How to make a great FREE website for your trade or property business

Getting your construction or property business online pt1

A lot of building trade and property businesses either don't have a website for their marketing or have done it poorly themselves, so I thought I'd write a couple of posts about websites and doing it yourself for free and how to make it work for you.

Now, I'm not discounting web designers and going to one for your website, it has advantages over making one for yourself, however it has a cost too! At the end of the day it's your decision, I hope this series of posts will help you, if you do go to see or already have a website designer doing your site.

So, What do I know

Firstly let me tell you about why I think I'm qualified to talk about websites. I'd like to point out I'm not an expert web designer/ builder, however I've read a lot and formed my own opinions of what I think makes a good site and there are a lot of differing opinions out there, I've also had a bit of experience in building my own sites.

I built my own first website back in the 90's using HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) which is the main programming code for websites, since then I've made several websites using hosting packages from companies such as 123-reg.co.uk which is the type a lot of trades use now or the hosted ones from the likes of Yell!

What free website builder to use 

I now use Google sites and have made 19 sites to date for myself and other people using Sites, I made my own electrical website for my business, which is now dormant, in that I don't work on it, there is a lot I could do to make it work better, however it still gets me calls every week for jobs, so I keep it live to pass that business on. I've also made the Marketing for Trades website using Google Sites too.

I like Google sites as it's simple to use, there are plenty of templates to choose from and if you spend a bit of time learning how to use it and can use something like Microsoft Word then you can make a perfectly good site to start marketing your building trade or property business, for free which is really great if you're a start up!

What makes a good website

There are some key things that I think make a good basic website; 

• What you do and how you can help solve a customers want or need should be in the top left of the home page of your site (As on my sites), not your logo, I've said it before people do not care about your logo, it's only you that does, people want to know that they can find what they are looking for, so you need to tell them straight away how you can help them.
• Your contact number needs to be on the right in a large font to make it easy to see/ find. Some people will call you straight away without looking at the rest of your site, don't make it hard for them to contact you by looking for your number or going to a contact page (still have a contact page though) otherwise they may just leave and go somewhere else.
• Your logo I think it's still important to have this but have it on the right or left, lower down but above what is called the fold, that's the top part of the website you can see without scrolling down.
• Keep colours & fonts to a minimum, too many and your site looks messy and it makes it harder to read, you should really only use one maybe two fonts maximum and 3 or 4 colours. Less really is more.
• Use pictures They make a site come alive and break up the text on the site, if you've got your own that's best rather than use stock photos, it makes a site more personal and everyone has seen that american tradesman in a hard hat!
• Have a contact form rather than an email address, if you have a contact form it's easy for people to contact you, with an email address, you're reliant on them having to open their email program maybe cut and paste or type your email in and then send it to you, a contact form is easier.

One of the most powerful things about having a site you've built is that you can add and edit pages as and when you want, with a website designer/builder you'll have to wait and there will be a charge.

There is far more to a website, and just having a website alone will not get you business, I'll save the rest for the following posts over the next few days...



To your online marketing success

Paul Jennings


Once you've digested this post you can move on to part 2 about how to start getting your website found

How do you make your customers feel?

What do you sell?

I was once on a training course and the trainer asked a question to us and that was 'what do you sell?', he asked everyone in turn and he came to another electrician, he got the reply - 'I don't sell anything - I'm an electrician!'. 

I'm expecting that you may have this same view point as do many trades and property business owners in regards to their marketing and sales, however I'm hoping that by the end of this post you will change your mind because to be honest you're probably holding your business back.

Marketing and sales go hand in hand you can't get sales without marketing and if you don't make sales, well the marketing you do is pretty pointless! Without either of them you are out of business.

Everyone sells something

So lets clear this up, as a business owner you sell something, people give you money for your services and the products/ materials that you use, whether you're an electrician, architect or lay driveways you have to sell that to someone or you make no money. You are a 'Salesperson' like it or not.

