In construction work, contractors trust the designers’ plans; designers trust that the builders will safely construct the building according to plan; and most importantly, the homeowners trust the people they’ve put in charge of creating the future home for their family. After everybody shook hands and exchanged names and contact information—the process of building a home is begun. Soon a beautiful house is established, rising from the solid foundation of concrete and a customer-contractor trust relationship.

Contractor/client relationships require trust.

Today we’re going to look at how to establish trust before you’ve even met the client in person. Maybe even before they’ve asked you to work for them at all! Consider these two keys to building trust online.

1. Provide Value to Online Users

What you do online has to provide value to your potential client. Be thinking about your future customer and how to serve them rather than thinking of yourself and how to get more business.

Approaching online marketing from the position of “how can I serve my future customer?” communicates trust to your prospect. They come to your online presence seeing that you have no agenda other than helping them get what they want, and trust is communicated non-verbally. When you set up your content to serve the best interest of your potential client, you craft an online presence flavored with integrity.

Internet users can sense through the words you write, or the videos you create that you are a person there to help them achieve their goals.

Here are some ways for you to provide value online:

• FAQs. Think of the most common questions homeowners are asking and create answers from your own experience. Then put your new content online in helpful articles or videos.
• Articles. Write articles giving tips and tricks to improve their home. Provide articles to help them fix up or maintain their house. Any kind of article that helps your homeowner is valuable.
• Videos. Create videos answering their questions. Faced with a customer’s dilemma, create a video showing them how to do it themselves or how you can do it for them.

2. Provide Reinforcement for the Value Given

Just as concrete needs reinforcement, so does your online content and marketing message. How can your potential client know whether you really are what you say you are? Here are some ways to strengthen your marketing message online.

• Testimonials. Testimonials from happy clients provide powerful reinforcement.
• Portfolio. The more high-quality pictures you can provide of your work for your customers’ research the better. Having a strong, up-to-date portfolio legitimizes your online presence.
• Awards and Credentials. Have you won awards for your craftsmanship? Showcase them! Are you a qualified re-modeler? Do you have credentials from past training? List and explain what each of them mean, and how they will benefit the customer.

A firm foundation of trust between contractors and their clients doesn’t just happen. When you build a house, you don’t dig a ditch, pour some concrete in the cavity and immediately build a house on it. A lot of planning goes into the foundation. It takes a lot of hard, backbreaking work. It’s going to be the same way for you and your contracting business.

Summary

Research who you most want to serve—your target audience — and see how you can provide them with the thing they need the most, whether that’s information, videos, or photos, etc. Learn what they need and be there to give it to them. Sharing information and having a helpful online presence is the key to building trust with future clients before you’ve even met them.

*****

Thank you for joining me today. If you have any further questions or comments, please join the conversation in the comments below.

*****

Follow me on Instagram for behind-the-scenes stuff. And if you want to go deeper with marketing your business, you may get a free copy of my new book, Contractor Marketing Simplified.

The post Two Keys to Building Trust Online appeared first on Martin Holsinger.

During this back-and-forth email exchange of questions and answers, the potential client may decide you’re not even the person they need for the job, wasting time for both of you. The potential client moves on to another contractor to ask him the same questions, and you go back to your inbox to reply to another email with identical questions.

This is not an efficient way to communicate. Potential customers are left feeling frustrated and unsatisfied, and you are left spending too much time juggling inquiries and not enough time getting great leads.

FAQ Page Benefits

Frequently Asked Questions pages benefit everyone. They provide the potential client with answers to their most basic questions, they build the client’s trust in the contractor’s knowledge, and they give them a head start in getting to know the business.

For you as the contractor, answering questions on your website means fewer repetitious email exchanges, more satisfied customers, and a positive online reputation.

A FAQ page allows you to define your company’s services in an interactive, friendly manner, letting clients know right away if you’re the one for their job.

Creating a Frequently Asked Questions Page

Take time to look at your business from the perspective of a potential client and form a list of questions to answer and share on your website.

What do your potential customers need to know at the most basic level about your business? What would you want to know before hiring a stranger? Do you have a specialty contracting company that provides the perfect solution to their problem?

To help you develop your list, here are ten questions most homeowners want to know:

1. How much experience do you have with this type of work?
2. What are some examples (pictures) of your work?
3. Are you licensed and insured?
4. How do I contact you?
5. How does billing work? (Invoiced monthly? …etc.)
6. How do you handle design changes/change orders?
7. Do you charge by the hour, lump sum, or base plus time and materials?
8. Will you be working on other projects at the same time as my job?
9. What is your refund policy?
10. Do you offer a warranty on your work?

Be sure to approach your FAQ page from your client’s point of view, but as a general rule, these questions should be answered in any business niche. Create content answering each of these questions and post it on your website. Excite potential clients with your easy-to-understand business model and honest depictions of previous work.

