You’ve got the training, the qualifications and experience. Now, you’ve got everything you need, but to get a business going, you need the jobs coming in. You need to establish your business in your area, and the place to start is: Marketing.
The Lead to Your Business: Marketing
Yep, marketing!
Your electrical business is providing a service, and you have to work to sell that service. Fortunately, electricians are always in high demand, but that also comes with its own challenges. Generating electrician leads isn’t just about finding the customers but making sure they’re the right customers for your business.
‘Lead generation’ is part of the marketing process and the main way your business will connect to potential customers looking for the service you offer.
Difference between an Inquiry and an Electrician Lead
This can be a bit of a tricky divide, but simply put, an inquiry is someone looking for a solution. How is that different from a lead? Job leads are people who want your business to provide a solution.
Still confused?
Here’s an example: an inquiry might sound like: ‘So, what kind of work do you do?’ or ‘Does your business cover this?’ Inquiries are the raw resource, a bit like a hunk of unrefined metal, useful and fresh, but still needs work. Not all inquiries are going to be what turns into a job for your business. If you want the good metal, it needs to be refined.
While inquiries are general and surface-level, an electrician lead goes further. Job leads are the specific stuff.
For example, a customer inquires if your business handles security system installation and what kind. Your business responds that yes, you do residential and/or commercial installations. This turns into an electrician lead when the customer makes it clear that they are going to need a business to do this for them and makes it an opportunity for you to contact them about their job.
Strategies to Gain Electrician Leads
Whether you’ve decided to start your own electrician business or you’re an established business looking to grow, electrician lead generation is how you find jobs. Jobs mean more money, an established customer base and a further spread of your reputation.
So, what strategy to use? Where to start? We’ll cover some marketing bases to get you started on the right foot in generating electrician leads.
Lead Generation Websites
Lead generation websites connect your business to potential customers in your local area by providing your contact details to those looking for your specific services. Some offer a suite of marketing services to cover everything from online ads to direct lead generation.
These kinds of websites charge for their services. The type of charge depends on the website; some charge a cost-per-lead model, while others charge for all-in-one packages per month. Whichever model you choose at first will be a big step in your marketing, and new businesses will find it can be a large chunk of their budget at first.
While it is vital to kickstart a new business with quality electrician leads, some of these services will offer diminishing returns. It’s always a good idea to review where your money is going and if it can be spent better elsewhere.
Google Business
Setting up a Google profile should be one of the first steps for your new business. By setting up a Google Business account, you’ll have access to the Google Business dashboard and can start establishing your presence online. Our tip is to start from the most important parts and work down, like establishing where your electrician business is located and your contact info. This will benefit your electrician lead generation by instantly connecting your business with locals, and it’s free to sign up and use right away.
Have a Business Website
Google Business is the first step of your online presence. When potential customers find your Google Business profile and info, make the most of it by having something further for them to find information about what your business offers. A good website with your services, area, contact details and about section means fewer general inquiries and more electrician leads.
Having a solid website works twofold. When you set up a website for your business, search engines will put it directly in search results. Google and similar search engines are useful because they operate by making sure searchers get the best info for their inquiries. It’s in their interest to give the best results possible so people trust them, so they set up a search algorithm to make this work.
So, how can your business take advantage of this and stay competitive?
SEO and How to Use it.
No-one really knows exactly how the algorithm decides what pops up on page one of Google, but what we do know are ways to push your website up and tailor it for potential customers.
This is called Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO. Basically, what your business needs to do is make sure Google knows what your website is about and that it is what should be in the search results. Google itself can help you funnel more electrician leads directly to your website.
So, say you’re an emergency electrician business located in Brisbane. If you’ve put those words on your website, you’ve already helped the algorithm. Do you have a services section? Put in the keywords ‘emergency’, ‘Brisbane’, ‘electrician’, and you can go into more detail about what kinds of work you’ve done or suburbs your business services.
You’re telling Google: this is what my business does, so if people are looking, you know my website matches. And make sure to update your website from time to time! Post updates frequently asked questions, or news about your services: this can go a long way in getting a robust source of electrician leads. Keeping it fresh nudges the search engine and makes sure it knows you’re active and useful to their searches.
