Online Marketing: Local Search Marketing for Electricians, Plumbers, and Contractors

Yesterday I spent a few hours with a good friend of mine, Dave, that is an electrician in the Salt Lake City Utah area.  He has been in this industry all of his career, but within the last few years he has started his own company and is doing contractor electrical work, along with all the small jobs needed at residential locations including remodels, etc.

We talked at length about the strategies he is currently using to gather new customers, of the which some techniques were awesome (and I won’t share them either).  He has a Blogger site he uses for his business, but really hasn’t done much online except post in some free local online classifieds for the area.  He is considering investing some money in getting his site ranked for electrician related local search terms here in Utah and was asking for my help.  One thing he said to me over and over was that all his contacts in construction, plumbing, etc. have said to him, “If you find it works, let me know cause I want to do it as well.”  So this post is for all you Electrician, Plumbers, Contractors, etc. that are sitting back and waiting to see if local search marketing works…I can already tell you the answer, YES it does!

Here is how it helps.  It puts your target customers in front of your website so they can see your phone number and call you to come fix their house.  Think about it for a minute before you spend money on another one of those ad buys that go on the back of the Pizza Hut mailer.  Does anyone look at the ads on the back, or even the front, of those mailers?  Stop slinging paint and spend your marketing budget on something that reaches you target customer.  If you are going to buy ad space in a mailer, pay the state to put your ad in new construction license packet or something. Also, stop paying $800-$1000 a month to be listed on dexonline.com when you can spend that money on a local search campaign and see a lot better results with much more traffic.

Here are some figures that will help.  According to statbrain.com dexonline gets an average of 11,617 visits a day, while Google gets an average of 100,233,752 visits a day.  Google captures over 70% of the search market, leaving the rest of the searches done accross thousands of other sites, dexonline.com being one of them.  My suggestion is to realocate some amount of your marketing budget toward growing your online search presence along with doing what you can as a business owner to take advantage of some free local search techniques, follow that link…it will help and you can thank Mat later.

Let me give you a real world example that I helped another friend out with in the last 30 days.  A few weeks before Christmas I went to eat with some friends at Salt City Burger, Co. in Sandy Utah.  Once I enterered the restaurant, a friend of mine greeted us and I found out he was now managing this restaurant and that another friend of mine, Mike, ownes the place.  The meal was really good and to help him out I have done a few little things for him to help with his search presence.  Before we went there, I actually tried to find them online so I could call and get a reservation and I couldn’t find a single thing about the restaurant online.  After working a little magic you can now find his webpage in spots 1 and 2 if you search Google for Salt City Burger:

and you will also find a number of reviews I did to help him just a bit, one of which I did on Yelp.  Do a search for salt city burger, sandy utah and you’ll see it in the #1 spot and it’s even in the top 5 right now for burger, sandy utah.

Now the questions is, “Well great, his website shows up now and so does a few review sites related to his restaurant, but does that mean new customers go to his place because of it”?  The answer is yes.  Just ask Mike and for added verification, last weekend while walking through Home Depot I bumped into a friend of mine, Sarah.  She told me that a few days before they were trying to find a new burger joint to eat at in Sandy and when searching Google she saw my Yelp review and that took them to Salt City Burger for dinner and they loved it…true story and a fact.

Now for all you Electrician, Plumbers, and Contractors, etc., do the free stuff I linked you to above and you’ll see that it works, then give us here at DSM a call and we’ll take it to a whole new level for you helping your business grow to new heights (yeah, that’s a shameless plug).  Just imagine the kind of growth your business could see if your website ranked #1 in Google anytime someone did a search for draper utah plumber, salt lake city utah plumber, sandy utah plumber, utah plumber, etc., and the list can go on and on because the number of cities and states you can target goes on and on.  I hope to talk to you soon and best of luck with your business as Dave told me this is a tough time of year for small business electrician, plumbers, contractors, etc.

6 thoughts on “Online Marketing: Local Search Marketing for Electricians, Plumbers, and Contractors

  1. Pingback: Garett Croft Stenson - things to look into online

  2. Vinyl Swing Sets says:

    I agree local search is a powerful tool, that list of local directories that mat gave is money. But getting your actual company site in the Google search is even better. Yellow pages and Dex are crap! They don’t know anything about online marketing. Stop paying them, they are driving your companies to the ground. Dream Systems Media will easily get your company all over the web so you can pull customers from different areas, Mat did it for my company here in AZ – Ruffhouse Play Systems. We sell luxury (top of the line) backyard swing sets and we are surviving in this economy only because of our online sales. If small businesses want to set themselves apart from their competition they have to get online, its the only marketing we do. Thanks Andrew! I too am another testimonial of everything you talked about.

  3. utah plumber says:

    There are many opportunities for you to promote your business on the internet and most of your competitors are not aware of them, check out the following:

    Your Website

    Your website is the keystone of all your marketing and internet marketing, it is the place where your other marketing and advertising leads to and you need to get clear in your mind as to exactly what the purpose of your website is. Is the main purpose of your websites to sell? Are you offering free information? etc.

  4. Sally Dillon says:

    Yes, it works! Here is what my client (a plumber who specializes in trenchless pipe replacement) told me on the phone just the other day, “Whatever you’re doing, keep it up. It’s working.”

  5. wwo says:

    yea i agree there.

    local search directories are great for marketing and that list is gold. but the actual value is not the traffic it brings, but the impact it has on local search from google.

    thanks for the awsome list!

  6. Fluid Studio says:

    I agree, local serch directories are a great way for local companies like, Northern Electric Company to get more hits on there site. . Whether it be a complete electrical re-model, basement re-model, adding a pool or a spa and many other services. Northern Electric Company is the one to go to. Highly trained electricians know how to get the job done.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *