Advertising for trade businesses

The advertising question for a trade business is rarely how to get more enquiries. It is how to get better enquiries, and how to find people to do the work.

Redirect the budget

When you are booked out for four months, advertising for more of the same work is counterproductive. It generates enquiries you decline, which annoys the enquirer and wastes your office time.

Two better uses of the same money.

Recruitment. A skilled installer is worth more than a customer. Advertising for staff uses the same channels, the same photographs and the same brand work, and almost nobody in the trade does it properly.

Selection. Advertise for the work you want: the higher-margin jobs, the contract customers, the specialisms. Being fully booked is the strongest position from which to change your customer mix.

The local basics, in order

The first two carry most of the weight. In local trades, map results and reviews decide the majority of first contacts, and both are largely free.

Publish a price indication

The most common objection is that jobs vary too much. That is true and beside the point.

A page listing "bathroom refit from £11,500, typical range £14,000 to £22,000, based on 40 projects" does three things: it stops the enquiries from people expecting £4,000, it signals confidence, and it is the single most-read page on most trade websites.

Response time is the competitive advantage

In most local markets, the firm that answers first wins. Enquiries that wait two days are frequently lost to whoever replied in an hour.

Measure it. Send a test enquiry to your own firm from a private address on a Friday afternoon and see what happens.

What consistently wastes money

Printed advertisements in free local papers with no offer and no phone number. Sponsorship of things your customers do not attend. A website redesign that does not change the phone number's visibility. Directory listings sold by telephone at £80 a month.

Photography of your own work

A folder of before-and-after photographs is the most valuable marketing asset a trade business can build, and it costs nothing but the discipline of taking pictures before starting and after finishing.