In a statistical report published by Backlinko, about 4.48 billion people are now using social media. This is more than double the 2.07 billion social media users in 2015.
With the right tips and techniques, you can grow your home improvement businesses' presence online and use the internet as a tool to attract potential clients to your construction business.
What Is The Purpose of Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing involves using social media websites to promote brand awareness or sell a product or service. This involves creating and sharing content that can drive your audience.
While marketing your company on social media, the goal is to:
- Create a credible online presence
- Build an interactive community
- Sell your services
- Increase your Return On Investment (ROI)
- Increase awareness about your brand
- Offer good online customer service to your customers
- Listen to people's opinions about your business
- Advertise your home improvement business to a larger audience.
Best Social Media Marketing Strategies
Social media marketing isn't just posting random content on your Facebook business page or Instagram feed. There is so much more to it. If you want to build a digital brand presence, you need to develop a social media strategy to guide your decisions.
Here are ten of the best tips and strategies you can use to generate leads and sales for your home improvement business:
1. Define Your Target Audience and Social Media Platforms.
You can't be active on every platform. Decide whom you want to reach - and then choose a handful of social media platforms based on that. The goal isn’t to reach a larger audience, but to reach the right one. For instance, as a home improvement company, you should focus on online platforms that are used frequently by most homeowners.
2. Build A Credible Social Media Profile.
Once you have decided which social media networks to use for your marketing campaign, the next important step is to create an authentic profile. Your profile must be able to convert more customers to your business.
Ensure that your branding, that is, logo, images, name, etc., is consistent throughout your marketing media and website. This makes it easier for people to identify your brand.
3. Engage Your Audience with Quality Content.
It’s important to create engaging, useful, value-added content for your audience. Your content may include blog posts, articles, tutorials, reviews, videos, webinars, white papers, ‘best practice’ sheets, checklists, guides, or anything else you like.
Good content does not necessarily have to be lengthy and boring articles or posts about your business. They could be pictures or time-lapse videos depicting recent projects, with short and exciting captions and dramatic before-and-after posts.
Finally, provide tips and advice to your customers on how they can improve their homes. Most people love to hire those who have expert knowledge in a field. Telling people how to beautify their home, make minor repairs, enhance curb appeal or property values, find ways to finance home improvement and remodeling projects, or DIY tips makes them want to see your page often – and eventually pay you for your work.
4. Interact With Your Followers.
Frequent interaction helps boost customer engagement, trust, and loyalty. You can interact with your readers or viewers by responding to their questions, private messages and comments, or appreciating their replies. This makes your customers and prospects feel important, because they should be.
Also, responding to negative comments with kind words is an excellent way to showcase your good customer service. Everyone gets a bad review sooner or later - often through no fault of their own. Many people don’t worry about a bad review if they see an immediate response from the company management taking ownership of the issue and doing something about it.
TIP: spark up engagement by posting questions or prompts on your site or on industry or home improvement bulletin boards. For example, you could ask for their opinions, their preferences, and a lot more.
Give more than you get. ‘Like’ and ‘share’ quality posts - even from your competitors. Contribute to discussions. Shed insight on trending topics. Add value to the community. All this builds brand credibility and goodwill.
5. Post Consistently.
Consistency is a significant key to creating successful online brand awareness. Abandoning your followers after building an online presence will affect your brand reputation. Instead, ensure that you choose and stick to a specific time to post relevant content and engage your followers regularly. For example, you can post 3 to 5 times every week. This way, they will regularly see your posts, and you can maintain top-of-mind awareness.
6. Run Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertisements.
With more companies using social media platforms these days, it is becoming more challenging to break away from the crowd and stand out.
This is why many businesses pay money for online advertising and social media marketing.
PPC or Pay-Per-Click advertisement is a form of online advertising in which you pay the publisher of the ad every time someone clicks on the link. This is great because you do not have to pay if your link is not "clicked on." So, you would only pay for a working ad. This advertising model is prominent in Google Adwords and on social media marketing websites like Facebook.
Google Ads allows you to rank for specific keywords that are associated with your business. For example, a person looking for a renovator to hire in California will probably type in "Renovators in California" or "Top 5 Renovators in California". So, if you run an ad to rank for that keyword, your service or social media page will be shown prominently among the results.
In contrast, Facebook Ads (now ‘Meta’) works by suggesting your ad to different users based on their location, preferences, search history, and interests. Therefore, the users do not need to run an immediate search request before the ad is shown.
7. Provide Valuable Offers To Potential Customers.
Certain customers will not buy your services until you make a compelling offer. For example, you can offer a DIY tutorial, a free estimate or consultation, or a detailed design guide.
A free estimate is a great tool to attract interested people who are still contemplating whether to hire your company. Similarly, the design guide will help your buyers make quick decisions when choosing the perfect interior for their home.
Offering a free initial consultation can help build a good personal relationship with your potential buyers. Plus, it is an excellent way to establish your own expertise and credibility and identify the customer’s true needs.
8. Scout Out the Competition.
You can learn a lot from what your competitors are doing on social media. Here’s how to conduct a competition analysis - a key component of your SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, which every business owner should prepare and continually update.
Identify Your Competitors.
- Select a list of high-ranking keywords relevant to your brand.
- Find out companies ranked for the selected keywords on social media websites such as Facebook or search engines like Google.
- Check out other companies your customers are following.
Tip: Pay close attention to what the buyers say about your competitors - their complaints, reviews, and opinions. You can work on these to improve your own company. Learn and improve from their mistakes - not just your own.
Analyze Your Competitors' Weaknesses and Strengths.
Some of your competitors might have a strong online presence on a platform and a weaker one on other social media platforms. It is crucial that you look out for this and use it to your advantage. For example, if a competitor has a stronger Facebook presence but isn't active on Pinterest, you can focus on building your Pinterest presence.
9. Create a company blog.
As a home improvement company, a blog is where you can post exceptional content valuable to your customers. In addition, having a blog can help you to rank better on search engines. Google and other search websites often suggest blog posts with the most relevant results to search queries entered by the users. Consequently, creating blog posts on content such as DIY tutorials, FAQs, tips, and guidelines related to home improvement makes people more likely to visit your site.
10. Promote Your Social Media Page.
While you use your page to promote your brand's website, you should also use other channels to promote your social media page. You can add links to your social media page on your website. You can also download the social websites' icons from Google and link them to your account. So, when people visit your website, they can easily access your social media page.
Ready to Take Your Business to the Next Level?
Building a social media presence is great for your business to reach a larger audience. However, your customers need to be financially buoyant to patronize your business.
