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How to Market Your Contracting Business on a Small Budget · Contractor Business Builder Podcast

• 0:00
  You don't need a big marketing budget to book high paying jobs.
• 0:03
  I've helped general contractors grow with simple, affordable
• 0:07
  marketing systems and today I'm sharing the exact ones that are
• 0:09
  working right now. Let's get your business seen
• 0:12
  without burning your cash sharing. 8 different ways to
• 0:16
  mark your your construction business on a very tight budget
• 0:20
  and the first one that's often overlooked and missed is e-mail
• 0:23
  marketing. It is very low hanging fruit.
• 0:26
  It's one of the easiest types of marketing and most effective
• 0:29
  types of marketing could do as a contractor.
• 0:31
  So what you, what you want to do is get some sort of software.
• 0:35
  We've got our Rapid Lead CRM software that we provide to
• 0:39
  clients. And if you're interested in
• 0:41
  that, we'll put links in the description below to go check it
• 0:43
  out. But essentially something like
• 0:46
  MailChimp, there's a whole bunch of other ones out there.
• 0:48
  The free ones will work if you're just getting started, but
• 0:51
  something a little more robust will definitely help you when
• 0:54
  you can add automations and have better analytics behind it.
• 0:58
  But essentially you're going to compile your list.
• 1:00
  That's the first step in e-mail marketing is you, you want to
• 1:03
  compile a list. And this could be a list from
• 1:06
  your marketing or your accounting software like a
• 1:09
  QuickBooks or what have you, if you have project management
• 1:11
  software. So whatever list you have, it
• 1:13
  could just be contacts in your phone of previous leads or
• 1:17
  clients that you've worked with, whoever may be business
• 1:20
  professionals, you want to add them to your list so that you
• 1:23
  can compile hopefully. I mean, when you're starting
• 1:25
  out, if you got 10 people, you got 10 people.
• 1:27
  But ideally you want to get to 100 people on your, on your
• 1:30
  initial, you know, e-mail marketing list and then you'll
• 1:33
  grow from there. But if all you can get is 50 for
• 1:35
  now, that's fine, depending on you know, how long you've been
• 1:38
  in business. But essentially you can export
• 1:41
  your list from wherever and put them into your, your, your
• 1:46
  e-mail marketing system. So from there, the next step is
• 1:50
  to actually create the content. And nowadays with, you know,
• 1:54
  Chapi T, AI, Gemini, whatever, whichever 1 you know, you're AI
• 1:57
  of choice, it's easier than ever to produce a newsletter.
• 2:01
  I would say you just get started with a monthly newsletter.
• 2:04
  If you can do twice per per month, even better.
• 2:07
  And you always want to be providing lots of value inside
• 2:10
  the e-mail. So, you know, if someone's
• 2:12
  mailing you mail every month and every time you open the mail,
• 2:15
  there's $100 inside, you're probably going to open that mail
• 2:18
  every single month because you're going to want your $100.
• 2:21
  Think of that when you're sending emails to clients.
• 2:24
  Why is this valuable? Why do they care?
• 2:26
  It doesn't have to just be some sort of way to, you know, save
• 2:29
  money or make money or whatever. It can be just simple things,
• 2:31
  you know, entertainment value and and whatever, but just think
• 2:35
  of it from the, the clients, the openers perspective of like, why
• 2:38
  is this important? Why is this valuable?
• 2:40
  Why should they care? Right?
• 2:41
  So you're going to craft your e-mail and send them all you can
• 2:44
  schedule these, you know, well ahead of time and start with
• 2:47
  that a monthly, monthly emails. Now, an important part of doing
• 2:51
  e-mail marketing is keeping the health of your list high.
• 2:56
  So you don't want, you want to make sure that you're not just
• 2:59
  sending emails and they're getting bounced or people aren't
• 3:02
  getting them or what have you. So after you've started sending
• 3:05
  emails, you want to go in. This is just sample data here,
• 3:09
  but you should be able to see how many were delivered, how
• 3:12
  many people open them, all these types of things.
• 3:14
  And if you've got a system like this, you know, it's all kind of
• 3:18
  automated where if people don't open emails, they'll be removed
• 3:21
  from the e-mail list. If it balances or they they, you
• 3:24
  know, unsubscribe, they get removed.
• 3:25
  So you want to make sure all those, you know, automations are
• 3:28
  in place. And if they're not that you're
• 3:29
  doing this manually. And then the really important
• 3:31
  thing is bounced e-mail. So again, this is sample data.
• 3:34
  It's not real real life stuff, but you should be able to see if
• 3:38
  emails bounced. And if they bounce, you have to
• 3:40
  make sure that they're removed from your e-mail list as well as
• 3:42
  anybody that unsubscribed or if they complained, you know, about
• 3:45
  spam or whatever. When you're starting out, you're
• 3:47
  you're open rates are probably going to be pretty high because
• 3:50
  most of the people on that list are going to be pretty direct
• 3:53
  connections with you and already know you.
• 3:55
  So I would expect probably somewhere around a 40% open rate
• 3:59
  when you start out. Could be even higher.
• 4:01
  Typically if you're in the 30 to 40 percent open rate range, that
• 4:05
  is pretty good. If you're above that, great.
• 4:07
  If you're below that, you probably need to trim your list
• 4:10
  and look for people that have an open emails.
• 4:12
  If if you sent out, you know, four or five emails, they
• 4:15
  haven't opened any of them, take them off your list.
