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How to Market Yourself As a Contractor (Proven Step-by-Step Guide)

Written by: Jesse Kemmerer
Published on: 03/28/2023

Want to know how to market yourself as a contractor?

Let’s cut through all the crap. Digital marketing for contractors doesn’t have to be rocket-science. In fact, I can boil everything down into three simple steps:

Create a valuable offer.
Create a vehicle to show that offer.
Drive targeted prospects to that vehicle.

In this article, I’m going to dive into those three steps, showing you how you can accomplish each without a marketing degree, technical knowledge, or even startup money.

Of course, you could always hire a contractor marketing agency to do these things for you – but with a little hard work, you can also do them yourself.

For just a moment, forget about website design services, SEO, Google Ads, Facebook marketing, or anything else. Those things are complex. For now, we’re going to break everything down to the very essence of contractor marketing – you know, the things that actually drive leads.

1. Create a Valuable Offer

We all want more leads, right? We want a list of prospects who want what we’re offering and are willing to exchange their contact information for a chance to get it.

But what can we offer potential customers that would entice them to give us their name, address, phone number and email address?

Whatever it is, that’s our valuable offer.

The more valuable and specific the offer, the better the results.

To put it into perspective, lets look at a hierarchy of a simple offer: Contact us.

Contact us. Here’s our phone number. We can help you. Dial it already.
Contact us for more information. We do it all. Call us, please?
Contact us for a free quote. You have a project, right? Call us; we’ll give you a price.
Contact us for a free 10-minute consultation. Let’s talk about your project and see if we’re a good fit. All we need is 10 minutes of your time. Easy, peasy.

As you can see, the offer becomes more valuable and specific with each iteration.

Why does it matter?

The first offer puts all the effort on your prospect. They have to do all the work, and their reward is they get to talk to you. You’re basically shouting, “Hey, dum-dum! I’m a roofer and you need a new roof. Pick up the phone and call me, already!”

The last offer is much more specific, professional, and valuable. You’re respecting their time and letting them know exactly what the next step is: a free 10-minute consultation about their needs.

Of course, this is an extremely broad example. Let’s get a little more specific.

6 easy examples of valuable offers.

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Valuable offers are designed to give something in order to get something in return – namely, your prospects’ name, address, email address, and phone number. Typically, this happens via a form on your website or elsewhere, but you can also collect this information during an initial phone call. Remember: not every lead will buy your services right now. But by collecting your prospects’ contact information, you’ll be able to follow up with them later on – perhaps when they are ready.

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Let’s talk about what you can offer your prospects for their contact information:

Free consultation/quote
Callback
Discount
Resource (information)
Spot on your schedule

Now, lets put these concrete examples into practice.

For a plumber…

For a roofer…

Schedule a time for our estimator to come to your home.
Call us for a next-day quote on your roof repair.

For a home builder…

Download our five most popular floor plans for free.
Request a 10-minute introductory consultation to talk about your new home.

Ignore this at your peril.

Remember: in order to collect your prospects’ contact information, you need to give them something valuable and specific. Now, I’m going to talk about where you can put that offer – for free.

2. Create a Vehicle to Show that Valuable Offer

Obviously, we build websites for contractors that make the phone ring. They showcase our clients’ valuable offers and convert their visitors into consistent leads.

But that’s not the only vehicle you can use to show your valuable offer.

In fact, there are many completely free vehicles you can leverage.

No matter which vehicle you choose – or if you choose to utilize many of them – they need to have something in common: the ability to collect your prospects’ contact information.

The various ways you can accomplish this differ depending on which vehicle. Below are some concrete example of various vehicles you can use and how you can collect leads with your valuable offer.

1. Google Business Profile.

The Google Business Profile is an absolutely mandatory vehicle for your business. And the best part?

It’s completely free.

You should completely fill out your profile. Spend a couple hours on this. Use everything that’s available to you, including services, photos, Q&As, products, and more.

The beauty of this is that you can actually add offers to your Google Business Profile.

What’s more, they’re even called “offers.” Here’s what one looks like:

When people search for your business online – or for keywords related to what you offer – your Google Business Profile is one of the first things they’re going to see.

What better vehicle for your valuable offer?

2. Social media profiles.

You’re on Facebook, right? Of course you are.

Most people fail with contractor social media marketing because they ignore the fundamentals.

Later on in this article, I’ll tell you how to build your social media following. But for now, it’s important to know that you have to offer something to get something in return.

However, because this is a different medium, it requires a different strategy.

Remember: you want leads. A lead is someone who expresses interest in what you have.

You need a way to collect the contact information of the people who like, comment on, or share your posts. Otherwise, you’re just wasting effort.

To do that, you need to restructure the way you make your posts.

Here’s an example for a HVAC company…

“With Spring right around the corner, we’re offering a 15% discount on our “Spring Tune Up” maintenance package. To get it, all you have to do is comment a thumbs-up on this post or click the share button. We’ll send you a DM to get you scheduled at your convenience.”