I understand you may not like to be called this and it stems from the media and the stereotypical car salesman, double glazing salesman or estate agents portrayed by the media on programs such as rouge traders which have done a disservice to the sales industry.

Here's the thing though,  we are all salespeople, everyone on the planet is a salesperson, if you've ever;

• Been on an interview - you had to sell yourself to get the job.
  
• Wanted to go to a different restaurant or pub to your friends or partner - you had to sell them the idea of going to the place you wanted to go to.
  
• If you've got kids, did you ever let them get their own way? -They sold to you!

If you're surveying and quoting a job, you have to sell yourself, if people don't like you, that job ain't yours! if they don't believe you can do the job - same result.

A bit of history

Most people think of sales as manipulating and pushing people to buy something that they don't need or for more than it should cost. That's not sales at all, the word 'Sell' comes from the word 'Sellen' which means to give or serve - When you sell you are serving your customer.

Here is what you really sell

You're not really selling your service, you are selling feelings to the customer and it's different for each customer.

My wife brought a new car, but she didn't buy the car, she brought a car that ran well (the old one kept breaking down) she brought the fact she wouldn't have to worry if it would breakdown again - she brought peace of mind - she brought happiness, you should have seen her face when she got it and for a long time after.

If you're a decorator you're not selling some paint or paper that you put on the walls, you're selling the outcome of that, you're selling the feeling that your customer will have when they walk in from work and have rooms that look good or when friends and family come round for dinner, they won't be embarrassed about the look of the place and that makes them feel good.

So now you know this how will it help you, simple, when you go to quote a job, you sell them those feelings and let them know you can give them the feelings they want and the job is as good as yours.

How do you know what they really want, well that's simple too - Ask them!



To your sales success

Paul Jennings


PS. If you help enough people get what they want, you'll get what you want - Zig Ziglar

Email that can harm your business

Having a professional business email address

I see a number of trades and property businesses, business cards, listings on the web or on their websites that use either a free email service such as Gmail, Hotmail or one that is from their Internet Service Provider (ISP) such as BT of Virgin!

So here's the question, why would you want to promote those companies - how much are virgin paying you to have their name on your Ads, business cards, website or van signage?

It looks much more professional to have yourname/info@yourbusinessname.co.uk instead and it's probably easier and cheaper to set up than you think.
Also what happens when you decide you don't want to be with your ISP anymore, you've got to change all of your marketing.

Having your own business email address also shows you are a serious business too. It's a little thing, but trust me it makes an impression and not the right one either!

How much does it cost?

To buy a .co.uk which is called a domain name, can cost around £7 for a couple of years, you then have to buy the email hosting which costs around £1 per month!

Setting up your Email

Each provider has different ways to set up their email service, although whoever you use will have step by step guide on how to do it!

I use a company called 123-reg.co.uk for all of my domain names and email and found them to be the best - I can then pick up my email via Gmail and on my phone.



To your success 

Paul Jennings

10 customer service tips to more business

Great customer service will grow your trade or property business

Customers are the lifeblood of your business, so why wouldn't you have a focus on customer service as part of your marketing strategy for your trade? I find a lot of trades do not think this is important, but they are wrong, they believe their business and job is to go and do a survey, quote, do the work and then leave!

Yet the benefits of doing more, going further for the customer outweigh the actual energy use to do the 'little things' - surprise the customer with service they don't expect and it'll be a win- win outcome.

Delighting a customer means not only will they use you again in the future without even calling anyone else for quotes - they are going to become a fan of your business and recommend you and who knows where that could lead.

What customer service is not!

I say this a lot - Satisfaction guaranteed is not customer service, that is expected as a minimum, do you think a customer looks for a plumber, electrician or tiler and says 'I'm going to take them on, it'll be okay if I'm not satisfied with the work'? 

If your marketing has things like this in it then you're best removing it and using something that will work better, this does not set you apart from your competition.