• 4:17
  Trust me, it's not worth keeping them on your list.
• 4:19
  They're not opening them anyways.
• 4:20
  So you know, you're not, you're only hurting yourself by keeping
• 4:24
  people on your list that are not interested in your, your content
• 4:27
  that you have at the the second, right.
• 4:31
  The second area that you can market your contracting business
• 4:34
  on a budget is in the real world, right?
• 4:36
  We've, there's all this online stuff.
• 4:38
  You probably know about some of it.
• 4:39
  And I'm going to be going behind the scenes and showing you some
• 4:42
  really cool, like behind the scenes of, of different things
• 4:45
  that you can utilize and, and how I would approach getting
• 4:48
  stuff set up online. So we'll be going through that
• 4:50
  in a moment, but a lot of people skip the real world stuff and
• 4:53
  don't realize how important it is.
• 4:54
  So things like your signage, you should have signs, you know,
• 4:58
  those chloroplasts plastic signs, just get started with
• 5:01
  that. Eventually you're going to want
• 5:02
  to upgrade to some nicer looking signs, especially if you're
• 5:05
  doing larger, you know, projects and things like that and you
• 5:08
  want to have that quality feel to it.
• 5:11
  But the very least go get some of those cheap chloroplast
• 5:13
  plastic signs and put them up on every project that you do.
• 5:17
  They should be in every front yard or every commercial
• 5:20
  property, whatever type of projects you're doing, you
• 5:22
  should have a sign out front and it should be very visible and it
• 5:26
  should have some sort of call to action and an explanation of
• 5:29
  like services that you do. Once you have the sign out
• 5:32
  there, then you should also be doing door hangers.
• 5:34
  So this is an example of a door hanger here does not be anything
• 5:37
  super crazy special, but just, you know, nice looking
• 5:40
  graphically. Put a picture of a project that
• 5:43
  you've done, your services, how to contact you, put a QR code on
• 5:47
  it so people can quickly get it on their phone and away you go,
• 5:50
  right? Go put these on all the
• 5:53
  different doors, people in the block in the area, if they're
• 5:57
  home or if you see them outside, talk to them, hand them a door
• 6:00
  hanger. Let them know, hey, I'm working
• 6:02
  down the street or working across, you know, the street
• 6:04
  over there. We're doing work in your area.
• 6:07
  If there's anything at all you're thinking about doing on
• 6:09
  your host or thinking about building a new house or whatever
• 6:11
  it is, you know, reach out to us, love to come by and give you
• 6:14
  a quote, give you, you know, some free consultation and and
• 6:18
  talk about whatever kind of work you might want to get that.
• 6:20
  This is a fantastic way because it's in person a lot of the
• 6:23
  time. And even if you're just leaving
• 6:26
  the door hanger, they're going to see your sign, they're going
• 6:28
  to see your truck, they're going to see whatever else, you know,
• 6:31
  in the area, your guys working and stuff like that.
• 6:33
  So it gives that really like local feel to it more than just
• 6:37
  them doing a Google search online.
• 6:39
  Now, once you've, you know, done that, of course, with your
• 6:43
  vehicles, you should have like vehicle wraps.
• 6:45
  If you don't want to spend, you know, the money on getting a
• 6:47
  full wrap, at least put a decal or some side it kind of nice,
• 6:51
  you know, logo or design on your truck.
• 6:53
  That's very easy to see. This is your business and it's
• 6:56
  like essentially free market. You got to pay to get their, you
• 6:59
  know the declare their rap. But after that you're going to
• 7:01
  be driving around all the time. So may as well be getting some
• 7:04
  marketing done at the same time with that, right?
• 7:07
  The next area of marketing #3 here is people, people group.
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  So what groups or organizations can you reach A lot of people
• 7:15
  and get in contact with as you know, referrals as different
• 7:19
  things like this. So good ones are any networking
• 7:21
  events, networking groups, business groups that are
• 7:23
  happening in your in your city, in your area.
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  You want to be going to those, you know, a little caveat here
• 7:29
  is you can waste a lot of time going to these events and they
• 7:33
  are good, but just remember that your time is valuable as well.
• 7:38
  So if you're, you know, spending too much time at these events,
• 7:42
  it can be ineffective. You want to be going to high
• 7:44
  value events and then when you are there, make sure you're
• 7:47
  talking to people that are relevant and don't just leave
• 7:51
  with a, hey, nice to meet you. Here's a business card.
• 7:53
  There's a business card. Try to arrange, you know, a
• 7:55
  coffee meeting or a quick zoom chat or phone call or something
• 7:59
  more one-on-one after the event so that you can meet more people
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  and you're not just like glued to one or two people the whole
• 8:05
  time. And, and not getting the full
• 8:07
  benefit of, of all the different people that are there.
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  You know, you know, get this is a little bit of a skill, but,
• 8:13
  you know, create that connection.
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  Be very warm, be very open, be very genuine.
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  And, you know, spend 15 minutes with someone or whatever.
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  If there's like a group of people, talk with them and then
• 8:22
  kind of move on to the next. And most people will thank you
• 8:26
  for doing that because they're kind of stuck in the same thing
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  as you are, where it's like, I know I should be meeting other
• 8:31
  people. We're having a really good
• 8:32
  conversation right now. And I feel comfortable with this
• 8:35
  person. And then they, they don't want
• 8:36
  to break it off because they don't want to be rude or
• 8:38
  whatever. So just just be like, great to
• 8:40
  meet you, you like, you know, I've got your business card,
• 8:43
  I'll reach out with an e-mail or something.
