Regardless of the season or competition, contractors have to keep leads in the pipeline. To get the opportunity to give a top-tier customer experience, you have to get customers, even in uncertain times and market conditions.
If you’re just starting to build out your team, it’s nearly impossible to go door-to-door consistently to make connections.
The solution is using social media to grow your business — a tactic we call digital doorknocking.
While there’s no silver bullet or industry secret to growing your business, digital doorknocking will speed up the process. If your business is the truck, filling the pipeline with leads is the fuel in the tank. Someone still has to turn the key and press the gas.
Growth isn’t just about marketing. It’s solid business.
You have to be ready to handle the leads with emails, texts, or phone calls and manage your customer relations with a CRM, quality sales process, and a sales staff you can trust to put effort into the relationships with potential customers.
What is Digital Doorknocking?
Digital doorknocking is using digital marketing to get you and your company in front of potential customers, past customers, and potential new hires.
For the sake of time, we’ll cover Facebook marketing in this article — and Instagram and WhatsApp because they’re all part of the Meta family.
The main goal of going door-to-door, knocking neighborhoods, is to sell.
But it’s more than that:
- It’s getting face time with the customer
- It’s building trust
- It’s communicating a need
- It’s instilling trust in your work to improve their quality of life
Digital doorknocking effectively leverages your brand and achieves these goals without leaving the office. Using Facebook to grow your business is a game-changer. If you’re not doing it, you’re losing money.
It may seem like a bold claim that spending money on Facebook will make you money, but it’s true. CompanyCam has seen a lot of our growth attributed to digital marketing, specifically on Facebook.
Many of you reading this have probably seen us in your Facebook timelines, and if you haven’t, you will now.
Here are the changes you’ll see in your company by staying consistent with digital doorknocking:
- More awareness and trust in your brand
- More leads filling up your pipeline
- More referrals and repeat purchases
- More qualified applicants wanting to work for you
Why does it work?
Just about everyone is on Facebook. There are nearly 7 billion monthly users on Facebook’s platforms. Facebook has almost 3 billion, and Instagram and WhatsApp are around 2 billion each.
Even if you aren’t on Facebook, five out of every seven people you know are. Most people your customers are close to, live with, and work with are on Facebook (or Instagram or WhatsApp).
So there’s a great chance that all of your previous customers, potential new customers, and new hires are on a Meta platform.
Digital doorknocking using Facebook marketing for your contracting business works because you can leverage this massive number of people using their services, widdle it down to just the right people, and get your message in front of potential customers.
Just like you have to hire and pay your employees well, you have to spend to get in front of your customers and fill your pipeline.
The best part is it doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive to create the ads. Creating Facebook ads for contractors can be as simple as a selfie video or choosing to document instead of creating flashy, highly produced, and expensive ads.
You can even browse ads your competition runs by searching for their Page in the Meta Ad Library.
Primary Goals for Digital Doorknocking
Let’s unpack the main goals of digital doorknocking.
1. Awareness and Trust
Not everyone always needs a new roof (or insert your service here), but at some point, every homeowner will have to decide on which company to use for their new roof, tear-off, and installation.
Getting people familiar with your brand before they even need a service is crucial in getting people familiar with you and staying top of mind. So when it comes time to shop, you’re already a trusted household name.
2. Pour on the Leads
Now that they’re familiar with you, making it easy for them to give you their information is essential.
Using Facebook is only part of the battle. You must create an experience that makes it easy for the customer to find your phone number or fill out a form for an estimate or consultation.
The combination of consistently running campaigns on Facebook with a good experience after they click on your ad is essential for getting more business.
3. Referrals and Repeat Purchases
The buck doesn’t stop once you sign the contract. Leads referred from a previous customer convert at a higher rate than a standard inbound lead and even leads generated from going door to door.
Facebook allows you to retarget customers who’ve already interacted with your brand or purchased in the past. This gives you the opportunity to ask for referrals, promote how you’ll reward them for spreading the word, and keep your brand top-of-mind when they move or need more services.
4. Recruiting Top Talent
Now that you have a constant stream of leads flowing into your pipeline, you may want to hire someone to handle the workload. Lucky for you, almost everyone is on Facebook, as we mentioned, so you can get your message out that you’re hiring.
Having a solid brand presence on Facebook will also build trust in applicants and help you get your hiring needs in front of more people, whittling down the pool of applicants to only the A‑Players.
Parting Advice
Don’t be Afraid to Fail
Your first Facebook ad won’t immediately supercharge your business. Commit yourself to testing new ads, audiences, and targeting styles, optimize what works, and scale up when you see success.
This process takes time, and there will be failures along the way.
If Facebook isn’t working for your company, the problem likely isn’t Facebook. It’s your ads, targeting, or the customer experience after they click on the ad.
The number one issue I’ve seen in companies I’ve worked with is that they make one post, put a few hundred bucks behind boosting the post, then never try again when it doesn’t pan out the first time.
Ignore the Haters
Social media brings out the worst in people, and getting more eyes on your ads means a higher chance you’ll see trolls and bullies in the comments. Expect it and ignore them.
You’re in the business of building your brand, not wrestling matches in the comments section.
Hire Someone
This is not an easy game. Digital doorknocking is not “just social media.” It’s growing your business using the tools social media provides.
At some point, the work will become too much, and it’ll behoove you to hire someone to manage it.
