Steps to Start a Successful Contractor Business Through Digital Marketing
In less than a year, we created a successful insulation and drywall business through the power of the internet. It developed from a simple conversation to a branded company pulling home improvement leads in just a few months.
We didn’t use any lead sharing websites like Home Advisor, or any free advertising sites like Craigslist.
We used our abilities as a professional digital marketing agency in Austin to create a business in Mansfield, Ohio from the ground up.
Below is the step by step process of how our company Border West started a contractor business. This is a guide that will show you exactly how we will not only help get your business started, but make sure it’s successful.
Steps for Starting a Contractor Business With Digital Marketing
1. Taking Care of Legal Issues
2. Contractor Listing on Google Maps
3. Building a Contractor Website
4. Pay Per Click Contractor Ads
Got Questions ?
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We know there’s like a gazillion websites out there that claim to have all the answers for making your website “show up first on Google”
Maybe you just have a few questions to see what are the best options for your company
Maybe you have absolutely no idea where to start
Call Border West at (512) 516-9867, or click the button and we can discuss it through email
We’ll answer any questions and see if maybe we can help. If we can’t, we’ll try to steer you in the right direction.
No pressure, no contracts, no over-inflated promises. Just honest answers.
The above chart shows the failure rate for new small businesses. As you can see, the odds of your new business being successful drop significantly in the first few years. Some industries, like construction, have even higher than average failure rates.
1. Taking Care of Legal Issues
Ideally, starting a new business would be a simple step-by-step process. But as with many parts of owning a small business, things rarely go as planned.
The fact is, many owners end up running a business before they really intend to. A lot of owners start off doing side projects for people they know part time. Maybe they have a hobby where they start selling products and it begins to build revenue.
Whether you plan your new business venture with complete precision, or end up starting it because you’re busy enough to do it full time, you need to get legal ASAP.
What does this mean?
It means doing all the things actual business owners do to keep the government, the IRS, the law, and unhappy customers off their backs.
More specifically, it means taking care of the following things before they bite you in the ass:
Business Licensing
The rules for getting your business licenses and registering your business are different in every state. Since we’re talking about contractors, there are hundreds of different industries with different requirements.
Border West is in no way attempting to provide any legal advice other than FIND OUT WHAT YOU NEED TO DO IN YOUR STATE!
The best way to find out the requirements for your specific industry is go start with Google. In Texas, where we’re located, there are some loose requirements for licensing. Most businesses don’t need a license at all. But, even if you live here in Texas, you need to make sure.
In Ohio, where we started Prestige, the licensing is different. So is every other state. The point is, make sure you find out what licenses you need and get them. The consequences could be stiff fines, or worse.
DBA (What's Your Name?)
A DBA, or Doing Business As, is another area you want to deal with right away. In Austin, ours is set up through the Travis County Clerk of Courts. Generally, the clerk of courts in your county would be where you register your small business DBA.
A DBA is just the legal name of your business. While there are some exceptions for needing one such as the business being your actual name, you almost always need to register.
It’s very important that you get your DBA registered BEFORE you start putting your company name on everything. The reason being, if someone in your state has used the name already, they can sue you for copying it. This could mean having to change it or even a serious lawsuit that could cost a lot of money.
This may not seem like a big deal if you’re a one man insulation contractor company. But what happens when you grow and you have several trucks with the name Ace Insulation that just happens to be owned by a huge company?
You’ll have to change the name. This means confusing customers, changing any place your name is listed online, repainting trucks, getting new business cards……you get the idea.
A DBA is usually only around $20. It can be done online. It’s super easy.
Insurance
We’re not going to spend too much time on liability insurance because it differs so much between industries and providers. Getting general liability insurance for your contracting business is absolutely something you should take care of immediately.
Yes, liability insurance for contractors is expensive. And yes, there are many contractors that operate without liability insurance. But if you have any intention of your contracting company being successful, bite the bullet and get yourself insured.
The biggest problem with putting it off is that the longer you do, the easier it is to convince yourself that you don’t need it. But it’s not fair to your customers or yourself to go without insurance. Any major issue will probably end up costing the customer a lot of money and most likely put you out of business.
