Digital Marketing : it all starts by knowing your tradie competition

What’s the foundation of all marketing, tradie or otherwise? A strong understanding of your own offerings, as well as of the competition.

This extends to all aspects of marketing, including the digital sphere.

When it comes to online marketing for tradies, step 1 is you guessed it – knowing the competition.

Of course, when it comes to digital marketing, “the competition” is a smidge harder to define. Not to mention, your online competition can be different from your brick-and-mortar competitors!

“Who is my competition?”

When we talk about competition in a digital marketing sense, we aren’t just talking about other plumbers, sparkies and chippies – we’re talking about anyone who might pop up on Google for the services that you offer.

In addition to competing tradies, your online competition also encompasses:

• Hardware stores like Bunnings or Mitre 10
• DIY and home improvement websites
• How-to videos
• Tradies in completely different regions

While not all are direct competitors, each is fighting you for attention online.

Say a potential caller opens up Google and types in “how to fix a leaky pipe”.

What you want is for them to stumble on your tradie website and decide to call your plumbing business. The last thing you want is Google to direct them towards an online store for plumbing equipment or worse, a DIY guide.

When it comes to tradesmen’s digital marketing , understanding the difference between your physical and online competitors is a crucial first step.

With this knowledge, you can start planning how you’re going to make your website climb, and what to build your SEO strategy around for the best results.

For example, say most of the competing results come from DIY sites. What you can do is continue to chase those keywords (example: fix leaky tap) but focus the content itself around the dangers of DIY plumbing, or the importance of using a licensed plumber.

Know your competition: 3 things to focus on when building websites

1) What are your competitors doing SEO-wise?

Okay, so you know who your online competitors are – the next thing you should be doing is figuring out what they’re doing SEO-wise with their tradie marketing.

In particular, you’ll want to focus on:

• What areas they’re covering
• Which jobs and services they’re offering
• What types of clients they’re working with

For example, say you’re a sparkie who specialises in commercial electrical fit-outs.

You start poking around, and find that the vast majority of your online competition is targeted towards domestic clients.

That might mean doubling down on the “commercial” aspect of your key selling point, and focusing your digital marketing strategy around optimising for commercial jobs (and differentiating yourself from the ones that are left).

While the best way to do this is with a keyword analysis tool, it’s possible to go without. Just drop by their tradie website and look at what terms, services and locations tend to pop up more frequently, and you’ll have a good idea of what their SEO strategy is based on.

2) Identify what your competition is doing right

If your competition is doing better than you from an SEO point of view, then they must be doing something better than you are… and you need to find out what that “something” is.

You need to figure out what that is so that you can adopt a strategy to counter that and ultimately rise through the ranks.

Alternatively, you could straight up pinch their ideas and use them for yourself – if you find that their website is beating the socks off of yours, narrow down why and find out whether you can get that implemented on yours.

There are a couple of things they could be doing that could be leaving you in the SEO rear view mirror:

• Content strategy
• Blogging and content marketing
• On- and off-site SEO
• Link building
• SEO for mobile
• Video and multimedia
  

As the case usually is with SEO, there is an endless amount of reasons that your competition could be outranking you.

That’s why you need our tradie experts on your side. The world of SEO is massive, and it’s expanding every day with new techniques, strategies and SEO developments hitting the scene each day. 

That’s where we come in. We take care of the web development and SEO side of things so that you can do what you do best: practice your trade, whatever it may be. 

3) Look at your competitors’ content

We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: the key to successful SEO is a steady stream of high-quality, original content.

Naturally, this content needs to be well-written for it to have an SEO impact – it also needs to be uploaded on a regular basis.

(This is why so many company websites have a dedicated blog section, and why you need to get on the bandwagon too!)

By looking at how often your competitors are adding to their blog and how long their typical blog post is, you can get an idea of how much work you need to do.

Say your biggest online competitors are only uploading two 400-word posts a month – that’s your baseline.

Of course, not all competitors are that easy to “out-content”. Not to mention, ensuring that your posts are well-optimised is a separate battle in itself (which is where tradie marketing agencies like ours come in!)

Talk to Melbourne’s experts in online marketing!

Transform your website into a 24/7 sales team

You’re looking for leads and jobs – something we can deliver in abundance.

Unlike other digital marketing agencies in Melbourne, our team specializes in digital marketing. We’ve worked with all sorts of tradies to get them the jobs they want, from the customers they want, in the areas the want:

• • Plumbers
  • Electricians
  • Roofing installers
  • Solar installers
  • Builders

• Locksmiths
• Aircon installers

And it all starts with an in-depth one-on-one where we drill into what it is that makes your business different, as well as what your competitors are doing.

We provide a range of digital marketing services for tradies including:

• Content strategy
• SEO strategy
• PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising and strategy
• Social media management strategy
• Web design

All of this for a single flat monthly fee that you can budget for!

Just be warned, however – our services are exclusive. Unlike other marketing agencies who may work for several clients in the same trade, we guarantee one tradie per trade, per area. We know how protective tradies can be when it comes to their coverage areas!

Want more leads and jobs? Call iformat today on 1300 88 64 50 or click here get in touch online.