Electrician Marketing – 9 Effective Steps to Grow Your SMB
In this dynamic digital world, to grow your business it needs more than just pure experience and industry passion. Besides, the fiercer and fiercer competitions are getting, you should also take the current digital transformation into account, as 97 percent of consumers now go online to find local businesses, and while word of mouth used to be your primary source of leads, the review generation, and recommendation process has moved online to places like Google, Nextdoor, and other online directories.
Hence, to give your electrical contracting business a pair of wings to grow in 2019 and beyond, you need to put your steps into the world of digital marketing.
#1 Effective website appearance
According to Blue Corona, currently, there are a vast number of consumers (97%) find local services by using the internet. Hence, there is a high percent that your website is likely to be the first interaction prospects that they will have with your business.
However, as I have mentioned in many of my articles, it’s not enough to just only have a website. It is claimed that 75 percent of the people based on the company’s website design to just its credibility, and 48% of them agreed that it’s the top factor in assessing credibility. Moreover, nearly 90% of visitors are reported to be less likely to visit the website again if a single bad experience on a website occurs.
Following tips will help you to ensure your website smoothness:
Visibility is the priority
Visibility here means that your website has a high rank in search engines likes Google. This matter is relevant to SEO, our second marketing strategy, which will be discussed a bit further down.
Mobile friendly
There have been almost 1.5 million online searches for electrician keywords are recorded for the past 12 months, and 61% of them are appeared to happen on mobile devices.
A survey conducting by Blue Corona has proved that 57 percent of users prefer a business with a probable designed mobile site. And furthermore, Google also ranks mobile websites higher in the search engine results.
Concern your website’s security
HTTPS is highly recommended for websites, as data breaches and hacked consumer information are commonplace recently, and this is acknowledged by for sure most of your website visitors. In case that your electrical website has any sector for users to fill in their personal information, from simply a phone number, an email address to their personal addresses, it is required to be secured.
Minimize the loading time
Three seconds is enough amount of time for visitors to decide whether they should remain on your page or not. Website visitors need to experience your site in under that amount of time. Or else 40 percent of them will leave and choose another website instead.
Bring users the best experience
It’s important for your website to have easy navigation on mobile devices. When designing the website’s layout, you need to make sure that your contact information is in front and center, as well as the intuitiveness and attractiveness of the appearance.
Once your page loads, users form an opinion in 0.5 seconds. They expect to be able to find information easily and quickly—especially from a mobile device.
#2 SEO
You need to master search engine optimization (SEO) for electrical contractors.
After having a so-called “qualified” website, the next step is to make your website be found in search engines, and search engine optimization (SEO) plays a vital role in this practice.
SEO is the process of altering your website content and code to help search engines understand what your page is about and, as a result, help your relevant web pages rank higher for specific search queries. SEO changes year to year, what it takes to be top in 2019 is totally different from five or seven years ago.
On top of that, SEO for electricians is a bit different than other industries because of the emphasis on local service areas. While there are significant numbers of ranking signals, here’s what you should focus on if you want your electrician marketing plan to work:
- Secured sites (HTTPS or HTTP)
- Mobile-friendly websites
- Schema markup
- Webpage content length
- Page speed
- Social signals
- Quality backlinks
- Optimized images
- Domain age
Local SEO for electrician marketing
On top of general SEO, you’re also going to need a dash of local SEO, which is the process of helping your business show up in Google’s local listings:
To show up in the local listings you need to optimize your NAP (name, address, phone number) citations across the web. The more local citations you can build with consistent NAP information, the better.
Get ranked in cities where you’re not located
Ranking in cities you aren’t located in is tough, but not impossible. You’ll need to put in some extra effort to capture rankings over multiple cities or states. There is a myriad of ways to improve your local SEO so you’re more visible to users in your service area.
#3 Create valuable content
Content marketing is a big bucket that includes things like blogs, videos, eBooks, infographics, downloadable guides, and pretty much anything on your website.
It is a must, as based on Blue Corona’s survey, there are 82 of customers have a more positive outlook on a company after reading custom content, and 70 percent of customers feel closer to a company after reading or watching their content. In fact, 74 percent of companies found that their lead number and quality of leads went up as they implemented a content marketing strategy.
Moreover, your electrician marketing plan needs to include some sort of blogs. Google ranks web pages, not whole websites—so as part of your electrician marketing plan, you need to answer every single question a homeowner or property manager might have before signing the dotted line (anything on home rewiring, circuit breaker replacement, electrical outlet repair, etc.). The more search terms you can be found for, the more visibility you’ll have.
#4 Use PPC search ads
The top half of the search results page is dominated by PPC ads for electricians. What you’re seeing are Google Local Services ads on the top and general PPC search ads underneath.
In fact, 75 percent of people say that paid search ads make it easier to find the information they are looking for online.
Google local services advertising for electricians
Google Local Services ads are pay per lead ads at the top of the search results for local home services queries.
