5 free ways to get online for Plumbers and Electricians

Vincent
Vincent
Sep 4, 2018 · 10 min read
Source: Pexels

Having a good online presence for your plumbing and electrical business is essential to stay competitive. Times have changed. Consumers have so many choices that word of mouth and the occasional pamphlet drops with local paper advertisements just won’t do it.

Why your plumbing and electrical business needs an online presence

Nowadays almost everyone would have a basic personal online presence. Probably a Gmail or Outlook account, may be even a Facebook page with family and friends. But you may also share the same email with your business, at best you have a dedicated business email under Gmail, such as bobsplumbing@gmail.com.

Do you know 68% of customers search for a company online before they hire?

Customers research the website and ratings of service providers to validate their decision and de-risk the purchases. Having a professionally looking website promotes legitimacy, customers feel that they’re less likely to be scammed or hire a bad business.

If you look at your most successful competitors; whether they’re a large company with strong back office support or just an owner operator, they are certain to have a well executed online presence. These may include:

  • Company website
  • Custom domain name and email
  • Prominent listing on Google My Business with good ratings
  • Consistent engagement with customers on Facebook
  • Online customer booking with instant confirmation with TradieCalendar

If you’re thinking between quoting and working on jobs, I can barely keep up with the paperwork. Don’t worry! I will show you 5 simple actions that can give you a turbo boost to your company digital presence. Best of all, they’re all free.

Google My Business — 15 mins

Source: Google

You’ve seen them before and wonder, how did these businesses get a listing on Google? They get shown up on searches or Google Maps. Did they pay for it through advertising — I’m not ready for it yet!

Thankfully it’s super easy to register for Google My Business. It not only lets you publish your contact details such as address and phone numbers. You can also upload photos of your jobs and customise opening hours. More importantly Google review is an invaluable tool for customers to provide testimonials, they also serve as a validation for potential clients as well.

You can have a very basic version of company website with easy template to work with. It’s a good choice if you have limited web experience, as there are only limited options for editing and design variations. But if you prefer a particular look and design to match the theme of your business, you’re much better to go through other options below.

For more advanced options, Google My Business has excellent inbuilt analytics that tells how often you’ve been searched and where your customers are coming from. For plumbing and electrical businesses, it provides wonderful insight on where you should target your sales and marketing effort.

Apple Maps — 5 mins

Do you know Apple has 40% of the smartphone market? That means those iPhone users will default to Apple Maps when they perform searches, so it’s not a bad idea to make sure you are registered.

Maps Connect is Apple’s version of Google My Business, although much more basic. It pretty much provides all the same functions as Google, but without the webpage and analytics.

Design your own web page (Wix, Weebly & WordPress) — 30 mins

If you want a design to impress, there is no better way then to design your own web page. It sounds daunting at first, but these days it is no harder than editing a PowerPoint presentation. There are many themes to choose from as well, note that some do come with a cost.

There are many web hosting platforms to choose from Wix, Weebly to WordPress. They all start with a free plan to ones with more advanced features such as custom domain name, shopping carts and even selling advertising. If you do decide to implement these features, they won’t break the bank starting from $12/month.

With the free plan you will get a web address that is a subdomain of the hosting platform, such as http://bobsmith.wixsite.com/bobsplumbing. But if you’re comfortable, it’s always better to have your own custom domain name such as http://bobsplumbing.com. This builds brand loyalty and reinforces the legitimacy as part of the customer purchasing decision.

For beginners Weebly is the best option out of the three mentioned above. It has has a great selection of business templates and with all things drag-and-drop, there is no requirement for any web development or programming knowledge at all. Weebly has a simple editor with limited options, so you don’t get overwhelmed in the beginning. You can click on the text and photos to replace with your own personal content.

Everybody knows there’s no free lunch — so when things are free there’s got to be a catch. With these free plans, not only you’re limited in features, the hosting platform also sell advertising and display their logos on it. But you can always start free, then progress to the pay version once you see value in the web page.

Source: Wix

Online customer booking at TradieCalendar — 5 mins

After you have listed yourself on Google and published a business web page, the next most important thing for your plumbing and electrical business is to ensure you’re contactable and be responsive when customers decide to hire you.

Traditionally you would do the email and phone tennis until you can agree on a mutual availability, but times have changed. It’s no longer competitive to rely on these methods to close the deal with customers, whether it’s a chance to quote or working on the job itself.

Imagine you’ve done all the hard work in listing your business, built a web page; may be even bought some advertising. The client has researched and decided you’re the best plumber in the business and wants to hire you. Unfortunately an equally attractive competitor provide online customer booking with instant confirmation. You have lost this business even after all the hard work.

60% of customers prefer online booking and 35% of those bookings are made after hours.

26% of customers would book jobs that are waiting to be fixed around the house if given access to online scheduling.

But not to worry, because you’re not going to do that. Innovative services like TradieCalendar.com now provides these services with a very simple set up that gets you up and running in less than a minute.

By simply signing up at Tradie Calendar, you get a URL customised to your business, such as https://tradiecalendar.com/booking/bobsplumbing.

