Marketing for tradesmen
Marketing for tradesmen, minus the guesswork.
Most tradesmen are not short of people offering to market their business. They are short of anyone willing to say which parts are worth the money and which are not. This page is my attempt at that, including the bits I do not sell.
The choice underneath this whole page: renting position next to your competitors, or building visibility you keep.
Where the work comes from
Four sources, and they are not equal.
Nearly all trade work arrives through one of four doors: somebody was recommended you, somebody found you on Google, somebody found you in a paid directory, or somebody saw an advert. They cost very different amounts and they behave very differently when you stop paying.
Word of mouth is the best of them and it still ends in a search. People are given your name, then look you up to check you are real before they ring. A thin or missing Google listing loses jobs you had already won, which is the most annoying way to lose them.
That single fact is why the Google listing sits underneath everything else. It is not an alternative to word of mouth, it is what word of mouth runs into.
Worth the money
In the order I’d spend it.
Your Google listing, set up properly
Free to own, and it decides more of your local visibility than anything else you control. The category alone is worth checking before you spend a penny anywhere.
A routine for asking for reviews
Every finished job, same wording, no cleverness. Costs nothing, moves the thing that matters, and is the single most neglected job on this list.
Knowing where you actually rank
Not one search from your own phone. A grid across the area you cover, so you can see which towns you are invisible in rather than assuming you cover them.
A site that answers the question
What you do, where you go, proof you are real, and a number that dials when tapped. It converts the people who found you. It does not find them.
Photographs of your own jobs
Taken on your phone, before and after. Free, and better than anything anyone can buy for you. The most common reason a trade site looks fake is stock photography.
Something that tells you if it worked
Calls, direction taps and clicks from Google's own figures, next to the same rank map run again. Without this you are paying on feel.
Being straight with you
There is a lot of marketing I do not do.
I do not run ads, social media, print or vans.
Some of those work. Ads in particular can be the right answer if you need work this month rather than next quarter. I am not the person to ask about them, and I would rather say that than take the money and learn on your budget.
What I do is a narrow thing: find out where you are actually visible across your area, fix the parts of that which can be fixed, and show you the same measurement again two months later so you can judge it yourself. If your problem turns out to be something else entirely, you will get that answer for nothing and we can both get on with our day.
Questions
Worth asking.
What is the cheapest thing that actually works?
Asking every finished customer for a review, and having a Google listing set up correctly for them to leave it on. It costs nothing but the asking, it feeds the thing that decides most local results, and almost nobody does it consistently. If you only ever take one piece of advice from this page, take that one and do not pay me for it.
Are directories like Checkatrade worth it?
For some tradesmen, yes, particularly early on when you have nothing else. What you should be clear about is that you are renting position next to your competitors, and it stops the day you stop paying. Your own listing and site are yours and keep working. Plenty of people sensibly run both. I would just rather you knew which one you were building.
Should I be paying for Google Ads?
Possibly, but I do not run them, so treat that as an outsider's view rather than a pitch. Ads buy you the top of the page immediately and stop the moment the budget does. They tend to make most sense when you need work this month, or for a job type you cannot rank for organically. If you have never checked where you rank for free first, that is the cheaper thing to do.
Do I need to be on social media?
Not for most trades, and I do not sell it. A page you never update looks worse than no page. Where it earns its keep is as somewhere to put photographs of finished jobs, which does help people decide once they have already found you. It is rarely how they find you in the first place.
How do I know if any of it is working?
By measuring the same thing twice, which is most of what I actually do. Google's own figures tell you how many people called you, tapped for directions or clicked through, and a rank map run on the same grid twice tells you whether you became more visible. If whoever you are paying cannot show you both, you are relying on how the month felt.
Where you stand
Find out where you actually rank.
Send me your business name and the areas you cover, and I’ll check where you’re showing up across your area and where you’re not. There’s no charge for it, and if you’re already doing well I’ll tell you that.