• 8:44
  We can connect on a coffee or maybe jump on a phone call.
• 8:47
  Love to continue this conversation, but I, you know, I
• 8:50
  just want to go around and meet a couple more people here.
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  Whatever. Most people will be more than
• 8:53
  happy and thankful for that because now they can, you know,
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  go and bounce to the next person as well.
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  So local Chamber of Commerce are great.
• 9:00
  There's, you know, lots of organizations that do like
• 9:02
  referral networks and different things like that.
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  Any kind of building organizations, you want to be a
• 9:07
  part of those. Those are really great coaching
• 9:11
  consulting type groups. You know, there's lots of group
• 9:13
  coaching. We we've got a group coaching
• 9:15
  program and just having those types of people in your network
• 9:19
  are, are very helpful both as, as giving you like, you know,
• 9:23
  business advice, if you will, or just like letting you know
• 9:26
  what's, what's working in their business.
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  So there's that like cross pollination of good ideas and,
• 9:32
  and just camaraderie, but also specific referral, especially
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  when they're in your area or city.
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  You want to get in those types of groups, mastermind groups,
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  whatever you want to call them. Alright, so the 4th area to mark
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  your business on a tight budget is listing sites.
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  So getting found, getting Omni presence online, you want to be
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  everywhere and anywhere that someone could search for you and
• 9:53
  find you in the worldwide web, you know, virtual world and the
• 9:58
  big dog is Google right now. You know, that may change with
• 10:01
  the whole AI revolution that's happening, but even having
• 10:05
  strong presence online is going to it filters into the AI world
• 10:09
  as well. So you'll be well positioned for
• 10:11
  it. Google My Business is the big
• 10:13
  one. So if you don't have a Google My
• 10:15
  Business profile, go get one. You want to get a lot of
• 10:17
  reviews, as many as you can. Put all your information in
• 10:21
  there. You want to have descriptions.
• 10:23
  You should be, you know, posting.
• 10:24
  I've, I'll be talking about social media posting later and,
• 10:27
  and you know our CRM program and how that all works and how to
• 10:31
  get more, you know, eyeballs on your company.
• 10:34
  But you know, putting your profiles, any information, the
• 10:37
  more information you can give Google, the more they're going
• 10:39
  to like you, the higher they're gonna rank.
• 10:41
  Quick tip that is learned from a buddy of mine recently is your
• 10:45
  hours of operation. So if your hours of operation
• 10:49
  are are short and someone's searching for you at let's say
• 10:53
  at 8:00 PM at night or whatever 6:00 PM and you close at 5:00
• 10:58
  PM, Google is more likely to show a business that is open at
• 11:02
  the time that someone is searching for you.
• 11:04
  So just little FYI that if you can have some sort of automated
• 11:08
  phone system or some way to kind of be open and show that you are
• 11:13
  open and put that in your hours, you may have a wider window and
• 11:17
  a more likely chance that Google is going to show your, your
• 11:19
  business profile. So do you, you know, I'm not
• 11:23
  about saying I'm open 24 hours. I mean, we, we could be, we, we
• 11:26
  technically have people that will, you know, respond with
• 11:29
  auto responders and stuff like that to be open all the time.
• 11:32
  But but just quick build things below that.
• 11:35
  Now I have this easy leads action list.
• 11:39
  It's got a bunch of information, you know, higher than this they
• 11:41
  haven't shown that shows you how to set up the Google business
• 11:43
  profile, how to set up your social media, how to do
• 11:46
  referrals and things like that, which I'm be talking about
• 11:49
  later, as well as this online Omni presence directory list.
• 11:55
  So you want to go and get yourself listed on all the
• 11:58
  directories you can find online. Bing, Yelp, Yellow Pages next
• 12:02
  door, Bark. There's a whole bunch of them
• 12:04
  here. So whichever ones that are
• 12:06
  you're eligible for or work for you, depending on your area and
• 12:09
  where you're located, go and get on all the different lists
• 12:12
  online that you can. And then of course there is
• 12:15
  these like lead paid lists, like, you know, like a trusted
• 12:18
  pros or house. I'm not sure Angies list, stuff
• 12:21
  like that. I'm not a believer in the paid
• 12:24
  for. I think you can spend your money
• 12:26
  more wisely on the branding and marketing to create your own
• 12:29
  marketing machine to bring in leads than than relying on
• 12:32
  someone else. But if you want to try it, go
• 12:34
  for it. But you should have a listing on
• 12:38
  those sites because even just having a listing is another
• 12:41
  place that has a link to your website.
• 12:43
  So it creates more, more links, more presence online.
• 12:46
  And the more authority you have online, the more likely Google.
• 12:50
  And in the future now, I mean, Google has AI that's built into
• 12:53
  the search. When you search on Google, you
• 12:56
  are probably seeing, starting to see that it's giving you AI
• 13:00
  summaries of stuff more than just before where it would be
• 13:03
  like, here's the Google listings.
• 13:04
  Here's all the websites that you can click on now.
• 13:07
  It's like it'll tell you these are the top contractors in the
• 13:11
  area. This is how you should choose
• 13:13
  your contractor. So there's a whole bunch of
• 13:14
  information that's going in there before they even get to
• 13:17
  like websites or, or Google listings sometimes because
• 13:21
  Google does Google and they want to get paid for their ads and,
• 13:23
  and whatever else, right? And and more people using their
• 13:25
  AI more and more. So go get listed.
