Construction Podcast 65: What to put in your social media toolbox? – Transcription
Interviewer #1 (John Gordon): Hello and welcome to Pro Construction Guide series of prodcasts. This episode will provide recommendations on how to fill your social media toolbox with ideas on how to use free social media to boost your leads and to boost your sales. I’m John Gordon.
Interviewer #2: (David Dovell): And I’m David Dovell.
John Gordon: And thanks for joining us. Pro Construction Guide magazine regularly brings you a new podcast built exclusively for you, the professional contractor. It’s the only podcast for Pros hosted by pros with successful contractors as guests. You can listen to prodcast on proconstructionguide.com or you can download it from iTunes.
David Dovell: Just to remind you, if you’re not a subscriber to the Pro Construction Guide newsletter, you can go to the website, proconstructionguide.com, and sign up for free. All subscribers get a digital copy before the printed issue gets to the Home Depot stores, and you can read the content anytime and anywhere.
John Gordon: Now, don’t forget as we wrap up our conversation this morning, stay around stay with us at the very end because David and I reach into our proverbial virtual toolbox and pull out something that we think that is a good item or a good idea for Pros.
Now, let’s get on with the show. In this episode, we’re gonna be talking with a marketing and advertising expert who’s company specializes on working with remodelers and builders. Well that’s good news. Our guest today is Andy Bergren, a senior manager at Group Two Advertising. Andy was also a guest of one of our earlier podcasts, No. 38. If you want to be precise, he provided some awesome tips for putting a very low-cost marketing and advertising plan. Andy, welcome back to the prodcast. Can you give us a 30-second bio on Andy Bergren.
Guest ANDY BERGREN: Hey guys. First of all, I just wanna thank you for having me back for the show. It is so great to be here. A little bit about Group Two. Like you said, we’re the leading agency for home builders and remodelers, so what that means is we work with companies of all sizes all around the country with the goal of driving leads, and then we strategize marketing efforts. One of those strategies that works with remodelers and builders is to troubleshoot their marketing, and helping them to decide where they should be investing and why.
John Gordon: Good deal. Good deal. So why would you recommend that a remodeler or a construction firm needs to be using social media?
ANDY: The most important thing for you to realize is are you a skeptic about social media regarding whether it will or will not work? You need to change that mindset because I can tell you from experience that everyday it absolutely does work. Keep in mind that along with your website, it’s truly your digital storefront and essence. If you do social media correctly, the strategy can work to drive leads as well as increase your brand awareness, credibility and traffic to your website, and it can lead to more to word-of-mouth referrals.
Whether you like it or not, our culture is shifting dramatically to a more open and service-oriented environment. As scary as social media can be and as lost as some of you out there may be, this is going to be a necessary evil, especially if you wanna create a business and take it to the next level.
John Gordon: A necessary evil. Oh. Haha.
David Dovell: So Andy, I’ve been a remodeler for many years. What social media channel should I use in my business?
ANDY: That’s a great question. There’s so many social media bloggers out there, so which would you pick first knowong fully there’s so much time and creative develop on it. My advice is to really focus on one social media at a time, and once you capitalize and master one and are your using it as an effective resource, then move on to the next and try to work that way like a domino effect.
The reality is if you spread yourself too thin and you try to do them all, you’re gonna find that you’re gonna do each one in a mediocre way, which will lead you to inevitably mediocre results. So starting from the beginning, think what can help you optimize web pages and show the right content — like a target ad.
You’re asking yourself which one to start with. I would without a doubt recommend Facebook. About three-fourths of Americans are on it, so you’re audiences will definitely be there. Not to mention that their ad platform is the most advanced out there, so you can really can target your exact customers, and serve them an ad with Facebook’s new generation app business. You can actually collect leads directly from potential customers when they click on the app. Definitely start with Facebook.
John Gordon: Okay. Houzz is in our space and get’s a lot of buzz. What do you think about Houzz?
ANDY: Houzz is a great site for you to really showcase your work before a large, interested audience. People really want help executing their ideas, so showcasing your work there will help customers build interest and more importantly trust in you since they can see the quality of work that you do. That is extremely important because customers are doing the research well in advance before they reach out to you.
On Houzz, if your presentation on the pages is just bad, a bad representation of your company, then more likely they will gonna rule you out and move on into somebody else. To do the Houzz right, a simple but important rule is obviously to have professional photos organized in a manner that generates leads. If you have bad photos, you’ll be ignored.
The goal is to inspire visitors on your pages. To take that next step and to have them contact you or drive them to your website, which will help them to take a deeper dive into your business and really increase your chances of ultimately winning their business.
John Gordon: Talking about photos, quality photos, sort of begs the next question, which is content at large. You got a bunch of stuff, but don’t know what to put out there or don’t even know where to start. What sort of content should our Pros be posting to make they get the best views, the best number of views?
ANDY: We get this question all the time. When you post content, make sure it looks great and reads well. That concept seems so simple really, but still companies knowing that post terrible photos, out of focused or poorly cropped. You’ll be surprise on the level of the improvement of your post when you post pictures that are cropped correctly. That will take the people to the right landing pages and guide them in terms of actual content post.
