In this series, we’re taking on remodeling contractors and how their business can be found online by previous and potential customers. If you’re a contractor this marketing model works, we know because we use it. If you are not a remodeling contractor don’t tune out, this advice applies to all companies who want to be found online.

Joe: Welcome back to the Being Found show. You can always follow up online at beingfound.com. We’ve got our shows recorded on video so a lot of times you can watch our screen, also you can connect with us on podcast and Facebook and social and all that stuff. We love to connect with you any way that you want to connect with us so welcome back to the Being Found show. We are diving in and getting really specific for contractors and remodeling contractors. We’re talking about what it takes to be found by buying customers. We’re talking about really specific steps you can take to be found. The internet, it’s a part of the process and so we want to make sure you have the tools and the power to make the internet part of your selling process.
An idea Chauncey and I had was to use one of the tools that we use and it’s called Soovle, S-O-O-V-L-E.com. What Soovle will let us do is we can put in key terms and it’ll tell us, well you tell us what it’s telling us, Chauncey. What’s this thing telling us?

Chauncey: Basically it’s telling us the most common searched terms for these collections of sites that we’re looking here. I’m not sure exactly what the timeframe is for the commonness of the search but I know it’s not of all time. It is relevant and it’s time relevant. You can type in your search terms, here we have remodeling contractor and you can see there’s not much showing up under Wikipedia or Answers but if you were to trim that down to remodeling, I’m sure we’d see results there. Basically, it gives us the opportunity to find out what people are searching for at different intentions during the buying process so that we can preemptively answer those questions. I realize that was a lot of big words so basically, it gives us the chance to see what people might be searching for that pertains to us that we can then hop in and possibly answer their questions so that they’ll come to us and become one of our clients.

Joe: Here’s a good example. We’ve typed in remodeling contractor and this is going a little further and it’s helping us to understand what the intentions are that people are searching for in these different websites like YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Amazon, blah, blah, blah, a bunch of them. When we type that in one of the number one typed terms, it’s actually number two in Google is remodeling contractors near me.

Chauncey: Mm-hmm (affirmative) and YouTube.

Joe: And YouTube, yeah. Modeling contractors near me. Think about that for a second. This is why we wanted to get specific. That is the opportunity to meet a buying customer right there. Somebody right now or at least historically from this is looking for a remodeling contractor near them and you have to wonder are you being found when they’re looking for you and especially when it’s one of the top terms. This is a big trending term.
Here’s another one, another one is remodeling contractors in Huston. Here’s what catches me off guard so we’ve got remodeling contractors in Huston, remodeling contractors in Phoenix, remodeling contractors in San Antonio, so on and so forth. To me this is surprising a little how many people are looking for a contractor in a specific area because I think people tend to think when they’re trying to compete online to be found by a customer that they’re competing with the whole world and I don’t know that we realize how hard search engines and customers work to narrow down their search to find the right company near them.

Chauncey: Oh yeah. We’re in a transitional period here and it’ll go on for quite some time longer because people will still be building their websites this way in order to localize them but search, the consumer is in a transitional period where they’re starting to figure out they don’t have to do that as much.

Joe: Right. Okay so now let’s try to go into the segment past this. Use Soovle, check it out but let’s put it in context to how you use it. For instance, let’s say remodeling contractor near me, well that is now a look into the intention of what potential buying customers are looking for. Now you got to ask yourself, are you being found? So what do you do? We already talked about you need to be in the map pack, we already talked about you need to be in Google my Business. You also need to have created content on your website that talks about the fact that you’re a remodeling contractor in a certain place. In other words, you just defined the question that your customer’s trying to ask, which takes you to the next stage is answering it and in this case the answer is making sure that they know where you’re at and they know how to get a hold of you and they know how to find you, right Chauncey?

Chauncey: Right. The map pack is establishing who I am, where I am and a basic blanket of what I do. Soovle would be expanding a little bit on that.

Joe: It’d be funny … Let’s go to another one. People in Yahoo are typing in kitchen remodeling. That would be one of them. I want to break this up but I also think about me trying to do a kitchen or a bathroom remodel. I think after that we would need a paramedic.