• 13:27
  If you want this document specifically, check out the
• 13:30
  links in the description below. You can get a free copy of this.
• 13:33
  It'll have all these different listing links that you can click
• 13:36
  on and quickly jump through as well as a bunch of other
• 13:38
  information on on how to like actionable items to get you
• 13:42
  bigger presence online. All right #5 is social media and
• 13:47
  there is 4 big ones that I suggest contractors beyond for
• 13:51
  sure there's other ones if you want to get on other ones and
• 13:54
  you don't have to get super fancy off the bat.
• 13:56
  You can tell from my profile it's, it's nothing crazy, but it
• 14:00
  should have your logo. It should have your information
• 14:02
  and you should have some regular posting going on.
• 14:05
  Instagram is great for contractors and very, you know,
• 14:10
  one of the best ones because it's very visual.
• 14:11
  Facebook, you should have a Facebook page, same thing.
• 14:14
  Put a nice picture of like a house or remodel or whatever
• 14:18
  service, whatever like showcase service that you want to like
• 14:21
  get more of those type of jobs. That's the type of picture you
• 14:25
  should have as your cover photo. Of course, put your logo on
• 14:27
  there, invite everybody and anybody and then have, you know,
• 14:31
  some regular posting going on. I'm not a big believer in you've
• 14:35
  got to be posting, you know, every day or you know, every
• 14:38
  week is easily enough and you should be creating a system
• 14:41
  behind this. Like I'm going through a lot of
• 14:42
  marketing stuff and we're going to get into even more stuff.
• 14:45
  And if you're like, I don't know where I'm going to have the time
• 14:47
  to do all this or how all this, like I don't, I just I don't
• 14:51
  have time to do all this right, That is a good thing.
• 14:54
  You shouldn't be doing all this yourself as a business owner, as
• 14:57
  a CEO of a company. You should be hiring people.
• 14:59
  You should be creating the systems and the processes and
• 15:02
  the, you know, have the knowledge around it so that you
• 15:05
  can hand this off. It's very easy to create a quick
• 15:07
  process for people to, you know, have like a Google folder or
• 15:10
  somewhere where you put in pictures from the sites or what
• 15:13
  have you. And then hire a virtual
• 15:15
  assistant or office admin or your neighbors kids next door,
• 15:19
  you know, for 10 hours a week or five hours a week just to take
• 15:23
  those pictures, use some chat, you know, send off some, some
• 15:26
  social posts and stuff like that.
• 15:27
  Of course, you wanna have it somewhat polished and, and have
• 15:30
  like a good process around it. So that's consistent.
• 15:32
  There's messaging and it's reaching ideal client and all
• 15:34
  that kind of stuff. But you should not be handling a
• 15:37
  lot of this marketing stuff that I'm talking about.
• 15:39
  It's kind of like either set it and forget it.
• 15:42
  You have to update every now and then or create a system or
• 15:45
  process around it because you as a business owner should not be
• 15:48
  doing all of this marketing. You may have to record, you
• 15:51
  know, some videos or do some personal kind of stuff when
• 15:53
  you're the face of the business, but as far as like the back end
• 15:56
  of getting this stuff out, you should not be doing that.
• 15:58
  You should be creating a system and hiring someone in.
• 16:01
  If you want help with this and building the system and using
• 16:04
  like a CRM software like like we have available, reach out to us.
• 16:07
  We'd love to chat with you and help you out with your business
• 16:10
  and your systems. Alright, so Facebook is great.
• 16:13
  The other one, LinkedIn, same thing.
• 16:15
  Cover photo, nice cover photo. Have a good picture of yourself.
• 16:18
  You don't have to be in a suit and tie, just something like a
• 16:20
  nice clean, professional looking picture of yourself.
• 16:23
  Have your face on it. I know some people like to put
• 16:25
  the logo in there, but it's a much warmer feeling and then
• 16:29
  people can recognize you and you're just you're marketing
• 16:32
  your sales gonna be better. People can see your face.
• 16:34
  They know you as a person. They trust you.
• 16:36
  Like the trust goes higher and it's just better to have a
• 16:39
  personal picture than just the logo in your in your profile
• 16:43
  pic. Then, you know, fill your about
• 16:45
  section, put some featured stuff in there articles.
• 16:49
  If you can get some reviews, you know, good, good stuff.
• 16:52
  I'm not sure how many I have right now, but get some reviews
• 16:55
  on there and the more the better.
• 16:57
  So those are the kind of the big three social media platforms
• 17:01
  that most people think of. The other one is YouTube video
• 17:05
  content is the most consumed and the highest value content that
• 17:10
  there is out there right now. People like video.
• 17:13
  Video resonates better. It builds trust faster.
• 17:16
  If you know the picture, get, you know, says 1000 words of
• 17:19
  video says a million, right. So have start getting in the
• 17:22
  habit of using video. If you personally don't want to
• 17:24
  be on camera, just, you know, flip your your camera the other
• 17:29
  way and just do a walk through of the site of like, here's our,
• 17:32
  our new house that we just built.
