JUST IT MARKETING

The Five Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

9/6/2024

The Five Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
By Jack Spiess, Owner of Just It Marketing

In today’s competitive market, small businesses need to leverage digital marketing to stand out and thrive. With the right strategies, even the smallest players can make a big impact. Here are five of the most effective digital marketing strategies for small businesses to consider.

1. Local SEO: Dominate Your Local Market

For small businesses, especially those with physical locations or service areas, local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is crucial. By optimizing your website and online presence for local search terms, you increase your chances of being found by customers in your area. This includes:

Claiming and optimizing your Google My Business (GMB) listing: Ensure your business details are accurate and up-to-date. Add high-quality images and encourage customer reviews.

Using local keywords: Incorporate phrases that reflect your location and services in your website content, meta descriptions, and title tags.

Building local citations: Get listed in local directories and industry-specific sites to enhance your online presence and credibility.

Effective local SEO helps you rank higher in local search results, driving targeted traffic to your business.

2. Content Marketing: Engage and Educate Your Audienc

Content marketing is a powerful tool for building brand authority and connecting with your audience. By creating valuable and relevant content, you can attract and engage potential customers. Consider the following approaches:

Blogging: Regularly publish blog posts that address common questions, offer solutions, or provide industry insights. This not only helps with SEO but also positions you as a thought leader.

Video content: Leverage video to showcase your products, share customer testimonials, or offer tutorials. Video is highly engaging and often more effective at capturing attention.

Infographics and visuals: Create visually appealing content that simplifies complex information and encourages social sharing.

Content marketing helps you build trust with your audience and can lead to higher conversion rates over time.

3. Social Media Marketing: Build a Community and Drive Engagement

Social media platforms offer a fantastic opportunity for small businesses to connect with their audience on a personal level. Here’s how to make the most of social media:

Choose the right platforms: Focus on the social media channels where your target audience is most active. Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter are popular choices depending on your industry.

Create engaging content: Share posts that resonate with your audience, such as behind-the-scenes looks, customer stories, and industry news. Use a mix of images, videos, and text.

Engage with your followers: Respond to comments, messages, and mentions to foster a sense of community and build relationships.

Social media marketing helps you increase brand awareness and drive traffic to your website.

4. Email Marketing: Nurture Leads and Retain Customer

Email marketing remains one of the most cost-effective ways to reach your audience directly. Here’s how to leverage it for your small business:

Build a quality email list: Collect email addresses through your website, social media, and in-store interactions. Offer incentives like discounts or free resources to encourage sign-ups.

Segment your audience: Tailor your email campaigns to different segments of your audience based on their interests and behaviors. This increases relevance and engagement.

Craft compelling content: Write clear, concise, and value-driven emails. Include strong calls to action (CTAs) and personalize where possible.

Email marketing allows you to maintain regular contact with your customers, keep them informed, and drive repeat business.

5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Get Immediate Results

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising can deliver quick results and is highly effective when executed correctly. Here’s how to use PPC effectively:

Set clear goals: Determine what you want to achieve with your PPC campaigns, such as driving traffic, generating leads, or increasing sales.

Choose the right keywords: Conduct keyword research to identify terms that potential customers are searching for. Use these keywords in your ad copy and landing pages.

Monitor and optimize: Regularly review your PPC campaign performance. Adjust your bids, ad copy, and targeting to improve results and reduce costs.

PPC advertising helps you reach potential customers who are actively searching for products or services like yours, delivering immediate traffic and results.

Implementing these digital marketing strategies can significantly enhance your online presence and help your small business grow. Remember, the key to success is consistency and continuous improvement. Start with these foundational strategies, and as your business grows, you can explore more advanced techniques to further amplify your digital marketing efforts.

Author

Jack Spiess is the Owner of Just It Marketing, a digital marketing agency dedicated to helping small businesses succeed online. With a passion for innovative strategies and a deep understanding of the digital landscape, Jack and his team offer tailored solutions to drive growth and achieve marketing goals.

