a budget for these promotional and marketing campaigns, there is no use in having a good website or brand.
Often, businesses fail badly when they rely completely on their brand name but do not invest in marketing and promotional strategies. As such, ensure you put some money aside for marketing as it is going to be extremely beneficial for you in the long run.
4. Set Up SEO for Your Website
Now, this is where the role of your marketing strategies starts. Once your website is up and running and you have set aside a good budget for marketing, we can now look at the various marketing strategies that we can use to ensure your electrician website and your business is visible to your targeted audience.
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is one of the most used and successful strategies that ensure you start getting better traffic and subsequently qualified business leads that generate revenue.
How does this work? As soon as a customer searches for electrician services or similar keywords, you will see thousands of results for the same kind of services. Some appear on the very first page while others come on the 2nd page and so on and so forth.
How do you think some pages make it to the first page while others come up on the subsequent pages? This is made possible by having quality website content. A website that has the right combination of keywords used in its content has better chances to rank higher than a website with poor content and misplaced keywords.
This is known as Search Engine Optimization. A website that is Search Engine Optimized would mean it has its website content optimized for better rankings. Though improving search ranking through SEO can take several months to show results, it is one of the most effective ways of improving your website search ranking. Since electrician services are locally based it is easier to have local SEO services do the job for you.
The local SEO for electricians include the following –
- Complete market analysis of your area
- Information about your local competitors
- Detailed reports on monthly volumes and searched keywords
- Facility to audit citations from online directories.
- Creating and editing new citations.
- Managing the local listing of your services
Apart from the above SEO involves a lot of other activities that are pretty technical and as such it is best to hire a local SEO services provider and a campaign manager for your website.
5. Invest in PPC or Pay-per-Click Ads on Google.
If you have a good marketing budget and are looking forward to getting some quick results out of your marketing strategy, then PPC ads can be the best option. These ads are meant to drive potential customers to your website through paid ads.
This means that you are buying some qualified traffic by paying for ads. The best part about PPC ads is the fact that you will only have to pay if a user clicks on your ad to come to your website and not if someone merely types in the keywords that include your services or displays your search results.
As per a recent study, PPC for electricians is the most successful marketing strategy when it comes to getting some quick and qualified business leads. However, ensure that you maintain a good combination of other strategies as well so that you do not end up losing a lot of money if at all this does not work.
Don’t be disheartened if too many customers are clicking without opting for your services. This is bound to happen. But the results are encouraging most often than not. Let us move on to our next marketing strategy.
6. Use Social Media for Online Ad Campaigns
If you want to quickly make your business services visible and available to all in your area, then there is no better tool or option than social media. The proper use of social media ads and marketing campaigns helps you elevate and increase your electrical services business presence.
As per recent data published on social media usage, about 79 percent of the American population uses social media. So, undoubtedly social media is the best way to connect to people which obviously leads to better outreach and better results.
It is therefore important to prepare a proper marketing plan involving the various social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Marketing on Social Media involves planning on things like keyword research, promotion strategies, creating quality and engaging content, etc.
If you can have a perfect plan in place you can win several contracts without working too hard. One of the best ways of promoting on social media is running paid ad campaigns. This is an easy way of getting some quality traffic to your business website or Facebook page. Scheduling ad campaigns on Facebook is not a very difficult thing to do.
Facebook ads for electricians will work best as they can easily select their outreach radius and geographical locations while setting the ads and get the desired leads from their own areas. You can even select the demographics and things like gender, age range, buying behavior, etc., while scheduling the ads thereby making it easy to create targeted campaigns. While scheduling these Ads though, you will need to be sure of the content that you would like your target audience to see.
You can use high-quality images, HD videos, and engaging content that can quickly catch the eye of the viewer and make them click the like or any other call to action that you may have placed with the Ad.
7. Use Google Ad Services for Local Visibility and Brand Presence
If you are looking for a cost-effective and rather a low-cost way of generating some good quality leads and get some high-value contracts, then using Google Local Service Ads is definitely going to help you.
This service has no obligation and no sign-up fees. All you will need to do is list your service under the Local Services and if you get a lead out of the ad you pay for it.
So basically you are charged on a pay-per-generated-lead basis. Using Google Local Service ads for electricians is a great way of getting recognized and get quality leads quickly. When you sign up for these ad services your business will be carrying a Google Guaranteed tag under your business name.