• 17:34
  You know, I'm going to do a little walk through and just
• 17:36
  walk through the house explaining like, you know, these
• 17:38
  are the cabinets that they want. We had, you know, trouble with
• 17:41
  this countertop because of this is a little bit tricky, but our
• 17:43
  guy saw that whatever, right? So just talk through the
• 17:46
  project. You don't have to show your face
• 17:48
  or whatever. Or if you if you can't even get
• 17:50
  there, just do a silent, you know, pan and throw some music
• 17:53
  on it. But start utilizing video and
• 17:56
  start putting videos in your on YouTube because YouTube again is
• 18:01
  is a Google is Google owned and goes into Google search and it
• 18:05
  gives you more presence online and another Ave. for people to
• 18:09
  find you. So things about YouTube that you
• 18:11
  want to be thinking of is here. You can have links.
• 18:15
  Put a link to your website. You got other links, put them in
• 18:17
  there too. Put a description in there.
• 18:19
  Same thing here. Cover photo, picture of
• 18:21
  yourself, name of your company. And then for your videos,
• 18:24
  because you're going to be very localized, make sure you're
• 18:27
  putting that your city or even your neighborhood into the
• 18:30
  description of the video in the description as well as the
• 18:33
  title, because you don't want to be competing.
• 18:36
  You know, how to how to remodel a home or, or the best way to,
• 18:40
  to design a new home build or something like that, or what to
• 18:43
  be thinking about and competing against everybody in the world,
• 18:46
  right? You want to be very specific to
• 18:48
  your city so that people in that in your city are finding it.
• 18:51
  That's the one caveat with YouTube, as it is international.
• 18:55
  So you can, you can potentially get people watching from all
• 18:59
  over the place, which isn't really your ideal clients,
• 19:02
  obviously, because they're not to do business with you.
• 19:04
  So make sure it's very localized and you've got your city, your
• 19:07
  neighborhood, whatever very much on there everywhere.
• 19:10
  I'm going to be showing you in a little bit to how you can use
• 19:14
  YouTube videos to help produce a lot of other content.
• 19:18
  This is how I run content for my business is I, I create YouTube
• 19:23
  videos and then we transcribe them and then we use that
• 19:26
  content and, and reformat it for different purposes for other
• 19:30
  avenues, which I'm going to be getting to in just a minute.
• 19:32
  So one last thing on social media is the actual posting.
• 19:35
  When I mentioned, you know, you want to build a system and have
• 19:37
  some sort of admin person taking care of this or marketing, if
• 19:40
  you got a marketing company, your manager or whatever, but
• 19:42
  with a good CRM system, you can create a post and get it out to
• 19:47
  all your different social channels.
• 19:48
  So the rapid lead software that we have, you know, it can push
• 19:51
  it out to Facebook, Instagram, Google business profile, your
• 19:55
  LinkedIn, if you got TikTok, YouTube, whatever, right?
• 19:57
  So you can create one post and get it out to all of it.
• 20:01
  So it's easier than ever to get a lot of exposure out there and
• 20:04
  it doesn't take a lot of time. Now the next one number we were
• 20:08
  on 6 here is blogs and blogs are easier than ever to right now
• 20:13
  with AI. So I'm going through with that.
• 20:15
  As I mentioned, I reuse the YouTube content that I have.
• 20:19
  I don't like writing. So hey, I is the best best thing
• 20:22
  ever for me as far As for writing.
• 20:24
  Close, I prefer, you know, this style to to be presenting and
• 20:28
  talking and and giving advice in in a more natural video format.
• 20:34
  But what I can do is and what we do constantly is in YouTube, you
• 20:39
  can go to subtitles and in subtitles you can do download
• 20:43
  subtitles. You can download the the
• 20:45
  subtitles. So that gives you a
• 20:47
  transcription of the video that you've uploaded to YouTube, all
• 20:51
  the, you know, written format words of the video and then you
• 20:54
  can plug that into a chat. The key again, you wanna tell it
• 20:58
  your writing style and give it like direction as far as how you
• 21:01
  want to write the blog, but it'll take that content and then
• 21:06
  create a blog article with it. So you want to as far as the
• 21:11
  video goes, you can do a video on how to plan your new home
• 21:16
  build or 10 questions that people should ask before they
• 21:22
  they contact the builder or that when they contact the builder or
• 21:25
  whatever, right? And then you can create a video
• 21:28
  talking about it and then transcribe it and then put it
• 21:31
  into a blog article. Blog articles can go on your
• 21:33
  website. Again, this is great for SEO
• 21:36
  Google, they love this kind of stuff and it helps promote your
• 21:40
  business as an authority in the space.
• 21:42
  Things to think about is you don't want just like a whole
• 21:45
  booklet of text. People, you know, get turned off
• 21:47
  by just having too much text. So have you know, like a
• 21:50
  paragraph, have some pictures in there, throw some pictures of
• 21:53
  your houses or your team or or whoever is you can benefit, you
• 21:56
  can better structure it, use some bullet points and stuff
• 21:59
  like that. And then put the YouTube video
• 22:01
  right in your blog. So now you have this cross
• 22:05
  pollination again. I like the word pollination.
• 22:07
  You know, my dad is a beekeeper. So we we got it.
• 22:09
  We did a lot of honey in the day.
• 22:11
  And anyways, put your YouTube video link in the actual blog
• 22:18
  article because now people can then click through to your
• 22:21
  YouTube channel and it has this cycle.
• 22:23
  It's like like a web. And the more places someone can
• 22:26
  kind of get stuck and, and kind of go from here to there and
• 22:30
  stay in your sort of ecosystem of marketing, the better.
• 22:33
  And the more information you can provide them, the more you can
• 22:35
  be trusted, the more likely they're going to reach out to
• 22:37
  you again, some pictures and then also throw in a couple
• 22:39
  links. So if you have like 10 different
• 22:41
  blog articles and one can reference another.
