5 Essential Platforms for Commercial Contractors to Find Clients
These days, platforms play an important role in helping commercial contractors to find clients. However, choosing the suitable one is not an easy task. Let’s go through our listing platforms for commercial contractors to find out the best platform for your business.
#1 Angie’s List
According to SEMrush’s traffic analysis tool, Angie’s List averages about 2.1 million visits per month. It is an online directory for local businesses and contractors in the U.S to reach customers easier by publishing reviews. This site has been a trusted name for 20 years with 5 million members that provides you with more exposure in front of people actively looking for your services.
It is obvious that attracting customers is the most important thing contractors must do. Angie’s List is a great tool that may help you to find targeted clients. Let’s see how this database work. Since Angie’s List is a business review site, your customers’ feedbacks become a very important factor that affect your identity.
To get started on the platform and reach your consumers, register and set up your business profile, then try to gain more reviews and feedbacks from your customers. Comments play an essential role in building your reputation through Angie’s List. You will be rated from A, which is the best one, to F scale based on your customers’ reviews. The more postive comments you receive, the more quality consumers you may reach. Last but not least, try to get a high rating in order to be on top of searches.
One of the most significant advantages of Angie’s List is that can be a good source for construction and contractor leads. Since customers need to pay a membership fee in order to write reviews, their reviews are high-quality and more reliable. And as you have already known, good feedbacks would help raising your brand reputation and reaching quality customers. These reviews, on the other hand, may cause you troubles if they are negative reviews.
The other pros you may like about Angie’s List is that it’s a mobile-friendly website. In fact, members of Angie’s List are able use Angie’s List app on mobile, which allows them to search for contractors on their phones. This means that not only can you reach more consumers easily through their phones.
Pricing: Don’t worry if you have low budget because the registration for businesses is free. But if you want to advertise for more customers, you still need to pay a fee. The typical cost for advertising on Angie’s List is $200 per month; however, the price is negotiable.
#2 Houzz
Houzz is an American website and online community about architecture, interior design and decorating, landscape design and home improvement. According to Houzz, they are – the leading platform for home remodeling and design, providing people with everything they need to improve their homes from start to finish.
Among our list, Houzz is the most popular website with more than 5 million visits a month, which is understandable since it has the largest residential design database in the world with millons of homeowner users, which brings you a chance to come closer to such a potential market. This website is a suitable choice for you if you have many photos to share with your cilents. You can easily create your professional portfolio, showcase your work by uploading beautiful images and even create your own ideabooks with your own photos are with millions of them on their website. Keywords are very essential for you to reach your clients. You should think of common phrases that your customers may use and choose the suitable one for your images if you want many clients to find you.
Although Houzz works as a search engine, reviews are still remain important in improving your reputation just like any other platforms. You should request feedbacks from your past customers or other colleagues in order to build and certified your brand. Since Houzz allows contractors to communicate directly with customers, chatting and answering their questions can also be another way to determine the order of your business in their directory.
Pricing: The basic Houzz pro account is free, however, the upgrade version: Houzz Pro+ costs around $600 a month.
#3 Thumbtack
Thumbtack is an online service with more than 1,000 types of services in different categories that matches customers with local professionals. This website is being used nationwide with millions of users since it is a fast and convenient way not only for businesses to find clients but also for customers to hire the suitable business.
Through Thumbtack, your customers are allowed to see search results in real-time with profiles, ratings, and more. If they want to work with you, they will message or call you directly. Here in Thumbtack, homeowners can also post their projects and contractors are able to pick the suitable one they want to pursue. This site also gives contractors a chance to set their targeting preferences, which means contractors are able to choose the potential customers they want to work with. When a customer’s job exactly matches up, you pay automatically for the lead.
Sometimes, your customers may not choose you from search results, but don’t worry because you can also browse open opportunities on Thumbtack in order to find more customers. To do so, go to your Leads tab and select “Opportunities.” You only pay if the customer replies to your message. However, the small tip for you is that always remember to respond to direct leads as soon as possible first, which you have already paid for, then browse other opportunities only if you have time.
To make your profile looks professional, besides your company name and contact information, here are some additional things you can add:
- An “about” profile
- The services you offer and the price for each service
- Any reviews completed from your clients
- Photos/videos of work you’ve done
- FAQs about the type of work you do
- How long you’ve been in business
- How many people have hired you on Thumbtack
- How many employees you have/work with you
- Any specialties you have
Pricing: It is free for contractors to list services and create profiles on Thumbtack; however you need to pay for a lead whenever your customers reach you.