Here are some customer service ideas

1. When doing a survey sit down with the customer and explain how you work, what will happen and offer advice and tips to save them money or get better value, not just from your trade but other trades too.
2. Give amazing guarantees.
3. Once a quote is sent - call to make sure they have received it, understand it and thank them for asking you to quote.
4. Do what you say you will! most people let this slip, I'm guilty of this at times but I always aim to do it 100% of the time.
5. Take them a gift as a thank you on the day you start work.
6. Save them time or money - When I used to go out for a break or lunch I always would let them know where I was going and ask them if I could get them anything!
7. Once you've completed the work give them a bottle of wine or chocolates and a hand written thank you for using your business (this has a massive impact). If the job is a bigger one you could be a bit more extravagant maybe with vouchers for a restaurant or other service. 
8. Share other services from businesses that you trust from your networking activities that can help them (You do network right? Read this)
9. 2 weeks to  month after the job has been completed call and make sure they are happy with everything.
10. A year after you have completed the work send a thank you card.

These are just a few ideas of the things you can do to stand out from the crowd and most trades are not doing things like this, be different.

Put a smile on your customers face

There are more things that you can do and I hope this has got you thinking, and proves customer service isn't just for commercial or corporate companies, trades and property businesses should focus on it too!

If you have employees or subcontractors on board you should get them to buy in to this philosophy too, and have a reward recognition system in place for the people who get the most positive feedback!

A few years ago I met a great guy called Derek Williams who runs a company called The Wow Awards I would highly recommend having a look at his site and follow him on twitter here He's passionate about customer service and engaging with employees in this way.

If you want to read more about customer service, I read a great book called 5 star service 1 star budget that you can read for more ideas, it's written by Michael Heppell and you can find him on twitter here.

Finally I would say see if your customers are using social media and connect with them there and stay in touch and offer help where you can.


To your success

Paul Jennings

10 tips for growth

Is your business ready for growth

I hear many trades people say one of two things; I need more work or I'm too busy, you've said it and I know I've said it before, we run around like a headless chicken trying to get things done, spinning plates to keep people happy, get in from a job at 8:30pm that went wrong and took longer than it should have, then grab something to eat and sit down to do the paper work!

So It's the too busy bit I'm writing about today.

If you follow my top tips, blog posts and posts on social media and then implement them, this is a stage you'll get to and a lot of trades people when the are too busy then stop marketing completely, because why would they want more business! 

This is of course the wrong course to take as once that work runs out they are out of work for a while until the marketing kicks in again unfortunatley it's not like a tap! Once you get to the stage of being too busy it's the time to ramp up your marketing and start to really grow the business and it's best if you prepare for that.

Now before we go on I understand that it's not every ones goal to grow a business and they are happy staying on their own or with just one other person working for them, but it means you'll almost always be in that feast or famine state, my mindset when I was running my electrical business was to grow it so that I could eventually step away to do other things.

I did not see the point of running a business just on my own, with all the extra hassle of running  a business it would have been easier to just work for someone else.

What you need to plan

When you're building a house you don't do it without a plan and the same is with a construction business. So here is a list of things you need to consider when growing your business, to make sure you are ready and don't lose or have to turn down work!

A house or a business - you need a plan

1. Have your goals for your business and yourself written down and review everyday.
2. Have a plan written down on how to grow and steps to be taken.
3. Write down all of your systems and procedures to run your business.
4. What staff/ sub contractors will you need.
5. Make a list of sub contractors you can call as soon as the business starts growing.
6. Identify one of the sub contractors you can rely on the most to become your right hand man.
7. Farm out the paperwork to a Virtual Assistant to free up more of your time.
8. Use a call answering service so you don't miss out on work.
9. Spend time each day on the growth of your business and have a marketing plan for that too.
10. Take more time off - we work more efficiently once we've had a break or holiday - this is something I got wrong!