Get specific. After you’ve answered these 10 FAQs, add some questions and answers about your company’s specialties. Delve into what you’re passionate about as a contractor; answer some how-to questions, or share a simple DIY tutorial.

When your potential clients find you online, instead of being inconvenienced by their curiosity, they’ll find that their questions are already answered! As a contractor who precedes your clients’ questions with answers, you stand out from the others who require multiple conversations to cover the same information.

Your best potential client may have never had their simple questions answered; be the first one to answer those questions concisely on an easily-accessible FAQ page.

*****

Thank you for joining me today. If you have any further questions or comments, please join the conversation in the comments below.

*****

Follow me on Instagram for behind-the-scenes stuff. And if you’re wanting to go deeper with marketing your business, you may get a free copy of my new book Contractor Marketing Simplified.

The post Contractor Website FAQs appeared first on Martin Holsinger.

Online Marketing Cost

To get your online presence setup and running properly you should expect to pay $1,500-$5,500 for setup and around $300/mo. for ongoing maintenance and optimization.

After you are setup and running, your Content Marketing Plan will cost anywhere from $500/mo to $10,000/mo. or more. If you are wondering what your marketing ROI is, you may want to read this post. 

Introspective thought: 

Are you in business because you enjoy doing the work? Or are you in business to build a real company that you can eventually sell? If it’s the later then you need to create an online marketing budget and build a real business. If you are in it just for the fun of doing the work, then don’t spend much money online, and don’t be surprised if your business never really takes off. 

This post is part of my Frequently Asked Question Series. Maybe you have another question that I’ve already answered.

3 FAST & EASY Ways To Respond:

• Share this post. I publish an article like this every Monday. Let others know about them.
• Confused about this? Ask a question in the comments below.
• If you’re not on my list you should be! I publish how-to articles and videos like this on a regular basis. Get signed up in the box below…

Thanks,
Martin

The post How Much Does Online Marketing Cost? appeared first on Martin Holsinger.

One of those marketing terms that can be confusing goes something like this, “you need to start developing your online presence.”

But what in the world is that supposed to mean for you, the savvy small business owner?

Does that mean putting videos on Youtube, or posting daily on social media? Does that mean having a website with an email marketing sales funnel all setup? Does that mean paying big money for SEO, or hiring someone to manage your Pay Per Click campaigns?

NO. That is not what it means. And in this post I will show you what I mean by developing a Solid Online Presence, and how it will benefit you in the long run.

Here’s my definition of a solid online presence.

I’ll break it down into three parts for you.

1. Have a Mobile-Responsive Website that You Own.

There’s nothing wrong with free website or blog platforms that you can use for your business. However, in order to develop a real online presence you need to have your own mobile-responsive website that you control. That doesn’t mean that you can’t hire someone to host and maintain it for you. It means that you are not basing the heart and soul of your business on a free website platform that could be gone tomorrow.

Also, make sure that your website is built on purpose. You need to lead your viewers to take specific action when they land on your site. Some people just put up a nice looking site with no clear call-to-action. In order to develop a solid online presence, you must first develop a mobile-responsive website that leads your audience to take clear decisive action.

2. Build a Solid Online Reputation.

Sure you can hope that people will leave you a nice review online. However, most people don’t do it out of their own free will. You need to ask them to do it.

Better yet, you need to have a plan for how you are going to ask them to leave you a review.

Here’s my recommendation for building your online reputation. Develop a review site that you own and control. Much like your website, your reputation should be under your control as well. There are trolls out there who want to harm you, and they will take advantage of the free platforms like Google, Bing, & Yelp. With your own review site, you can have a little more control over it, and only feature those reviews that are real and legitimate.

I also recommend that you incorporate Google, Bing, and the other review sites into your overall online reputation marketing strategy. This will insure that you are truly developing a powerful online presence.

3. Distribute and Optimize Your Brand Across the Web.

It’s vitally important that your (NAP), your business name, address and phone number, is consistent across the web. It is detrimental to your business to have duplicate listings, and mis-matched information about your company across the web.

To build a solid online presence, you need to distribute your (NAP) across the 4 main data aggregators, and maintain those listings on monthly basis. The four main data aggregators are: Acxiom, Infogroup, Localeze, and Factual. If you can submit your brand to these four aggregators, your brand will be spread throughout the web to over 300+ directories. It’s important that you do this.

To finish up this 3d point, I want to add this. You also need to claim, verify and optimize your search engine listings such as Google Local, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local. This will insure that you are showing up in the maps for your local area, and people are getting the correct info when searching for your business.