Chauncey: Yeah, well I think contractors are part of that. It’s kitchen remodeling contractors, so they are looking for help.
Joe: Yeah. Now let’s think about what that means … We now know they’re looking for kitchen remodeling contractors, if I’m that, if I’m a kitchen remodeling contractor and I know my customer’s looking for that, what do I do Chauncey? How do I take that leap so that I’m being found on the internet when someone’s looking for something that specific?

Chauncey: Your first bet would be to find out what people are looking for. Try typing kitchen before your remodeling contract in Soovle and we’ll see some of those options of what people are looking for.

Joe: I’m gonna do that. They’re looking for kitchen cabinets, commercial kitchen design. Let’s pick one of these, kitchen cabinets, so what am I doing now as a contractor? How am I dealing with this?

Chauncey: I might go a little further and say kitchen remodeling in the search.

Joe: Wow, look at that.

Chauncey: Here at the top on Google are some real prime examples, cost, ideas, before and after, near me, on a budget, kitchen remodeling contractors, of course, ideas for 2017 companies that’s a local search and kitchen remodel app. That would probably be an application on your phone that helped you envision your kitchen with a remodel.

Joe: Okay so I’m a contractor, someone’s asking for kitchen remodeling costs, how does it do me any good to deal with that? What do I do? Do I write content and put it on my website? How can I help someone? I can’t tell them what their cost is gonna be.

Chauncey: No but you can give them ideas, you can give them examples, you can give them ballpark figures, you can provide free estimates. There are a lot of answers to that question that are still realistic answers that people would be happy to see.

Joe: That’s really the key here is we have to accept the fact that kitchen remodeling cost is something our customers are looking for. If we don’t answer that question, likely some other contractor or competitor will answer that question in a way that leads that customer down the road further to buying. We want to [crosstalk 00:09:16].

Chauncey: Yeah and you can also make assumptions about that. Somebody who is looking for a kitchen remodels cost is probably inexperienced with remodeling their house because they probably don’t know what the cost is and they don’t know that they won’t be able to find a direct number online. You can really cater your content to what that intention is behind that search by providing them with the information that will make them feel better and more confident about their decision making and ultimately make them want to choose you.

Joe: How interesting so you’re saying we’re realizing that the phase this person’s in and maybe the experience they bring to it. The other one is kitchen remodel ideas, which means this person’s probably earlier in the process and they’re trying to figure out what are my ways to remodel my kitchen and we could be writing and sharing about that.

Chauncey: Ultimately this person is either at the point where they want to start plotting out the plan because they know their kitchen is gross and they want to fix it or this person is looking at their kitchen going could my kitchen be better? They’re potentially at two different phases there and so that page ideally you would provide them with one of two channels to really help them depending on where they’re at in that question.

Joe: In this last part of the segment I want to explain the turn or the advice. Let’s say we give advice in a blog post or on a web page about kitchen remodeling ideas and we give a list of ideas, well you still need to be profitable as a company and you still need to make money so what you want to think about is well I’ve given ideas in my content, I’ve written a blog post or whatever it is and I was just honest and helped with the ideas but now there’s the turn and the turn is, this is your time in your content or on your website or in your sales process where you now get to advise that person and the advice is pretty simple, you get to know say to that person in your content what your basically doing is you’re helping them understand who they are. If you’re the person that still needs to find more ideas and this wasn’t for you, here are some links of other places to look at. Here are some other ideas to go after, however, if you loved one of these ideas we’re good at this and we can do it for you so contact us or give us a call.
In other words, do you see how you do that? It’s just to put content out that doesn’t work in your favor some day to be profitable is worthless but at the same time, you still have to be open, honest and not be self-serving in the body of the content and all that. At least that’s the method I use to produce content or write [inaudible 00:12:16].

Chauncey: Absolutely. So, go ahead.

Joe: Save this for the next segment cause we’re at the end of this segment and we’ll be right back after the break. You’re listening to the Being Found show.