Hire a Local Company That Understands Contractor Marketing and Guarantees Quality Leads
Our friends and family are all roofers, home builders, landscapers, tree trimmers, auto mechanics, drywall installers, insulation installers…….
you get the idea.
Not to mention, the bulk of our clients are contractors, movers, builders, and home improvement companies.
Border West knows the contracting business, and we definitely know digital marketing.
Most important, we know how to make your phone ring and email inbox stay full with new customers requesting quotes.
Give us a call at (512) 516-9867 to discuss your business!
“Our siding-repair business is located in the fast growing city of Austin, Texas and just like our city our business needs paralleled growth. Border West Marketing has helped Premium Co. with brand awareness and is always available for any questions that may arise. As a contracting business it has been convenient that Border West employees have experience in projects such as building, fences and decks, and demolition work. Border West Marketing has always proven great efficiency and communication. Not only are they good at working with established marketing methods but also are willing to try innovative methods. In such a competitive market everyone has their niche and Border West Marketing definitely gives a tailored service with the utmost professionalism.”
Jennifer Jaimes
PREMIUM SIDING & PAINTING COMPANY
Austin, Texas
Call Us at (512) 516-9867 for an Accurate Estimate
Available Seven Days Per Week
How We Drive Leads:
Create a personalized strategy just for your business
Analyze competitors in your area, then do what they’re doing better
Work hard to get your campaigns running so you get quote requests fast
Optimize and improve your accounts daily to improve ranking and lower costs
What We DON’T Do:
X
Make you share and fight for leads with other businesses like Home Advisor
X
Try to get you to buy services you don’t need (like an unnecessary website)
X
Force you to sign a long term contract
X
Charge ridiculously high fees that don’t clearly explain where your money is going
Your industry, your business, your location, and your goals are unique. Our job is to analyze your company versus your competition and find the best way to beat them.
Fill out the form below and we can talk about a strategy for your company.
Construction and Contractor Pay Per Click
Pay per click is the concrete foundation that we build new contractor marketing strategies on. Whether it’s through Google Ads, Facebook, or any other contractor PPC outlets, pay per click advertising for contractors is the most reliable way to bring in a steady stream of contractor leads.
One of the principles we built Border West on is transparent, fair pricing. This is especially true with contractor Google Ad campaigns. Many digital marketing agencies have high fees and impossible to understand reports.
At Border West, you know exactly what you’re paying for and the exact return.
We always create any PPC accounts in your name. This means when your Google Ads bill is due, you pay Google directly. This provides you complete access to your account online or on the app. It also means that you don’t pay for your first ads until after they’ve run. If you’re working with Border West, we’ll have already brought in contractor leads before your PPC bill is due.
This also allows us to provide best in class pay per click management for contractors for the lowest up front fees. In most cases, we’re even able to waive setup fees.
Our goal at Border West is to cut through all the BS and just show our clients that we can make them money with as little investment as possible. Then, if they want to increase their online advertising budgets, they can do so with the confidence that we’ll make them money.
Taking Advantage of Facebook for Your Contracting Company
If you’re a business owner these days, you cannot afford to ignore social media. People are using Facebook and other social media to find and review businesses for nearly everything. Contractors included.
Not having a strong Facebook presence for your business is going to cause you to miss out on opportunities to competitors that do.
Does this mean you need YouTube and TikTok videos uploaded every other day. Generally, not. But in today’s competitive market, customers are going to want to see images, read reviews, and look at your interactions with customers. Social media provides that ability to a customer base that increasingly makes choices based on iPhone apps.
Border West specializes in contractor social media management because we know how to provide the information your customers are seeking. We know these industries because we have been working with them for decades.
You need a social media management company for your business that understands your industry and your customers instead of someone that just knows social media.
We know how to reach your clients. We understand the importance of creating social media posts that speak to them. And we charge accordingly. Border West social media management is priced accordingly for what our customers need. Most likely, Facebook isn’t going to be your biggest driver of contractor leads. But it is relevant enough to not ignore it.
SEO for Contractors and Home Improvement Pros
Contractor SEO can be extremely lucrative for many industries. With others, it is a long process that can produce limited results. Border West isn’t in the business of misleading our clients. In some areas with extremely high competition search engine optimization for a contractor or home improvement company could be second or third to other digital marketing strategies.
