We get it. You’ve been hustling on behalf of your contracting business since Day One. You’ve invested blood, sweat, and tears to create a portfolio of quality projects, and you’re proud of your work.
But you consistently have to drudge up more blood, sweat, and tears to build trust with new clients. They can’t see the strong foundation your team has already built.
But what if they could?
What if future customers could view your best projects before they hired you? What if they could take tours of the roofs, bathrooms, paint jobs, and landscaping of which you are most proud?
Since there is a high likelihood that you are WAY TOO BUSY to become a tour guide (and that your past clients would throw shade on the idea of you walking strangers through their homes), your business is going to have to rely on photos. And where is Google going to take a potential customer when they’re searching for a service like yours?
Your website.
Reason #1: Showcase Your Project Photos
If you’re like most contractors, you’re already taking job site photos, at minimum for insurance purposes. But there are a lot of other uses for those photos, besides saving you some dough on claims — and marketing your business is one of them.
Photos are powerful little suckers. They communicate to your brain in a nano-second (don’t quote me, but it’s something like that) what it would take much longer for someone to explain verbally. They can also trigger an emotional response or help you remember.
But most important to your business, studies have shown that visuals (a.k.a. your project photos) can help people make decisions.
Some of the easiest, cheapest, and most impactful marketing pieces are your project photos — the ones you take both before and after completion. They visually verify that you are good at your job. They also tell your potential customers that you care about your work.
A picture is worth a thousand words — and when you’re looking for a great painter or a capable roofer, photos are better than even your neighbor’s recommendation.
Reason #2: Improve Your Website SEO
You’re a busy contractor, so we know you don’t have a lot of time to be thinking about optimizing your website for search engines. (Leave it to the nerds, amirite?) But did you know that one simple way to improve your SEO score is to keep people on your website longer? And one easy way to do that is to give them more to browse while they’re there.
The more project photos that are present on your website, the more time a potential client will spend digging through them. They don’t want to give their money to just anyone, so they are going to sit down before work or after dinner to sift, study, and compare.
Somehow, all that time on your site magically translates into a better search ranking. (Don’t ask us, ask the nerds.) And with an improved SEO score, more people are likely to find your website at the top of the page when they type in “landscapers in Kentucky.” (…or whatever it is that you do. *wink*)
Reason #3: Build Trust With New Clients
We mentioned it at the beginning, but building trust with potential clients is probably the most important reason to have project photos on your website.
Just think about it: Joe Schmo is new to the area and wants to hire a landscaper to remove all the river rock from the beds in his front yard. When he searches for “landscapers in Kentucky,” your business and one more pop up as the first two on that page.
Your website has a written description of your services and a few nice photos. Your competitor’s site has a very similar written description and a slideshow of their top ten projects, start-to-finish — and, GIRL, those project photos look noiiiiiiice! Who do you think newbie-to-the-area Joe Schmo is going to choose?
Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. Sounds like you’re ready to put more photos on your website.
“But What if I Don’t Have a Website?”
Again, we get it. You’ve been hustling on behalf of your business since Day One (yada, yada), so building a website was probably not at the top of your priority list.
Even if you were to start taking job site photos, you don’t have anywhere to showcase them. Or your website is so old, you’re not sure where to start. Maybe it’s time to change that.
There are a lot of simple website-building tools out there, but if you’re looking for something more tailored and professional, you can tap one of CompanyCam’s partners to help you.
Webrunner is a contractor-focused marketing service that can build and design web pages that drive lead conversion for your business. Your Web Pro, also targeting contractors, can take your old-school website and convert it into a showroom for your business.
And once that website is up and running, what better way to start gathering project photos than with your friendly ole’ neighborhood photo documentation app for contractors? (*cough* CompanyCam *cough*)
