In Episode 3 of the Trades Secret Podcast hosts Devon Hayes and Amanda Joyce cover how you can build your trades business with consistent marketing strategies.
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Transcription:
Amanda Joyce:
Hi guys. I’m Amanda Joyce.
Devon Hayes:
And I’m Devin Hayes.
Amanda Joyce:
And today’s topic is why consistency is key in marketing.
Devon Hayes:
Welcome to Trade Secrets, where we demystify digital marketing to help contractors get the most bang for their marketing bucks.
Amanda Joyce:
This is for you if you’re a contractor looking for actionable marketing insights.
Devon Hayes:
Learn from home services industry experts to elevate your business through simplified marketing strategies.
Amanda Joyce:
Let’s dive into today’s trade secret. Brand consistency and consistency in your marketing builds trust with your target customers and search engines alike.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. So there’s two sides to this podcast today. There’s consistency in your brand, and then there’s consistency in the things that you’re doing for marketing, like do you send out a newsletter once a month? Do you post on Facebook once a week? Whatever your current strategy is, or if there’s no strategy or no plan, whatever it is you’re doing, what we’re talking about here today is the consistency in both of those dimensions of marketing and why it matters, why it’s important.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. I mean, we’ve all been to that website where you’re vetting out some local business in your community, and then you go check out their blog and you’re like, “Oh. They blogged a lot in 2018 and they haven’t posted anything since.” It throws you for a loop and it’s confusing. And at the end of the day, if you’re trying to build a consistent brand, that’s not what you want to do.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Exactly. You want to have the same logo across all platforms. Sometimes, you’ve got an old Yelp profile out there with an old logo or an old web address, but the same phone number as your current business. All of those pieces of mismatched information, as far as search engines are concerned, they actually hurt your trust score, which hurts your positioning on the overall search engine results pages within Google. So Google could see you as… And they’ve gotten better over the years with their AI, but ultimately, if you have a business name, maybe you’re Best Plumber Inc., but on some of your profiles, you just call yourself Best Plumber. And sometimes you capitalize Inc., And sometimes you don’t. And again, sometimes it’s not even there. Same thing with your address. Do you spell out Avenue? Do you abbreviate it? All of those inconsistencies in your profile actually have a negative impact on your ranking within Google.
So being consistent across the board, whatever it is you choose to do, is fine. Do you want to abbreviate? Do you want to spell it out? Just make sure it’s the same on every single social media profile, every citation on your website, and the make sure it’s in the footer of your website exactly how it appears on your Google business profile is probably the easiest way to update. If it were my contracting business, that’s what I would do. If I’m hearing this information for the first time, how do I appear on my Google business profile? Because that profile is so touchy these days. You don’t want to trigger a re-verification for yourself by updating that info or having your agency update that info.
So how do you appear on Google? And then just go through, make sure your website appears the same way, your Facebook contact info is the same way. For those of you who, I don’t know if you’ve invested in SEO, but a lot of times what we do is we set up citations for you and a citation is just getting your name in a directory online. Just make sure they all match.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah. Will you talk a little bit because I know that some listeners, they might hear that and say, “That sounds like a lot of work. Is Google really that picky?” Will you just explain a little bit of why that’s so important, basically making Google’s job easier?
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. So it used to be… And again, with AI, it’s changed, but it used to see you as two separate businesses. So if you are going by one name and one address, and then you have the same name but a different address, it can view it as a separate location or a completely separate business depending on what isn’t aligning and what isn’t consistent with where it first appears. So you’re just making Google use its crawl budget to figure out where the connection is, if there’s a connection, is this the same business, when you only have so much time for Google to serve results to a user who’s looking for you. So making it easier for them makes it better for you, pretty much. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of work. There’s tools out there. There’s different websites.
There’s one called BrightLocal, one called Whitespark, where you can submit what your address should be and can pay for as many as you want, 75 citations or something. And they will go through and they will get rid of duplicates, and they’ll make corrections. There’s another product out there that’s a bit more expensive per month called Yext, and it does the same thing. And that backend of that platform is great because you can make all the updates there and it pushes it out to everyone without an additional fee. So there’s ways to do it pretty easily without having to manually go through to 100 different sites and get your info updated.
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. So that’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about consistency in your NAP or name, address, phone number information. And same thing with your logo. Make sure your logo is the same, I guess, on all those platforms as well because usually, you can submit a logo with that. But Amanda, when it comes to consistency in actual tactical marketing, the things that are getting done every day or the things that you expect your marketing person, or maybe an admin is doing admin and marketing role, or maybe you have an agency, can you talk about the importance of the consistency in terms of how maybe a customer views them and maybe how a search engine views someone? How are they correlated?
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely. So your content marketing strategy, and I mean, your website as a whole, as we keep saying, consistency, we want to make sure that everything looks and feels the same, it’s coming from the same voice. And to what I was pointing out earlier about blogging, if you’re going to have a blog and you’re going to post to it, don’t post three blogs in April, and then leave it alone until Christmas, and suddenly say Merry Christmas. You want to make sure that you are posting consistently. That gives your visitors and the people that are following you something to kind of… They know what they’re going to expect from you. it’s having a consistent cadence with Google, so as they’re crawling your website, they’re consistently having more and more content that they can crawl, that they can then show in the search engine’s results pages. So it’s really important to have that consistency with your marketing.
