In this blog you will get a few tips on how to grow your company and attract business for free. Like everything it takes work, but it is work that we have seen pay off time and time again.
Framework Marketing are a digital marketing agency who have been in the construction industry for over 10 years. In that time, we have seen companies start and grow, and it’s an absolute pleasure to work closely with them whilst aiding them on their journey.
There are a few key things we need to clear up first of all:
- Marketing does matter and does work – if you don’t believe in it then look around at every single brand you know and check out the amount they spend on marketing.
- Your website and social media are evidence of what you do. This is the place all your clients will be visiting before making any enquiry, if it isn’t up to scratch you won’t get the call; there is too much competition to not worry about these things.
- Your website should be a lead generator, it should be a magnet for you clients, and you should be seeing enquiries coming through the website – if you aren’t then you are unfortunately doing something wrong.
- Don’t pay £800 for your mate’s child who has a diploma in Graphic Design to build your website, it will be a waste of money and somewhere people will only land if you personally send them there.
- Understand your target audience inside out, upside down. All content needs to be written in the tone that they understand and will engage with, you wouldn’t speak to a one man band brick layer the same way you would speak to a CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Understand the terminology, use it and address your audience. You will not exclude others, but you will definitely attract your clients.
- Form a plan, incorporating as many strategies as you can handle. Do not ad hoc advertise, set your budget make your plan and stick with it. Analyse the results and adapt where necessary. Go to www.frameworkmarketing.co.uk for help with forming a plan where you will find a free template.
- There is nothing wrong with trial and error, marketing is a challenging at times. It needs to be tested, analysed and adapted to succeed. Don’t worry if something doesn’t work, it’s good to know you won’t do it again.
The marketing options I say are completely necessary are:
- A responsive website
- A lead generator on your website
- SEO (don’t believe the news, this is still crucial to rank organically people selling PPC say otherwise, but they want your cash)
- Social media B2B you must, must, must be active on LinkedIn. Twitter is worth being active on too, but LinkedIn is the one. B2C Insta and Facebook. I always advise the big 4 for all companies, we pick up clients from all of our social media platforms.
- To keep your website ranking on Google, write weekly blogs like this one. You can also use these for your social media posts, and you will position yourself as an expert in your industry, building trust with your potential clients. Don’t be scared of giving away too much, I tell people how to do things knowing some will go on and do a half decent job themselves, no skin of my nose, but the rest will come to me and I will do an expert job with 15 years’ experience behind me. You can’t teach that in a few posts on social media, have that confidence in your skill set when writing to your target audience.
- Email marketing. If you have your own database perfect, if you don’t or you need more, then use a reputable company with contacts in your industry. We have 290k contacts within the construction industry on our books and have helped companies; from start-ups to blue chip corporations creating successful marketing campaigns for them and helping with brand awareness and lead generation.
- Have your brochures, pamphlets, flyers, website, notepads and pens all on brand, your brand should be written on everything you give to anyone, it should be embedded in your employee and clients minds.
- Press releases, again helping to set yourself up as an expert in your industry. Provide information and your company details to your industry, make a list of all companies, magazines, newspapers, websites in your industry and share you press release with them.
Finally, I would like to add that it is crucial to analyse what marketing you do. You need to give marketing time to work, its psychologically proven that clients need to see your brand 7 times before they make an enquiry which means they either need to see you everywhere or consistently so give it time. Make sure however that you keep an eye on the results and know when the time is right to end a strategy that isn’t performing.
