Marketing focus for trades

When I started my electrical business I wouldn't think anything of travelling for an hour and a half to get a job and sometimes further, then one day it occurred to me there must be plenty of business in my local area, I did keep seeing other electrical contractors vans from other areas in my town, so why wasn't I doing those jobs? I wasn't doing enough marketing locally, so I decided at the end of 2009 that I would only do work locally in my town and surrounding towns. I then started turning down jobs that were out of my area and it actually felt good to do that. 

If you search Google to find out how many homes are just in your local area you'll see there are plenty for you to get business from and supply you with enough business to grow too! In my local area alone (In which I mean 30 minutes drive or less) there are over 200,000 homes. 

I found there were other benefits to marketing my electrical business locally, apart from just spending less time travelling, I knew where all my wholesalers were if I needed extra materials I didn't have to spend time looking for them in areas I didn't know and sometimes I was often able to go home and get materials that I had stored in my garage, It saves a fortune on fuel, wear and tear on the van but it also allowed me to spend that time working on the business and therefore getting more business also If a job had taken a bit longer than expected it was less stressful because I knew I didn't have a long drive when I'd finished.

You can put that saved money in to marketing and you'll save money on the marketing too because it'll be much more focused and focused marketing is far more efficient and effective or put more into marketing to really grow your business.

A great goal to have is to become the best know person for your trade in your area so you'll be recommended to other local people and used again and again by your happy customers. 



To your success
Paul