• 22:45
  So let's say you did a blog article on like planning your
• 22:48
  new home build and then you've got another one that is, you
• 22:52
  know, preconstruction process. And in one you mentioned
• 22:56
  planning, you could have a link to the other blog articles.
• 22:59
  So now again, people can kind of click over from one to the other
• 23:02
  and Google likes it because they can see that, you know,
• 23:06
  information people are are going to spending more time on your
• 23:09
  site. Essentially at the end, you
• 23:11
  always want to call to action. So this is you reach out for
• 23:14
  free consultation or get our free, you know, builders
• 23:17
  planning guide or or whatever, right?
• 23:19
  There should be some sort of call to action at the end for
• 23:22
  them to click and get the free thing or or reach out to us for
• 23:26
  a consultation or to start planning your home.
• 23:29
  If you want to get extra, you know, curricular on this, you
• 23:32
  can go share articles. You can have links.
• 23:34
  People want to share it. It's rare, but it makes it easy
• 23:37
  for people to share your document and then a little write
• 23:40
  up on maybe you as the owner or the you know about the company
• 23:43
  or whatever. And blogs are a great way to
• 23:47
  then you can put this blog on your LinkedIn.
• 23:49
  You can put this like any of your social stuff.
• 23:52
  You can link to this in your newsletter, your e-mail
• 23:54
  newsletter. So as you can see that one
• 23:56
  content piece of creating like a nice video, you can then use
• 24:00
  that as a blog, which then can be used as social media posts.
• 24:03
  You can chop it up. There's there's like almost
• 24:06
  endless ways to reuse and repurpose content across
• 24:10
  multiple different channels. All right #7 is news and
• 24:15
  podcasts. So if you can get on the local
• 24:17
  news, then you are going to get a ton marketing for free.
• 24:22
  Essentially, look at local news channels.
• 24:24
  They don't have to be big, but small news channels and or
• 24:28
  podcasts are fantastic. And the best way to do this is
• 24:31
  to craft some sort of a story. People want a story of like how
• 24:35
  you help the specific client or maybe how you've been in
• 24:38
  business for for X number of years.
• 24:40
  Or maybe talking about the current state of the building
• 24:43
  industry and where things are going, maybe the future of of
• 24:48
  construction challenges that are happening right now.
• 24:50
  So more than just like we'll talk about my business to have
• 24:54
  some sort of like comprehensive story.
• 24:57
  It doesn't have to be super built out, but at least have
• 25:00
  like talking ideas and points that you can provide to someone
• 25:03
  so they can say, yeah, this actually sounds good.
• 25:05
  I think my audience would like this.
• 25:07
  With podcasts, look for of course, like ones in the
• 25:10
  industry, anything to do with building, construction, small
• 25:14
  business, any sort of things like that.
• 25:16
  Reach out to them, talk to them, send them an e-mail whenever you
• 25:19
  need to do to get on their podcast.
• 25:21
  And again, present yourself as a as a speaker as you know,
• 25:24
  someone of authority, whatever you need to do to be able to get
• 25:27
  on podcast. It's a great way to get some
• 25:29
  free publicity and share different audiences.
• 25:32
  You have to also be thinking of what you're going to give them,
• 25:34
  right? So if you're gonna promote their
• 25:35
  podcast on all your social channels, having that as an
• 25:39
  asset and something that you can, you know, give value to
• 25:42
  them as well as they're going to give value to you.
• 25:45
  Now, another great thing about podcasts is you can it's great
• 25:50
  for gold connections, so you can connect with other potential
• 25:55
  developers, real estate agents, people that are a little bit
• 25:58
  higher up and maybe as a small business owner, they, they
• 26:02
  might, you know, they may not want to, if you just reach out
• 26:05
  to them randomly for coffee or something, maybe they're like
• 26:08
  busy, right? But if you can reach out to
• 26:10
  them, they're like, Hey, invite, I want to invite you on my
• 26:12
  podcast and we'll, we'll promote it to our, you know, our
• 26:15
  audience and stuff like that. Now you may have got their
• 26:17
  attention and they may be a lot more likely to be, you know,
• 26:21
  connecting with you. Then you get to get on the
• 26:23
  podcast, you get to meet them, you get to create something
• 26:26
  together and it forms like a really good business
• 26:28
  relationship with very minimal almost work what you need to do.
• 26:32
  It also helps you with not having to create a bunch of
• 26:35
  content because you're really just having a conversation with
• 26:38
  someone. So it's really easy to record.
• 26:40
  Just use Zoom and and record on Zoom if you have to.
• 26:44
  Don't have to get super fancy. I would suggest getting a nice
• 26:47
  microphone because sound is really important part of of good
• 26:50
  content nowadays, especially if you're doing a podcast.
• 26:53
  And then once you have podcast, even if you're not doing a
• 26:56
  podcast with like you and another person talking, you can
• 27:00
  just do a podcast from your YouTube videos that I mentioned
• 27:03
  or your social media, you like videos, even if they're maybe 5
• 27:08
  minutes or 10 minutes or whatever, you can, you can reuse
• 27:11
  that video if you're talking about something to do with your
• 27:14
  business or or whatever and put that and create your own
• 27:17
  podcast. It's very easy.
• 27:19
  The the best way to do it that I've found and what I use is
• 27:22
  creators.spotify.com. You can put it on this.
