With the right marketing plan, painting companies can maintain a steady flow of leads and continue to grow their business, even during the winter months.

Why is winter the hardest time for painting companies?

Winter can be a difficult period for painting businesses, especially if you do a lot of outdoor painting. Harsh weather conditions make exterior painting impossible, and a lack of daylight reduces working hours significantly.

The painting industry also slows down with the festive season. Home improvement initiatives take a back-burner as people are focused on party planning and shopping.

Painting companies must be more creative in the winter months to keep their schedules booked with painting jobs and drive a healthy cash flow.

Winter marketing ideas for painting businesses

Painting companies can implement many marketing strategies to help them succeed during the winter. These strategies range from utilizing social media platforms to reach new customers to offering special promotions to entice homeowners and business owners to invest in their painting services.

Here are some winter marketing ideas for painting companies in greater detail:

Idea 1: Utilize social media

Social media is a crucial component of any marketing strategy for painting businesses. Use LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook to showcase your work and reach new customers. Share customer testimonials and past projects to build credibility and showcase your expertise.

Engage with potential customers by responding to comments and messages promptly and consider running social media ads to reach a wider audience. Social media is a cost-effective way to build brand awareness, drive website traffic and increase online visibility.

Idea 2: Refocus your SEO efforts

Investing in search engine optimization (SEO) during the winter months is an effective way to reach potential customers and improve your online presence.

By optimizing your website for relevant keywords, such as “house painting” and “interior painting,” you can improve your visibility in search results and attract more leads.

Ensure your website is mobile-friendly and includes a clear call-to-action. Your Google My Business listing should also be updated with your latest information and photos of your work.

While SEO drives free, organic traffic to your website, consider supplementing with pay-per-click (PPC) advertising during slow seasons. PPC advertising allows you to target potential clients and drive traffic to your website.

Idea 3: Offer winter discounts and specials

Offering special promotions and discounts during the winter months is a great way to entice homeowners and business owners to invest in your painting services.

Motivate homeowners to book interior painting jobs with a combination of creative messaging and lucrative discounts. Encourage new customers to book painting jobs before the festive season to brighten their homes for holiday parties. In January, inspire folks to beat the winter doldrums with a fresh coat of paint.

Winter may also be a slow time for other businesses, making it a perfect opportunity to give their workspace a new look for the new year.

Idea 4: Leverage word of mouth and referral marketing

Word of mouth and referral marketing can be incredibly powerful for painting businesses. Encourage past customers to share their positive experiences with others and offer incentives for referrals.

Don’t forget to ask customers to leave reviews on Google and other review sites. Online reviews are the new word of mouth in our digital world. 46% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations from friends and family.

Idea 5: Utilize business cards and marketing materials

Business cards and marketing materials can be an effective way to reach potential customers and promote your painting services.

Hand out business cards and brochures to potential customers you meet in the community and leave some at local businesses. Make sure your marketing materials are eye-catching and clearly communicate the benefits of your painting services.

Idea 6: Focus on interior work

While exterior painting projects may slow down during the winter months, interior work may still be in high demand. Be sure to highlight the benefits of interior painting, such as increased property values.

Find more leads for your painting business with Broadly

There are many winter marketing ideas that painting businesses can use to continue to grow and find new leads. Whether it’s through social media, SEO, special promotions or word of mouth, there are plenty of opportunities to reach potential customers and drive business during the winter months.

Broadly’s software is a one-stop solution for online business and reputation management that can help save time on your marketing efforts. Manage online reviews, implement email campaigns, modernize your website and streamline invoicing with Broadly’s solutions.

Don’t let winter get you down – Check out Broadly.

The post Winter Marketing Ideas for Painting Businesses appeared first on Broadly.

This blog shares our tried and tested marketing tips for dumpster rental businesses.

How do I market my dumpster rental business?

There are no shortcuts for marketing your business. But, with some time, effort and a bit of creativity, you can develop a successful marketing strategy for your dumpster rental service.

Here are a few tips.

Develop a solid online presence

Your online presence shows potential customers that you’re a credible business. And when it comes to dumpster rentals, homeowners want to know that they can trust you to handle their waste disposal needs.

To build a strong online presence, start by doing some market research on competitors and maintaining an active social media presence. Use various platforms to share blog posts and infographics to educate your target market about your business and the services you offer.

In addition, make sure your business website is optimized for search engines so that potential customers can easily find you when conducting online research. An informative website includes dumpster sizes, pricing and any other waste removal services you provide.