These legalities are generally something that our clients at Border West have to take care of on their own. There are circumstances where we can help provide contractors information on how to register their DBA, for instance. But we wouldn’t be allowed to actually sign anyone up for insurance, licenses, or any company name registrations.
2. Contractor Listing on Google Maps
This is where the contractor digital marketing begins to take place. The first thing we did with Prestige Insulation & Drywall was sign up for a Google Maps listing.
Even before building a website.
There are a couple of reasons for this, but the main one is that a Google Maps listing takes about a week to get processed.
When we sign up a new business, we have to have a letter mailed to your business address to confirm the location. This takes about 5 days. After you get the letter, you’ll have to enter a code on it. Verifying this takes another day or so.
After the contractor listing is verified, we begin to add relevant information, such as hours and additional services. We’ll also create infographics for your company and post them along with photos and logos.
We’ll generate a link for customers to review your company and we’ll ask that you have some past clients leave some nice reviews. Great reviews are what drives Google Maps listings, and contractors with multiple 5 star reviews get their business shown a lot more than those who don’t have any.
Plus, customers seeing a well reviewed contractor are more likely to see them as a reputable business and use their services.
In Mansfield, where we started Prestige, there were very few listings on Google Maps for insulation and drywall contractors. By getting them listed, getting reviews right away, adding photos and logos, and posting deals, we got them ranked pretty high right away.
The above screenshot is from a search for insulation contractors in Mansfield, Ohio. What you see is the absolute top of the page (our search was from Austin, which has some effect).
Our company is the first listing on Maps, and because of our location, and lack of much competition in that area, the Maps listing for insulation contractors is the first thing shown on the page!
The beauty of this is, while we continue to build and do SEO on the Prestige website, this Google Maps listing is bringing in insulation and drywall customers.
3. Building a Contractor Website
A well designed and functioning website can be one of the most important lead generating tools for a contractor.
A poorly built website is generally nothing more than a waste of time.
Digital marketing companies like ours have been building websites for contractors since AOL was mailing free trials. Some have become part of the foundation for large companies. Most of them got buried in some corner of the internet until their hosting expired.
Many of these digital marketing agencies that specialize in contractor websites seem to forget the purpose of the website. A drywall contractor isn’t going to need or want a several thousand dollar website. Even if they can afford it, how many web pages do you need to discuss drywall installation?
One of the main reasons contractors like us and continue to use Border West for years is that we don’t try to sell them crap they don’t need.
We build contractor websites that perform well on Google, are very user friendly, look professional, and SELL THEIR SERVICES.
Depending on specifics, we can generally design and build a contractor website for a few hundred dollars. This will function well and make their business look professional. It will also have a dynamite quote request form (the most important page on the website).
Now, will this website fly out the gate and begin filling up with requests for work estimates? Unless you’re in an area where a hurricane just hit and you’re the only water damage contractor, probably not.
But if the foundation is built correctly, the rest of the work Border West does on your digital marketing will really kick ass.
4. Pay Per Click Contractor Ads
As much as some company owners we’ve spoken to over the years are against using any contractor advertising, all they’re doing is missing out on business.
We have clients that have siding contractor PPC ads on Google that haven’t left the front page in years. Even though they have the top Google Maps and a website on the first page of Google for siding installers, they still get a huge portion of their siding jobs from local pay per click advertising.
In larger cities some industries are extremely competitive with hundreds of other companies vying for leads. We work with a mover in a city like this that gets nearly all of their moving leads from PPC.
Because we kick butt at creating winning pay per click campaigns, we’re able to compete against huge nationwide corporations with our PPC ads.
Many of these large moving companies invest millions into digital marketing, including web design and pay per click. You have to have extensive knowledge and experience to perform against them organically and on paid searches.
Hiring Border West as your digital marketing agency will pay for itself and more in a very short time, especially with PPC.
Instant Results with Contractor PPC Ads
When we got the Prestige website built, the first thing we did was set up new accounts on Google Ads (AdWords) and Microsoft Ads (Bing Ads). This way we were guaranteed to start getting customer job leads almost immediately.
In an area like Mansfield, where Prestige is doing business, there aren’t many other insulation and drywall companies running ads. This means that we can generally run PPC ads for around $1 per click. In Austin, for a similar business, $3 per click is very difficult.