A good example of an SEO campaign that would produce great results would be for an insulation contractor in a smaller city. When we’re working with a home improvement company or contractor in an area with only a handful of similar businesses, we can get your company on the first page of Google in a couple of months. In areas like this, most contractors fail to really embrace the potential of digital marketing. They don’t hire companies like Border West to boost their businesses, so when you do, we kick their butts.
In larger cities with more competition, doing SEO for a contractor website is much more difficult. In Austin, there are a ton of roofing companies. And unlike other areas with cold winters, roofers in Austin can work year round.
Roofing contractors have no problem spending money on SEO because they know the return potential is huge. A couple of extra jobs can pay for an entire year of SEO work. When doing SEO for roofers, we always caution our clients about delayed results. Search engine optimization for a roofing website in Austin could take several months to really begin to produce consistent leads.
Most often in situations like these, we start off strong with a roofer pay per click campaign while we’re building SEO. With Border West, a couple thousand dollar budget for roofer PPC can pay for itself very quickly.
Contractor Website Design
One major issue we have with web design companies is that they don’t have enough versatility when it comes to the type of businesses they’re creating websites for. They have a one-size-fits-all approach to web design that becomes overkill for many of their clients.
Border West specializes in digital marketing for contractors, with a strong emphasis on marketing. All of our clients that are in these types of businesses would much rather have a nice looking, professional website that gets jobs than something designed for a corporation with nationwide visitors. They also appreciate taking the extra few thousand dollars they would have spent and putting it towards pulling some good contractor leads.
When Border West designs a contractor website, we do it with one thought in mind; helping our client make more money. This means we build a website that’s appealing to clients in your industry. It also means we design it for SEO performance. This is what matters the most, not having fancy animations and videos that slow down loading times and get you penalized by Google.
A recent website we built is Prestige Insulation & Drywall, an insulation and drywall contractor in Mansfield, Ohio. We went from our first conversation to showing up on Google in a few weeks. Along with SEO, we also started insulation and drywall pay per click campaigns so we could start pulling leads right away. In the first few months, Border West has created several thousand dollars of new revenue for a brand new company completely from scratch.
That’s the power of professional digital marketing for a contractor, by Border West. Call us today to set up a strategy for your business!
Five Rules for the Best Advertising for Contractors
We explain in detail how Border West designs contractor advertising that drives consistent business.
Our main job at Border West is to figure out how to get our clients more customers. We do this on a daily basis for all kinds of contractors like drywall installers, movers, and siding installers. Finding a formula that works for one client can rarely be duplicated for another.
When we try to find the best advertising for contractors, one of the biggest challenges is dividing the budget between the services they offer. Most contractors companies provide multiple types of services. One of our clients installs Hardie siding, replacement windows, decks, and roofing. Each of those services has dozens of specific keyword terms that customers might search for. If you just throw money at Google Ads without understanding the complexities, you’re going to waste a lot of money.
This is one of the reasons you need a digital marketing company that knows the industry.
In order to demonstrate this, we put together these four rules we go by to create the best advertising for contractors.
Rule #1-Be Where Your Customers Are
I’m going to go ahead and tell you the most important rule in marketing right away so you can stop reading.
It’s making sure customers can find you when THEY’RE LOOKING! The best advertising for contractors are the ads that are seen at the right time.
The biggest mistake companies make when trying to promote their business is just assuming that if people hear your name enough, they’ll remember you.
This can be true, but it definitely work in the right situations. We’ve all heard catchy songs on commercials on television. And they may have even caused us to remember a product or service when we needed it. But those companies spent a ton of money on those advertising campaigns, probably a lot more than most contractors have in their marketing budget.
So what about putting your business on a billboard? Or in an ad in a newspaper?
Those can certainly work, but for most small businesses, it’s just a gamble. Sure, someone could decide they want a new driveway and remember seeing your roofing company on a billboard on their way to work.
But are they going to call you because they saw a billboard? Would they even remember your company’s name?
They’re most likely going to get on the computer or their phone and start to search the internet for roofers.
Right Place, Right Time
When someone decides they want to hire a contractor to do a job, they’re going to start searching right away. They might search Google Maps; they might get on Facebook, or maybe search their iPhone.
If a contractor is going to spend money on advertising, the best return in today’s digital world, is going to be online.
People use their phones, computers, and tablets for nearly everything, and this trend isn’t going to change anytime soon. If you want to be successful promoting your company, you better get your business on the internet. Not only that, make sure customers can find you.
This is done with pay per click ads. PPC ads are designed to show up right when someone is searching the internet for a related term. When someone has a pipe burst, they immediately search online for plumbers. If your plumbing company has a PPC campaign that’s set up right, their company is going to be one of the ones that show up.