Generate positive online reviews

Online reviews are essential for businesses in the dumpster rental industry. Customers want upfront proof that they can trust you to deliver on your promises.

To generate positive online reviews, ask satisfied customers to leave a review on your Google My Business page or popular review sites, such as Yelp and Angie’s List. You can also share positive reviews and testimonials on your social media platforms and website.

Get involved in your local community

Service-led businesses, such as dumpster rental businesses, often find success drumming up new business by getting involved in their local community. Here are a few ways you can do this.

• Sponsoring a local event: This is a great way to market your business name and show potential customers you’re invested in your community.
• Promote city-wide clean-up events: Team up with landfill operators and other providers to offer hazardous waste and junk removal services for free or discounted rates.
• Participating in local charity work: This is an excellent way to give back to your community and generate positive publicity for your dumpster business.
• Joining a local chamber of commerce: This is a great networking opportunity to help you connect with other local businesses.

By getting involved in your local community, you’ll increase brand awareness and build credibility and trust.

Develop a referral program

Referral programs are great incentives for customers to promote your business to friends and family. And when it comes to dumpster rental businesses, referrals can be extremely valuable.

To develop a successful referral program, start by offering existing customers a discount or incentive for referring new customers to your business. Then, create marketing materials, such as email marketing campaigns and social media posts, that can be used to promote your referral program.

By offering customers an incentive to refer your business, you’ll generate leads and build brand awareness.

Improve your online reputation

Only providing great services doesn’t cut it anymore. With the rise of social media and review sites, customers can share their experiences with your business with the click of a button.

Here’s how to start online reputation management:

• Monitor your online presence: Set up Google Alerts for your business so you can quickly address negative reviews or comments.
• Encourage customers to leave reviews: Customer reviews are critical for companies in the dumpster rental industry. Provide customers with links to your Google My Business page and popular review sites to make it easy for them to leave reviews.
• Respond to negative reviews: If you receive a negative review, take the time to respond. By addressing the issue head-on, you’ll show potential customers you’re committed to providing excellent customer service.

Market your business online with help from Broadly

Marketing and running your business at the same time can be daunting, especially for solo entrepreneurs and small businesses. That’s where we come in. With Broadly’s mobile app, you can easily manage your online presence, track your customer reviews, connect with clients online, and respond to negative feedback — all from your phone.

Excited to learn more about how we help your dumpster rental company?

The post 5 Marketing tips for your dumpster rental business appeared first on Broadly.

By using email to promote your services, you can build your plumbing business and fill your appointment schedule. Since email marketing is affordable, it’s an excellent addition to your plumber marketing strategy and can be a rewarding investment for your plumbing company.

How email marketing can help you get plumbing customers

There are several ways that you can use email marketing campaigns to get plumbing customers. 

By sending service reminders or seasonal promotions to current customers, you can encourage them to schedule appointments and fill your schedule while boosting customer retention. You can also send promotions and offers to plumbing leads and prospective customers, converting them into customers and keeping your business top of mind.

Plumber email marketing helps you re-engage with past customers, encouraging them to schedule an appointment to fix that leaky faucet they’ve been ignoring for a while. It also can effectively promote your plumbing services to homeowners in a new service area as you expand your business. 

Best practices for email marketing for plumbers

You can increase the effectiveness of your email marketing efforts by following these best practices. 

Set your email goals

Start planning your email campaigns by determining your goal for each campaign. Having a set goal will help you evaluate the effectiveness of your plumbing marketing campaigns so you can use your results to improve future email marketing efforts. 

Email is a versatile tool, so your goals may vary greatly depending on the type of campaign you’re running. Here are a few tips to consider: 

• Encourage past customers to take advantage of a new offer or coupon
• Upsell services to current customers
• Promote a new service to potential and current customers
• Gather customer feedback and request reviews via email to boost brand awareness and your online presence
• Encourage current customers to provide referrals to new leads so you can expand your customer base

Your goal will determine the content of your email and the call to action (CTA), or the expected steps you want readers to take after opening your message. Your goal will also define how you measure the campaign’s success.

Use email segmentation

Sending a single email to all of your email contacts can be ineffective. Those contacts might include customers who haven’t scheduled an appointment in years, customers you see regularly and new customers you haven’t yet met. Broad messaging might not apply to many of your contacts, and they might delete your emails or even mark them as spam.

