You’ve come here wondering how to market an electrical contracting business. Maybe you’re struggling to get phone calls or maybe you have leads but you’re having trouble turning them into loyal customers. Even when you’re a talented electrician, you might find it difficult to get consistent sales. So, we’ve put together this list of marketing tactics to help you get started.
1. Find Your Ideal Customer
It may sound simple, but knowing exactly who you are marketing to, is the most important step before identifying marketing tactics. By knowing who your ideal customer is, where they hang out, and what they need in their lives, will help you identify how and where to market to them. It will also help you identify which services will most fit their needs which will help you close sales. Will potential customers be looking fo surge protection, LED lighting upgrades, dimmer switches, etc.?
What we like to do is make up a customer avatar, or essentially turn an ideal customer into a real person you can think about on a level where you know how to answer what they need and where to find them. Identify them by giving them a name and a career. Then figure out what interests them and what their values and attitudes are.
Here’s an example:
Client Avatar: Dustin, Age 42, Married, 4 kids, Business owner
Home: 3 car garage, bbqing setup in backyard equipped with smoker, grill, and firepit, large yard for 2 dogs and kids, has sporting equipment setup in backyard for kids, home is maintained, likes grass cut diagonally to look good, flowers and landscaping setup, paved side of house has boat on it, hot tub, garden
Interests: business development, hunting, crossfit, boating, camping, time with family, church
Values/Attitudes: cares about honesty and communication, being upfront, healthy mind/body lifestyle (cares about food intake and working out), values quality time with family and involvement with their sports, treats wife with respect
Fears/Problems: business development and scaling, spending enough time at home with kids as they are growing
When you know who you are serving, you know how to best serve them. You know how to speak to them about their wants and needs. When you can identify with potential customers and speak to their struggles and ambitions, you are more likely to reach them and turn them into loyal customers.
2. Have An Online Presence
With so many options of who to hire for electrical jobs, people often turn online to scope out a company. Do you have a quality website? Are you listed in free online directories? Have you made a profile on Google My Business (it’s free)? If not, get started!
Start with filling out your business’s information in free places. There are so many free sites you can be on. Most people don’t go looking for your business in directories anymore, but having them appear there does help your credibility. Many of these sites have places where customers leave reviews, not to mention a simple link from these online directories does help your website to a small degree. Google My Business, Yelp, Bing Places, Yellowpages, SuperPages, and more are good places to get started.
Make sure you have a website that doesn’t look like it’s from the 90’s to give you credibility. Every business should have a website. Cheap hosting and simple website template options can look professional and current, and can cost very little.
Pay attention to online reviews. When most people are selecting a business to purchase from, they often look at online reviews. This is especially true for service-based businesses. Be sure that when you have negative reviews you address them in a professional manner. When reviews are good thank the customers. When reviews are negative be sure to offer to discuss any issues with them offline. By responding to reviews, it shows people that you care about your customers.
3. Be Involved In The Community
Networking still remains one of the best ways to get quality customers. Connecting with local businesses at local events can help you win a contract in the future. Go into everything with the mentality of helping others with no expectations, and the rewards will flow later. Make friends with plumbers, HVAC, and other quality companies who will engage with customers who may need electrical work done. You can give them referrals as well as receive them to help each other out.
4. Find Leads
There are many ways to acquire leads for your business. Gone are the days when you can just drive your logo’d truck around town and expect phone calls to roll in. There are many different ways to go out and get leads. You can do giveaways at local events, or network, or you can turn to online advertising. Most of your customers spend hours online every day and it can be a great way to reach new ones. If you need help, you can always reach out to marketing companies but be sure to ask for case studies and testimonials to vet them.
Facebook Ads
Facebook advertising can be fruitful if you know what you’re doing. But just telling people you’re an electrical company isn’t enough. You need to give people value and show them your expertise before you ask for a sale. There are many ways to do this, but one way can be to create a free guide to give away that will appeal to your customer avatar. For instance, you might give away a lighting guide showing different options for lighting a room from recessed lighting, to pendant lights, to dimmers, to backlit cabinets, etc. You might include charts about how to light a room effectively. Ask for the customers email address before they download the guide so that you can nurture them by email and ask for the sale later.
Google Ads
People go to Google specifically looking to find electrical contractors. You can advertise using Google ads which help you appear at the top of Google search results when someone is looking for an electrical contractor. Here’s a guide by Neil Patel on how to create effective Google ads.
Google Search Engine Optimization
One of the best long-term investments for a local business can be to have your business appear in top results on Google and ads can be pricey. Look for a local marketing agency that specializes in local SEO (search engine optimization.) It might be pricey to pay someone for a month or two to work on your SEO and it may take a few months to see results but it can have a great long-term payoff when your business appears on the first page of Google in your area.
5. Train Your Team To Make Sales
You and your technicians can be the best source of closing a sale, retaining customers, and getting referrals. When you know how to interact with customers in a way that isn’t like a used car salesman, or you stop ignoring sales tactics altogether, it can make a huge difference to your bottom line. You can sign up for two free Instant Meeting Maker trainings for your employees on our homepage here. We have a library of trainings that train techs how to become sales machines.
That’s only scratching the surface of how to market an electrical contracting business. There are so many tactics that can be used, but until you put into place processes to train a top notch team so that you can retain customers and get great reviews and referrals, it’ll be difficult to continue to grow. Are you charging enough to be profitable? Do you have talent that outperforms the competition? Do you have a team that knows how to upsell services? All of these are just as important as having solid marketing tactics.
The Blue Collar Success Group is run by successful service business owners who’ve trained hundreds of teams and managers on how to grow their businesses.
