The Fast Track to the Handshake: Using Your Website to Build Relationships
Last week I had the honor of being on The Art of Construction podcast. Voted the #1 rated podcast for contractors and architects, Devon Tilly and his team help contractors and affiliates grow their business by interviewing some of the best minds in the industry and I really appreciate their passion and problem-solving in the world of construction.
If you’ve never heard of The Art of Construction podcast, I’d highly recommend it. The Art of Construction is here to help you grow your business. This insightful podcast is hosted by thought-provoking entrepreneur, Devon Tilly. Devon has been recognized nationally for his innovation and creativity within the building industry.
In this episode, Devon and I discussed the do's and don'ts for marketing in construction, the importance of messaging and how blue collar businesses can become messaging masters, tips and tricks for optimizing your web presence, and how to know what kind of marketing you need and when.
Missed the show? No problem, I dropped the link for your listening pleasure, or feel free to read the highlights below!
DEVON’S TAKEAWAYS:
There’s a lot of risk in the high-ticket items of construction services. To help mitigate that risk, you can use your website and your marketing messaging to build trust with potential clients.
Use your website as an online educational platform.
Wherever you’re at, start small, and build your website as you scale. Your website is the fast-track to the handshake and can help you set proper client expectations from the beginning.
What do you think is different in marketing in construction versus other industries?
One of the most obvious differences is that you’re not selling a $5 coffee or some other inexpensive product. You’re selling products and services that are thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on your industry. So your marketing has to be very strategic because in order to sell those high-ticket services, building trust with consumers is essential. That’s a huge investment they’re making. So you have to think about how you frame your messaging and tell a story that builds trust for people to feel confident making that investment. People don’t jump in and spend $100k on a project. There’s a lot of research they do and other factors that play into it before they make their decision.
How important is it to have a website for the construction industry?
It is absolutely important to have a website. I’m 29 years old and we’ve already been seeing a shift with living in the digital age. More and more people are researching online. If you tell them what your business is, they are going to your website to learn more about you. It’s common practice to go to Google and search for local contractors, do research on a company, read reviews, etc. So having that online presence is absolutely crucial.
Now, fi you’re just starting out in your business, I’m not saying you need to go out and get a full-blown custom website. You don’t want to put the cart before the horse, in that sense. But having a basic website when you’re starting out is necessary.
Today’s consumer is going to the web to research you and your competitors before they contact you, so your website is that first conversation that you’re having with them.
Referrals are still powerful and relevant, but if you’re looking to scale, gaining more clients means showing up online for those people searching for you online.
I had a general contractor client this past year that reached out to me for a website. They’d been in business for 5-7 years, had a decent size crew, and were starting to bid on more commercial projects. But one thing they told me was the first thing they were always asked by those commercial prospects was: “Do you have a website?” And when they were saying no, they were ruled out as an option, because there was nowhere to go to see how credible they were or see their portfolio of work…
So it’s absolutely crucial, no matter what stage you are in, to have some web presence out there.
What are the things or qualities that potential clients are looking for on a contractor’s website? What are the top things to start with?
Going back to messaging and the unique challenges the construction industry faces with marketing, the most important thing you can do on your website is build trust. There are a few different things you can implement to help build trust on your website.
1 - Social proof (case studies, customer testimonials, and/or reviews)
We all rely on what other people say about a product or service before we try it for ourselves. Whether we’re shopping on Amazon or thinking about trying a new restaurant in town. WE do the same thing with contractors and construction companies. This is a major reason that referrals are so powerful — they’re a testimonial of a job well done!
Social proof on your website that shows a proven track record and happy clients is an essential that people will be looking for.
2 - Honesty and transparency
Like any other industry, people can be wary to purchase when they’ve been burned in the past. And sadly a lot of people have been burned by shady contractors, which causes a hurdle for the companies doing it right.
As honest and transparent you can be on your website — from your pricing to your process — is super valuable to consumers.
3 — Offering helpful content
You can do this through blog posts or even a Frequently Asked Questions page on your website. By using these parts of your website to answer real client questions, you’re establishing yourself as a trusted, reliable source that is helping them solve their problems. Right away, that builds trust and keeps people coming back, because they see you as the expert.
Whether you’re starting out with a basic website or building a fully custom website, these are a few of the essentials to focus on.
How can websites be better at lead qualification?
The first thing you need to do is get clear on who you want to be attracting. Who do you want to work with? Start asking questions like:
Who is my ideal client?
What age are they?
How much do they make per year?
What lifestyle do they lead?
