Trade businesses are both numerous and unique, which presents some challenges when it comes to marketing and visibility in the industry. Still, there are some best-practice marketing solutions to create a visible and successful trade business in your local area with marketing.
Key Takeaways: Trade Businesses
- Local businesses need to be listed in Google My Business to ensure local visibility
- It’s important to create high-quality content for your trade business that is unique
- Optimize the website with technical SEO strategies and make sure it’s mobile-ready
- Embrace social media as a marketing tool and a way to connect with customers
- Identify the marketing strategies that are most relevant and successful to the business
Local Listings
One of the first things to do for your trade business is sign-up for Google My Business – the best online directory for local businesses. Not only does Google My Business make your trade business easier to find, but it improves your SEO. A business that is not listed will rank lower on search results than one that is, regardless of the content and website optimization undertaken.
Signing up for Google My Business makes your local trade business more visible right away. When customers search for local services “near me,” the closest listening will appear along with business details like location, opening hours, and customer reviews. This is often the first thing people view when searching for local services; it is more accessible than ready search results.
High-Quality Content
Whether you are a plumber, painter, electrician, or builder, your industry is very niche. Every tradesperson in our industry has a website that contains the same content. Every plumber has an article about changing a tap, and every electrician has content on wiring a plug – this makes it difficult to compete for a better ranking on search results. But high-quality content can help.
High-quality content doesn’t mean excellent vocabulary and sentence structure; it means understanding your audience and creating content that speaks to them and is relevant. Find ways to add unique value to your customer’s experience, such as testimonials from previous customers or business anecdotes that only you can tell. This helps to set your content apart.
Optimize the Website
Once you have signed up for Google My Business, you are ready to improve the performance of your website. Search engines respond to user intent, technical SEO, mobile-first infrastructure, and Core Web Vitals that includes web page loading speeds. Make sure you have the best long-tail keywords on your website to match user search queries and outcompete your rivals.
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing the website for search engine crawlers; it involves embedding code in images and URLs to help the search engine crawlers find and rank the business. If you don’t know how to work with technical SEO, it’s best to hire an agency for the work. It’s also crucial to adapt your website to mobile since around 70% of people have one.
Social Media
At one time, social media was a nice-to-have feature in your life, but nowadays, it is more of a business necessity. Businesses of all sizes now use social media to engage and inform customers and generate interest in the business. Social media links up nicely with websites and content creation systems; best of all, it is free to open a business account on most platforms.
For the most part, social media is free. An account is free to open and simple to use. However, if you want more traction from your social media account, you will have to invest in paid advertising. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram offer an advertising system similar to Google Ads, where you create an advertising budget to generate more leads.
Marketing Strategies
Marketing strategies are diverse and need to be suited to the unique requirement of the business. Trade businesses rely on local work, repeat business, and word-of-mouth. Still, trade businesses need an online presence in the form of a website, social media accounts, and e-mail marketing campaigns. Talk to a marketing professional about the needs of your trade business.
Chances are you will need a combination of marketing strategies to maintain visibility in your industry and drive traffic to your website. The more you invest in marketing strategies, the more growth you will enjoy, but you will strike a balance between the work you take on and your resources. In most cases, a trade business can benefit from content marketing and paid Ads.
Conclusion
Trade businesses operate in a competitive industry and require unique marketing strategies to make them visible and relevant in the local area. If you’re new to online marketing and want to take your trade business to the next level, build your online presence with SOAP Media today.
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