This isn't an exhaustive list but it's a start, having all this stuff planned in advance will help you grow your business to where you want to be and get the life you want.

I really hope this post has helped and has given you some food for thought.

To your success

Paul Jennings

How to write a great blog post for trades....

Finally a blog about blogging for trades

Have you heard lots about how you should have a 'blog' but not sure what it's all about or even what you should be 'blogging' about, perhaps you think blogging is a waste of time or have one already but it's not doing anything for you!

Well I'm finally writing a blog post about blogging just for you. I've been blogging since 2008 when I started my Free Electrical Advice Blog, I had a rough idea about what I was doing then, however I only ever wrote 12 posts and then left it, However I've had well over 15000 views to that blog since 2008 and get it still gets around 9 views per day, over 260 views per month and I do nothing with it!

Let me say that again because it's important, I get all those views and I do nothing with it, I have not linked to it from anywhere but my website, I do not post on twitter or other social media or do any of the things I'm about to tell you about in the rest of this post! I think this just goes to show that the !
content you write in a blog stays around forever

If I were doing the right things, views to my old blog would go through the roof, so If you thought blogging was a waste of time I hope I've now changed your mind, who wouldn't want that sort of traffic looking at their blog and therefore business!

What will blogging do for me then!

Quite simply blogging shows you are the expert the professional electrician, decorator, architect or builder and it markets your business.
It drives traffic - potential customers to your website and because you've shown your expertise and maybe helped them already with the content you've written they will have a level of trust and so call you first!

I can guarantee one thing though if you don't do it someone else will and get your potential customers!

What blogs are not & should not be about

I've seen quite a few blogs done wrong, they are not just an advert for your business! so here's what you should not do;

• Just write posts such as 'We can install your boiler from £600'
• just post pictures of your work
• Start a blog and not write anything at all!
• Write posts that don't make sense, have someone read it first if you're not sure and preferably someone not in your profession to make sure they understand it.
• Use Jargon

What can I blog about?

If you've thought that you have nothing to blog about, then think again, there are so many subjects you can write about to show your expertise in your trade, here is a list and I'm sure you can think of a few more

• Products
• Health and safety
• Industry law
• Industry news
• A job as a case study
• How you run your business
• How to's
• Customer has asked you a question
• Keywords - use your keywords 
• Other trades and how they fit in around each other.
• Related products
• Dodgy work you've found

Has this given you some ideas? I want to mention the How you run your business entry, in a little more depth though. Most people will just see the face of your business, you or your employees coming to do the work and that's it! you have a great chance here to show the depth of running a construction business things such as;

• The costs
• Tools you have to buy
• organisations you belong or have to belong to such as Gas Safe, NIC EIC, FMB
• How you quote work
• Employing people
• Blog about the employees/ team
• Marketing
• Accounting/ invoicing
• The time involved outside of the job 
• Training you go on to keep up to date
• About why you got into your profession

Again this list could be much longer and I'm sure this gives you some ideas.

How to make blog content marketing work

If you follow the tips in this post, you'll be on a good heading with your blog, however there is a bit more to blogging than I've covered in this post but I didn't want to over do it, so I'll write another one soon.




To your blogging success

Paul Jennings

10 Reasons you should be on Google+

10 reasons you should be on Google+ to market your business

Google+ is going to be great  marketing 

This year I've been heavily pushing Google+ pages as a great marketing tool for electricians, plumbers, builders and to every trades person that will listen, actually I've been promoting it to every business person that would listen, you'd think Google were paying me!

Why do I promote Google+ for Marketing?

Well, I think it's going to be massive boost for business promotion and I'm not the only person that thinks so. however many business owners are not paying it enough attention yet and not taking it seriously. If you're not using Google+ or using it properly then you're losing out!

SO if you've been asking the question why should I be on Google+? Here is why I think you should;

1. Each post is a page on the internet
2. Your keywords are searchable
3. Hashtags are searchable
4. Every +1 boosts your page in search
5. If someone has you in a circle and someone they know searches for your trade its like a personal recommendation.