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How to Build a Website for Contractors, Home Services, or Construction Businesses

10/26/2023

Numerous contractors in the home services sector are experiencing frustration due to insufficient lead generation. For others, the issue is more critical—they're not acquiring the necessary leads, putting their business in jeopardy. If this situation resonates with you, there's a reasonable chance that your contractor or construction business website is a contributing factor.

According to studies, a staggering 97 out of 100 individuals turn to online sources to gather information about local businesses. This underscores the importance of having a visible and user-friendly website. If your website isn't effectively reaching your target audience, you're likely missing out on potential leads.

Today, our focus will be on the latter concern: crafting a website that is not only functional but also compelling enough to attract potential clients.

Four main keys to an effective contractor website

We get that you’re likely not a web designer, so trying to figure out how to get more customers online might feel daunting. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: Building a great contractor website doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, I recommend keeping things simple so you don’t get bogged down by difficult-to-maintain features and unnecessarily fancy design.

There are many website builders that are beginner friendly. We recommend using Weebly, Squarespace, or Wix for this style of business. Stay away from builders like Shopify that are meant for eCommerce, and stay away from WordPress as it requires coding knowledge.

Stick to the following basics, and your business will grow.

1. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

According to research, more than half of all internet traffic is happening on mobile devices, and it’s estimated that mobile data traffic will increase by seven times between 2017 and 2022. What does that mean for you? More and more of your leads are looking for your help from their mobile devices, so if your website only works well on a full-size screen, they won’t bother with it. Or you.

By contrast, a mobile-friendly website is designed in such a way that people can read and navigate your site with ease—regardless of the device they’re using.

How can you tell if your current website is mobile-responsive? Pull up your site on your cell phone:

Is the navigation menu always visible?
Is the text legible without pinching and dragging to enlarge it?
Is there sufficient space between buttons and links—so you can press one without pressing another?
Can you read the entire page without scrolling left and right?

If you answered yes to those questions, your site is likely set up for mobile devices. If not, updating your site should be your top marketing priority.

The site builder we use for our marketing clients: Weebly, has themes that will be automatically responsive to smartphone screens. Be sure to check the mobile version while you’re building your site, so you can make sure everything looks good on both mobile and desktop.

By the way, because people care so much about mobile-responsiveness, Google does, too. Since April 2015, the search giant has been rewarding mobile-friendly sites in their rankings—and penalizing those that aren’t.

Let’s get super practical about what that means: If your competitors’ sites are mobile-responsive and yours isn’t, they will very likely show up higher than you on the search engine results page (SERP). That matters because, on average, moving up one spot on the SERP means a nearly 31% increase in click-through rate. Whoa. To see if Google views your site as a mobile-friendly, use their free tool.

2. Offer great content on your site

When people visit your home services website, they’re looking for answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. To serve them well, you’ll need to be intentional about the content you provide and how you organize it. The following pages are must-haves.

Homepage

Your website homepage is the virtual front door of your business and, on average, you have 15 seconds to convince people they’re in the right place. Your home page should answer five questions—quickly:

What service(s) do you offer? Be clear, specific, and brief. You can go into detail on your Services page.
Who are your services for? Do you only serve commercial clients, or are you open to residential jobs?
So what? Without criticizing your competitors, let people know why they should choose you instead. What unique value do you bring to your customers?
Why should people trust you? Include a couple of reviews, testimonials, and/or logos from companies you’ve served. (People don’t care what you say about you; they care what other people say about you.)
What should site visitors do next? Make it ridiculously easy for people to do business with you by including a clear call to action: schedule a call, make an appointment, and so on.

Services Page When you’re trying to develop content for your website, the easiest way to start is by thinking about what questions your customers are asking — and then answering them. For your services page, those questions are:

What services do you offer? Provide more detail than you did on the home page, but don’t go overboard. Also, be sure to use clear and simple language, not industry jargon.
What problems do you solve? This might seem like the same thing as services, but it’s not. For example, “hydro-jetting” is a service that solves the problem of sewage backing up into the shower.
What’s your service area? List all the communities you serve. If you’re in a metropolitan area, customers will need to know if you’re willing to travel from the far corner all the way to the opposite corner.