That obviously involves completing certain background checks initiated by Google. So, once you are listed for Google Local Services Ads, as soon a customer enters related keywords similar to your service description, your ads will show up on top of the results.
To ensure that you benefit the most out of these ad campaigns, ensure you continue to maintain a high rate of positive reviews and a good brand presence and recognition in the area that you operate.
Overall, this is the most cost-effective and cost-saving way of generating quality leads that can prove to be a lifeline for your electrical services business.
8. Use Google Maps Optimization for Building Trust and Visibility
For any customer trusting the service provider is the key to buying the service from them. Though most of the work starting from viewing the service offerings to booking them is happening online, having a physical address that is pinpointed on Google Maps, will always add additional credibility to your business.
Having your business location optimized on Google ensures that if the customer wants to, they can see where you are located which translates into better visibility and building trust around your business.
When your customers will know that you are a local business and can get there in no time in case of any issues, they will be ready to call you anytime they need your services.
As such, Google Map Optimization for electricians is a great way of making sure your business location is showing up on Google thereby enhancing your business visibility.
Combine it with Google’s Local Ad services and PPC Ads, and there you have a business that is on Google making its mark.
9. Create and get Your Google My Business Page Verified.
This is one of the simplest things to do. Moreover, it is free. Using this free service by Google you can create an attractive business profile that can help you get some potential customers. If you have your services in various locations, you can create a page for every location if you have different offices and phone numbers in every location.
After you set up your page, Google verifies your business as well. The verification is done by google through an OTP mailer that they send through post to your business address which usually takes 5 -7 business days.
Once you are verified you are good to go. With an electrician website that is search engine optimized, with good overall customer review ratings, along with a Google My Business page that is verified, your business can surely generate more leads than any of your competitors.
The reason being with such a combination you have all chances of showing up on Page number 1, of organic search results for your service keywords in your area. You can combine this winning combination with already discussed PPC Ads, that claim to give you a better ROI.
As per surveys, 70 percent of consumers look for and find their services online through Google Searches, and as such Google is one place where you can think of investing most of your marketing budget without thinking too much. For Google is one place that guarantees a good ROI most often than not.
10. Soliciting or Asking the Customers to Leave a Review
For any business, reviews and feedbacks can play a decisive role in their growth. Reviews have the power to catapult your company’s growth to unimaginable extents. Studies suggest about 90 percent of consumers always read reviews before visiting any company or service provider’s website.
Since most people use Google to search for your services, it is always recommended that you solicit and ask for reviews from a customer once a service is completed. Google Reviews can go a long way in making your electrical business emerge as a winner from amongst all your competitors.
While positive reviews can get you more business, negative reviews can cause you equal harm. As such always ensure that you are providing the best of services. It is not possible to satisfy every customer and as such if you see negative reviews, make sure you are addressing those negative reviews with an assuring answer that is visible to all as a step that your company had taken.
Google Reviews or Reputation Management for electricians has the following benefits:
- Google Reviews improves your business website rankings in search engine results.
- Helps in building a relationship with the end-user or customer
- Positive reviews translate into more people taking your services which means more sales.
- Reviews are a way to empower consumers to voice their concerns and issues.
- Reviews and feedbacks help you to work on the areas of improvements for better service delivery in the future.
- Positive reviews are a great way of getting your business promotion without paying a penny.
Apart from Google reviews, there are many other websites that can help you generate some reviews for your business. Some of these platforms include – Podium, Broadly Reviews, Shopper Approved, Grade. Us, etc. These sites can help you get 5-star ratings and reviews that can help you get some quality leads thereby enhancing business growth.
11. Using Call Tracking and Analytical Software
Now that you have your marketing strategy in place, there has to be a tracking mechanism in place to understand what’s working and what’s not.
Since the electrical services business is more about physical delivery of services at the customer location, they will call in to enquire, get and provide further details of their service requirements, and confirm their bookings.
It is important to track these calls, to better understand which strategy is working best for you. This can be incorporated by placing different phone number lines in different campaigns thereby making it clear which campaign is generating more leads and which campaign is not working too well.
Some advanced systems can track calls through clicks made on the contact number on the websites or the ads thereby giving you an analysis of the source of the call.
Call Tracking & Analytics for electricians gets all the more important as this will help them know which strategy is leading to more conversions and can be continued and which strategies have to be revisited.