   

   Google+ will help you be found in search

6. Being on Google+ now will help you in the future 
7. It's another page on the internet for your business
8. You can have reviews from customers
9. Within I'd say the next 2 years Google+ will overtake facebook
10. Google+ is here to stay

I hope now you've read the list you'll consider making Google+ part of your online marketing. 

You can read my more indepth post about Google+ here

and my tips on using Google+ here

I hope you make great use of Google+ and it gets you new business, remember though it's a marathon not a sprint and if it was easy to do everyone would do it!

To your success

Paul Jennings

PS. Click here to go to the Marketing for Trades Google+ page for regular marketing tips!

Marketing your trade with facebook

Marketing with a facebook Pay Per click campaign

Carrying on from my last posts on Google Adwords Pay Per Click (you can read Google Adwords PPC Part 1 Here and Part 2 Here) I thought I'd write about Pay Per Click marketing on facebook and why it may be better for you than PPC on the search networks.

The difference between facebook and Google Adwords

So what are the benefits of using facebook Pay Per Click, the main difference

about facebook PPC is, rather than advertising to people that are looking for your product or service keyword(s) at a specific time you can advertise to people who may be interested in your service or need it in the future. So if you're an interior designer marketing your business on facebook, a potential customer may be thinking of using an interior designer however not yet started looking and your ad pops up just at the right time when they are on facebook and prompt them to either go to your Interior design website of to your facebook page. You are now in their mind!

Targeting your potential customers

As with Google Adwords you can also target your area however with facebook you can also find the right target market based on interest, age, groups or target friends of the people who already 'Like' your page,  so maybe the age bracket 30-55 years old as they are more likely to be home owners that would use your service!

Your ad will show when they use facebook, if your ad catches their attention and relevant to the viewer they'll click on your ad and then be taken to the site you've specified.

Marketing on facebook can be very targeted as you can fill in search data to be targeted to your potential customers or clients, so if you were a  shop and wanted to target runners you can and your ad would only show to runners that are using facebook, what is great is when you set up your campaign and add 'runners' or 'running' to your keyword terms facebook will tell you how many people your ad has the potential to reach (remember some of these may not use facebook at all any more or on a regular basis) you can also target ages so if you just wanted to target runners over 50 then you could and if you just wanted to target runners in a local area you can do that too!

You can be really sneaky and just target followers of your competitors pages too, so if in your search terms you put a facebook page in, your ad will just show to those people.

Getting people to click

One of the best things to do is to set up a facebook page to send your prospects to, on that page you can then give tips and post about useful resources about your trade, Once people have 'Liked' your page it shows on their wall if they they like that tip or resource that you have posted then that comment will be seen by their facebook friends. When they are ready or need your service they'll go through to your site and buy your product or service.

A great way of getting people to like your page via facebook ppc is to keep your ad simple so if we go back to the running retailer a simple ad would be 'Like Running? Click 'LIKE' what happens in the minds of the prospect is they think 'yes, I like running, I'll click like' simple and they don't have to think or view the page first. I did this with the Best of Hertford facebook page http://www.facebook.com/thebestofhertford and I got the cost per 'Like' down to 5 pence, now to get a fan for 5 pence is really great and I had simple copy in the ad of 'live in Hertford? click LIKE'.

As with normal search ppc though try a few different ads and test and refine them all the time.

I'd love to see your facebook page so let me know the address and I'll stop by and 'Like' it.



To your Success
Paul



Visit my Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/MarketingForTrades and click like for more tips and links to resources. 

Pay Per Click marketing for trades

Pay Per Click Marketing Part 2

For those that don't know what Pay Per Click marketing is and about how it can work for your business you can read part 1 here

As we know Pay Per Click advertising and Google Adwords Marketing is one of the best ways to drive prospective customers to your website and ones that are already looking for your product or service at the very point they need your service, This is especially great if your site is new and not been picked up and ranked by the search engines yet, which can take weeks.