Not only do we have an offer, but we also have an action required for people to “sign up” for that offer. There’s also an expectation of a follow-up to collect the contact’s information and schedule the service.

Remember: it’s only a lead if you have the contact information.

When using social media, structure your valuable offers to encourage likes/shares/comments so that you can follow up with those people to either secure the sale now or have the opportunity to do it later.

3. Lead-generating website.

You could always hire us to build a killer website, but you can also do it yourself.

There are hundreds of options out there, from Wix to SquareSpace.

Regardless of how your website gets made, ensure that it consistently features your valuable offer and has a form to collect visitors’ contact information.

Your valuable offer and contact form needs to be prominently displayed on every single page of your website. No exceptions.

The great thing about a website is that you have unlimited opportunities to display your valuable offer.

Take a look at your current website on one of your competitors’.

What are they offering in exchange for visitors’ contact information?

Could the offer be improved?

Chances are, it could be. And the better offer you have, the more leads you’ll ultimately get.

3. Drive Visitors to Your Offer Vehicle

Okay. Now that we have a valuable offer and a vehicle to show it to potential customers, we need to get in front of some eyeballs.

Rather than give a bunch of broad advice on different marketing tactics, I’m going to give some detailed ways you can get more traffic to the three offer vehicles we discussed above.

1. Google Business Profile.

Typically when we talk about getting more visits on you Google Business Profile, what we’re really describing is local SEO.

Without getting into the weeds too much, Google can show your Google Business Profile to people who search for keywords relevant to the services you offer.

The question is… how do we encourage Google to show our profile?

Have a consistent NAP across the web. This stands for your business name, address, and phone number. It needs to be exactly the same on Facebook, your website, YellowPages, and anywhere else your business is listed.
Have many, many business listings. You’ve likely heard of SuperPages, Angi, and more. Your business needs to be listed on as many quality directories like those as you can find. Luckily for you, we’ve compiled a free list of 267 places you can promote your contracting business.
Have great reviews. You should make a proactive effort to get reviews from every single customer you have. The more reviews you have, the better.
Get your business on social media platforms. All of them. Take the time to create profiles for your business. They’re great trust-building signals to search engines like Google.
Post often and regularly. You can post offers, events, and news directly to your Google Business Profile. You should be posting a couple times a week at least, whether that’s to promote your business, highlight other businesses in your area, showcase your valuable offer, give informative information, or anything else.

Focus on these five aspects and watch the views on your listing climb.

2. Social media profiles.

How do you build your social media following?

The key is consistent posting, personalized approaches, and a little automation.

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Sign up for a free profile with Buffer. This will allow you to cross-post to up to three different platforms for free. More importantly, you can create a calendar that will automatically post your updates after they’re scheduled. You don’t have time to make a post every day – and lets face it, you’re not going to do it. Thankfully, you can knock out a month worth of posts in an hour on a lazy Sunday afternoon and let technology do the hard work for you.

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What kind of posts can you make? Here are some examples.

Offer a giveaway to build your audience. It doesn’t have to be expensive, but give something away for free in exchange for people sharing your page. For bonus points, make it something related to the service you offer. For instance… a landscaper might offer a free mowing.
Ask questions. Get an actual conversation going. What are some pain points in your industry? What are some topics people may not know about? What’s something a little bit controversial? Start a dialogue on your page and respond to every single person who comments.
Offer valuable information. Look: I’m a nerd. I have a roof, but I have no idea how long that roof should last – nor what maintenance could/should be done to extend its life. Don’t you think your audience has similar questions?

Build your audience first. Then, show them your valuable offer.

3. Lead-generating website.

There are dozens of ways to improve your website, but I only want to talk about what you can do yourself without any technical knowledge or expertise.

Here it is:

Write content. Post it. Repeat.

Forget about SEO (although you can follow this guide if you want to learn more), fancy graphics, logo designs, website speed, or anything like that. Likely, you don’t have the technical knowledge to do those things well, anyway.

You do have knowledge about your services and industry. It’s time to put it to good use.

How do you get consistent content on your website?

Beg yourself (or your employees) to spend just a little time each day writing about your company and why it’s awesome. Or, help your readers solve tiny problems on their own (or prevent them from happening). You know your business best, so get creative.
Ethically steal from reputable sources. YouTube is a goldmine for finding videos on any of the above topics. Embed it into your website or post it to Facebook with a 50-word blurb about why it’s helpful, what tools you need, and why it’s right or wrong.
Borrow from sources that are already doing it better than you. Go ahead and visit the biggest names in your industry and create a list of blogs they’ve already written. But don’t just copy and paste – rewrite them completely in your own words. Or, if you’re feeling generous, pay your kids to do it (they could use the extra cash, right?).

And last but not least, there’s always the option to hire us to do it all for you.

Bottom line: more content = more visitors.

Write content. Post it. Repeat.