Remember that the goal is to market yourself, and the best way to market to market yourself is to highlight what makes your firm different from your competition. We call this in the business as differentiators. So post content like befores and afters so you can caption about why this particular customer chose you and how that resulted in the best work being done. Post pictures of your happy clients next to the finished project. Make sure you post your work with a hashtag that is relevant to the job. What does this hashtag do? It opens up that post to anyone searching for the same hashtag, introducing new people to you.
One of the biggest things we say on social media is that in order to grow pages, you have to post content that makes you a resource for people so most people care. So what’s in it for you? What’s in it for them? So don’t just post content that sells yourself; 80% of your content should provide a resource to people and 20% should be about yourself. You just have to put yourself in the shoes of your clients, and create a plan on what they would like to see and then go from there.
David Dovell: What social media advertising and strategy should a Pro use to grow leads and drive sales?
ANDY: This is actually the most important topic right now. Is Facebook advertising general cause over the past years, there has been so many advancements for all businesses especially remodelers. What I mean is the opportunity to reach respective clients who paid out reach yields at the lowest cost you’ve ever been.
On top of that, all of your efforts or completely tackles you can measure your exact return investment. If you can change the plausible would how here. For an instance, Group Two will setup one or two ads on Facebook for our client, and those ads can be targeted to their exact buyer demographic, like men and women, age 35-55 who are living in the following zip code who have a household income of $100,000 that are interested home improvement. You can serve those people that qualify for your exact ad.
And when they click on the ad, it will generate a form that will be submitted to you directly. On top of that, you can add those people on your email marketing lists and grow your whole marketing database. It’s really invaluable. We’re doing this for some remodelers. For $10 a day in facebook, you’re generating to 4-5 leads.
The other thing is that’s really big right now that we recommend is something that is free, which is Facebook Live. It’s still pretty new for businesses. Look what happen to your Facebook account last year; it’s converted into essentially a TV channel when you think about it. It’s as simple as a Facebook app on your phone; then you go live and all of your followers will get a notification that you’re live-streaming. Live videos are getting three times the amount of engagement and reach from any other post that you do.
People are attracted to amateur-style videos. So don’t worry about being professional or having a script — just go live and start talking. See how much trouble you can get into. That’s what people wanna see. They wanna see the rawness of it. We have some remodelers who do live shows every month; some are just showing befores and afters, and giving tips and stuff. It’s a free tool — so use it.
John Gordon: Realtors figured this out for a long time, and I think that it’s like content marketing. As much as I have done my home improvement, I still look at some of these realtors’ videos because there’s a handful of tips they send. Andy, talk about content marketing for our Pros and how they may be able to leverage that to drive some sales.
ANDY: If you’re not in the marketing industry you probably wonder what is content marketing. The trend continues to grow due to the rising millennial generation. It is confusing if you’re not familiar with Facebook, but it is essentially tge practice of paid public relations — you’re paying to have any content you want to be shown to the people for a very low cost. You can pay $30-$40 to reach 5,000 people. It’s really great stuff, and we recommend doing that.
David Dovell: I’m a remodeler like many of our listeners. I’m not really that expert, so how can I easily measure my social media efforts and see if it’s working for me?
ANDY: If you’re committed to social media, the advertising should really work. If it does work, you can measure those results like and benchmark to make sure that what you’re doing is working. And if it’s working, you can keep improving. The easiest way to measure is a simple form, like setting up on one Google analytics.
Just type in a web browser Google analytics. It helps you measure what traffic is being driven into your website; it’s really advanced, but there’s also simple things that you should be looking at like those traffic channels. You can see if you’re doing it correctly, which top 10 pages driving traffic to your site.
It’s important to benchmark and see the return of your investment that you are getting.
The other thing that we recommend is the Facebook lead ad, and how you can directly measure those ads and free your internal investments in terms of what you’re putting in. And lastly, I would mention Facebook Insights. If you’re not familiar with that, just go to your Facebook business page. Touch the top button, Insights, and it will show you like your followers and all sorts of fun data. It helps you see the people that are following you, and helps you use that information to create ads and target those people further in the future.
John Gordon: So this is as usual a ton of awesome information, Andy. We’ve got a bunch of Pros who got a thousand things chasing them in any given second, so can you say three main points that you want us to take away from this conversation?
ANDY: I think the biggest point is social media continues to evolve, and it’s here whether you like it or not. As somebody who in the trenches of this stuff everyday, I can honestly tell you that it does work. So I highly recommend you invest in it if you’re looking to grow your leads and sales. It is important for you to know these strategies are free to implement. It’s just up to you to really figure out the best way for you to execute, whether that’s hiring a marketing company, hiring a in person in your remodeling business or just taking it up yourself. It’s a big decision to make, but if you’re looking to invest, your time and money into these strategies, you know some new concepts in Facebook lead generation advertising. Start with $10 a day and run it for 30-60 days. If you end up with 50 leads that turn into a client, that’s a pretty good return of your investment. And lastly, don’t ignore things like Facebook Live. It’s free, but have a plan, have an idea, and be familiar with other remodelers in your field. It’s really really engaging stuff, and people will be flocking to you.
John Gordon: That’s excellent. It’s simple, it’s inexpensive. It’s not super expensive to do and the payback is pretty respectable.
Andy, thanks a ton for taking the time and sharing your expertise. Folks, if you wanna learn a little more about Andy’s company and its services, visit grouptwo.com.