It also keeps you from wanting to pull your hair out internally. You want to sit down as a team and say, “What’s our marketing going to look like for the next quarter, the next year?” And have that consistency. You don’t want an admin that one month cares about Facebook and the next month doesn’t. So on that same note, while you’re looking at that long-term consistent plan, this is a great time of your year to be talking about this. Also say, “If we’re going to post a Facebook once a week, let’s make sure we’re doing it consistently.” That’s certainly not a huge undertaking to do that once a week, but you want to think about what it is you’re going to be sharing, if it’s going to be a little-known tip, or if it’s going to be some kind of behind-the-scenes content. Just make sure you’re doing that regularly. It’ll build that trust with your consumer base and it’ll build that trust and help your rankings with Google as well. I don’t know if that was
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. And then it has an impact on your… Yeah. And so as far as Google’s concerned, the freshness of your content on your website, it plays a role in your positioning, how often you’re updating content on your site. That’s important. But when we think of the buyer journey or your buyer’s experience with you or past customers, you want to continue to nurture that relationship. Long after their roof is built or their pipe is fixed or their landscaping’s done, you want them to remember you. So having that, they almost expect to see, like if it’s a newsletter once a month, they’re like, “Oh, yeah.” They may not open it. They may not read it. They may not click through. Who cares? The point is that they’re like, it’s that top-of-mind awareness. You’re just saying, “Oh, hey. We’re here. Oh, hey. We’re here.”
Amanda Joyce:
“We’re still here.” Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
“Oh, hey. Remember us,” without being in their face. And so that when they do get a roof leak or a pipe leak, or they want to put a new
Amanda Joyce:
needs it. Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
… in the backyard. Absolutely. Then they remember you. You’re right there. Maybe your newsletter hits. You don’t want to deliver a service, and then disappear completely because then you’re leaving it wide open for your competitors-
Amanda Joyce:
It’s a huge missed opportunity.
Devon Hayes:
… to come in and swoop in and take-
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely.
Devon Hayes:
And then be there the first call because they got a postcard or they got a newsletter, or they saw Facebook post or a video, whatever it is. And so yeah. So just consistently posting or sending a newsletter, these things, they also help your customer journey too. So that’s where there’s a healthy mix. We have a lot of roofing contractors as clients at Elevation Marketing, and we know good and well that not a lot of people are going to engage with and share some of the blog content for a roofing client. But if you think of your brand and think of your buyer, whether they’re at the top of the funnel or at the bottom, top of the funnel, they’re thinking about a new roof, maybe looking at new roof colors, and every time they’re searching the topic, your company name comes up over and over and over. You’re building trust every time with that content. So consistently posting gives you more topics, gives you a better reach on hitting those buyers that are maybe at the top of the funnel.
And then your content, you can tailor that down to emergency roof leak. You have that page on your website that is catered specifically to that buyer in that moment who needs you right then. So again, you have the trust because you’ve consistently been part of their journey all along. Maybe you’re pinging them on email. Maybe you have, I don’t know, a direct mail or you do every quarter, whatever it might be. It’s just keeping them aware of you, not forgetting about your customers once they’ve left your doorstep. And that’s part of branding and that brand consistency and customer relationship nurturing.
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely.
Devon Hayes:
Let’s see here. And let’s see, I was trying to look at some of these metrics because trying to drive this point home, it’s not… This isn’t really a sexy topic. There’s no great takeaways other than understanding why the consistency is important for the brand, why it’s important for search engines, why it’s important for your customers. And I think these things are all… You guys know this. You guys know you should be doing this. A lot of contractors… There was a huge space for business coaching in this world, and you probably heard the same thing over and over again. And we just wanted to give a little bit of background as to why it matters, why it’s important, and how it can have a long-term impact on your brand, your customers, and your digital visibility.
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely. And going back to the tactical stuff we were talking about in the beginning, that’s one of the very first things we do anytime we take on a new SEO client. Obviously we create a long-term marketing plan, and that’s consistent through our entire partnership with them. But before we do anything, we go out and make sure that they look the same across the web, that their brand colors look the same on their website as they look on their social headers, and that their address is the same across the web. That’s just an easy win that you can have as a business owner.
Even if you’re not paying anyone to do your marketing right now and you don’t… Where do I even start to make a tiny dent in my search rankings and in my customer experience and the customer experience I’m offering people on the web? It’s just an easy tactical win that you could take away today. And whether it’s you or your admin or your spouse that’s managing it, they could go start chipping away at this and make sure that you’re being that consistent brand voice that people can rely on in your market. And hopefully, when the time comes and they’re ready to make that big buy, that big decision, you’re going to be the natural answer to their problems.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Absolutely. So I mean, today’s takeaway is brand consistency for both your customers and in your marketing tactics. They build trust, and trust is how you’re going to get those conversions and how you’re going to grow your business. So consistency is key. Do it across the board. Boom.
Amanda Joyce:
Badaboom badabing.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Thank you so much for listening. Questions, comments, suggestions, we’re here for it all. We love your feedback, so let us know and we’ll see you guys next time. Thank you.
Amanda Joyce:
Thanks guys. That was today’s trade secret. Thanks for listening.
Devon Hayes:
Did you find this helpful? We’re just getting started.
Amanda Joyce:
Subscribe and don’t miss our next reveal.
Devon Hayes:
Until next time.
