Website Pre-Work for Excavation & Septic Companies

Website Pre-Work

1. Before we delve into what you need on your website, I want to be sure we have built a strong marketing foundation. As I talk with dirt work company owners across the United States, I have come to the realization that the vast majority of you tend to skip straight past the basic fundamentals of your marketing strategy and dive headfirst into tactics of websites, seo, and ads.

So, what do I mean when I say “Fundamentals”? All marketing has 3 core components:

• Message (what)
• Market (who)
• Media (how)

You have to have a unique “Message” (who you are, what you do, what makes you unique, and why someone should hire you rather than one of your competitors), a specifically defined “Market” (who you sell to and who your best customers are), and then look at “Media” (where you can reach those best customers). The tactics of ads and SEO fall into the “Media” category.

If you focus solely on the Media or Tactics, you will likely fail regardless of how well-selected that Media is. Invest the time and energy into defining your “Message” and figuring out who your “Market” is. By doing so, ALL of your Media choices will be vastly more effective. How can you do that?

Spend a few minutes and THINK. Take out a scratch pad and answer these questions:

Message:

• What do I do that is unique and different from my competitors? (Do you offer a guaranteed time frame? Do you offer written estimates prior to starting work, promising to stand by that estimate? Maybe you offer a guarantee for all of your work and will look after any issues within a one-year period of time after the project is complete. Perhaps you offer a free consultation to showcase the services you have to offer to potential customers.)
• If you think about the psychology of a customer, what concerns or apprehensions do you think they have about hiring you? “They won’t be able to finish the job on schedule, so I will probably have to waste a lot of time waiting around for them,” or “They are going to be a mess and leave me with more work in the end,” or “They are going to give me one price over the phone, tell me another when they start with the job and then charge me something VASTLY different once all is said and done.”
• How can you address your customers’ common concerns in a unique way? How can you reduce their risk, and make the process easy for them?

Market:

• Who is my ideal customer? What’s your ideal geographical area, and are you looking to attract everyday consumers, engineers, GC’s, ranch owners, etc. You need to be clear about the audience that you are looking to attract.
• Look at your last 25 customers and evaluate who spent the most money, who had the highest profit margins, and who was genuinely pleased with your service.  What are the unique characteristics of those good customers? Do they live in a particular area? Do they represent a certain type of business?
• Start to define who your ideal customer is so you can put a marketing plan in place to attract similar customers.

Once you have engineered your Message and Market, you can start to think about Media. In order to determine what media will be most effective for you, think about where you can reach your ideal customer.

Clearly, the Internet is a great “media” for connecting with your ideal customer who is proactively in the market for your services. Throughout the remainder of this book, we will be explaining the most effective marketing channels for dirt work companies, and how you can use them to connect with your ideal customer.