Using Adwords in your marketing strategy can give a significant boost to your business and is a great return on marketing investment and if you've not tried it yet then do so.

A Sample PPC Ad for an Electrician

Below is a sample of one of the Ad that I ran for my business that did well

Writing an Ad is very simple but an art form in itself, you are limited on the number of characters so your Ad needs to be concise, yet draw the prospective customer in to click on your Ad. 
This Ad I set to only show in Hertford, so only people in Hertford would see it when they entered the Keywords I'd set, you see it's very relevant to them so they would click on it, then all that needed to happen was for them to be suitably impressed and get enough information from my website and call me.

Isn't it just a waste of marketing money!

Here's the thing if PPC doesn't work why are all the advertising companies using it! Google your trade now and see that yell, trust a trader, rated people etc are all using it and then charging 2 or 3 trades people around £12 for that lead, when they would have only paid £1 or £2 for it! 
Most of your competitors are not using PPC, so you will have a massive advantage over them!

The one thing with Adwords is that you can spend a lot of money and get little or no business from it, and I've heard this complaint from trades people many times, unfortunately I've not seen their particular Pay Per Click

marketing campaigns to comment on how they have spent too much with poor results but let me explain some possibilities as to why. 

First though let me clear up one myth and that is that your competitors can click on your ads over and over again and use up your budget, this is known as 'click fraud', However if they try this the Google Adwords program will recognise that the clicks come from the same PC and therefore not count clicks, this means that the competitor would have to use several different PCs and that would just be a waste of time (unless they were mental of course) This is time which would be better spent getting new customers. 

How to waste your Pay Per Click Budget

One way to use a lot of your PPC marketing spend is to set the wrong area for your ads to show, on my old Hertford Electrician site I have Google Adsense (Which allows you to have ads on your site and make money when people click on them) sometimes it shows ads for other electricians, now, my site is for Hertford and the local area only so why would an electrician from say Bath want to advertise in Hertford, it would not be worth them coming up to my neck of the woods for work!

When a a someone clicks on the ads they've lost money, this is because they've either set their ads to show UK wide or even worse, worldwide! 

Another point to note is that they have their Ad showing on Google's display networks, the problem here is your ad will get shown on a site with relevant content to your site but it may not be a great site to get prospects as they may not be searching for your services, therefore your budget may get wasted here when people are just curious and click on the ads.

Setting your bid too high means that your budget could get swallowed up pretty fast, it's best to aim for the second or third spot rather than the top where you'll be paying the maximum cost per click all the time. best to start low and increase the bid as you get reports from Adwords.

Start off your campaign with a few keywords, if you have lots of keywords and largely irrelevant ones your money will again be wasted, on top of this you'll not get good metric feedback. It's much better to focus your PPC campaign.

Making your Pay Per Click work better

Test, Refine, Repeat is what you should be doing with your Ad copy on a regular basis, start off with 10-15 ads and find the top performers, create duplicates and change a word or two test that Ad for a few days to see which gets the most impressions and clicks, then do it again, removing or changing just one word in the ad can reduce your ad spend and get a better return on investment as it may be that one word that influences a searcher to click. You also want to set your ads to show evenly so that you can see exactly how each performs on which day and what time during the day the day. I found my Ads always got more clicks around Wednesday late afternoon and evening. 
When you monitor like this you can set Adwords to show more often and at the best time!

Always be refining and tweaking your ads on a daily basis to see if you can get better results and reduce your spend and increase your ROI.


To your marketing success
Paul Jennings


If you run a trade business in or around Hertfordshire? I run 121 Google Adwords Marketing training for trades that can get you started and with £100 to spend on Google Adwords

And here is Part 3 in the Pay Per Click series about marketing your trade with Facebook ads

Is there any point to Google+ for your trade?

Is Google+ going to be the best thing for promoting your business since sliced bread?