My Online Presence Definition Recap…

“To Develop A Solid Online Presence means that you have a mobile-responsive website, an honorable online reputation, and consistent business information across the web.”

So, How does a Solid Online Presence Benefit You?

1. More Trust.

Let’s say I am searching for you and your company.  I do a few searches and I find your brand all over the web. You have a professional looking mobile-friendly website, and a 5 star reputation. Your brand is consistent in all the directories I look into. My trust in you and your company begins to go way up.

2. More Leads.

The more you work on developing a solid online presence like I’m describing, the more your brand will appear when people are searching for what you offer. As this happens, more and more people will follow your funnel and end up as leads in your sales pipeline.

3. More Sales.

As more and more people find you online, and they begin to like you more and more, and they become leads in your sales pipeline, guess what. You will begin to have more and more sales. See how that works?

Those are the benefits of developing a solid online presence.

Now, imagine that you don’t do any of those things. Let’s say you sporadically post on Facebook, or throw up a few videos on Youtube, but have no online presence to funnel people to. What could the repercussions be? Well, it’s pretty simple. Less trust, Fewer leads, and less sales.

My goal for this post is to not only help you understand what we mean by, “solid online presence.” But also, to inspire you to take action and begin implementing these things in your business today.

Take action today – And stand out from the crowd tomorrow. 

to your success,
Martin

The post What Is Online Presence? – And How It Will Benefit You appeared first on Martin Holsinger.

In this post, I will answer another FAQ I often get, “What is the most important online marketing strategies?” Here’s my answer:

If you are just starting out…

You might think I would say “Social Media Marketing,” or something like that. But in reality, you should be focused on creating a solid online presence that is mobile-friendly, reputable, and full of valuable information which you own and control. 

Here are 3 things to clarify what I mean by solid online presence: 

• Mobile-Responsive Website. 
  Use Wordpress and Genesis, and a customized local business theme to develop a powerful, sleek, mobile-responsive website. Your website maintenance plan will be much easier to handle and your overall success will pay off. 
• Online Reputation where people can read reviews and check ratings.
  I always recommend that you have your own review portal that you can brand for your company. It’s also important to be able to own and control your online reputation. 
• Consistent Online Presence across the web. (Your Name, Address, and Phone Number should be consistent everywhere it is found across the web)
  This is the foundational part of growing your business using the internet. In order to get more leads and make more sales online, you must take advantage of location based marketing and a consistent online presence. 

Those 3 online marketing strategies are what you should be focused on if your are just starting out. Especially for busy small business owners like yourself. 

What if you already have a solid online presence?

If you already have all those things I just listed above, then the next most important online marketing strategy you can do, is grow your list.

You must grow your list.

Once you have an optimized online presence like I mentioned above, and you are getting leads to your business… Then, nurture your relationship with those People. I emphasize people, because business is transacted between people.

The internet doesn’t dis-annul this. It enhances it.

You can now use the internet to meet more people, and develop a relationship with them. Which leads them to knowing you, liking you, and trusting you. Do you know where it goes from there? That’s right. To more sales.

The way to do this is through content marketing, which I wrote about in this post.  Content Marketing is a more advanced online marketing strategy that works very well. However, I stress that you must start with a fully optimized online presence first.

This post is part of my Frequently Asked Question Series. Maybe you have another question I can answer for you…

3 FAST & EASY Ways To Respond:

• Share this post. I publish an article like this every Monday. Let others know about them.
• Confused about this? Ask a question in the comments below.
• If you’re not on my list you should be! I publish how-to articles and videos like this on a regular basis. Get signed up in the box below…(I’ll send you a free cheatsheet on video marketing)

Thanks,
Martin

The post What is the Most Important Online Marketing Strategies? appeared first on Martin Holsinger.

So the question is, “How do I get more leads to my business using the internet?”

In order to get more leads to your business, you need to create a pathway for them to follow. From first discovering you online to giving you permission to contact them. This is a process not an event.

Create resources that your target market is looking for, and then drive traffic to those resources. Put a gate in front of those resources and give them the keys to open the gate after they give you their name, email or phone number, and the permission for you to contact them. 

In simple terms do this:

1. Create a free cheatsheet, checklist, PDF, eBook, video or something valuable that your target market is looking for.
2. Then create a landing page that describes this resource and the result they will get for reading it.*
3. Then ask them for their name and email address.
4. Then send them the free resource.
5. Then follow up with them. 
6. Continue to provide great value to them over time
7. Ask them for the sale. (Eventually)

*FYI: You will probably need to drive traffic to this landing page through paid advertising.

Here’s a recent post I wrote on Getting More Leads with Local SEO. With that simple guide you can get more leads to your local business by optimizing your website for local search terms.

This post is part of my Frequently Asked Question Series. Maybe you have another question that I’ve already answered.

