A solid digital marketing strategy should be multi-faceted to help bring traffic to your website, raise brand awareness, and generate quality sales leads.  When it comes to digital marketing, start with your website.  Your website needs to be mobile friendly, easy to navigate, and well optimized to attract search traffic for your search terms.  Once you have your website built and optimized, you can supplement your marketing efforts with social media.

Social media marketing is an important part of digital marketing as social media is a great place to build brand awareness and trust, and attract new potential customers.  Keep in mind that it may be easier to generate leads through social media channels for some industries than others.  Restoration contractors may not be able to generate quality leads through social media as easy as a clothing company that can regularly post pictures of their products and even offer promotions and giveaways through social media.

So the question is, can social media help generate quality restoration leads for contractors?  In this guide, we will explore the different social media platforms, social media marketing tactics, and mistakes to avoid to help contractors generate leads from social media.

Choosing Social Media Platforms

There are a handful of social media platforms that are heavily used by consumers and businesses.  Each platform has its own character and way of posting and sharing.  Contractors have to decide which social media platforms will best benefit their business.

When deciding which social media platforms to target, consider the following questions:

• Is your business B2C, B2B, or both? For restoration contractors, the answer is both as professionals provide restoration for both homes and businesses.
• Who is your target audience? Restoration contractors generally serve homeowners and business owners which would make their target audience mainly adults who own a home or business.
• What is your overall goal? While the main goal of all digital marketing efforts is to generate leads, the goal of social media marketing is to build brand awareness and trust among potential customers who can then become leads.

B2B and B2C

It is important for contractors to remember that neither individuals nor businesses go on social media looking to make a purchase.  The best use of social media for contractors is to generate leads by building interest in your brand and services.  Contractors can accomplish this by posting blogs, pictures of previous restoration jobs, and case studies.

Target Audience

As previously mentioned, the general target audience for restoration contractors is homeowners and business owners.  However, you need to go a little deeper to further define your target audience.

• What is the average age of your target audience?
• What is their average income?
• What challenges do they face as homeowners and business owners?
• Where do they get their information?

Asking these questions about your target audience will help you narrow your focus and decide which social media platform is best.

Social Media Marketing Goal

As mentioned above, the goal for contractors is to generate more leads with their social media marketing.  Keep in mind that people go on social media to socialize, they are usually not there to make a decision or a purchase.  What can help contractors build brand awareness and trust  on social media is:
– share valuable information in the form of posts and infographics
– participate discussions surrounding your industry
– post pictures of previous jobs
– share success stories
– support local community events and fundraisers.

Choosing Social Media Platforms

There are 5 main social media platforms used by businesses to create brand awareness and generate leads.  These platforms include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and LinkedIn.

It is recommended for businesses to choose no more than 2 or 3 social media platforms to build a presence.  Social media marketing can be a time-consuming process and many contractors already have limited time to devote to social media.  Choosing the 2 or 3 best platforms for your business will allow you to do more work to build a presence and reach new audiences on each one instead of spreading the work thin over all 5 platforms and getting very little if anything from your investment.

Here is what you need to know about each social media platform:

• Facebook: Facebook has well over 2 billion monthly users and the main demographic is men and women ages 25 to 55. Around 80 percent of people within this demographic and age group have a Facebook profile.  Facebook is also where a lot of users get information as news and informational outlets have a major presence.  All contractors should have a presence on Facebook because the main demographic and age group includes homeowners and business owners.  Facebook also allows you to create ads that can specifically target your audience.
• Twitter: Twitter has become a hub for news and information. It has less users than Facebook and its main demographic is younger as it includes men and women between the ages of 18 and 29.  There are two main advantages for businesses on Twitter: it is an excellent customer service platform and many users follow small businesses to get updates about products and services.  For restoration companies, it is a toss up whether to build a presence on Twitter.  If you value providing excellent customer service, you should consider Twitter because this platform allows you to instantly respond to customers who have an issue.
• Instagram: Instagram is a highly visual platform with a relatively young demographic between the ages of 18 and 35. Instagram users expect impressive images which works well for businesses that offer products with a nice visual appeal.  This may not be the best platform for restoration companies as there are no products to post pictures of and pictures of restoration jobs will likely not appeal to most users.
• Pinterest: Like Instagram, Pinterest is also a visual platform and its main demographic is mostly women between the ages of 18 and 45. The industries that do the best on Pinterest are retail, health and wellness, travel and hospitality, fashion, beauty, and home and garden.  Home projects like remodeling, gardening, and landscaping are popular points of interest on Pinterest, but this is not quite the same as home restoration.  Once again, this may not be a good platform for a restoration company.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn is mainly a B2B networking platform with a demographic that includes men and women aged 25 to 45. Restoration contractors must have a presence on LinkedIn to help generate to more B2B leads.  What makes LinkedIn unique from other social media platforms is that 4 out of 5 LinkedIn members help make decisions for their businesses and LinkedIn’s users on average have twice the buying power of the audiences found on other platforms.  Building a strong presence on LinkedIn will help generate more B2B restoration leads.

