Contractors, are you struggling to keep your full time employees busy during the slow months of your business? We have a few tips and tricks to help you spread your companies name out to the community to allow you to continue to receive income, hopefully, during those slow months. Throughout this blog, you should, hopefully find some tips to help you be successful in your business throughout the coming months and not worry about a slow season next year.
Up your marketing
During this time, it might be easier to plan a marketing guide for the next year or even 6 months to get you through the busy seasons coming up. Spending time working on your plan not only for social media but for SEO on your website or even write a few piece of content for your website is crucial for success in your busy months.
If you hire someone out for this, they can write blog posts for you, post to your social media, even answer you phone calls for you. Virtual Assistants can be very helpful to the success of your business. If you don’t want to take the time to vet a person, you can vet a business.
If you don’t want to deal with any of that mentioned above, hiring a marketing company might be a good use of time. One of my favorite phrases I love to use is “Hire out what you don’t want to do.” As business owners, we have a lot of tasks to juggle and some we don’t even want to touch. That’s the joy of being able to delegate out tasks as a business owner.
THIS IS NOT AN ACTUAL DISCOUNT!
This is just to show how easy it is to make a design on Canva to promote on Social Media
Contractors: Offer a discount
Labor discounts might help get you more work during your slow time, contractors. This helps keeps your technicians working during the winter months. Promoting these discounts as ads on Google or Facebook or even other possible platforms might help spread the word faster. They could also end up being more expensive depending on the time you choose to run the discount.
One of my favorite ways to attract new customers is to send out a newsletter promoting a discount. It is normally 10% off services for a referral to a friend or family member. They have to mention a special word or phrase to get the discount. It keeps your business at the top of their mind when someone they know needs your services.
Contractors: Connect with people
Find a networking group to join. Around us, Number 9, Master Networks, WNG, Networkinators, BNI and/or LBB. There are many choices and new groups keep coming each year. They are a great way to share your business. Create your brand. Some of these groups have requirements but others just want to connect and share. Use the links, I provided, to find a group that works best for you if you are located in or around the MO/IL area.
Another great way to connect with people is by choosing to take your current referral partners out for maybe a breakfast. lunch, or possibly a coffee. Ask about their life, their goals for their business and even goals for their personal life. When we connect, we learn more and build trust. You do business will people you trust, not ones you don’t.
If you are a contractor and are looking for someone to network for you, look no farther than Tracy Mueller. She is the owner of Networking4You and personally goes and figures out who to connect you to in our area. If you’d like to connect with her, here is her LinkedIn page. We love Tracy and she is a valuable person to know in the contracting business.
If you’d like our opinion, just reach out to us through our website.
Try a different avenue
When we look into what your job entails, could you offer a new service that one of your technicians has been wanting to try? Could they have the time over winter to hone in on that skill and teach others about it? Would it be worth your time and effort marketing it? It is never a bad idea to take a look and figure out if there is another way to bring in more revenue.
Looking else where, could you reach out into a different stream of clientele? As painters, our clientele are normally over the age of 35. We could reach out to local businesses, churches, and/or daycares to see if they want any painting done.
The worst thing they can say is no so it never hurts to reach out and ask. Maybe they know someone to connect you for the usage of your services.