Google+ is the new (I say new, but it's been around for a bit now) social media platform from Google.
However it has been wrongly dismissed by many business owners and that is a slight error in judgement and it will be their loss to continue to do so. 
In this post I'll explain why you should take advantage of Google+ and its +1 button (Google's 'Like') now and I'll show you how it will be a great for marketing your business whether a plumber or an interior designer. By the end you'll understand just how powerful it can be.

Which is the biggest search engine on the internet?

I've been plugging Google+ pretty much from the very beginning at first just because it was a nice new social media platform that I really liked but then I started to realise the power of it and the more I read the more I loved it, I now spend the majority of my social media time on it. Google has tried a social media platform before and it failed, but Google+ is going to succeed, they will make sure it succeeds and it already has a foothold.

Google is the biggest search engine on the internet and they make an absolute fortune from the adverts (known as Adwords Pay Per Click) that are shown to people when they search for something. However the key thing you should be interested in for marketing your business here are the organic & local display which are below the beige box at the top of a search display.

So how does Google+ help my trade business?

Obviously Google will favour it's own social media network over any other, it may not be fair but that's the way it is and I'd do the same thing. Google is bringing it's services together, you now only have the one username to login for all services and you can operate the Google services that you use from the top bar. Google whether you realise it or not has already brought Google+ and search together.

If you've got a GMail account (if you do, you have a Google+ account waiting for you), are on Google+ and performed a search, lets say for an architect, If you are following a friend or customer of an architect in one of your circles (Google's version of friends or connections) and that person has has given a local architect that they know a +1 on their website or G+ page, something great happens. 

Google takes that as a recommendation and will show you that architects website or G+ page in the search results and it will let you know by the side of the listing too, great free marketing for the architect. Can you see how powerful G+ can be for your business?
Google also now has a linking feature so with a bit of code you can link your website and page together to help get you seen in searches.

What is the potential marketing reach of Google+

Now that we know how big Google+ can be for our businesses, imagine you have 40+ customers that love your service and all of those customers have been onto your website and page, they've circled you so they receive your updates and they've given you a +1 too, when people who are following them now search for your service or product guess who they're going to see in the search?

So let's do the maths imagine you have 40 customers promoting your service, and each of those has just 100 people following them - that's potentially 4000 people looking at your company. 
Now imagine they have 500 and trust me as G+ grows this will be the norm and a low figure at that, I've been on G+ since the beginning and now have 569 people who have circled me, so 40 x 500 would be 20,000 people potentially looking at your product or service.

If we said just 1% of those people turned in to customers or clients that would be 200 new customers or clients for your business.
Would that be okay?

But it doesn't stop there, if you have lots of +1s and your customers are leaving reviews/ reviews for you on Google Local then that opens you up to everyone else who is on the internet that needs your product or service as +1s and reviews give your business more weight in searches. How does that work for silent word of mouth business 24/7?.



To your success
Paul Jennings

PS catch up with me on Google+ - you can also visit The Marketing for Trades page for regular tips.


PSS make sure you're on Google Local too, here's the link, it's free and takes about 10 minutes to set up.

Marketing your trade to people who need you now!

Marketing to your future customers that are looking for you NOW! tell them you're here

Have you tried Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising yet? If not, read on as marketing your business with PPC can be a great way to bring in new business quickly.

What is PPC? 

The red boxes are the PPC listings or Sponsored Ads

When you search on Google for a product or service, you're shown results for that search, at the top and down the right hand side of the page are shaded boxes and in the top of the box are the words 'Sponsored Ads', the rest of the pages are what are called the organic listings or Google Places listings Read my post about how to get here for free. The 'Sponsored Ads' section is the bit we are concentrating on. 

The sponsored Ads is the PPC section where advertisers have 'bid' for their ad to show, I say bid because advertisers ads enter into an auction to be shown when someone searches for their product or service and depending where they come in the bidding depends where the ad gets shown.

