Marketing for Electricians: How electricians can secure a good place in the building market.

As with every other trade in the Building (or any other) industry, no company, or individual, is too small to be involved in marketing.

Unfortunately many businesses make the mistake of confusing marketing with advertising whereas advertising is simply one of hundreds of ways an electrician, or electrical company, can market themselves.

Marketing is about finding new, or retaining existing customers; listening to exactly what they want, then offering them exactly the right service, at exactly the right time, for a price they are prepared to pay.

Get a Springboard website to help you market your electrical company A fully functional, well designed, professionally built website is an absolute must for electricians and electrical companies. A website can cost you as little as £100.00 per month (a fraction of the cost of other advertising) and, apart from a few leaflets and a little web advertising in the first year, your website should be all the advertising you need.

The majority, if not all of local adverting, on the radio, in the local papers has a very low ROI (return on investment) in our experience. These people are more than happy to take your money, but offer no help for the smaller business on the best way to present your advertising or how to get noticed. We call this BADvertising.

Your new website will tell future customers about your history and qualifications. Your safety record and your Insurance. It will carry photographs of jobs you have done. It will show your branding and make your company visible to an unlimited number of people. It will confirm your commitment to great customer service and it will carry testimonials from satisfied customers.

These testimonials are worth their weight in gold. Every householder agonises inside about which tradesperson to use for their home. Testimonials will give your customers reassurance that they chosen the right person by choosing you. Once that hurdle is overcome you can build a relationship with your customer.

Even the best website in the world is useless if no-one knows about it. You should make sure that any web package that you buy includes Search Engine Optimisation. This means your site will be picked up by Google for words such as Electrician and Installations etc. It is vital to get your site listed, as marketing yourself in this way is the cheapest, but most lucrative method available.

Leaflet drop for DIY advice To start the ball rolling you should design an A5 leaflet which promotes your company and your website. The leaflet should carry a clear concise message and any logos or branding you have. The website should be in big, bold letters and the leaflet should contain a "Call to action". I.E. The reader should be invited to "Visit our website" or "Call now for a free quote".

Distribute the leaflets to every house in your area. Its hard work, but starting any business is hard work. This type of marketing actually guarantees a 1% return anyway, but the bonus is that thousands of people will see your website.

To survive in today’s recession-hit and ever decreasing market, it is important to stand out from the crowd. To do this you need to go one step beyond customer satisfaction and strive for customer delight. Achieving customer delight is not just about doing a good job, It is about carrying out that job in a way which gives the customer a great experience.

Adding a double socket that works is a good job. When it is done the customer will be pleased it is finished and they have a socket that works. You could simply walk away thinking you have another satisfied customer.

If however, the socket has taken three weeks to install (because you started on Monday and then a really lucrative job came up so you left the original customer for three weeks and came back to install the socket) your customer may say "Thank You" but they will not be delighted by any stretch of the imagination.

What customers say to you, and what they say to other people, are two entirely different things......Only one of these is important and it is not what they say to you!

The Construction and Building Industries, in every single department are guilty of this. Mostly its because the electrician takes on too much and has to keep dashing about between jobs to try and satisfy everybody. Mostly this fails and very few are satisfied. Certainly none are delighted!

DIY Doctor hears from hundreds of thousands of home owners every year. The feedback we get about all trades says exactly the same thing time after time.

"The Electrician/Plumber/Carpenter/etc did what we asked eventually....BUT"

Most of the “BUTS” are because the electricians did not turn up when they said they would. Either that or they left at 2.30 every day to "cover an emergency". When you do things like this you are saying to your customer;

"I have to go now because someone else is more important than you" How would you feel if you were being served in the supermarket but the manager asked you to stand aside to let another customer go through because they were spending more?

To get a delighted customer you should tell them when they can expect to see you: And be there. Tell them a finish time and date and do everything you can to meet it. If you cannot meet it, tell them why. Take 5 minutes at the end of every day to tell them how the day went and where you are with the job. Make the experience of having you in their home a pleasant one.

If you do what you say you are going to do, when you say you are going to do it, your marketing is already in full flow.

Dont Panic if things go wrong. Here is my number Your customers are an incredible marketing tool. If you delight them they will shout about you from the rooftops. Upset them and they will do exactly the same. This time however, it could put you out of business.

For the main part customers are scared. A huge part of your marketing is to put them at ease and help them feel in complete control. For your customers to feel the need to spread your name around they must enjoy the experience of employing you. Not just be happy because the new light goes on when you flick the switch.

A great idea is to leave your customers with something to remember you by. A diary, a phone pad with your logo on, something they can use to contact you again.

Good marketing requires imagination.

The picture shows red self adhesive “Panic” buttons which can be bought for very little on the web. Push them onto a 2 inch (50mm) square piece of PVCu which any Plastics or Glazing company will cut for you. A sign or print company will print your details on a sticky backed sheet. Thin magnetic strip can be bought cheaply and cut into 1inch lengths. Assemble these items and give your customers a fridge magnet which will make them laugh.

Finally, a great marketing tip which will single you out as a great Tradesman.

A couple of weeks after a job, drive back to the area and park close to the house, but out of sight. Call the customer on your mobile.

“Hello there, it’s been a little while now since we finished your job and this is just a service call to see if everything is working well for you ”

Things should be great and you will have scored heavily in the Customer Service Department. If there is actually something wrong, you can say: “Stay where you are I’ll be with you in 5 minutes to have a look”

Drive the last 100 yards to the house.

Your customer will be delighted at sales service. “Word of Mouth” will spread like wild-fire. Don't forget Customer Satisfaction is what everyone else is trying to achieve. Smart people go for Customer Delight.

That is marketing!

Check out all of our other marketing pages.