TOP 4 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR TRADES BUSINESS ON A BUDGET

11 Oct TOP 4 WAYS TO MARKET YOUR TRADES BUSINESS ON A BUDGET

When times get tough, marketing your trades business is often pushed low down on your list of priorities. Although this is completely understandable, it’s important that your business continues to appear where your customers are searching. Disappearing altogether could have a disastrous effect on your bottom line.

To help keep your online presence ticking while you focus on the day-to-day, we’ve come up with 4 ways to market your trades business on a budget. From the entirely free to some affordable options, here are our top picks:

• Google Business Profile
• Social Media
• Email Marketing
• Short-Form Video

Let’s go through each of them in detail.

1. Google Business Profile (Free)
   We’ve talked about how important your Google Business Profile (GBP) is in managing your online reputation, but it’s also one of the most powerful free tools in your marketing toolbox.
   
   To make your GBP work for your business, you need to spend a little bit of time optimising and managing it. The key is to take advantage of its many features, including the capacity to:

• Upload photos and videos
• Include FAQs about your business
• Collect and respond to customer reviews
• Update your business and contact details as required
  
  
  

Once you’ve optimised your GBP, two things will happen:

First, your business will start appearing in prime Google real estate whenever customers search for your business name. And second, your business becomes much more likely to appear under ‘Places’ whenever customers are searching for local services.

If you’re yet to claim and set up your Google Business Profile, we guide you through the process here.

2. Social Media (Free)
   Facebook not only continues to be the most popular social media platform in Australia, it’s the also the primary source of referrals to third-party websites, making it the obvious choice for marketing your trades business.
   
   More than anything, social media is the perfect platform for connecting with and nurturing your customers, in turn helping to build your brand awareness and loyalty.
   
   To get the most out of Facebook as a marketing tool, you should:
   
   

• Regularly post engaging content that links to relevant landing pages on your website
• Encourage satisfied customers to write reviews and then respond to those reviews
• Create social media competitions, such as discounts or giveaways
• Tag your clients (with permission) on ‘before and after’ posts and encourage them to share the post on their profile
  
  Want to get more out of Facebook but don’t have the time? Learn how automating your social media can help keep your trades business top-of-mind while you get on with the job.
  
  

3. Email Marketing (Free – $$ Monthly Subscription)
   Email marketing still offers one of the best returns on investment of any form of digital marketing, which is why, in Australia, 81% of businesses use email as a key component of their marketing strategy.

For trades businesses, keeping in touch with clients once the job is finished is a great way to build brand loyalty, encourage word-of-mouth, and drum up repeat business.

To make it an even more attractive prospect, most email marketing software offers a free version. (Paid versions range from as low as $10 per month right up to thousands per month, depending on your needs and the size of your subscriber base.)

However, before you leap into email marketing, you should plan out a strategy that taps into your clients’ demographic, ensuring you provide your specific audience with useful content that adds value to their lives and builds loyalty.

Once you’ve put your strategy in place, it’s time to start sending emails. To achieve the best results from your email marketing campaigns, you should:
– Send relevant emails that serve a specific purpose
– Send emails at the right time 
– Personalise your subject lines and email content
– Optimise emails for desktop, mobile, and tablets
– Regularly A/B test your email subject lines and content to improve open and click-through rates over time

Not ready to go it alone with email marketing? You might want to consider using an marketing automation software. This will let you create, schedule, and send personalised emails to your clients, all from the one easy-to-use platform.

4. Short-Form Video (Free)
   Short-form video is now the most popular form of content on social media, with 91% of consumers watching videos to learn more about a product or service, and 82% of consumers convinced to purchase a product or service by watching a video.
   
   These stats alone should be enough to motivate you to tap into this ever-growing trend, especially given that everything you need to make video content is at your fingertips and completely free. The only thing you need to bring to the table is a bit of your time and some creativity.

To give you a hand, here are our tips for creating successful short-form videos:
– Stay up to date with short-form video trends
– Focus on your audience, not your service (e.g. customer enquiries, pain points, FAQs.)
– Cater to sound-off users (e.g. text captions, visual cues, demonstrative content)
– Ensure videos are high quality (e.g. clear audio, good editing & lighting)
– Stay on brand (e.g. logo, colours, font, tone-of-voice)

For more great tips on how to market your trades business on a budget, check out the full article here.