Online Rep and Google Reviews
This point ties into the above about your business’s SEO and using your online presence to its full potential in generating electrician leads. By putting the effort in to tend a robust online presence, you will not only increase the chances of your business being found by local searchers, but that those searchers will see your business as trustworthy.
Through an online rep, your business will attract more electrician leads.
Google reviews will be attached to your business profile. Customers will be able to rate your business and leave reviews for others to see. Even negative reviews will help your business, as it’s an opportunity to connect with past customers and show potential ones that your business is honest and responsive.
Customer Referrals
Word-of-mouth is a tried and true method of getting those electrician job leads. It’s one of the oldest in the book. People trust their friends and family, and recommendations from others are one of the most solid electrician leads you can get. Sure, they’re not going to be the consistent source of your leads, but you can encourage satisfied customers in that direction.
Emails, social media posts, website updates: through these, you can encourage customer referrals with deals and discounts for your loyal clients who refer friends and family. You can also offer these personally to previous customers if a new lead mentions their recommendation. You get more electrician job leads for your business, and your already happy customers are happier. It’s a win-win!
Chasing Those Leads with a Management System
Getting the leads is one thing. Now, your business needs to make the most of them! There will be many leads that don’t go anywhere, and it could be for a variety of reasons: budget, time, being snapped up by the competition, and even slow response. There will be electrician leads that are promising but aren’t a good fit for your business at the time. So how can you identify and chase down the good electrician leads and manage them? As with anything, getting the hang of it will take time, but there are tools out there that can help you manage your leads to make the process more efficient and streamlined.
The more effective your system, the more time you have for your services and business growth.
Qualified Lead
We’ve already covered the difference between general inquiries and leads, so what does qualified mean for your electrician job leads, and why is it important to make the distinction?
As covered above, while you’ll get many electrician leads as your business continues to grow, not all of them will translate into a job. It might seem impossible to decide which is which, and it can lead to stress in managing your electrician job leads. This is where the distinction comes in.
A ‘qualified’ lead is an electrician lead that meets certain requirements. Like age group, location, detail of request, previous customer, etc. Things that say, ‘Hey, this is a solid electrician lead. It’s worth the time to follow it.’
Another example of an inquiry to a qualified electrician lead could be getting a general inquiry through your business website about general quotes. It then turns into a lead when the customer responds to you with their specific needs and wants an electrical quote for their particular job. This example might become a ‘qualified lead’ when you check the customer information and find they’ve hired you before, or they’ve been referred by a friend.
Depending on your workload, it might not be an electrician job lead to follow, but it’s your decision in the end to choose which leads seem most promising. Qualified leads help you make that decision.
Lead Management Tools
Marketing and sales teams cut their teeth on learning how to sift inquiries from leads and chase leads to successful jobs. That means a lot of them have done the work for you and developed lead management tools
These tools can help you keep track of which customers fit your previous history of successful jobs and what areas have the greatest success in coming up with qualified leads. This is not to say that customers who don’t fit these demographics can’t be helpful, but a sound management system means you’ll spend less time sorting through which leads to pursue.
Conversion Rates
A conversion rate is the overview of your lead-to-job ratio. It’s a good idea to have an electrician lead conversion rate handy as it works as a benchmark to judge your lead generation against your job pipeline. The rate will change over time as your business grows and builds a reputation and a client base.
So say, for example, that in one month, you get 200 leads and 50 of those result in jobs. Divide the number of jobs ‘converted’ from electrician leads by the total electrican leads generated. Next, multiply this result by 100 to get your electrician lead conversion percentage rate.
Jobs/Leads = Conversion
50/200 = 0.25
Conversion x 100 = Conversion Rate
0.25 x 100 = 25
So, in our example, the lead conversion rate is 25%. Of course, numbers for your business will vary from month to month and week to week. To sum up your lead effectiveness, a simple number is a great place to start keeping track of your marketing. It can be a lot to handle with everything else in your electrician business, but as you can see, the tools and services are out there to handle it.
Sparking Business Growth with Electrician Leads
With the right job management tools, you can connect to potential customers, manage your current customer base and provide yourself with a solid foundation to keep your business running.
Having tools to handle your marketing is a great way to get started in generating those electrician leads while saving you time and providing info about what works and what doesn’t. AroFlo’s article on electrical advertising has more information to get you started.
Our job management software offers a suite of tools to maximise your time: AroFlo’s done the work developing the software for electricians and tradies.
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