Most marketing advice is written for companies with a marketing person. This guide is for a contractor with a phone, a truck and no spare evening. It covers six things, in the order they are worth doing. None of them needs an agency.
- Start with being findable, then with answering fast. Everything else comes after.
- Three options on an estimate turn a yes-or-no into a choice.
- Your last job is your best ad for the houses around it.
1. Be findable where neighbors look
When someone needs a roofer, they search on their phone. What they see first is not your website. It is your listing: name, hours, phone number, photos and reviews. Claim it on Google and Bing, fill in every field, and make sure the hours and the number are right.
Then make sure your website says the same thing as the listing. A site with a page for each town you work and each service you offer gives search engines a reason to show you in those towns too. Koira builds those pages for you.
2. Answer, or text back fast
You cannot pick up from a roof or from under a sink. That is fine, as long as the caller hears from you quickly. A text back within a minute, from your own number, with a question about what they need and a few times you could come out, keeps the job yours. The missed-call guide covers what to say.
3. Make it easy to say yes
An estimate with one price asks a yes-or-no question. An estimate with three options asks which one. Put a good, better and best on the page, let the customer sign on their phone, and take the deposit at the same moment. A signature without a deposit is still a maybe.
Then follow up. Two short, friendly check-ins, a couple of days apart, are enough. After that, stop.
4. Ask for the review every time
Happy customers rarely leave a review on their own. They will if you ask while the work is fresh, with a link that opens the right page. The ask should go out after every paid job, not only the ones you remember. Reply to each review when it comes in.
5. Tell the street
The best prospects for your next job live next to your last one. They saw your truck. A postcard with a photo of the finished job and a line that names the street does more than a generic flyer to a whole zip code. The postcard guide goes into who to mail and what to put on the card.
6. Write to the people who hire again and again
Property managers, realtors and HOAs need the same trades every month. A short email introducing yourself, with what you do and where you work, is enough. Send three over a couple of weeks and then leave them alone.
How to tell if it is working
Count dollars, not clicks. For each paid job, ask where it started: a missed call that got a text back, a postcard, a search. If you cannot trace a job to where it came from, you cannot tell what to do more of. Koira keeps that count for you under What Koira brought in.