Here’s how it works: if you qualify for the Google Guarantee, you get to select a list of electrical services you offer. When a person’s search matches criteria for those services, your ad will be eligible to show. Unlike Google Ads, because you are selecting categories and not specific keywords, you can’t pick exactly what your ads will and won’t show for. This may not be a big issue for some companies because you aren’t paying by the click.
According to Google, some of the factors that determine how your electrician ads rank include:
- Your company’s proximity to the user.
- Your company’s Google My Business rating and the number of reviews.
- Your responsiveness to the people that contact you through these ads.
- Your business hours.
#5 Be active on social media
Many electrical contractors wonder if social media is worth it. In fact, the answer is really clear: If customer service, growing your brand, and owning your online real estate matter, then yes. It absolutely matters.
If you want to make social media work for you, you need to put some money behind it. There are several types of Facebook ads you can run depending on whether you’re looking for more website clicks, “likes” on your Facebook page, or engagement on a particular post.
Use LinkedIn ads is a brilliant idea!
Not many people know that LinkedIn is a marvelous place for commercial advertising. Four out of five LinkedIn members drive business decisions, and LinkedIn’s audience has 2x the buying power of the average web audience. If you want more commercial clients, I highly recommend distributing your content on LinkedIn and putting an ad budget behind it. You can target ads by:
- Company name
- Company industry
- Company size
- Job title
- Job function
- Job seniority
- Member schools
- Fields of study
- Degrees
- Member skills
- Member groups
- Member gender
- Member age
- Years of experience
- Company connections
#6 Offer a full-round service
Every business owner knows that it’s cheaper to keep an existing customer than it is to find a new one. If you’ve found that you don’t have many customers coming back for repeat services, you likely have a customer service problem.
Too many companies treat customer service as an afterthought, and for sure, they’re making a terrible mistake. The #1 most effective long-term growth strategy any contracting company can use is a top-notch customer. The first step to evaluating your customer service strategy is to find out its quality in the first place. And if your customer service representatives (CSRs) aren’t doing a great job, all they need is a little extra training
#7 Online review generation and management
Word of mouth and customer referrals probably make us a large portion of your leads, and you’ve probably noticed you’re getting less of them. That’s because the online review and referral process has moved online to places like Google, Yelp, and Nextdoor. Consider these statistics providing by the Blue Corona:
- 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation
- 72 percent of consumers say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more
- 90 percent of consumers say that their purchases are influenced by online reviews
Review generation and management are important for your marketing plan. Not only could low review ratings (or a total lack of reviews) steer potential customers away from your website, but review ratings help you get in the “local pack” on Google search result pages.
Also, make sure you don’t ignore Nextdoor. According to Steve Wymer, Nextdoor’s vice president of policy, approximately 30 percent of all posts on the up-and-coming platform are recommendation requests for local services.
#8 Call tracking and intelligence reporting
Call tracking and intelligence reporting will let you know if any of the above strategies are working.
It’s easy to use Google Analytics to track how many visitors to your website convert and which digital marketing strategies brought them there. However, most of your business likely comes from customer phone calls. With the right call tracking and intelligence reporting, you can see exactly which marketing strategies are resulting in phone calls, and which ones aren’t.
#9 Use video marketing for electricians
Video marketing is the present and the future. U.S. internet users currently spend an average of 15 hours each week with digital videos, and Cisco predicted that video will even make up 82 percent of all internet traffic in 2021. Not only that, but including a video on a landing page can increase conversion rates by 80 percent, and video drives a 157 percent increase in organic from SERPs.
You can start by filming the following videos, and create a YouTube channel:
Company profile videos
Follow the Golden Circle Model, what are you, how does your company operate, and why does it exist?
Customer testimonial videos
The top source of leads is recommendations, so get ahead of the game by filming them
How-to videos that answer common questions
How-to videos earn the most attention out of any videos on YouTube. For example, create videos on common questions like how to install a light dimmer switch, or how to reset a circuit breaker.
Animated videos that break down complicated electrical concepts and installation processes
Most people don’t understand complicated electrical wiring regulations and processes. Animated videos are a great chance to break it down for them.
Technician introduction videos
It’d be better to let your customers know who is going to come into their home to work on their wiring.
How much does an electrician make?
According to U.S News & World Report, Electricians made a median salary of $54,110 in 2017. The best-paid 25 percent made $71,430 that year, while the lowest-paid 25 percent made $40,320.
Salary outlook
Best-paying cities
The metropolitan areas that pay the highest salary in the electrician profession are San Rafael, San Francisco, Oakland, New York, and Kennewick.
Best-paying states
The states and districts that pay Electricians the highest mean salary are Hawaii ($77,990), District of Columbia ($77,330), Alaska ($77,180), New York ($76,480), and Illinois ($74,010).
Bottom lines
All the above strategies serve the purpose of giving you the most brilliant suggestion so that you can customize the most suitable online marketing plan using the right amount of combination. After all, you can have a sustainable flow of quality leads and booked jobs, which will not only help your profit to be enlarging, but it does also establish your name in the market.