By getting clear on who you want to attract, when you go to create a custom website or create content, that content is all geared to that specific person.
Then, build content and become the expert in the eyes of your client. Write blog posts, case studies and customer stories, free PDF downloads that have helpful advice, tips, or information, etc. People love leaving a website with a free tool and their questions answered and that establishes a good impression of your brand in their head. They’ll come back wanting more.
The more you establish yourself as the expert in your field, the less you’ll have to be on the phone convincing people to work with you. They will have reached out to your company, ready to move forward, saving you valuable time, money, and energy!
Now let’s talk about the wasted time on phone calls. I hear this all of the time from my clients who are on the road or on the jobsite and they don’t have the time to take all of these phone calls to answer client questions. It’s an important part of the job, sure, but there is valuable time that can be saved.
If you utilize your website to its full potential, you’ll run your business more efficiently, and save time on the phones. Here are some ways you can pre-qualify leads through your website:
Frequently Asked Questions page
An FAQ page is a powerful tool for construction websites but sadly they are underutilized.
I know you’re getting the same questions from clients all day long.
What’s the investment?
How do you take payment?
How long until I get a quote?
Whatever those questions might be, put them on your website. Prospects can find them, read them, and won’t pick up the phone to ask those when they might have in the past. That just saved you so much time, simply answering those common client questions.
Optimize your contact forms
Every business has different objectives for their business. Maybe you want as many leads from your website as possible. To do that, you want your contact form to be super simple. Name, contact, email, message. Done. You’ll get a lot of responses because you haven’t required a lot of information.
If you want to narrow down who is reaching out (prequalifying those leads), start asking for more information on your forms.
What is your budget?
What services are you interested in?
What is your preferred timeline?
Then it’s more the people that are serious about getting the job done rather than those who are calling around and price shopping.
So that’s one way you can prequalify your leads — getting intentional about how your structure your website and tweak little things that make a big difference.
Any other overall website strategies you’d like to share with The Art of Construction tribe?
Oh yeah, I have a TON!
I like to start with the basics of website strategy. And this comes from a place of love. For all of your blue collar workers and contractors — you guys are so busy and I get it can be hard to invest the time and energy into marketing.
I know we just came through a couple of years during COVID, when most of you were super busy and jobs were flowing in, but when things start to slow down a bit, that’s the perfect time to sit down and look at your overall marketing plan and strategies.
So let’s talk about a few website best practices for your construction website.
Make your calls to action DIRECT and OBVIOUS
It seems like a simple thing but I go to a lot of websites where it’s actually hard to find how to get in touch with the company. I’m telling you now, your website visitors WILL NOT TAKE THE TIME to hunt for your contact information or directions on how to work with you.
So make that sucker obvious and in their face. Whether it’s “call now”, “get a free quote”, or “schedule with us”, make it stand out and tell them directly what you want them to do.
With that tiny tweak, you’ll see a difference in your conversion rates and the amount of time people spend on your website.
Simplify your menu navigation
Best practice is to have no more than 7 links in your top navigation.
I get it — you want to give people all of the choices they need to navigate the pages on your website, but in reality, it overwhelms your users. They get stressed when they have too many options in front of them.
By keeping your navigation simple with the main “money making” pages for your business (usually your service pages and a contact page), you’ll guide users through your site with more ease and see a difference in your conversion rates.
Any additional links you can include on your website, but probably down in the footer or sprinkled throughout different sections of your website where it makes sense.
Social proof
Include testimonials and reviews. It is a MUST on your website.
People will get nervous and avoid hiring a contractor or construction company that doesn’t have reviews. When people are going online, they need to see that track record of success.
If you want to spice it up even more, video testimonials from your clients are even better. You can ask past clients to record a 30-60 second testimonial to include on your website and social media. That helps prospective clients put a face to the testimonial and it builds even more trust than just having a written testimonial.
If you decide to ask past clients to write a testimonial or do a video testimonial, you can give them talking prompts to share their experience as a story, including:
What challenges did you face before working with us?
What fears or hesitations did you have prior to hiring our company?
How did our company work to help solve your problems?
What are the finished results of the project?
What would you tell someone who is thinking about hiring our company?
(For more on building effective case studies, check out From Project to Proof: Crafting a Compelling Construction Case Study)
Using professional images
Again, it sounds simple or obvious, but it’s a great way to build trust and allow users to see you as a legitimate company.
If at all possible, use real images (and not stock photos), including photos of you and your team. People love to see the face behind the company!
Optimize your opening headline
Often your website is the first interaction someone has with your brand, so that opening headline needs to be short, clear, and communicate the value that your services bring to your clients.
