Content Marketing Options For Contractor Web Sites
Content marketing has become a great way for remodelers to attract prospects to their web sites. By publishing content that your target customers would liking be searching for, and optimizing that content for SEO purposes, a business can help those prospects find and visit their web site. Just getting them to your site won’t ensure a sale, but if you can get them to your site you can use additional content to help keep them there. Content marketing alone won’t turn those prospects into customers, but if you can keep those visitors on your site you might be able to accomplish two very valuable marketing and sales goals.
Two goals for content marketing
The fist would be to pre-educate prospects about your business, your products and or services, and how you and your team do business. This can save a lot of time during the sales process. By pre-educating them at your site on a variety of considerations using additional content, you will not have to spend as much time doing so at a live sales call. Busy contractors can speed up the sales process and gain more time for other business activities if they invest in publishing the right content.
The second thing it can help you accomplish is prequalification. Contractors can’t and shouldn’t assume every prospect will buy from them. By using the right content at your contractor web site visitors can actually prequalify themselves. If they like what they see and read, and they determine that what you offer and how you do business makes sense for them, they will likely contact you. On the other hand they may decide yours is not the right company for them and move on to find a different contractor. This too saves the contractor a lot of valuable time because the contractor will be spending less time qualifying and more time helping qualified prospects who are much more likely to buy.
Content marketing methods you can use
Content marketing can be done in a variety of ways including blogs, white papers, infographics, photos and many other mediums. The infographic below offers a matrix of content marketing types. PRWeb says they created this matrix to show how different types of content can appeal to different consumers and offers facts or suggestions about each. The top shows the different types of content, while the bottom explains how those pieces of content can be used.
Not all of them will be practical for all businesses, but it’s good to know what your options are and what other businesses may be using to do their content marketing. Also, as your business grows you may want to eventually take advantage of additional content marketing methods to improve and or increase your marketing results.
Once a potential customer knows they have a need they’ll begin researching options for what they can or should do to fill that need. During this stage of their buying cycle you’ll want to provide them with white papers, checklists, and or e-books. The strategy should be to provide more in-depth content that describes the problem(s) they have and outlines step by step solutions—which your company just happens to be able to help them with. This is also the lead generation stage. By keeping track of who downloads information from your site you can separate the consumers who are genuinely interested in what you offer and how you can help them from others who are just casually browsing your site. 
One might be that they realize your business is not right for them.
Never assume what they should do or tell them what to do.
By suggesting these simple changes and others to the remodelers I work with, I have helped them maximize their ROI for the dollars they spend on their web sites. Using the right strategies they attract not just leads, but targeted qualified leads for the kinds of customers and projects they want to get.
Then identify the functionality you will need behind the scenes. For example things like the Content Management System (CMS) you will use to add and edit pages, smart call to action buttons so you know what pages visitors clicked through from, landing pages, a blogging tool, automated lead nurturing ability, analytics and an email marketing tool. You will need to consider these kinds of things to get a price from a web designer for the work to be done and the CMS you will use.
Now you have a web site!
Each characteristic can make a difference regarding who they are and what it will be like to work with them. If you think back on past projects you can probably identify a variety of characteristics that make up the ideal customer type for you and your business. Who they are as people, and their personality traits, are definitely important. Also though, just as important as the personality of customers, can be other differentiating characteristics called demographics. Used in combination with personality traits, demographics can help contractors target market prospects who are also most likely to buy what they are selling. 
Marital Status
The goal of this marketing campaign is to build a customer list of people who will continually need more work due to the age of the home they live in, and or will refer the company to other people just like them who are willing to pay more to get the comfort and quality offered by a professional and legal business. We want and will use this customer list so we can market additional services to the same homeowners in the future.
I'll be back at the Remodeling Show again this year. 
Qualifying leads
Consider that if you try to close a prospect that is still in steps one or two above they will not likely buy anything from you, at least at that time. How could they? They still don’t have enough info to make a confident decision. If you try to close them you might just alienate them. Depending on your approach, if you make them feel bad because they wouldn’t make a decision and or that they wouldn't buy from you, they may never buy from you. But, on the other hand, if you know they are not ready to buy, rather than attempt to close them see if you can help them move their process along so they can do the due diligence required to confidently make a decision and sign a contract. Helping them through this process is what is often referred to as lead nurturing.
According to GE Capital Research consumers spend 38-115 days researching before making a major purchase. If your qualified prospects are not yet ready to buy, respect their process and consider your approach with them. Give them the time they need when they need it. By this I mean give them time to do their research. And, at the same time consider offering them some guidance to help move them along and to show that you can be a trusted adviser for them. When they are ready to decide on products and need help with that part of their process again be ready with help and guidance, but don’t try to close them yet. Remember, if they told you they were still trying to decide what products to use how could they make a buying commitment? Trying to close them may seem disrespectful to them. Instead offer them guidance and let them know you would love to work with them when they are ready to choose their contractor. The idea here is that if you practice catch and release, and your prospects can swim off unharmed, they will likely remain in your pond and may decide to jump on your hook when they are ready to bite!
If you plan to remain a small company, only worried about generating enough work for yourself and maybe one other worker, I suggest you work really hard creating and nurturing referrals. This is a good low cost option but it does take a lot of your time. You’ll need to spend time calling your previous customers to let them know you’re still around and would love to get more work from them. I suggest you also let them know you would appreciate their referrals. While you have them on the phone get their email addresses and permission to send them information about your company via email. If you can do this you can take advantage of low cost email marketing strategies to stay in front of them and remind them about referring you. If this works for you and you get enough quality leads, you will also need improved sales skills so you can raise your prices and still sell enough work. If you can pull off selling at higher prices use the money to expand your marketing strategy beyond the email related tactics.
If you have a business that is already doing at least $500-700K worth of business, but you are not making enough money, I suggest you 
to check and most will never be able to retire. I suggest you consider the option of a job at a company that already does good marketing and knows how to sell. These businesses will be growing as the economy improves and will need the talents of good carpenters and project managers. If you find the right company to work for you will probably make a lot more money, have a whole lot less stress in your life and your new job might even include a company sponsored retirement plan. 
In my quest for a web site company to work with I was specifically referred to the one I chose by another business owner I know who had similar goals for his business. This web site design company owner did what I thought was a great job interviewing me to uncover my purposes before she designed, priced and built my site. Now, because of her assistance, I can help targeted prospects find me and prevent suspects from wasting my time and resources! And, if contractors seeking help with their businesses aren’t yet ready to buy, I can nurture them along with more information about me and my business until they are. 
What is sad to me (and really ridiculous if you think about it) is these business owners are doing the same thing many remodeling consumers do. They hire a service provider to take care of something for them without first being clear on what they expect, or, what they can expect will actually be included if they buy. Then, rather than take responsibility for their own lack of due diligence before buying that service, they rationalize why it’s the service provider’s fault they are not happy and want their money back. You can find lots of evidence to back up this reality by reading just a few of the articles on the
Instead of the old outbound marketing methods of buying ads, buying email lists, paying for lead generation services and praying for good leads, consider the new wave in marketing; “Inbound Marketing”. Inbound marketing focuses on creating quality content on your business’ web site that pulls people toward your company and product. By aligning the content you publish with your target customer’s interests, you naturally attract inbound traffic that you can then convert, close, and delight over time. If visitors to your contractors web site don’t like what they find out about your business and how you do business, they won’t call you or waste your time. In addition to creating high quality leads, done well, inbound marketing can also help you increase the number and quality of referral leads from those customers you have delighted. 