If it’s not, one of their competitors will. And they’ll get the job.
Rule #2-See Things From Your Customer's Perspective
One of the biggest problems when a contractor markets their business themselves is they do what they think looks good. Border West sees client websites with pictures of brand new F-150’s and hardly any writing all the time. Or dozens of blurry pictures from jobs from 2009, taken with a phone from 2004.
The problem is, potential customers don’t care about your new truck or pictures of every job you did ten years ago. They care about getting a new bathroom installed. And they want to know that you’re the best contractor for the job, at a price that fits their budget.
This is why it make sense to hire a company like Border West that specializes in getting leads for contractors. We know from experience how to get your website in front of customers online. And we know how to make your company look good so that they want to hire you.
It’s what we do and we do it well. Get in touch and we’ll explain how.
Rule # 3-Don't Waste Money on Bad Contractor Advertising!
Whenever we take on a new client, we ask them to limit or eliminate all other advertising spending. The point of this is for us to show them the exact results that Border West’s online marketing brings them. Afterwards, they’ll have a better idea what brings the most contractor leads, dollar for dollar.
An issue we’ve had repeatedly is clients insisting on spending money promoting their business where it doesn’t perform well. Some owners feel that they need to be on Facebook, or a certain magazine, or a radio station no matter what. They spend ridiculous amounts of money on these ads, even though the same amount would preform 2 or more times better in other areas.
It’s not a bad idea to diversify your ad budget, if you have a very large company and it makes sense.
If your company isn’t traded on the stock market (yet) and you’re just looking for more contractor leads, spend your money where it makes the most sense. And makes you the most money.
You wouldn’t keep buying Ford Trucks if Chevy’s lasted four times longer and cost the same price (just a hypothetical, we’re not taking a side on that debate). Don’t waste money in areas that aren’t helping your business as much as they should.
This goes for web design, SEO, and digital marketing companies as well. If they’re not getting the results you want, fire them and call us. We want to earn your business and we’ll work our butts off for it!
How to Tell What's Working
A lot of digital marketing companies will show off numbers every month, boasting about all the traffic they’ve gotten you. The problem is, their charts and reports don’t always result in more customers.
Border West provides monthly reports also, but we also ask our clients to be involved in telling us what’s working. We work on our partners’ accounts every day, and if something isn’t performing, we fix it immediately.
With internet marketing, it’s easy to get tons of traffic if you don’t care what happens when it gets there. The best advertising for contractors is what gets them jobs, not just clicks on their website.
Rule # 4- Take Advantage of Free Marketing
Wait, what?
Free contractor advertising?
Like holding a sign alongside the road?
Well, dancing around on a corner with a big sign is technically free advertising if you do it yourself, that’s not really what we meant. This means making your business shine on social media, Google Business, and with SEO. These are extremely effective places to get found by customers that you really should be taking advantage of.
We’ve covered Google Business and Facebook ads for contractors other places on this website. There are definitely ways to really stand out in social media and Google Maps, but the most important thing is to get listed. That also means to make sure all of your business listings are exactly the same! Not similar or close, but exact. If you use Rd. instead of Road for your address, do it the same way every time. If you don’t, you’ll piss off Google, and you don’t want to do that.
Since we’ve covered social media and Google Business, let’s talk about what’s really going to have the biggest long term benefit to your business.
Contractor SEO-Get Your Site Right!
SEO, if you don’t know what it is, means search engine optimization. It’s comprised of many different ingredients that make your website look good for search engines like Google.
Search engines don’t have senses, so they can’t tell how good a website is by looking at it and reading the content. Everything about your site is written in code, including the actual words you write. If that code and the words inside it is done correctly, your website is considered optimized for search engines.
While it sounds extremely difficult, once you’ve learned how to do it, it’s not that bad. The worst part is that it’s extremely time consuming. A contractor doing SEO for their own website is going to have to dedicate time to learning it, then several hours per week implementing what they learned.
Most businesses hire a professional SEO company like Border West to make their website like a fly trap for customers.
Since you brought it up, here’s what it entails when Border West does SEO for a contractor.
Content Creation (Writing Stuff)
We were explaining SEO to a client who had a photography business recently. We analyzed his website, and all we saw were pictures. He had a very hard time understanding why a photographer needed to write about taking pictures instead of just showing examples.
We explained how Google can’t see his pictures, and only knows what it reads in his site’s code. He seemed to get it, but he didn’t really like it.