Social Media Marketing Strategies for Restoration Contractors

As we have established, Facebook and LinkedIn are the best social media platforms for contractors to generate restoration leads.  If your business has the time and resources, you can also consider having a presence on Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.  Once you have decided which platforms to work with, it is time to implement effective social media marketing strategies to build brand awareness and generate leads:

• Create business profiles: Make sure your business profiles on all platforms are completely filled out with updated information including contact info such as phone number and address, business hours, short business bio, current pictures, and other information that potential customers will find useful. People are much less likely to trust your business if you have an incomplete company profile.
• Join related groups: Both LinkedIn and Facebook are full of groups of all types of interests that individuals and businesses can join. On both platforms, join groups related to home restoration, home maintenance, and other similar topics.  This will allow you to connect to more potential customers and businesses and participate in the discussion surrounding your industry.
• Share valuable content: Like in every aspect of digital marketing, it is vital to have good, quality content. Restoration contractors can share blogs and infographics related to home restoration and home improvement and share pictures that show the results of their services.  Sharing a good blog about a topic being discussed in one of your groups will build trust in your brand and drive traffic to your website.  Remember, your goal is to educate your audience on social media and get them to your website.
• Start ad campaigns: Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter allow users to create detailed ad campaigns to target specific demographics. Through these campaigns, you can increase the reach of your posts to help build a bigger audience.

Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

Marketing on social media can take time, especially for a restoration contractor.  Allow time for your audience to get to know your business, like your business, and trust your business.  The social media strategy tips discussed above will help you accomplish this as sharing valuable information regularly will get people to know and like your business and eventually trust you as an authority in your industry.

There are several common mistakes that businesses make on social media that can prevent you from building an audience and make it difficult to generate any leads.  Make sure you avoid these common social media mistakes:

• Content without purpose: Content is the most important part of your social media strategy because it is through your content that people get to know your business. Understand your audience and provide them with content that will be of value and interest to them.  Providing valuable content consistently will endear your audience and establish you as an expert in your field.  Posting content with no connection or interest to your audience will not produce any results.
• Lack of consistency: Consistent posting is important for getting and retaining the attention of your audience. Remember, it takes time for audiences to get to know your business on social media.  They will get to know your business much faster if they see a post from you each day on their feeds.  Consider making an editorial calendar to keep your content creation and social media posting consistent.
• Lack of strategy: Knowing and understanding your audience is very important for developing an effective strategy on social media. Facebook and other platforms have in depth analytics tools that can give you a lot of data on your target audience.  All of the content you post should be created with your target audience in mind.
• Too focused on your business: Social media is a place for discussions, conversations, and the exchange of ideas. Don’t fall into the trap of only posting content about your business.  Join the conversations within your industry and share content that contributes to the community.  Being an active participant in social media communities and contributing content that benefits others will help build trust.
• Too focused on sales: Remember, social media is not the place to focus on selling your services. Your goal is to build trust and relationships with potential customers so that they will turn to your company when they need home restoration.  Once a potential customer reaches out to you interested in your services, then they become a lead and you can focus on the sales aspect.

Social Media Marketing and Lead Generation for Contractors

Social media marketing provides opportunities for restoration contractors to increase brand awareness, and build their reputation and trust within their target audience which can help generate more leads.  Remember that social media is “social,” meaning your goal is to make connections with potential customers, including consumers and businesses, so that they will turn to you when they need your services.

Social media is where you make your connections, your website is where you sell.  The majority of leads that restoration contractors receive come from online searches and having an optimized website that ranks well in the search engine results pages (SERPs).  Focus on optimizing your website first to ensure that it is user friendly and has a strong presence in the SERPs.  Social media can supplement your website marketing but will not have as high of a return.  However, the trust and awareness that social media marketing builds can definitely benefit your business.

If your business is having trouble generating good leads within your service area despite your best efforts, you can work with a lead generation company like RestorationMaster.  We help generate exclusive leads for restoration contractors within your service area including water damage leads and fire damage leads.

Give RestorationMaster a call at (888) 846-1992 for more about our lead generation services for restoration contractors.