What marketing is right for tradies and builders to do post COVID-19?

This isn’t an easy question, is it? 

The world’s changed. Consumer confidence is low or all over the place. Business confidence is low or all over the place, whole sectors have been put on a hold, other sectors fine and dandy.

In the construction and trades industries, which of course is the one we operate in, specific parts of the industry are suffering quite badly, and other bits are sailing on fine and seem unaffected.

Residential builders for example, took a big hit – lots of projects got canceled, postponed or on hold. In the last week or so, my customers are telling me they’ve been getting new enquiries again.

My Byron builder has had two enquiries in the last seven days, three of my Sydney builders have had new enquiries bubbled up from old enquiries coming back to life or new people going, “Hey, I’ve got something I want to do” in the last week – green shoots they call that.

It’s starting to feel better, even for the builders who we initially thought were going to be the hardest hit. 

It’s probably not a coincidence that those new opportunities came after the lockdown restrictions were eased and everyone was starting to feel better.

Maintenance trades are still busy. Those involved in larger construction projects are still busy because those projects started eight months or a year ago. But they’re all worried about what’s going to happen in a few months when the projects that didn’t start in this three-month period would be coming to their stage. It’s a changed market, but it’s not a dead market, though. 

So how does this affect what marketing you should do?

Well there’s a few things. 

You should do more. 

You should be out there marketing hard to get your share. 

You should be looking at which markets you serve and try to steer yourself towards the ones that are still okay. 

I wouldn’t be trying to sell anything to shops right now and probably not for the shop fit-outs. Defitting might be a thing. Think like that.

You should be doing more. You should be using the same things and you should be saying different things.

It’s hard to avoid mentioning the current situation in your marketing because no one’s really interested in what you used to say – COVID is top of mind, but everyone else is saying that sh*t to. The same old stuff and the same old messages – “COVID-19…” is boring. People just scroll past. 

It happened to me. I’m still advertising a workshop called ‘How To Survive And Thrive In COVID-19‘. I thought it would be quite original and clever with my name, but, every other person’s workshop is also called the same bloody thing.

It’s a recorded video. It’s good advice I’ve given but it’s old news and it’s a bit boring.

I’m going to have to start marketing a different message very soon.

Your messages will also feel boring if you say the same sh*t everyone else is saying (I’m going to change mine soon). 

So in your marketing, you should be saying stuff that’s relevant in the current climate but isn’t just the same as what everyone else is saying.

In marketing they call this the message – what you say. 

Where To Place Your Marketing

I also want to talk about how you send a message because you’ve got many options. 

• • You’ve got Facebook Ads, newspaper Ads, Instagram Ads, posts on your Facebook page, posts on your Instagram wall.
  • You’ve got your signage, and phoning people up and I call that relationship marketing.
  • You’ve got referral marketing which is talking to customers.
  • You’ve got your website.
  • You’ve got SEO and AdWords and ways to get people to your website.

Marketing is a complicated thing. There are lots of things you can do.

For my clients, I’ve got this video training program. You might have heard of it and I mentioned it before. 

They watch the videos and make decisions about what they want to do and what marketing they could and should be doing, which depends on which market they service and what they do.

They talk to me, we make decisions about what messages we send and how we send them and I kick their asses to make them keep doing it so they build momentum and grow their businesses.

You should do that. 

You should watch those videos. I’ve helpfully made them available to you cheaply so you can watch them.

You can watch the videos and make decisions because you already know what to do and what works for you. 

You should do more of it and crack on. So the way you do your marketing stays the same. You should do more but the things you say need to be a bit different. You need to acknowledge the current situation.

So put yourself in the minds of your customers. 

• • What are they thinking about?
  • What are they worrying about?
  • What do they want, given what’s going on?
  • Do they want a nicer house?
  • Do they want a nicer house, but they can’t afford a big expensive renovation, and they want a lesser cost improvement to their house?
  • Do they want to build a garden?
  • Do they want to build a deck because they’re spending more time on it and it’s become apparent that it’s not as nice as they like?
  • Do they want confidence that you won’t be irresponsible trades businesses and have their customers or their tenants ringing them up to complain that you breathed on them or coughed on them?
  • Do they want help to make sure that projects go well and their customers are happy?

Put yourself in their mind. It’s many and varied.

For now I’m going to leave you there and say put yourself in the minds of your customers or the customers you want to attract.

Think about what they want and it’s rarely cheaper. That was a hint. 

In this time and the time that’s coming of uncertain consumer and business confidence, marketing is what’s going to separate the ones who succeed from the ones who struggle. 

Most of your competitors aren’t doing it.

Most trades businesses don’t do it well or don’t really do it at all.

So you’re going to succeed and get a bigger share of your market by doing it more and better than your local competition. All my clients are doing it. They are getting kicked to do it, and we’re all doing okay.

In summary, what you should be doing? 

You should be doing more marketing. You should be doing the same things but saying different things.

One way for me to help you of course, is for me to your business coach to help you decide what to do. I’m going to kick your ass to make sure you do it. If you’re interested in that, book a 10-minute chat and we’ll initiate the process.

You don’t commit yourself until you commit yourself but there’s a process we can start. Another thing you could consider is the marketing course, it’s only $50 a month. That’s about £30 in the UK. 

You do it for as long as you want until you’ve watched the videos, filled out the worksheets, made your decisions and got yourself going. 

Those are your choices.