The 4 Step marketing plan for your trade business.

A simple 4 Step marketing plan

Most tradespeople I speak to have no plan for their marketing, no plan means no direction to growth no way to get what you want from your business.

Churchill said 'Fail to plan, plan to fail' and this applies well to many things but very well to marketing!

Now if you have started your business as a lifestyle business, that's okay although the the stuff I put out probably isn't for you, however if you want to grow a real business and you've not got a plan and I mean one that's written down on paper (it's no good just in your head) then you have a lifestyle business, so this blog post is about getting that plan down on paper and the key things you need to create a basic marketing plan for your trade or property business.

Here are the 4 key steps you need to think about and have in your plan.

Step 1. Who are your customers and clients?

Knowing who your target market are, is really, really important and the answer here can't be anyone.
You don't want to be going to quote for jobs for people who want you to work for £10 an hour or those that don't understand the value you give them!  
Build a picture of them and what they do, their interests and their family the house they live in.

Step 2. What will you tell them?

What is your USP, why should they use you and pay your price?
And more importantly can you prove that you can deliver what you say or do you have a guarantee that says what happens if you don't?

Step 3. How will you get your message out?

You need to detail how you'll spread your message, the actual marketing you'll be doing and you need to have many ways to market your business and be doing many things all at the same time not just one! 
It may be Networking, Pay Per Click, Flyers, Social media, Direct mail, Blogging and articles or one of the many other ways to market your business.

Step 4. When will you do this?

You need to plan when you're going to do your marketing, you need to figure out how much time you're going to put into getting new customers and clients, they are the life blood of your business and what puts the food on the table so if you're not working on getting more you've got a stagnating or dying business.




So hopefully as you've been reading through this simplified marketing plan you've made some notes on your 4 step marketing plan, If not grab a sheet of paper now and write it down, strike while the iron is hot as they say and then follow through!



To your marketing 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