Guest Blog – Free Marketing Toolkit for Australian Trade Businesses

09 Jun Guest Blog – Free Marketing Toolkit for Australian Trade Businesses

Forecasting the future workload for your trade business and making sure you have a constant flow of new jobs can be tough on you and your partner at the best of times. For many, this has become even more difficult due to the impact of Coronavirus. Even if your client base is strong now, do you know how long that will last? What’s going to happen in a few months once the backlog clears? Will your competition increase? Will customer demand drop? Will your ideal job type change? What should your charge out rate be? It’s important to start thinking about, and planning for all types of scenarios. 

Most trade businesses would love to win more work. And even if you’re one of the lucky businesses who currently has more jobs than you can handle, it’s still good to plan ahead and think about what will happen if your volume of work decreases. How would you generate more business if you needed to? This means figuring out your marketing plan is important for every trade business – even if you currently have more than enough work.  

Marketing your business doesn’t have to be expensive or time consuming, but it is important to be aware of the tools and platforms that are at your disposal. After all, it’s really up to you to define how you want your trade business to be found and perceived by potential customers. 

To help you out, the Tradify team have put together a free marketing toolkit with a list of actionable steps that you can start today. Whether you need all of them, or just a couple, there is plenty of opportunity for you and your partner to drive more business, build a strong cash flow and make sure the great work your business is doing is there for the world to see. Check out the marketing tips, tactics and strategies that you can start working on today. Plus, take a look at examples of trade businesses who are nailing their marketing game in our free Marketing Toolkit for Trade Businesses.

Take your trade business online
Let’s start with the obvious, if your trade business is not online – you’re at a severe disadvantage. Word of mouth recommendations may still be a strong channel for generating new business, however your potential customers are smart enough to make use of the device in their pocket and spend 2 minutes researching who you are even if you’ve been referred to them by a friend. Having a basic website, active social media accounts and, most importantly a list of customer reviews is an easy way to showcase who you are, what your trade business is all about and the great job you do. 

Need help taking your trade business online? We’ve made a free play book for Australian trade businesses to help you get established online, or take your online presence to the next level and stand out from the crowd. 

Make use of free tools
The beauty of online platforms is that the companies behind them make their money from establishing a platform that they can sell ads on. In other words, you can use them to help grow your trade business free of charge. Platforms like Google My Business are free and allow your business to be found across Google Search and Google Maps. Start off by creating a profile, adding your logo, photos as well as gathering some customer reviews and you’ll be well on your way to improving your chances of popping up when locals in your area search for things like “Electrician in Randwick” or “Plumber in Parramatta”. In addition to Google’s products, tools like MailChimp are helpful for sending newsletters, offers and surveys to your customer base. Free versions are available, so you can see if they’ll meet your specific requirements.

For more information and examples of how to use free online tools, download our free marketing tool kit for trade businesses.

Get on social media
Whether you like it or not, social media use continues to grow each year. The latest data shows that 40% of Australians are expected to have a Facebook account by 2020. With people’s daily habits showing no sign of changing now is the time to grab some of this attention and create a Facebook account dedicated to your trade business. Again, they’re free to set up and easier than a website to keep updated with the latest news, updates and photos of your trade business.

Looking to ride the social media wave further?
Platforms like Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn also show growing userbases and are easy to establish business profiles on. Each platform does have it’s own style and type of audience so it’s important to get your strategy on point. For example, Instagram is good for capturing day to day photos/videos of your team in action while LinkedIn may be a place where you share monthly updates around completed projects or company news.

Need a hand getting this set up, or looking for new ideas to take your social media presence to the next level? We’ve added some suggestions and examples of trade businesses doing well on social media in our free marketing toolkit. 

Focus on customer reviews
We all know the power of positive word-of-mouth. A recent Nielsen report highlighted that 92% of consumers believe suggestions from friends and family more than advertising. In the online world 88% of people trust reviews written by others as much as they trust recommendations from personal contacts. Despite this compelling evidence, many trade businesses continue to turn a blind eye to asking for reviews. If you and your partner don’t already have a plan in place to ask for customer reviews, now is the time to start.

Your review strategy can be as simple as asking your customer to take 2 minutes to rate you on Google as you leave a job, or sending handwritten “thank you for your business” notes. The important thing to be aware of is the power of customer reviews during the decision making process. Do you want to be the plumber with 3 reviews from 2016 or 100+ reviews as recent as last week. We’ve highlighted more strategies to help you generate reviews as well as where you can showcase them in our free marketing toolkit. 

Free marketing toolkit for Tradies

We know, you’ve got a million things going on to help run the business. Marketing may not be your strong point or at the top of the list. That’s why we’ve put together a guide of everything you need to know, plus step by step instructions on how to promote your trade business, and drive more customers. Get marketing tips, tricks, tactics and examples of tradies & trade businesses nailing their marketing game.

 

Click here to get the marketing guide now.