Make sure you publish this booking address on your web page, business card and Facebook. This way your customers can find you easily and simply book your services through this link.

What differentiates TradieCalendar from other services is that it is built specifically for plumbers and electricians. It has inbuilt algorithms to minimise travel time between jobs. Customers can also reschedule and cancel online themselves, so you’re never double booked.

Furthermore, it has a full record of bookings so recurring appointments such as electrical tagging can be scheduled or prompted to the customers. These recurring appointments help you set up a steady revenue base, so your booking pipeline never runs dried.

Signing up to Tradie Calendar is super easy and takes less than a minute. The customer booking interface is very simple and intuitive, there is also a dedicated dashboard for businesses to manage their bookings. This undoubtedly is the best time return on investment for plumbers and electricians running a small business.

Utilising an online booking service with instant confirmation like this further solidify brand loyalty in the customer’s eyes.

Source: TradieCalendar

Social media (Facebook) — 15 mins

As the dominant social media platform on the market, Facebook has over 2.2 billion active users worldwide. It penetrates over 60% of the Australian and New Zealand population.

Based on the user’s interest, Facebook segments its users into multiple groups so they can be targeted specifically for advertising purposes. Therefore it is the most powerful platform for targeted marketing. For example, you can focus specifically on female 30–45 that has interests in home improvement in Melbourne.

Setting up a business page on Facebook is similar to Google My Business. You will need to have the followings ready: your company name, a profile photo and short description of your business. It’s a good idea to highlight your specialty here so you can stand out from the crowd.

Once it’s all set up. It’s a good idea to post photos regularly about your work so you can engage your customers. It not only shows you are active in the business, but also proud of your workmanship. It never hurts if you can get a nice selfie with a friendly customer too!

This Facebook business page serves as a great foundation for the future when you’re ready to buy Facebook ads.

Bonus — Not free, but still cheap

If you have completed all 5 steps above, here are two bonus tips to further boost your digital credibility with a professional business logo and custom domain name.

A professionally designed logo speaks volume to your brand and gets recognised instantly. To have this done by a designer like 99designs, it can cost hundreds of dollars. It may still not be in tune with what your business stands for.

Luckily there are many online services that automatically generates a whole range of logo based on your chosen template and keyword. You can try Canva and Wix, but sometimes there are simply too many options and it becomes overwhelming.

Logojoy has an intelligent logo generation engine, all you need to do is pick the style you like and the name of your company, then let it do the rest. You can still edit the slogan or change the colour, but the only work you need to do is pick a logo that you like.

What’s more, these logos have already been customised to your company name and theme, so you know what the final product looks like. It only costs $20.

Source: Logojoy

The power of owning your own domain name permeates all fabrics of your digital presence. From web address to your email, it extends to your business card. It speaks volume to the credibility of your business.

Having your own custom domain name such as bobsplumbing.com is definitely beyond entry level 101, but it’s not as difficult as it appears to be. You can buy readily available domain names from $2 to $30 per year. They can be purchased from domain name registrars such as GoDaddy and Namecheap.

It is a common misconception that you need to have your own local country Top Level Domain (TLD), this could be com.au for Australia or co.nz for New Zealand. Local country level domain names are generally more expensive and require more proof that you’re a local business before they can be issued.

The reality is that customers rarely values the local domain name, your contact information from the web page or online booking confirms whether you’re local instead.

Therefore it opens up an opportunity for businesses to register domain names that are more relatable to the brand, not to mention they’re much more readily available. This is preferable to adding words to the company name. For example, wouldn’t you prefer bobsplumbing.co or even bobsplumbing.io than bobsplumbingbrisbane.com.au.

Once you have purchased the domain name, you can register Weebly (or your chosen hosting platform) to your domain name services within GoDaddy or Namecheap to complete the process. I prefer Namecheap as most of the time it is indeed cheaper than the competitions.

Source: Namecheap

Conclusion

Having an online presence for your plumbing and electrical business is essential to stay competitive. It provides validation for customers that this is a trustworthy company. It forms an important part of the consumer’s purchasing decision.

To remain competitive you need to make sure you can be found by customers. Here are 5 free and simple ways to get you started.

Google My Business — Lists your business on Google searches and Google Maps.

Apple Maps — Ensure you’re shown up on all Apple devices with 40% of the phone market.

Design your own web page with Wix, Weebly or WordPress — As easy as drag-and-drop with many pre-made themes to choose from.

Provide online customer booking at TradieCalendar — Instant booking confirmation is the key to stand out from the competition, especially when 60% of customers prefer online booking.

Set yourself up on Facebook — Reach 2.2 billion active users with Facebook.

Bonus tips — Get your company logo professionally designed at Logojoy and a custom domain name at Namecheap

Are you ready to try out these tools and get discovered by customers automatically?


TradieCalendar

Tips, ideas & inspirations for home improvement and property maintenance service providers in the digital age.

Vincent

Written by

Vincent

Connecting customers and trades businesses @ TradieCalendar.com

TradieCalendar

Tips, ideas & inspirations for home improvement and property maintenance service providers in the digital age.

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