YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING STRATEGY BEGINS HERE
The Definitive Contractor Marketing Strategy Guide
INTRODUCTION
Drive bottom-line contractor marketing ROI with this proven system.
The critical components that make a marketing plan effective are rapidly evolving.
In the lawn, landscape, and outdoor living industry, digital marketing is nothing new, but it’s often underexploited to the detriment of many a bottom line. Many marketing plans appear to address all the relevant channels and check all the crucial boxes—but it’s just touching the surface. Clean, user-friendly website…check. Houzz profile, Facebook, and Instagram posting…check. After digging critically, though, the lack of synergy across all the separate, disjointed efforts is probably the exact catalyst that’s preventing your so-so strategy from becoming great. Brand power is also very often left as an afterthought with the logic of “We aren’t a Fortune 500 brand, so we simply need to prioritize direct response advertising.”
Bottom-line success, however, comes down to harnessing the elements of an industry-proven system that can dramatically multiply the effectiveness of your strategy as a whole. That’s not necessarily suggesting a major overhaul of what you’ve established so far, but more likely what’s needed is straightforward, yet critical, course corrections and shifts in emphasis so that you can magnify the return on your marketing dollar.
In many ways, this is an exciting time for outdoor living contractors looking to grow now. Digital tools have never been more powerful or accessible, and there’s an opportunity to reinvigorate your marketing strategy by taking advantage of what’s actually effective today. After all, we can certainly be thankful that the days of running print ads all year, while not having a data-driven way to quantify their worth, are gone and replaced with measurable digital solutions—albeit many of them are fragmented and difficult to track.
With that very data, and a marketing industry specialization, comes unique insight. We have the pleasure of working with leading companies across all channels of the industry—manufacturers, dealers, landscape design pros, and lawn contractors. By working with each leg of the industry, we understand how each can work together, what works best for each segment, and how you can optimize their spend. We see the same challenges, the same shortcomings, and the same gnawing questions.
Let’s take a look at nine essential components of a powerful marketing plan that works to drive real business results for those looking to reach the next level with marketing.
Click into each of these to start exploring (and applying!):
Corey Halstead
HALSTEAD, co-owner.
“This is an exciting time for design/build contractors looking to grow now.”
Strategy and Brand for Contractors
The foundations of the marketing plan aren’t changing — strategy and brand still set the stage. And as the industry becomes evermore competitive—evermore cutthroat—and as the communications landscape is constantly transformed by technology, managing and promoting your brand only becomes more crucial to building consumer connections.
Today, even smaller contractors are beginning to adopt big-business brand practices and reaping the benefits over their larger incumbents. Combine that new brand focus with the decreasing barriers to entry for smaller competitors due to digital reach, and you’ve got a newfound importance on brand in design/build industry that any firm looking to compete — big and small — must notice.
Website Design for Landscapers
Your website is a multifaceted marketing tool that really only reaches full potential when it becomes an effective online hub for driving revenue. It’s the central touch point to all others-it’s where most of your prospects ultimately land, regardless of how they first contact you, and increasingly, that first contact is not made while sitting in a chair, browsing on a desktop computer.
Videography & Content Production
Your website is far from the only asset that benefits from compelling content. Not surprisingly in 2020 and beyond, content is and will continue to be, king across all initiatives. It’s the difference between ordinary conversion rates and the spectacular, and it is literally the fuel for effective posts on social media, blog articles, SEO, paid social media campaigns, email blasts, direct mail efforts, and pretty much the entire marketing system each year. But to keep content fresh, where’s it all supposed to come from?
Case Study Development
Project case studies present a serious opportunity to let prospects take a deeper dive into your portfolio, to experience the dramatic transformation of successful projects as they unfold—from concept to completion. They’re an invaluable tool for conveying powerful narratives, not only about your most stunning work but about the distinctive nuances of your value proposition and brand.
SEO & Search Engine Optimization
Past experiences with search engine optimization professionals may have sourced many owners and leadership on the whole concept, but that doesn’t change the importance of organize search and paid search (pay-per-click or PPC) strategies working in tandem. Consumer behavior is consumer behavior, and prospects still rely very heavily on the practice of searching online during their project research. In doing so, they will find companies that do what you do. If the companies they find are doing things well on the marketing front, the prospect will begin the process of engaging with their content and being worked down the funnel. Now you’re playing catch-up.
Social Media Marketing
Not unlike search, social media marketing for design/build can effectively be broken down into two categories— paid and organic. Depending on the platform, both are worthwhile to include in your budget, but the tactics deployed on each vary greatly based on expected goals.
Review Building
It’s well-established that the most convincing source of marketing information has always been endorsements from your satisfied customers. That’s been true from the dawn of commerce, and it’s just as true in the digital age.
Marketing Automation
Holding the attention of your prospects and reliably capturing leads requires a level of responsiveness that’s just not possible without automation. After all, running a leading design/build firm doesn’t exactly leave for a lot of free time.
Sales for Landscape Contractors
Of course, the intent is to empower your sales team by giving them the resources to do their job. It’s incredible how many sales organizations put so much effort into setting goals and incentivizing their sales force, then torpedo the entire effort by not providing the resources they need.