Hey you. Yeah, you. Do you run a trade-based business? Maybe you’re a builder, a landscaper, a glazier or a floor fitter. A locksmith, an electrician, a plumber. If you work in the trades in any way, this article is for you.
You see, I work with a fair few tradespeople, and I’ve been through the same process with each one. They’ve been established businesses for a number of years and have a comfortable stream of work coming in, but they want more. They want to be on that first page of Google when someone looks up their trade, so they can win more business over their competitors. So they asked some marketing-type people, and someone suggested they needed to be blogging regularly. Which is how they end up in front of me. But they’ve never blogged before, so they want to know why they should invest in doing it – or hiring someone like me to do it for them.
So, here you are. 5 reasons any trades business should have a blog on their website.
Improve Your SEO
Getting to the first page of Google might seem like black magic, but there is a way you can do it. In fact, Google tells you how! All you need to do is a little bit of something called SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation. This is the process of tweaking your online presence to make it more attractive to search engines, so that when someone types in ‘local plumber’, it’s your name that pops up first. Good SEO means you will rank higher than your competitors, get more leads and customers, generate a five-star reputation and grow trust with your potential customers.
Sound good? Then get a blog going. One of the biggest things Google looks for when deciding where you should rank is how much content is on your website, and how often you update it. So if your site is just 1 page, it’s going to rank below one that’s 1 page but has 1 blog a month going up. And if you have 2 blogs going up a month, you’ll get in above them too. See how it works? It takes some time, but regular blogging gives you a big tick in the Google algorithm and boosts your rankings.
Put A Face To Your Business
There are a hundred different ways you can convince potential customers to buy from you. But something I’ve noticed over the years is that people tend to respond better when they can put a face to the business. That’s not just my opinion either – it’s been proven to make a business more relatable and trustworthy – something every tradesperson needs. After all, you’re going into people’s homes and doing critical work, they need to feel like they can trust you. Ditching the stock images and having a blog that reflects your personality. Blogs make people, feel like they’re talking to a person, and not just a faceless entity, and that’s a powerful thing. Sometimes that’s all that’s needed to convince them to give you a call.
Prove You’re Not a Cowboy
Let’s face it, this horrible reputation follows some trades around worse than others. Cowboy tradespeople are a customer’s worst nightmare, and it’s one of the reasons you see community Facebook pages full of people asking for personal recommendations. But cowboy tradies don’t bother to market their business particularly. By investing time and effort into your website and keeping it updated, you’re showing customers that you’re here to stay. And by using that blog to share all of your knowledge and skill, whether that’s by sharing photos of successful jobs, reviews from happy customers and tips and tricks posts, you’re boosting your credibility and proving that your customer is safe in your hands.
Stand Out!
And of course, there’s the fact that most trade businesses don’t blog at all. So if you do, you’re putting yourself ahead of them in search engines, and in the eyes of your customers. You get to one-up your competition without having to do any heavy lifting, and you can’t really put a price on that!
Over the years I’ve worked with a number of tradies on their content, and they’ve all been beyond happy with the results they get. Whether it’s getting their website up and running with great copy, providing regular blogs so they get all those benefits without having to do it themselves, or writing lead magnets that draw in and educate their customers, I can turn my hand to it.
So if you want to win the Google game and stand out from the crowd, you know where to find me. Drop me a line and we can chat about what options will suit you best.