Advertising: What Do You Do?

[OrlandoFenceDeck]

I completely agree with what Alan wrote. We've actually hired a marketing guy to take care of this for us. And he has us ranking at the top of the search engines and is running FB ads for us. It's really help to blow up our business. We're growing much more quickly since we started working with him.

Mathew

[simplemaker]

Agree with the two previous posts. It's the cheaper way to make your brand known today, and besides, you can find a lot of leads if you maximize the use of the web.

[community contracting]

Never leave a customer that wont call you back. If they are not happy fix it. You did something wrong. I have never advertised a day in my life. still have about 800 business cards left from 21 years ago

[community contracting]

I have had a chain of referrals that go on for years as well as a customer that may call from 20 years ago. Hint....keep the same number for business and the same old sluff number for someone that wants to sell you something or your number .

[Jeff Arrow]

I've gotta agree with Alan on this one. Been in biz close to 100 year (family biz) and have solid amount of referrals. But everything is moving on to the internet more and more. Once I bit the bullet and paid a SEO specializing in home improvement websites the phone was ringing off the hook like it used too. I had tried everything else before that and it was costing more and more and working less and less.

[DWise540]

Google ads take a little while to learn but they're well worth it.

[ANR Insulation]

I'm a newer contractor so I still rely heavily on web presence. 75% of my customers come from organic ranking on google and 25% from adwords. Everytime I try some new form of advertising I always set up call tracking, so I can know exactly what landed me the job.

[Ambreen Sajjad]

I have chosen Houzz a few years ago, it was a nice experience, they have a professional people to deal with home improvement issues. But I liked one thing about them they perform all the tasks in-time. After employing their services, I have also chosen a similar company named Renovaten, their contractors in Florida are quite famous and efficient enough to cover the tasks in a cost-effective way. So, in terms of costs, the later one is a best option to consider according to my opinion. You can also click the link at the end

[dgbldr]

I have also chosen a similar company named Renovaten, their contractors in Florida are quite famous and efficient ...

I bet they are also smart and handsome and have very large feet. And they don't lose their dog.

[Chesapeake Shores Paving]

The best place to spend marketing/advertising dollars is Facebook ads and SEO. Those two, done well, have made me a lot of money.

Hi Alan! I am curious to know more about SEO. I think advertising is really shifting to methods like this one. Though can you share how you're doing it with SEO and what are the results so far? Are anchor texts like this one --> "paving company near me" also work? How? And do you still spend at least a small amount on traditional advertising practices?

Thank you in advance!

[newhavenpaving]

Who are the SEO guys that you work with? Can someone give recommendations please? Thank you in advance.

We provide driveway-paving services for driveways and parking lots. Newbie here. Hoping to make connections.]

[ncpavingpros]

Hey, we are a Parking lot paving company in Raleigh and we're trying to work with SEO companies here but I want to learn how to do SEO myself so I am trying out things. Any recommendations out there?

[Sarah Evans]

I work with afillante. Good company (for mass mailing). They recently had a good article http://affiliate-sms.com/blog/how-to...e-before/about ezine and rules . And it gets good information about how to double your sales. It may come in handy at the beginning (as free marketing).

[Alexander Todd]

Hey, we are a Parking lot paving company in Raleigh and we're trying to work with SEO companies here but I want to learn how to do SEO myself so I am trying out things. Any recommendations out there?

SEO has a lot of moving parts. The search algorithms are constantly being changed by the major search engines, but generally speaking its for the better. The goal of every search engine is to provide the consumer with the best possible match for his/her search term, so the higher on the page you want to rank, the more comprehensive the information on your page related to common search terms need to be.

One of the first steps that I recommend is to create/claim and verify your google business listing. This tells Google and the rest of the web that you are in fact a real, credible business that exists in a real place, which gives your website more credibility and thus bumps its rank towards to top.

Once you have done that, you can use Google Trends (https://trends.google.com/trends/?geo=US) to figure out what keywords and search terms people are using in your area to find businesses like yours. Once you have that information you should go back into your website and edit the copy/content of your page to include those keywords and other keywords that relate. Additionally, ensure that any photos or images on your website have descriptions that use specific terms related to your work, descriptive titles, and tags.

If you can handle that, then you will be well on your way to handling SEO on your own. It's a deep rabbit's hole, but its not unmanageable on your own. If you have more questions, please let me know.

[Jenni Fer]

I typically run a newspaper ad for about 39 weeks straight each year, during the spring/summer/fall, plus a few business card directories that they put out, too. I also have website through exporthub.cn. Running ads in the winter has been a waste of time. The newspaper ads have worked very well but they were taken over by a larger newspaper in Bangor, which now owns most of the newspapers in Northern Maine. This year they have increased their rates $200.00 per (13) weeks (this is all Black+White), which is how you pay for them at a time. What a huge jump! Never mind that when I run a color ad that they make it look really bad......

I hate to give up or cut back on my local ads that work, but that is a big increase, for me. I am thinking of maybe adding a website that is not connected to Houzz, so I can control things a little more my own way.

So, for those of you that do advertise, what do find that works? What hasn't worked?

By the way, I am not suggesting that you have to advertise, this is just how I am doing things.

Right said! but I will suggest the b2b platform is the best way to advertising and also getting business goals.