• tradie marketing strategy

Ask a tradie marketing agency: how do you “sell” a service?

2022-02-11T02:52:26+00:00July 29th, 2020|Marketing|

When it comes to digital marketing (for tradies or otherwise), it’s important that you know exactly what you’re selling.

Oh, we aren’t just talking about your services (though those are certainly important) – we’re also talking about what it is that your service actually does for people!

Websites for tradies won’t cut it on their own – for your tradie digital marketing to succeed, it needs to be backed by an in-depth understanding of your service.

It sounds a little vague, we know – however, with a proper understanding of this, your tradie digital marketing will be that much more effective at bringing in leads and converting them into customers and jobs!

It isn’t just about “selling” your service on its own

Selling a product is easy – go on about the specs, features, and extras, and interested people will take notice.

Unfortunately, services aren’t quite as straightforward.

After all, you don’t have any features or specs to sell. Instead, selling services needs to fall back onto other things…

Figuring out your customers’ deeper desires

The best marketing is marketing that taps into something deeper in your audience.

Whether it’s a goal or some sort of negative outcome they want to avoid, understanding this underlying want or need is the difference between just another ad that people look over, or something that makes them sit up and pay attention.

For each of our clients – including tradies who’ve come to us for tradie SEO and marketing – we start by doing our best to zero in on this need or want.

On top of hitting harder with potential customers, this also helps you stand out from other tradies.

Not only does it give you a point of differentiation – something that’s crucial if you want to stand out from the crowd – but it’s also something that not that many tradies are doing, giving you a competitive edge!

Focus on results

While you may not have a tangible product to sell, what you do have is an outcome or result from using your service.

For example, while there aren’t many physical attributes to a haircut, there are tangible results (for example, a tidier fringe, a stylish fade or wicked colours).

When selling a service, it’s important that you keep these results and outcomes in mind. After all, it’s these outcomes that a customer wants, not necessarily the service itself!

It’s also important to bring to light some of the other outcomes a customer can experience by choosing your tradie business.

This is especially important when developing tradie marketing strategies.

There are some people out there who might feel uncomfortable with welcoming a tradie into their home. Maybe they’re convinced they can DIY it, or still hold on to old stereotypes about tradies.

Show them the results however, and you may be able to win over even the most stubborn potential customer.

Case study: Watermaster Roofing’s tradie marketing strategy

Watermaster Plumbing Solutions is a long-time client of ours.

So when Sam and the team made the decision to spin their roof plumbing services off into its own separate business, they naturally came to us for all their tradie digital marketing!

As always, we began by zeroing in on what people are really looking for out of a roofing service.

What customers really want

Houses are people’s most valuable assets. They’re also a big part of many people’s goals and dreams for themselves – a good looking house says that they’ve “made it”.

And more often than not, that’s what roofing installation is really about.

When building their website, we also crafted a tradie digital marketing strategy to go with it that focused on appealing to these aspirations.

We went beyond practical considerations like durability and maintenance, playing up the aesthetics to speak to those desires and dreams.

What sort of outcomes did we focus on?

Beautiful, good-looking roofs – really, the results speak for themselves!

We used plenty of high-quality images of successful jobs to show potential customers what they could get by calling Watermaster Roofing.

Of course, it didn’t end there – we also made sure to talk about the specific materials the Watermaster Roofing team uses, with a focus on how they can:

  • Reduce maintenance work
  • Keep heat out in summer
  • Enjoy a roof that will last for decades
  • Protect their customers’ home

These are some of the other outcomes of a metal roof – outcomes that most people aren’t aware of.

Results

As an entirely new business, our work was cut out for us.

Good news: the tradie digital marketing strategy we built has helped Watermaster Roofing successfully get off the ground and grow.

Just recently, our strategy landed them a big job that’ll keep the lights on for the entire year!

Case study: Briggs Electrical

What do people want from their sparkie?

Electrical emergencies can happen at any time – and that’s what Briggs Electrical have built their business off of.

While a lot of tradies advertise out-of-hours emergency service, not many are able to deliver on it like David Briggs and his team of sparkies.

David made it clear he was willing to respond to emergency calls no matter the day or the hour.

Using this, we built a tradie marketing strategy around peace-of-mind. With a focus on emergency electrical jobs, we made sure to play up things like:

  • Quick response times
  • 24-hour service
  • On-the-spot solutions

By playing up these aspects, we’ve been able to appeal to everyone’s inbuilt desire to want security or insurance should anything go wrong with their home electrical wiring.

What other outcomes did we focus on?

Luckily for us, everyone understands how dangerous electricity is – we didn’t have to do much work to get the benefits of choosing a professional across!

Of course, emergency electrical services aren’t the only thing sparkies do. David and his team are no different – on top of emergency services, they also offer services like:

  • CCTV installation
  • Home theatre installation
  • Routine electrical maintenance

There are a lot of different services to go through. Luckily, each of them have pretty tangible benefits that are easy to sell people on!

Results

Briggs Electrical is the feather in our cap – and that’s for good reason.

Over the years , we’ve used this strategy to bring in 50 additional phone calls a month through their tradie website, as well as 40 online contact forms – a considerable amount of business.

Case study: Tri-Tech Air Conditioning

What do people want out of air conditioning installation?

Based in Brisbane, Tri-Tech has been providing a huge range of different air conditioning services over their 30+ years in the business.

Not only that, but they’ve also won Mitsubishi Electric’s Southeast Queensland Dealer of the Year 10 years in a row!

Keeping this in mind, we created a digital marketing strategy that was assertive, knowledgeable and which shone a spotlight on their thorough process and which played up their team’s know-how.

We focused on rebranding them as the most experienced air conditioning team in Brisbane. Just like with Briggs, it was all about inspiring confidence and appealing to potential customers’ desire for peace-of-mind.

What outcomes did we focus on?

The obvious outcome, naturally: namely, a more comfortable house.

Of course, that isn’t the only one we’ve been focusing on – we’ve also been focusing on bringing customers’ attention to outcomes they might not have known about.

That’s why we’ve been focusing on spotlighting many of the new features and optional extras that come with new air conditioning systems, as well as what they do. For example:

  • Wi-Fi control
  • Voice activation
  • Zoning

We’ve also been adjusting their messaging for seasonality, bringing up promotions and deals, as well as shifting the focus to the benefits of ongoing service and repairs during winter months.

Results

Since we started working with Tri-Tech, our tradie digital marketing strategy has doubled the number of phone calls and quote forms obtained through the website, reducing their reliance on other methods like PPC advertising with Google Ads.

And it’s worked, taking their business to new heights!

Digital marketing for tradies that works

Digital marketing can be a tad more difficult for tradies compared to other types of business.

However, it doesn’t have to be… provided that you take the right approach towards selling your services.

Our approach towards tradie digital marketing goes beyond just building a website. It focuses on really selling your services.

And that starts by connecting you to your target market.

Combining a range of online marketing techniques like search engine optimisation for tradies, PPC advertising and more, we connect you directly with people who are in the market for your services.

It’s all about making you Hi VIS:

  • V – Visible to your target market
  • I – Inspiring confidence in customers
  • S – Sustaining the results for the long term

With tradie marketing packages for trade businesses of all shapes and sizes, we can help you get the results you want.

Want more? See how we’ve helped other tradies improve their online presence and grow their small businesses.

And you can be one of them, too! Contact iformat today on 1300 88 64 50 or fill out the form and let’s get started!

You can also visit us for website for tradies in Melbourne: pop into our office at 105D Carpenter Street, Brighton 3186 VIC.

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