• 27:26
  It's a Spotify enabled resource. It'll house your podcast
• 27:30
  episodes and from this creators dot Spotify, it'll send it out
• 27:35
  to Spotify, Apple Podcasts and like a list of other ones.
• 27:39
  So again, it's like a one stop shop.
• 27:42
  Like I mentioned for the social media, you don't want to be
• 27:44
  doing this manually where it's like we've got to post there.
• 27:46
  We got to post there. We got to be on this platform,
• 27:48
  that platform. Use a tool like this to to push
• 27:52
  out your content to multiple different platforms.
• 27:55
  Even if you start off slow, realize this is a long term
• 27:58
  game. Things like YouTube, things like
• 28:00
  podcasts, it takes years to grain gain traction, unless
• 28:04
  you're throwing like ad spend or money behind it or you get kind
• 28:07
  of lucky and and have like that viral moment possibly.
• 28:12
  But typically speaking, it's it's a bit of a slug fest.
• 28:14
  You you got to just get through it, put out content.
• 28:17
  You will get better at speaking. There's there's a lot of
• 28:19
  advantages as well. The more content you put out,
• 28:22
  the better you get, the more you, you become natural and feel
• 28:25
  like you're speaking abilities and you're presenting and you
• 28:28
  start to see what resonates with, with your ideal clients as
• 28:31
  well, Because ideal clients will come to you in like, yeah, I've
• 28:33
  seen you broadcaster. I saw you on, on YouTube.
• 28:36
  And it's like that the, the marketing that you get from
• 28:41
  doing this stuff is really powerful in the sense that even
• 28:45
  if you're doing ad spend and let's say you're putting, I
• 28:47
  don't know, a couple hundred, a couple $1000 into ad spend,
• 28:50
  Those people coming off the ads probably don't really know you
• 28:53
  very well. Or if even they did hit your ad
• 28:55
  and they, they clicked, they went to your website and they
• 28:58
  see, they watched a video or two.
• 28:59
  They they saw you had a podcast. It's like your trust level just
• 29:03
  goes up and they're much warmer when they come talk to you.
• 29:05
  So having a good content game and being able to really excel
• 29:11
  at this stuff is going to put you above a lot of other
• 29:14
  contractors really quickly and and just make your life so much
• 29:18
  easier when it comes to the sales side of things, you know,
• 29:20
  beyond the marketing, once you actually get the lead.
• 29:23
  So yeah, with podcast use this, get it out there.
• 29:26
  You just put it, put it in here and away you go.
• 29:28
  Alright, we're going to be moving on to #8 in just one
• 29:31
  second. I just want to remind you grab
• 29:32
  the document I mentioned in the description below.
• 29:35
  There is the easy leads checklist.
• 29:38
  It goes to a sales stack. You get actually a couple of
• 29:40
  documents, but that's the main one that is relevant to this
• 29:44
  video. And in there it'll show you how
• 29:47
  to improve your referrals, improve your online presence,
• 29:50
  have all those listing sites I mentioned.
• 29:51
  It's a great resource. If you haven't yet, click in the
• 29:54
  description below and go and download that resource.
• 29:57
  It will give you a big boost in your marketing and it's all free
• 30:01
  ways to improve your lead Gen. across your business.
• 30:04
  So #8 here is the referral program.
• 30:08
  So having a good referral program is essential as I would
• 30:11
  probably guess if you're, if you're looking for, you know,
• 30:14
  effective low like small budget marketing.
• 30:17
  Referrals are your number one game and word of mouth getting
• 30:21
  referrals is so critically important.
• 30:23
  The best lead you can possibly get is a referral because they
• 30:26
  have high trust. The high is high value.
• 30:30
  Your margins are going to be better.
• 30:31
  You're going to have less competition because they already
• 30:34
  know you and they've been referred from somebody else they
• 30:36
  they already trust. So referrals are super important
• 30:39
  for referral program. It doesn't have to be
• 30:41
  complicated. The main kind of easiest way to
• 30:44
  do this is anybody who refers somebody to you, whether that is
• 30:49
  whether that person ends up doing business with you or not,
• 30:52
  you want to make sure you're sending them a gift card and
• 30:54
  sending them a lot of appreciation.
• 30:56
  The gift card, you know, 1020 dollars to Starbucks or some
• 31:00
  local whatever business, something easy for them.
• 31:04
  But even if they even if they send you a referral and it's
• 31:07
  like the persons like not a good fit or whatever, you want to
• 31:10
  give them some sort of a small reward.
• 31:13
  You know, you're not like paying them a bunch of money, but give
• 31:16
  them a small gift card because that way they're like, oh, wow,
• 31:18
  you know, that was really nice. I enjoyed that.
• 31:21
  And then, you know, the next time they have someone, it's
• 31:23
  like, I'm going to refer again. Maybe he would send me another
• 31:25
  gift card, right. And then just keep sending gift
• 31:27
  cards as many referrals as as they send you.
• 31:30
  And if they send you a lot of referrals consistently, maybe
• 31:32
  you want to take them out for dinner or you know, do something
• 31:35
  extra special for them. But make sure that you are
• 31:38
  providing some sort of an incentive to people that refer
• 31:41
  you, whether it happens or not that you do business.
• 31:45
  If you end up doing business with that person and you know,
• 31:49
  based off the size of the project.