3 FAST & EASY Ways To Respond:

• Share this post. I publish an article like this every Monday. Let others know about them.
• Confused about this? Ask a question in the comments below.
• If you’re not on my list you should be! I publish how-to articles and videos like this on a regular basis. Get signed up in the box below…(I’ll send you a free cheatsheet on video marketing)

Thanks,
Martin

The post How Can I Get More Leads to My Business? appeared first on Martin Holsinger.

Short Answer: Experiment With a Few

Experiment with a few different ones and find what works for you. I’m finding that LinkedIn is working really well for me to gain more reach and generate leads to my brand.

Facebook

Facebook seems to be what most people use as their primary social media platform. Facebook also has an amazing ad platform, that you can use to drive traffic to your online resources.

Youtube

Of course Youtube is extremely powerful for marketing. Online video is so effective for marketing and easy to rank. And Youtube has a social feature that’s built in, which makes it even more engaging. 

Twitter

Some people love Twitter for their business. And Twitter is coming out with a really cool ad platform that you may be interested in.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is really good for connecting with other entrepreneurs and business people. You can publish your own articles in their Pulse Feed, as well as engage with other professionals in the newsfeed.

Instagram

Instagram is awesome for sharing photos. I’ve been using it for sharing both personal photos as well as inspirational images and statistics that can help build my brand. The downside of Instagram is that you are limited to your profile to provide links which direct traffic back to your site.

Again, you need to find what works best for you and stick with it.

This post is part of my Frequently Asked Question Series. Maybe you have another question that I’ve already answered.

3 FAST & EASY Ways To Respond:

• Share this post. I publish an article like this every Monday. Let others know about them.
• Confused about this? Ask a question in the comments below.
• If you’re not on my list you should be! I publish how-to articles and videos like this on a regular basis. Get signed up in the box below…

Thanks,
Martin

The post What Is The Best Social Media Platform? appeared first on Martin Holsinger.

What is the marketing ROI for online marketing and social media?

In order to answer this question, I first need to know what your position online is. If you already have a solid online presence, then we can start talking about ROI.

However, if you do not have a mobile-responsive website, and you are not building your online reputation, and you have not optimized your online distribution…then you need to start there first.

#1. Investment vs. Expense

Your online properties are to be likened to your business assets like your shop, office, tools, and other investments.

Take Real Estate for example. If you add on to your office it will become worth more, correct? If you office becomes worth more, then ultimately the value of your business will be worth more as well. Should you decide to sell it that is.

Your online presence is like having online real estate. The more you invest in it the more valuable it becomes. So, first and foremost, you should view your online presence as an investment that will grow more valuable over time.

I talked about this in this post: 3 Reasons Why Online Marketing Beats Word Of Mouth. 

#2. Measurable Marketing ROI

Now, if you already have those things in place, then we can talk about ROI. A properly executed Content Marketing Plan should yield a healthy ROI over time. But it will range based on many factors like your industry, your competition, the size of your market…and more.

The really cool thing, is that all of these things are measurable and trackable. With online marketing software, you can track very specific numbers, and track very specific results.

INBOUND CONTENT = ASSETS.

This methodology creates assets that have a compounding effect because they continue to generate value (leads) over time without additional investment. Therefore, content marketing has a compounding return. (How does that sound to you?)

With content marketing you create assets (content, systems, processes, workflows) that you own, which grow in value over the long term. In other words, content marketing creates assets that generate leads over time.

The assets of content marketing keep on producing traffic and leads, long after those assets were created. Inbound marketing opens up new markets because the assets can be found, shared, and passed along — forever.

Using the Hubspot Marketing ROI calculator I came up with the following numbers.

• Let’s say your company is getting around 100 new visitors per month.
• 20 of those become leads, and 5 of those leads become new customers.
• Each customer pays you around $250/mo.
• This translates to: $72,000 potential increase in annual revenue generated by your website after one year of using HubSpot’s software.
• Pretty good ROI, right?

Here’s the graph:

So how reliable is this Content Marketing Strategy?

The methodology has been proven. The system works. However, it does take time to put content, processes, and workflows into practice and gather your own data. With enough trend data, you will be able to consistently execute and deliver results based on data-driven formulas.

My hope is that you will go for it.

This post is part of my Frequently Asked Question Series. Maybe you have another question that I’ve already answered.

3 FAST & EASY Ways To Respond:

• Share this post. I publish an article like this every Monday. Let others know about them.
• Confused about this? Ask a question in the comments below.
• If you’re not on my list you should be! I publish how-to articles and videos like this on a regular basis. Get signed up in the box below…

Thanks,
Martin

Special Thanks to Hubspot for the help coming up with this data. 

The post What is the ROI For Online Marketing? appeared first on Martin Holsinger.