12. Use Quality Content that is in-sync with your target audience
We have mentioned earlier that your website content is extremely important to ensure that your website is search engine optimizable. More than that, if your website contains high-quality engaging content you are going to have customers returning to your websites again and again.
It is because the quality of the content on your website will have a positive perception of your company. Going by data, about 82 percent of the customers feel positive about a company after reading good quality custom content on your website and about 70 percent of them feel that they know you better after watching a video or reading a blog on your website.
Moreover, businesses have found that their lead generation and lead quality were enhanced after a content marketing plan was implemented. Your content marketing plan or strategy can everything that makes your website such as blogs, infographics, ebooks, videos, downloadable guides, etc.
Your content planning needs to include more blogs with the right keywords. Google ranking is based on pages and not the complete websites. Content Marketing or Blogging for electricians can be planned by SEO managers or the local SEO provider.
If you have a website with blogs that can answer all kinds of questions that customers may have before they opt for electrical service, you have better chances to rank up the search results. Add a few links to your service offerings and booking page on the website, you get some good quality leads too.
13. Use email marketing campaigns.
This is one of the most reliable and inexpensive ways of enhancing your business by generating qualified leads. You can opt for email marketing plans that are provided by your website service provider. Almost all website service providers have their own plans. For electrician websites, you may opt for small business campaigns.
As part of the email campaigns, you can send mass mailers with newsletters with all your service offerings to intended recipients. You can use the mailing lists that came in as leads. For converted leads, you can create a separate mailing list as existing customers and for potential customers, you can have a separate list. You can then send separate mailers to both lists.
For instance, for customers who had already taken your services, you can pitch in for all other offerings you have, and maybe a loyalty discount. And for potential customers, you can send an early bird or a welcome offer if they opt for your services. Though due to the increased use of other digital marketing platforms, emails seem to lose relevance, they are still one of the best marketing tools around.
14. Develop and Use a Marketing Strategy that Uses High-Quality Videos
Your electrician business is more about the skill and the expertise that your professionals put in while working and resolving the issues. As per data, more and more people are watching videos than reading text.
Looking at some data, businesses that make use of videos get 41 percent more traffic than the ones that do not use videos. As high as 90 percent of users from a survey say that videos are extremely helpful in the decision-making process.
Websites that include videos on the landing page have shown conversion rates of as high as 80 percent. Including videos in emails have shown click-through rates rising by as high as 200 to 300 percent. As such videos are a full-proof way of marketing your services quickly and easily.
There is no better way than to showcase the skills and efficacy with which you and your team work on customer sites and finishes the work in the form of a video. Develop such videos along with small clips of customer testimonials and you can use these videos in all your online marketing channels right from the website to social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, etc. You can also use them in your email marketing campaigns
15. Use good customer service as a marketing strategy.
The success of any business is largely related to customer responses, purchasing decisions they make, and of course the reviews they leave about the service availed. And the same is true for the electrical services business as well. Customers will talk about your actions and service delivery and not about the promises you have made on your website or other platforms. And that is exactly why customer service should be one of the key aspects of your marketing strategy.
As per some stats, 7 out of 10 Americans say that they are ready to spend more on companies that provide better customer service. If you are able to provide a high level of customer service, your customers will keep coming back to you and you will get more customers as your loyal customers will refer others to your company.
To ensure good customer service you will need to include things like social media pages, live chat services, email query resolutions, customer service telephone lines in your marketing plans so that customers can get in touch with you with their concerns when needed. Replying to negative reviews and acknowledging customer feedback are also signs of good customer service and always ensure you are never failing to do so in an electrical services business.
Final Thoughts – The Takeaways To conclude and to summarize, electrical or electrician services can include any small issue like fixing a faulty bulb to a big project like changing the wiring of the entire building. Being an electrician, it is not always possible to keep getting big contracts, especially if you are a small local business.
But now no more. The use of the Internet, Google, Social Media, and email have now opened a world of endless possibilities. The whole world is now online and if you simply go where the world is, that is, if you move your business online too and make your presence felt there is no stopping for you. Make use of this comprehensive guide to pick and choose the best marketing strategies that you can use to enhance the visibility of your business and brand.
This guide will help you find answers to all your questions on how you can grow your small electrical business. Meticulously, plan and execute the electrical services marketing strategy and you will be surprised to see the results.