When you segment your contacts into different lists, you can send much more targeted and relevant emails. You can segment email lists by factors like the customer’s status, location, and the services they used in the past. 

Segmentation ensures that every email you send applies to the customers who receive it so that you can engage with your customers in a valuable way.

Customize your emails

Whenever possible, customize your emails with the recipient’s first name for a personalized touch. Recipients are more likely to open emails with personalized subject lines.

Remember: someone’s email address doesn’t always indicate their first name. As you collect email addresses to build your contact lists, remember to register their first name so you can easily customize your emails. 

Make emails easy to read

The design of your email affects how much of it your customers will read. No one wants to study a giant block of text, so it’s essential to make your emails user-friendly and easily scannable. 

Try to keep your emails short and break down the text by using small sentences and brief paragraphs. White space makes an email more inviting, and you can also use elements like bold words and bullet points to help readers scan through your message. 

Strategically using graphics can also help to draw readers down through your email. Including a brightly colored button can encourage readers to take the action that you want them to take, like scheduling an appointment. 

Carefully schedule your emails

When it comes to plumber email marketing, less is often more. You might be tempted to send out weekly emails, but it’s critical to consider the frequency that works best for your recipients. 

Email fatigue is real, and if you bombard your contacts with too many emails, they will get tired of seeing them. Your open rates might decrease, and your contacts might unsubscribe from your emails. 

Try sending a monthly email first, or only send an email when you have a specific reason to. Monitor your frequency and make sure that you’re not suddenly losing subscribers. If you are, try sending out fewer emails and see if that solves the problem. 

Use A/B testing

After you put so much effort into designing and sending your emails, it’s essential to understand how well they perform and how you can improve them. 

You can use A/B testing, or split testing, to evaluate how different emails perform. With A/B testing, you send two similar emails with distinct differences. You might experiment with a long and a short version, different CTAs or varied subject lines. 

You can determine which email performed better by evaluating metrics, such as open and click-through rates. Then, you can include those elements in future emails, split test more variables and continuously improve your plumber email marketing performance. 

Create a custom email marketing campaign with Broadly

With Broadly, it’s easy to create a custom email marketing campaign for your business. Broadly makes it simple to create emails with curated templates, communicate with contacts through Inbox, and build valuable relationships with your customers. 

The post Plumber email marketing best practices appeared first on Broadly.

That’s where HVAC software comes in. The right software can help you manage your customers and your business more effectively, freeing up your time to focus on providing excellent service. But with so many options on the market, how do you choose the best HVAC software for your small business?

Here are a few things that you should look for in an HVAC software:

Why You Should Invest in HVAC Software

Before we see how to choose an HVAC software, let’s look at how investing in HVAC software can help your business.

Time-Saving Automation

One of the main benefits of using HVAC software is that it can automate your repetitive tasks. For example, suppose you’re manually entering customer data into your CRM. In that case, you can use an HVAC software that will automatically sync with your accounting software and add new customers to your database. This way, you can spend less time on administrative tasks and more time growing your business.

Improved Customer Management

With the right software, you can keep track of customer appointments, service history, and payments. You can also send automatic reminders for meetings and follow-ups. It will mean that you never miss an appointment, always stay on top of customer requests and get immediate feedback. This will help you provide better customer service and improve customer retention.

Better Marketing

You can boost your marketing campaigns by streamlining your marketing efforts and tracking your results. For example, you can use HVAC software to create targeted email campaigns and track how many people are open. Other software has built-in email marketing features that allow you to easily send out newsletters, discounts, and other promotional materials to your customers.

Better Business Insights

HVAC software can also give you valuable insights into your business. For example, you can see which services are selling well and which ones need improvement. You can also track your marketing campaigns to see which ones generate the most leads. Such data-driven sales and marketing can help you make better decisions for your business.

How to Choose the Best HVAC Software for Your Small Business

Choosing the best HVAC software can be tricky. You need to find software that is easy to use and has all the features you need to manage your business effectively. Such software should support your unique business needs.

Here are the top things that you should consider when choosing HVAC software for your small business:

Simple User Interface

The software should have a simple user interface that is intuitive and easy to navigate. Otherwise, you’ll spend more time figuring out how to use the software instead of using it to grow your business. On top of it, if your staff is going to be using the software, you might need to provide training, which can be time-consuming and expensive.