About PageMost businesses waste real estate on their About page talking about how their company got started and offering way too much detail about their team. Most customers don’t care about that; instead, they want to know if you understand what they need or want, and if you’re qualified to provide a solution. Address those concerns on your About page.

Blog Page

Posting regular updates to a blog is a highly effective way to display your authority as a home services or construction professional. Most general contractors feel overwhelmed trying to come up with ideas to blog about, so here’s a tip: Have each of your team members brainstorm the top 10 questions they hear from customers, write out the answers, and post each response as a blog post. (Yes, it’s really that simple.)

Contact Page

Your Contact page should include very little text. Here’s what you want it to have:

Phone number
Email address
Physical location/showroom if you have one
Map of your service area
Links to your social media channels
Hours of operation
Contact form (Be sure to test it regularly to make sure messages are coming through!)
Automated chat feature

3. Use well thought-out imagery on your website

Images on your construction website or contractor website should be high-quality. Although original photography is preferable, you can find affordable (often free!) images through stock photography sites like Unsplash and Envato Elements. Be sure to use images legally; don’t just snag a random photo from Google.

Be intentional with your photos. For example:

Home page – Show what success looks like for someone who uses your services.
Services page – Show a friendly member of your team interacting with a customer.
About page – Use images that help people imagine what it would be like to work with you — shots of your friendly and professional-looking team in action are great choices.
Blog page – People get overwhelmed when they see too much text on a page, so break up lengthy blog posts with a relevant image or two.
Contact page – Include a photo of your physical location — especially if it’s not in an obvious place — and be sure to include a map.

4. Capture leads from your website

What happens if someone visits your website and doesn’t schedule a consultation or service call right away? It’s unlikely they’ll come back again. But if you have a way to contact them, you can nurture them toward a sale.

The best way to capture these leads is to collect email addresses, and you can do that by adding email sign-up forms to your site. Offer something of value to your website visitors in exchange for their email addresses — like a discount or a DIY repair guide — to get more people joining your list.

Once you have someone’s email address, you can reach out on a consistent basis, sharing a combination of helpful and promotional messages to encourage them to do business with you.

Jack Spiess

Owner of Just It Marketing, with over 7 years of experience helping small businesses grow via the Digital Marketing Sector.
Phone: (360) 270-9630 Email: [email protected]

Small business marketing, marketing agency, contractor lead generation, website optimization, local marketing strategies, Cowlitz County, Clark County, Washington, building a lead-generating website, contractor business growth, online presence for contractors, digital marketing tips, SEO for contractors, website design for small businesses, targeted audience engagement, conversion optimization, local SEO, social media marketing, content marketing for contractors, online advertising, marketing tactics for small businesses.

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The Five Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

The Five Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
By Jack Spiess, Owner of Just It Marketing

1. Local SEO: Dominate Your Local Market

2. Content Marketing: Engage and Educate Your Audienc

3. Social Media Marketing: Build a Community and Drive Engagement

4. Email Marketing: Nurture Leads and Retain Customer

5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Get Immediate Results

Author

How to Build a Website for Contractors, Home Services, or Construction Businesses

Four main keys to an effective contractor website

1. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

2. Offer great content on your site

3. Use well thought-out imagery on your website

4. Capture leads from your website

Jack Spiess

Jack Spiess

Archives

Categories

​The Five Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

​The Five Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Small BusinessesBy Jack Spiess, Owner of Just It Marketing

1. Local SEO: Dominate Your Local Market

2. Content Marketing: Engage and Educate Your Audienc

3. Social Media Marketing: Build a Community and Drive Engagement

4. Email Marketing: Nurture Leads and Retain Customer

5. Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Get Immediate Results

Author

How to Build a Website for Contractors, Home Services, or Construction Businesses

Four main keys to an effective contractor website​

1. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly​

2. Offer great content on your site​

3. Use well thought-out imagery on your website​

4. Capture leads from your website​

Jack Spiess

The Five Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses

The Five Best Digital Marketing Strategies for Small Businesses
By Jack Spiess, Owner of Just It Marketing

Four main keys to an effective contractor website

1. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly

2. Offer great content on your site

3. Use well thought-out imagery on your website

4. Capture leads from your website