1. Your digital footprint is too small

In this day and age, print advertising and referrals aren’t going to cut it. If you want to make an impact and get people talking about you and your business you’ll want to promote yourself all over the web. Not only should you have an up-to-date and appealing website and useful blog content, you’ll also want to maintain an active social media presence on Facebook and Houzz. Many builders are stuck in the website-only world which will only get them so far. Expand your digital footprint through an active blog and frequently updating your Facebook and Houzz profiles.

2. You haven’t set any goals for your website

I bet most of you get your business the old fashion way, by being very good at what you do and getting most of your business from referrals. But there are two problems with that;

• If you are a small business there is a limit to how many jobs you can complete each year, which limits the number of referrals you may get, and
• Because you are so busy doing what you do best, designing and remodeling or building homes, there isn’t a lot of time to follow up on referrals when they do come in or time to work your past clients and network for new referrals you can’t plan for when a referral will come in.

Digital marketing is a math problem and I’m guessing the people on this call are pretty good at math. To optimize your digital marketing strategy you’ll want to understand the relationship between website visitors, leads and sales. The key to digital marketing is to plan your work and work off that plan.

3. You haven’t identified and promoted the top 3 actions you want visitors to take on your website

If you don’t know what you want visitors to do on your website, they won’t know either and you’re left with a big confusing mess. Decide what actions you want your visitors to take when they visit your website whether that is scheduling a consultation or anything else, you decide what’s right for you!

4. The only way to capture a lead on your website is your “Contact Us” page

Contact pages receive very little traffic. In order to effectively build a list of prospects, you’ll want to market to a lead magnet, content that will be useful for your target audience. By offering people informational content you’ll draw in more site visitors and expand your email list.

5. You don’t have a strategy for email marketing

It's simple: newsletter, drip campaign, automation. Keep track of the people you’re sending emails to and who receives what content. Some people may only be interested in a specific campaign, others might want to read your full newsletter. Automate your email lists to take the time and effort out of this process.

6. You haven’t optimized your website for the search engines

Google operates on keywords. Include specific keywords and images tied to your company to ensure that your website, Facebook or Houzz page pops up when someone googles “remodelers” or similar key terms.

7. You don’t have a blog on your website and you’re not using a content calendar

Use blog content to keep people visiting your websites. Past visitors have no reason to return to your site if they’ve already looked at all the content. If you’re consistently updating your blog, people will be drawn back to your site again and again. This is one of the most effective ways to grow your digital footprint. Manage when you post content by using a content calendar, it'll make things much easier, trust me.

8. It is very difficult for your website visitors to share your content

Include plugins for your visitors to share your content on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

9. You’re confused about how to use and measure the effectiveness of social media

This is a difficult subject and you may want to contact a professional who can help you manage your social media channels and help you optimize what type of content you should be posting and when. Facebook has many built-in algorithms and measurement tools for analyzing the effectiveness of your social media campaigns.There are tons of other things you should be doing with social media like automating your messaging and much more. This one point could be a whole blog post by itself. 

10. You don’t have a plan to keep your digital marketing machine running smoothly all year

Your digital marketing machine is like an automobile, you need to keep filling it up with gas. Everything you do benefits from everything you’ve done before like a snowball rolling downhill. Three areas you’ll want to manage on a monthly basis include Content Plan/Goals, Social Media Plan/Goals, and Conversion Rate Optimization/Goals.

To Your Success,

Dan Baumann