Tradies are generally really good at their trade and working with their hands. When it comes to computers and software… generally not so much.
The plumber we did this for came to us about 2 months ago. He had paid a whole lot for his website. It was terrible. Maybe we’re a bit biased but there are many reasons why it was not going to score him any goals.
A website has to achieve several objectives.
- It needs clearly communicate the services you have to offer
- It needs to clearly communicate WHERE your services are available
- It needs to offer them a way to very easily contact you once they’ve confirmed your business can provide
A great website needs to do a bunch of other things well but, for tradies, if you don’t get these 3 things right then you can forget it. It’s not going to work. The previous company had failed on these fundamental objectives.
Ben from Done Right Plumbing Melbourne was eager to get new clients so I did this job very quickly. I think it was live in about 3 weeks after the first conversation.
WHERE you do your jobs from day to day is vitally important for tradies. Of course you’ll drive across town for a great paying job or if it’s your mates mother or you’ve got no other business on. However, driving across town is generally bad for business. Ben from Done Right is based in Melbourne. The previous site was advertising to the entirety of Melbourne and Victoria. It was too broad. Every time you’re driving through the suburbs, in traffic, with staff in the ute with you, it is COSTING you a lot of money. Now, it’s always going to happen. You can’t book the day perfectly every day. BUT. You do have some control with digital marketing. With this project, I didn’t know the area well. I looked it up on Google maps. I researched the surrounding suburbs. We wrote a little article on every single suburb about the services he does, in each of those suburbs. It was tedious. But this works. I’ve done it for many many clients. Now google’s skynet AI computer knows… that Done Right Plumbing Melbourne, provides a plumbing service, who does this scope of work, throughout Melbourne, but preferably, and mostly, in the suburbs around where is based. He’s still going to get some calls outside that area but 95% of his work is now within cooee of where he is based. This will save him thousands of dollars in the long run.
Ben was previously paying $5000 per month in advertising. However, he was getting little to no leads. They had no idea what they were doing. Even if it was setup correctly and it succeeded in getting people to go to his site, the site wasn’t designed in a way that was easy for clients. Running social media ads is it’s own skill. I’m not a plumber. I’m not a rocket scientist. I wouldn’t even try it. We have someone on our team who specialises in PPC google and facebook ads. This guy REDUCED his ad spend to $1200 per month (from $5k). Since we’ve implemented our marketing plan his leads have increased 600%. With the combination of the website we’ve built and this carefully constructed ad campaign he is now booked solid, week in week out. We’re confident it will continue to increase over time.
It’s so painful seeing hardworking tradies and other service professionals not being able to do what they are great at. They have great skills in what they do but, if noone knows their services are available, they’re just sitting around waiting for their mum to refer someone through word of mouth at her knitting club.
If you’re a tradie and you’d like to get a solution for your marketing needs then get in touch with us today.