• 31:50
  But if someone refers you to someone that does, you know, 100
• 31:54
  hundreds of thousands of dollars of business with you or you
• 31:57
  know, $1,000,000 home or whatever, you want to do
• 31:59
  something pretty nice for them. So you know, maybe a few $100.00
• 32:03
  gift card to a really high end restaurant or you know,
• 32:08
  something significant, but you want to always provide some sort
• 32:11
  of value to them. If it's a business connection
• 32:15
  where it's like referral partner and they're they're they have,
• 32:18
  they have their own business, then you probably want to do
• 32:20
  like a percentage of the the revenue could be half a percent
• 32:24
  or one percent, 2%, you know, again, depending on the size of
• 32:27
  the project, but you could be sending them 1000 or a couple
• 32:29
  1000 bucks. If they refer to $1,000,000 of
• 32:32
  business to you, that's probably worth sending them a check for
• 32:34
  five grand. You know, like make it worth
• 32:36
  their while to like send you business, right?
• 32:39
  Because if you have to, your cost per lead cost per per sale
• 32:43
  is probably a few $1000 if you're doing large projects.
• 32:46
  So if someone can refer you for free, you know, give them that
• 32:49
  money and, and keep those, keep the the wheels greased if if you
• 32:53
  know what I mean. All right.
• 32:54
  The other thing with the referral program is you need to
• 32:56
  ask, ask, ask, ask. Most people wait till the end of
• 32:59
  the project and wait till the client is, you know, 100%
• 33:03
  satisfied. And then they ask, Hey, by the
• 33:05
  way, do you know if you know anybody send them over my way
• 33:09
  love to speak with them, right? And that's about all that
• 33:11
  happens. You need to ask more often and
• 33:13
  you need to be more intentional with it.
• 33:16
  So I like to have a what to expect document early in the
• 33:18
  cycle. So before the person even starts
• 33:21
  the project. I've already talked about
• 33:24
  referrals. It's not that I've been bluntly
• 33:26
  like asking for referrals, but in our document it'll explain we
• 33:30
  are referral based business. We really appreciate when people
• 33:34
  refer business to us and this is how you do it.
• 33:38
  So that's the next thing is you need to ask, I would say before
• 33:42
  the project starts, have some sort of document that just sort
• 33:44
  of just bridges the topic. You're not doing a hard ass, but
• 33:47
  you're just like, hey, by the way, anybody you know, if you
• 33:49
  know anybody else that's considering a project like this,
• 33:52
  we'd love to, to speak with them and, and help them, you know,
• 33:55
  through this or, or whatever, right.
• 33:57
  And then midway through the project, again, you want to ask
• 33:59
  again, depending on the project size of this, like a one month
• 34:02
  project, maybe you just ask sort of early and then, you know,
• 34:05
  after the project. But if you're doing a new home
• 34:07
  build that's going to be 8 months, definitely you want to
• 34:10
  be asking, you know, before you start somewhere in the middle
• 34:12
  and probably at the end as well for, for referrals.
• 34:15
  And then every, you know, year or six months after the cleaner
• 34:19
  project, give him a call, see how they're doing.
• 34:21
  Still happy with the, you know, project, how's the kids,
• 34:24
  whatever, you know, by the way, you know, again, if you, if you
• 34:27
  know anybody would love to, to help, you know, neighbors,
• 34:30
  friends, family or whatever. We're doing a bunch of projects.
• 34:32
  We're pretty busy. But for friends and family, we
• 34:35
  definitely, you know, move mountains to, to get them in our
• 34:38
  pipeline earlier, whatever, right?
• 34:39
  So projected as you're doing them a favor for, you know, them
• 34:44
  referring people to you and then you want to guide them on how
• 34:47
  should they be referred, right? So you want to say refer people
• 34:51
  to me but tell them here is an e-mail template.
• 34:54
  Just you know if if you know someone, just send me an e-mail,
• 34:57
  CC them. Here's the template, send it to
• 35:00
  us. Or if you want, just text me
• 35:02
  their number and just let them know.
• 35:04
  Hey, so and so is thinking about whatever, right?
• 35:07
  You want to make it as easy as possible for that person to
• 35:10
  refer you and you don't want them to think that they need to
• 35:13
  be part of the conversation. If they want to wonderful, that
• 35:16
  is great. But a lot of the time you don't,
• 35:18
  you don't want like to have to go to someone.
• 35:21
  Like let's say my neighbor refers someone to me.
• 35:25
  I don't want my neighbor to have to contact that person to remind
• 35:29
  them reach out to me and then you know, like facilitate this,
• 35:32
  this relationship conversation. No, none of that.
• 35:35
  They should send the referral to me and then it's my
• 35:37
  responsibility to connect with that referral and try to connect
• 35:41
  with them. If I can't connect with them,
• 35:42
  maybe I mentioned always give them the refer referee person
• 35:46
  feedback. As far as you know, I was, oh, I
• 35:49
  wasn't able to get ahold of them or hey, just letting you know, I
• 35:52
  talked with, you know, Sally Smith the other day.
• 35:54
  Thanks so much for the referral. We're doing a consultation and
• 35:57
  next week and we'll see where things go.
• 35:59
  Provide an update, let them know.
• 36:01
  Don't just leave them hanging like, oh, I've heard something
• 36:03
  and never heard back from them. Right.
• 36:04
  And then of course, then that gift card later.
• 36:06
  So this is how you do marketing for very effectively without a
• 36:11
  large budget. You've got value out of this.
• 36:13
  Check out this next video all about the sales process.
• 36:16
  Once the the marketing is done. Now you need to get the high
• 36:19
  level sales to be able to close those leads and get those
• 36:21
  projects on the books.