With a contractor website, you’re going to have to write a bunch of articles about your work as well, if you want your site to show up on Google. And the better you write them, with just the right amount of the perfect keywords, the higher it goes on the list.
Doing this takes time, experience, and the unique ability to write a new blog about James Hardie siding every other week. If you own a roofing business, you need to write about roofing. A lot. Your roofing articles need to be detailed and long too. The best performing blog pages on Google are usually 1,500 words or more.
Don’t want to write essays about installing tile twice month for the next year?
Give Border West a call!
Getting Backlinks
Alright, this is where contractor SEO gets a little more complicated. I know what you’re thinking;
What the hell is a backlink?
A backlink is a link to your website that is on another website, simple as that.
There are different types and they are different levels of value to your site, but the point is, you need them. A whole lot, if you can get them.
The basic reason that backlinks are important to search engines like Google, is because they use it to gauge your website’s authority. Search engines use the assumption that if a site is linked by a bunch of other websites, it must have a lot of information that people want.
Ideally, if you just write great content for your website, people will use it and share it with others. Other websites will reference it in their own pages. This will improve your site’s authority and cause it to rank higher on Google. The only problem is, this could take years to accomplish. And this is only true if your content is good enough to be shared. If you write garbage, it doesn’t matter how much of it there is.
It is possible to speed up the process a bit with some not so secret tricks. They all take more time than actually writing content, but are easily found by searching “how to build backlinks.”
Technical SEO for a Contractor Site
Now we’re really getting technical (pun intended).
Technical SEO is just a catch-all term for the behind the scenes stuff that makes your site work better.
One of the main ranking factors is loading speed. If two sites are exactly the same and one loads pages a half second faster, guess what? The faster site is going to rank higher.
There are other factors involved that help search engines find your site easier. It may not always seem like it, but Google’s main job is to provide the absolute best options whenever someone asks for something in a search. Much of how it determines that is a secret of their algorithms. The stuff that isn’t is what’s categorized as SEO.
Rule # 5- Spy on Your Competition
In the last several years of doing digital marketing for contractors, we’ve found some really cool tricks. Some of the best ones involve using the magic of the internet to literally spy on competitors.
When we take on a new client, the first thing we do is find out how competitive the market for their service is in their area.
Want us to do internet marketing for a concrete contractor? First thing we’re going to do is see exactly how many other concrete companies there are in the area. Soon as we do that, we’re going to see how all their websites are looking with SEO.
The most important thing we’ll do is look at the pay per click campaigns. We’ll see what the average cost per click for keywords our client is going to need for their business. Then we’ll look at all the keywords that are being used by the top concrete contractors in the area. We’ll also see how much they’re spending to be at the top of Google. That way we know what it’ll cost to beat them.
Once we start working for your company, your competition will wish they hired us to manage their digital marketing.
The best advertising for contractors is cherry picked from their competitors marketing strategies then used to beat them on Google!
Types of Contracting Companies We Manage Marketing For
This is just a sample list of some of the types of contractor advertising Border West does. If it’s on the list, we’re still going to want to talk about strategy first. If it’s not, check with us because it probably should be.
Anyone on in any of these industries knows what their company is capable of. They know that not every job isn’t going to be a good fit, and if it’s not, better to walk away then do a crappy job.
Advertising for contractors is no different at Border West. We’ll talk about your specific project. If we don’t think we can get results both parties are happy with, we’ll do our best to steer you in the right direction.
Additions & Remodeling
Air Conditioning
Appliances
Appraiser
Architects & Engineers
Asphalt
Audio/Visual
Awnings
Brick & Stone
Cabinets
Carpenters
Carpet Cleaning
Central Vacuum
Cleaning & Maid Services
Concrete
Countertops
Decks
Demolition Service
Designers & Decorators
Developer
Disaster Recovery Services
Doors
Drywall
Electrical
Excavation
Fences
Fireplace & Wood Stoves
Flooring & Carpet
Foundations
Fountains & Ponds
Furniture Repair
Garage Doors
Gutters
Handyman Services
Heating & Furnace Systems
Home Builders
Home Inspection
Home Security
Hot Tubs, Spas & Saunas
Housekeeping
Insulation
Landscaping
Lawn & Garden Care
Lifting & Moving Heavy Items
Locksmith
Metal Fabrication
Mold & Asbestos Services
Owner/Operators
Painting
Paving
Pest Control
Plumbing
Powdercoating
Power Washing