#4 Porch
Porch is an online network that connects homeowners with the right contractors as well as helps home professionals get more business, better exposure, and higher revenue with free business profiles and paid marketing & analytics tools.
The way Porch works is quite similar to Thumbtack, which means not only can contractors create a professional profile featuring their contact information, project history, photos, services offered and company description but homeowners can also sign up and post their projects, budgets, and timelines, then contractors can choose the ones that suit their need.
Porch has numerous partnerships with other companies such as Lowes and the BBB, which makes a salient feature of this website. There is one more thing you may like, Porch is a new site and not as well known as other contractor sites, which makes the marketplace less competitive. You might have more opportunities to reach your clients.
Pricing: It is free for you to create your profile. However, if you want a Porch Plus for added visibility, an enhanced profile and project support, you need to pay $35 per month. There are 2 payment methods that you can choose from: pay-as-you-go, which means you can choose the projects you want and pay a $5 to $65 fee and subscription fee where you have your monthly budget set. If you are unsure about Porch’s quality result, try pay-as-you-go method first and then switch to the subscription later whenever you want in order to save money
#5 HomeAdvisor
This is a very popular and effective site for contractors to grow their businesses. Athough HomeAdvisor was merged with Angie’s List in 2017, they still have some differences from each other. Accoring to HomeAdvisor, it is the website that provides homeowners the tools and resources they need to complete their home improvement, maintenance and repair projects.
HomeAdvisor is highly recommended since it is very easy to use and manage. Contractors can set a spending target, which means they can control how much they spend on leads. They can also turn on and turn off leads whenver they want in order not to waste money unexpectedly.
This is also a very effective website because it has a strong web presence. With HomeAdvisor, not only can homeowners view average project costs, find local prescreened home professionals but also book appointments online easily. Furthermore, unlike Angie’s List or other websites, HomeAdvisor is free for homeowners, and that explains why more and more customers use it to find suitable contractors. Therefore, HomeAdvisor is a potential market where you can meet a large number of clients.
If you don’t have your own website, HomeAdvisor may suit you. Building the profile on it helps you to be found on Google searches without having your website, which makes HomeAdvisor stand out from other platforms. However, please notice that HomeAdvisor can use your profile to promote their business.
Pricing: This is the most expensive site in our list with $300 yearly membership fee, which means you must pay money to create your profile and gain access to other products. You are also required to pay for leads, which is usually between $15 and $60, may be more.
#6 Other suggestions
Yelp
There is no doubt that Yelp is one of the most popular local service shopping platforms on the internet. It approaches around 150 million visitors per month, which means you can reach a large market in this website. Yelp includes many differents industries: restaurants, food, shopping and so on.
Pricing: Free to create profile for both contractors and homeowners, but fee for advertisement is required.
Bark
Bark is now a world-leading services marketplace with over 5 million customers in 6 countries across the globe although it was established for only 6 years, since 2014. This site is very easy to use: Homeowners can list their job and contractors choose which jobs they want to pursue. By doing so, contractors do not need to create a profile and they are able to freely pick the project they want. Besides, Bark also has a mobile app, which is very convenient.
Pricing: All Bark leads are priced in credits and the standard price for a credit i 65 s $1.. When a contractor wants to communicate with a homeowner, they must use credits to send a message and receive the customer’s contact information.
BuildZoom
BuildZoom is another niche site designed specifically to help people connect with the right contractors in their area by browsing local contractors or by keyword search. However, compare to other websites, it is not very popular. The unique part about BuildZoom is that it has a profile for every single contractor licensed in the United States. Each listing has project photos, government-sanctioned records, and detailed profiles of the contractor. You clients are able to view all of the information, which can help you to gain more trust from them.
Pricing: A 2.5 percent would be charged for contracts less than $50,000. As the contract size gets larger than $50,000, the contractor must pay $1250 of that to BuildZoom.
The Bottom Line
The list above consists of some most popular and effective sites in the U.S these days that can help you to find your potential clients. Each of the above platforms has their own benefits as well as drawbacks. Depend on your demand and budget, you could pick the one that suits you best.
Choosing the suitable platform to reach more customers is an essential thing that any companies should do. However, having the good visibly for your business in an ecommerce world is important, too. Should you need any help to get your business exposed to the digital world, our online presence manager always willing to help you.
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