Don’t just say something like “We’re the best roofers or builders in Colorado.”
Speak to your client. Talk more about them and how you can provide a solution to make their lives better, than talking about yourself. This will have more of an effect and keep them on your site because they are immediately pulled in to how you can become a guide on their journey to solving their problem.
Devon: Great stuff. We went through the full StoryBrand program with Donald Miller and I think that’s a great lesson, where it talks through how you have to be the Guide and you have to figure out who the Heroes and Villains are. And I think in construction, we’re famous for saying that we’re the Heroes, but we’re not. We’re the Guides. The Heroes are the people that are putting the money down. We have to figure out what Villains are in the way and market around that. That concept gave a lot of guidance to me by putting myself into my customers’ shoes, so I totally agree with that.
Well I gotta challenge you a little bit, Katlyn. You’re talking about what we should do, so give us some client success stories for the contractors and affiliates listening to this today that may wanna be reaching out to ya.
Can you give us some client success stories?
Heck yeah!
One of my favorite client success stories was a friend of mine. He has built pole buildings for the past 20+ years but he has never had a website. He lives in a rural Oregon area In fact, his jobs were always referrals and word of mouth.
His wife and friends of his got on him saying he needed a website. He was busy working on the job so marketing was definitely pushed to the backburner.
But things started to get a little strained. The only marketing they were doing was ads in the local paper and it got to a point where he didn’t know where his next job was coming from.
So we started working together and the website I created him was actually a super simple website. But it was effective! I also worked with him on SEO to get more visibility in local searches. (And he actually had a buddy he said he wanted to beat out in the rankings, which we did). ;)
In just a short amount of time, we got him ranked on the first page of Google. Better yet, the people who were landing on his website were actually converting and reaching out to him.
He went from not knowing where his next job was coming from to being completely booked out for the year. He was actually having to turn jobs away because he didn’t have the team he needed to take on multiple projects at that point and scale.
I will never forget how he came up to me a couple of months after us working together. He was so elated and said “I can’t even pick up the phone, I’m so swamped and I’m booked out.”
So that’s one of my favorite client success stories, and one that happened early on in my career that has brought me so much joy.
(Read Dean Lindsey Construction’s case study for more information)
We had great success with another client — some friends of mine back in Minnesota — who took over their dad’s plumbing company. Their dad had did a lot of great work on his website for SEO, but it needed a redesign and some other things updated to get better results and make for a better user experience.
After launch, they have a conversion rate of 11%, which is incredible! (To compare, a good conversion rate would be anywhere between 3-6%).
Then we had a couple of concrete companies in my local area in Vancouver, WA who reached out because they needed a website for their business that had ran off of referrals for the pasts 15+ years. They were already killin’ it in our area but they knew if they wanted to scale further they needed to get those online leads.
From their initial launch, they’ve had a 22% conversion rate, which is insane. Almost a quarter of the people who land on their website reach out to them for a quote or for work.
That same company had another business — a mobile concrete mix site. We launched that website with a 22% conversion rate as well!
I’m super excited about the success my clients are having by getting themselves out there, building a website that reflects their values, the trust they’ve built in the community for the past couple of decades, and then getting those new clients by having that online presence.
What are some of the things you see contractors consistently getting wrong in their website marketing?
It’s funny that you brought up StoryBrand, because this is immediately where my mind went when you ask this question.
The biggest improvement that the construction industry can make in their marketing, is their messaging. I can’t emphasize this enough. The words that you put on your website or social media are just as important — and I’d argue even more important — that the design itself.
Design primes us to buy, but copy — your written content — is what actually does the selling.
If any construction company can buy, borrow, or read Donald Miller’s books, it’ll have a massive impact on your business and profits. I’m going through these in my own business, as well, and it’s been a gamechanger.
(Check out Building a StoryBrand and Marketing Made Simple by Donald Miller)
I also partner with a StoryBrand Certified Guide I refer my clients to, to help them make their marketing even more effective. It makes me look better, too, because the words really do matter so much in the conversion rates on your website. We can double or triple the results we do with web strategy alone just by making sure we’re getting the words right!
People don’t care about what you do. They care about how you can solve their problems and make their lives better. So you need to come in as the Guide and make your content about them and not about you.