It also means that the PPC ads don’t have any other ads to compete with, so they go to the top of the first page of Google search for drywall contractor searches.
But even with competition, we can start pulling contractor leads within a week, usually, from our first conversation. This isn’t BS traffic either. These are people in your industry who searched for a contractor and need your services.
This is how the most successful contracting companies do business, and it works very well.
Pay Per Click That Can Turn on a Dime
There was a large storm in the area that Prestige does business in last Thanksgiving. It caused quite a bit of damage with downed trees and branches everywhere. People’s backyards were full of brush and their driveways were blocked.
Prestige didn’t do any marketing for tree removal previously, but we decided to jump into the business anyway. There was a huge need for it in that area.
Border West created a few tree removal pay per click ads on their account. We got them approved and running within a couple of hours.
While storm clean up PPC ads were processing, we created a tree removal and yard clean up page. It wasn’t a work of art, but it was a great landing page for our PPC ads.
In a matter of a couple of hours, our company was showing at the top of Google for searches relating to tree removal services and yard clean up. Being able to have that kind of real time control over the message your contracting company is sending to its customers is what Border West brings to the table.
Call us and we’ll do the same for your business.
When your website is firing on all cylinders your traffic should be divided pretty equally. Maybe not as equally as this, but you get the idea.
5. Creating Content for Contractor SEO
Once we got Prestige bringing in insulation and drywall leads from Google Maps and pay per click ads, we started thinking about long term.
The content (words and stuff) that you have on your website is what tells Google the subject. The better your content describes what customers are searching for, the more likely your website is to show up on searches.
With some contractors SEO is very straightforward. In Ohio, insulation companies aren’t that abundant, which is crazy because it’s so freaking cold! In the areas not located in a large city, it’s possible to show up pretty high on Google for just terms like insulation contractor.
If you want to do the same thing in Columbus or Cleveland, it’s going to take some time for the first page.
What we will do is focus on more detailed and long tail keywords. This gives us a better shot at showing up for searches that our customers are looking for anyway.
For example, a search for drywall contractors in your area has tons of competition. There will be listings from Thumbtack and Home Advisor, as well as contractors from cities 100 miles away.
But a search for water damage drywall repair is a lot more condensed and detailed.
This also means it’s a lot easier and faster to show up on the front page of Google.
When Border West begins SEO for a contractor, the main focus is on content. How good yours is and how we’re going to add to it. Ideally, we would design your website, so the SEO would be taken care of already. Then, like with Prestige, all we do is add a steady diet of search engine optimized content and watch your contractor website rise up Google’s ranks.
6. Expanding the Contracting Business
When we first started Prestige last year, we only focused on insulation installation. This is why the URL is prestigeinsulation.com. We knew we would expand the business, but we focused on one area at a time.
Gradually, we began to expand the focus of our digital marketing. We moved into radiant barrier, attic ventilation, spray foam, skylights, and so on. Once we were set on the areas of insulation we wanted to cover, then we changed our overall focus to Insulation & Drywall.
Our business name is set as Prestige Insulation on the DBA, and that’s what it will stay. This doesn’t stop us from adding the drywall part to our name on the website. We add some minor changes on the website, then begin creating content and pay per click ads for drywall contractors.
Aside from just adding more services to your business, digital marketing for contractors is a long term process. Oftentimes business owners are more interested in SEO over PPC ads because they think that once an agency takes care of search engine optimization for their business, they’re done. In reality, this is far from the truth.
Just like any other aspect of business, you need to be constantly growing and evolving if you want to maintain your success. If you’re doing something right with your online marketing, it’s only a matter of time before ten other contractors try to copy it.
Once you get to the top of that mountain that is the front page of Google, you’re going to have to fight off the competition constantly if you want to stay there.
Border West is here to help you get there and stay there. We’re the best digital marketing company for contractors because many of our friends and family are in these industries. We understand the cycles, the seasons, and the cutthroat nature of the industry.
You can start with a PPC competitor analysis where we can check your website against your competition.
Or if you’re just starting out and need a new website (or if the one you have sucks), click the link below, contact us here, or call our number.
We’re here to help you make money with your business by using our experience with digital marketing to generate contractor leads for your business. Simple as that. Give us a call!
