Read on for four surefire strategies to move your building business forward this year.
1. Fire up your existing customers
The easiest and most cost-effective way to increase sales is to sell more services to your existing customers.
After you complete a job, it’s a good idea to collect your customers’ email address and phone number. That way, you can keep in touch with them and be top of mind the time they (or their friend) needs a job done.
There are a ton of free marketing tools that simplify sending emails to your customers in bulk, so you can stay in-touch with just a couple clicks. MailChimp is one of the most popular, and allows you to maintain a 2,000-strong client list at no cost.
2. Tighten up your professional partnerships
What’s the easiest way to gain access to a lot of potential customers? Find someone who already serves them and ask them to connect you.
Although collecting details yourself is a proven strategy to build your client base one email at a time, cooperating with someone who has access to your target audience without being a competitor of yours will boost your efforts.
For your building business, basically anyone with access to homeowners or property managers is a potential partner. You could connect with other tradesmen, such as tilers or electricians, but you should ask basically anyone who does good work and is willing to cross-promote your business.
Getting other businesses to share their details with you won’t be for free though. Offering them a percentage of the profits gained from their customer base in order to convince your future partner is an effective strategy.
Alternatively, you can also offer them access to promote to your customer base if it makes sense for your partners.
3. Cool down your costs
There’s one reliable way to reduce costs for your building business — by increasing efficiency.
Investing in a more fuel-efficient van, for example, could make your business more profitable in the long-term by reducing the cost of travelling to and from each worksite. In just a few years, you could save thousands of pounds spent on petrol (meaning there’s more in your pocket).
Reducing your operating costs is something you should regularly re-evaluate. Start with your biggest expenses and then work down to the last nail. Try and find ways to save a few pence here and there, and then repeat. It adds up fast.
Here’s a few ideas to get you going:
- Reducing your phone costs
- Find the best prices for tools online
- Get paperless billing software
- Offer a loyalty program to keep your clients coming back
4. Fix-up the flow of your leads pipeline
No matter how good a builder you are, people won’t buy your services unless they know to contact you.
These days, 83% of your customers look for local businesses using online search engines.
If your business is not showing up on Google’s top pages when searching for the services you offer, then your competitors will get the call (and the job).
Your first step should is to get your business on the map — the Google Map, that is!
In sum, to stand out, you need to know your customers and provide them not only with great service, but with valuable information and tips. Planning ahead, with smart partnerships and innovative strategies, can make a small business owner succeed in a crowded, competitive market.