If you were to bid £1 and a competitor was to bid £1.05 and others less than £1.00 your Ad would be shown in second place. Up until this point though it has not cost any advertiser a penny (Except for when you Pay Per Impressions), the time when the advertiser gets charged is when the searcher clicks on the ad, hence the term Pay Per Click.

Your marketing advert 

The ads that you create are limited to a certain amount of characters and you need to make it compelling to the searcher for them to click on it, It also helps to have the relevant keyword(s) that searchers are looking for in the ad itself. 

A relevant ad has more chance of being shown over a competitors (such as electrician in Hertford over just Electrician if the searcher has searched for the words Electrician in Hertford) and more chance of being clicked on by the searcher. When starting your campaign you should create around 10 Ads and test them to see which gets clicked on the most and then you take the best performing ad and create variations and pretty much repeat this tweaking all the time.


Keywords for marketing your trade 

when setting ads, advertisers need to set some keywords, words that are relevant to the business that someone searching for a product or service will type into the search engine, Some keyword examples for an electrician would be;

• Electrician
• Electrical contractor
• Electrical rewire
• Fuseboard change 
• Electrician prices
• Commercial electrician
• Emergency electrician

You can discover more of your own keywords with the Google Keyword tool here

Every word or phrase has a different cost per click, depending roughly how many advertisers there are and how much they are bidding for it therefore where you set your bid can make your Ad show or not be shown in the listings. The people bidding the highest will win the auction and so have their ad shown first.

Please note that your keywords should also be used throughout your website too as it helps in the ranking of your ppc ad as well as getting listed in the organic rankings.

Setting a ppc marketing budget

When setting up your ad, you are asked to set a budget, you may set a budget of £10 per day and let's say you set a bid of £1, once your ad has been shown and clicked on 10 times your ad will stop being shown for that day.

Lets say your competitor sets a budget of £10 also and and set a bid of £1, your ads will stop being shown around the same time, If however you set your budget at £15 your ads will be shown longer so you should get more business than your competitor. 

If however you set your budget at £10 but your bid at 75 pence once your competitor's budget has been used up your ad will start showing at the top later in the day once your competitors budget has been used up. The one thing with PPC is that once your set budget runs out it's like saying right I'm closing the shop - no more sales today. 

One benefit is that if you become busy you can turn it off and when you need more business turn it back on again. One tip is to set your ads so they show all the time at the start and see when you get the most clicks, then re set the times your ads show to only the times you get the most clicks.


Is your website a good or bad marketing tool

I'm going to keep this short, If your website is not good your prospective customer will bounce ie leave your website without an action, in other words you'd have wasted your money on PPC, make sure you have a good and well designed website before initiating a PPC campaign. Of course you could use just your Google Local page if you don't have a website, but in all honesty if you've not got a website then you are losing out!

Marketing on the networks

The three main networks for advertising your site are Google Adwords (the most used) Microsofts Bing and Yahoo Advertising Solutions, Google has more people using it for searching therefore it has more people advertising on it, the other two have less people using them so less advertisers which can mean you spend less or get more for your budget.

Conclusion

This has been a simplified overview of using Pay Per Click Marketing, you can view my Top tips on Marketing with Pay Per Click here. Pay Per Click marketing can be great for getting new business and it is very targeted to the people who need your service NOW!. It can take time to tweak it to get it right, the right ad, the right budget, the right bid etc. It really is a science or art and there are companies that just do this, whichever way you want to look at it. PPC done well means you can get more business than your competitors and spend less than them, this is when it's done well! 




To your PPC marketing success

Paul 



PS. If you run a trade business in Hertfordshire or don't mind travelling to Hertfordshire then you may be interested in my Google Adwords marketing 121 training. For more details on my Adwords training visit my website here

You can read part 2 about marketing your trade with Pay Per Click here

And here is Part 3 about marketing your trade with Facebook ads