Ability to Send & Track Invoices

Every business needs to send and track invoices made to their customers. It is doubtful that every customer will clear your invoices instantly. This often requires a dedicated accounting team to manage invoices and follow up when dues are not paid, late payments, and even payment disputes. 

Having HVAC software with the ability to send and track invoices, and send automated reminder notifications will save a lot of time and energy. It will also create a smoother workflow without disruptions to administrative tasks.

Along with this, the HVAC software should provide scope for payment processing. Ideally, the customer should receive an option for making online payments with their debit or credit card in the invoice.

Mobile Capability

Mobile capability is key to working on the go. If you need to check your inventory or want to pull up a customer’s file while traveling, being able to do so from your mobile device will be a huge time-saver. 

This is particularly relevant for small business owners who often wear many hats and don’t have the luxury of being tied to a desk. For example, mobile payments are a great way to get paid on the spot and receive it in real-time through a mobile app without waiting for an invoice to be processed.

Easy Customer Communication

To provide excellent customer support in the HVAC industry, you need to be able to manage and organize client communications quickly and easily. The software should allow you to easily track customer communication to follow up as needed. 

For example, you should be able to quickly see all the customer information, including phone calls, emails, and text messages that you’ve had with a customer. 

Further, the software should integrate with all customer-facing platforms to see all details of job scheduling, home service requests and communications with all your customers in one place.

Team Management

If you have a team of technicians or other field staff, you need a management platform to work effectively. It would be best if you have a software solution to easily assign tasks, track progress, create timesheets, organize work orders, conduct job management for field technicians and support internal team communication. 

For example, you should be able to see which technician is assigned to which job and track the status of each job. This will help you ensure that each job is completed on time and to the client’s satisfaction.

Broadly Has What You’re Looking for All in One Platform

The right software can help you manage your business more effectively, providing valuable insights and saving you time and money. 

Broadly is a reputation management platform you can use as a one-stop shop to help you automate review requests, follow up quickly and easily with customers and leads, and track your growth over time.

The post Choosing the Best HVAC Software for Your Small Business appeared first on Broadly.

Well, not really. Think of it like tipping: a testimonial is a “thank you” for doing such great work. You provide wonderful service and, in return, customers write reviews to help your business grow. Not every customer knows how to write a review or where to leave one so it’s helpful to be specific. Try the following strategy:

Ask.

Just ask! Again, 7 out of 10 consumers will leave you a testimonial if you ask. This is the hardest part, but make an effort to ask for a review after each customer interaction.

Simplify.

Convenience is key. Find out what review platform your customer already uses and ask them to review your business there. Your customer likely won’t create a Yelp account just to leave you a review.

Prioritize.

All reviews are not created equal, and some review platforms matter more to search engines. If your customer is active on multiple platforms, remember that Google is the most beneficial place to receive a review in terms of SEO value, followed by Yelp and Facebook. Google reviews can be written by anyone who has any type of Google account including Gmail, Youtube, & Google Maps.

Send.

After finding out what review platform your customer uses, send your happy customer a direct link to your Google, Yelp or Facebook page. Again, convenience is the key to generating reviews.

Practice these 4 steps, and you’ll generate more testimonials for your business! This will ensure that your business earns testimonials more frequently, which is beneficial to your online reputation and your SEO. Testimonials are powerful for your business, so do your best work and make it convenient for your customers to share their experiences with you.

If you’d like to learn more about how Broadly can help simplify the process even more, schedule a free consultation with us.

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By creating a Google My Business page, your business can connect with fans and customers directly. You can share content, news, promotions, photos and videos. You can also see what customers are saying about you, answer any questions and respond to negative feedback.

In addition, your customers can leave reviews on your Google My Business page, endorse your posts with +1s and re-share your content. All of which can help improve your local search visibility ranking.

For example, Google reviews can influence placement in Google’s Carousel. +1s can help you achieve higher search rankings.  And by connecting your personal Google+ page to the content you create on your website or blog, the content you share can see improved visibility in the Google search results.

Here are 5 simple steps to setting up your business on Google:

1. Sign in or select “Get on Google” by visiting www.google.com/business
2. Next, find your business by entering your business name and address into the search box
3. You will then be prompted to verify your business. Select “Mail me my code” and Google will send you a post card via snail mail with a 5 digit verification code on it
4. You can then complete your business information by adding a description, photos, videos, contact information, and hours of operation
5. When you receive your PIN number through the mail, log back in and enter your code to verify your business

If you’d like more information on creating and verifying your business on Google, visit Google Support.

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