Marketing Ideas for Tradespeople

Andy Smith
Ideas , The Buzz
August 7, 2014
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Ever since the term “entrepreneurship” was coined, thousands, if not millions of marketing plans have failed. And many more have gone down the drain without ever seeing the day of light. It seems natural for this to happen. After all, marketing isn’t an exact science—it’s ambiguous.

As thousands of companies try to establish themselves in competitive markets, they’ll try many tactics —good and bad. Unfortunately, this often leads to lousy marketing. Then again, we can’t blame companies for this. Rather, it’s the marketers making these mistakes who are responsible for the horrible marketing going on.

So —novice or not, if you’re a marketer yourself, you’ll benefit by learning the top five most common mistakes made in marketing today.

1. Who buys your service?

The first and biggest mistake some marketers make is that they focus solely on their products. They study products all day long, but almost never figure out who will end up using it, needing it or even how they’re going to use it. Sure, “state-of-the-art” may seem like a good reason for people to buy a product, but that’s certainly not enough. Especially not these days when consumers have the internet to inform them whether a product is good or not.

The best way to solve this is for marketers to shift their focus from products to their consumers. Once tradespeople begin to understand consumers and their wants, needs and problems, etc., the rest will be easy.

2. Relying On How Great You Think You Are

You’ll have a competitor who is rubbish at the job. You probably wonder how they are still in business, well here’s the answer: They are better at marketing themselves than you think. I’ve seen great buskers, and rubbish acts who get a number one. Think about it, no one goes to McDonalds for the fantastic food or brilliant service do they? You don’t need to be the best, you need to do what you say you are going to do and be consistent.

Probably the most desirable car on the planet is the Bugatti Veyron. I drive a Nissan Micra. Who sells more cars and makes more profit, Nissan or Bugatti?

3. Don’t Try Covering All the Bases

A huge mistake tradespeople make is to think that every new social media platform is another place they should hang out. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, you really can’t spend all your time working all the social networks and provide a great service.

Spread yourself too thin and you’ll look rubbish on all of them. And that’s certainly not a good thing, is it?

4. Failing To Give Consumers a “Value Proposition”

Marketers can understand everything about their customers, but unless you use that knowledge —it’s useless. To make sure you have a big impact, formulate a value proposition for your consumers—why should they buy what you’re offering?

What are the common gripes consumers have about trades people?

Turning up on time?
No proper contract or quote?
Unexpected Extras?
Not tidying up after themselves?
Being grumpy?

Put their mind at ease with a charter and tell them exactly how different you are. Unfortunately, this is something that even the most experienced of marketers don’t do.

5. Taking Too Long To Sell To Consumers

One of the biggest mistakes marketers make isn’t that they don’t inform consumers, but they take too much time doing so. Keep in mind that consumers value time. They want something that’s easy to use and easy to understand. And they certainly don’t want to waste time trying to buy a product. If you leave them hanging for too long, they’re likely to find someone else who can actually sell what they need. Ask for the order, make it easy to buy.

We’ve got a lot of experience in developing marketing material for trades people and have witten about how to use NCR forms to get more orders.

There are no shortcuts when it comes to marketing. Tradespeople first have to understand their customers, their products and themselves, and then sell to customers in the most effective and efficient way possible. Once you’ve accomplished all this (and you do what you say you are going to do), the orders will be rolling in.

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