Devon: Love it! And I love how you’re talking about the fact that you can’t be an expert in everything. Online presence is a lot of different things of people working together and coming together. That’s why we’ve launched the Art of Construction Master Facilitator Program. Because niching in this stuff — you keep referencing about SEO and conversion rates — that’s an important thing, but there’s a lot of other touches around that stuff and you can’t do it all yourself. We call it the AoCIT House, and we’re really constructi-fying how your IT and Marketing works for the builders and affiliates out there. Because they really know how to speak hammers and nails, but understanding how it all comes together is important.
How do you think marketing in the construction industry can be improved?
This question brings me back to the people I love most in my life — my dad, my grandpa, my stepdad — they all built blue-collar businesses with an emphasis on building relationships and sticking to their core values.
I feel like a lot of people in construction might feel like if they’re marketing online, that the relationship aspect is taken out of it, because they aren’t physically with someone to shake their hand or have a conversation. But that’s not the case. The relationship building is still happening, but in a different way.
Your branding, your website, your social accounts — whatever content you’re putting out there — that’s your first introduction people are having with your company. That’s a digital “nice to meet you” or handshake.
When you put in the time and invest in learning how to tell the right story, you can take those same values and translate that into your marketing messaging online. People can get to know you on your website, on your social accounts, and that trust starts to build before they’ve ever met you in person — and that’s really powerful!
Construction is still relationships. It always will be. You’re just being given a chance to have that relationship with so many more people, in a grander scope, online.
That’s what I really think the construction industry could do to improve their marketing. Marketing doesn’t have to be gimmicky or sleazy — it should be real and authentic, that stay true to your values.
Devon: I totally agree with that. The longer I go through this great game of business and my mantra of “always be marketing", just be as real as you can be. But keep putting yourself out there because if you don’t put yourself in front of people, they’re gonna move on.
What are some other benefits of having a website just beyond more sales?
There are definitely benefits outside of more sales that a website can give you.
Saving time, automating processes and systems (like using online scheduling or invoicing), prequalifying leads, building brand awareness, and keeping up with your competitors, to name just a few.
Another huge reason for having a website is that it is an ASSET in your business that YOU OWN.
A lot of times, contractors will pay advertising companies or web designers to build them a website, but the one who built the website maintains control over it. But when their contract is up or if the web designer fall off the face of the earth, you have no access or control of your website.
GET A WEBSITE THAT YOU OWN AND YOU CAN LOG INTO AND MAKE CHANGES AND UPDATES YOURSELF, otherwise you get yourself into a trick position.
Social media and paid ads change their algorithms over time. If they go down, so does your content on those platforms. But your website is something you own that gives you a consistent platform for your company that won’t just go away with changing algorithms. This is another very important reason to own a website.
Devon: I totally agree! Don’t expect what you don’t inspect. Make sure you know what the login is and know enough to understand how to make changes or what platform you’re on. Make sure to ask the questions when you’re investing in this, to be able to scale it up if that designer leaves. Understand how domain names work and a few Marketing 101 things is critical stuff if you’re gonna take the reigns.
How do you know what kind of marketing you need and who to hire to get that dialed in?
We are all in different places in our business and marketing is not one-size-fits all. Something that works for my business and industry might not work for yours.
So here are some starting points for different phases of business…
If you’re a new business owner:
Cohesive Branding (Logo, color palette, typography, etc.)
A simple website
A Google My Business page (100% free to create and use and gives you instant visibility online)
Download the free guide to landing clients fast using Google My Business
If you have a website, but aren’t getting a lot of traffic of visibility online:
Short term marketing strategies like Google Ads (especially in slower months or if you have a seasonal business)
Find a Google Ads specialist
Long term SEO strategies (takes months to build, but you can absolutely dominate your market and get consistent traffic year round once you’ve put the time and work in)
Find a full-service SEO agency
If you have a website, but aren’t getting a lot of traffic of visibility online:
Short term marketing strategies like Google Ads (especially in slower months or if you have a seasonal business)
Find a Google Ads specialist
Long term SEO strategies (takes months to build, but you can absolutely dominate your market and get consistent traffic year round once you’ve put the time and work in)
Find a full-service SEO agency
If you’re an established business looking to scale:
Custom website
Find a website designer that focuses on website strategy (not just visual design). Let’s chat :)
Long term SEO
Social media marketing and management to keep a consistent online presence and engage with your community
What’s the one thing you want to leave with our builders as they go out there to crush it with their business?
Put yourself out there, even though it’s scary. Fail forward, start small, and then build upon it over time!
2023 is the year to level up your construction business
You don’t have to settle for mediocre website results. With website strategy, we’ll come up with a gameplan to connect with prospective clients, tell your story, and boost conversion rates so you can scale your business and profits.
Schedule a free 30 minute consultation with me today!
