Being a local electrician these days doesn’t just involve working on the tools. You need to be your own accountant, customer service advisor and of course the all important marketing manager! The most successful electricians aren’t just skilled at the job they are rounded business people that understand the importance of finding customers as well hanging on to them.
This is the first in a series of advice articles looking at digital marketing for localised tradesmen, specifically domestic installers and electricians. Digital marketing can seem daunting and can be very costly should you employ outside help, however especially when it comes to setting up new campaign employing an expert can be worthwhile.
However for those that want to have a stab at it themselves this first article in the series deals with paid search and will set out a basic template and advice for local electricians to get off the ground.
Step 1 - Identify your keywords
Before you even get started you will want to identify which keywords you want to target. To begin with brainstorm keywords that you want to advertise on. These keywords will trigger your ads to show so try and think of every variation possible, include singulars and plurals. You need to identify keyword groups and keep them together as these groups will be useful.
You can use this tool it’s free and will tell how often a term is searched for and how competitive a term is: https://adwords.google.co.uk/o/Targeting/Explorer?__u=1000000000&__c=100...
However I have identified some standard groups which you could use using Crawley as the location:
Town Location Terms
County Location Terms
Electrician Terms
+electrician +crawley
+electrician +sussex
Electrician
+electricians +crawley
+electricians +sussex
electricians
"electrician crawley"
"electrician sussex"
"electrician"
[electrician crawley]
"electricians sussex"
"electricians"
"electricians crawley"
[electricians sussex]
[electrician]
[electricians crawley]
[electrician sussex]
[electricians]
"crawley electrician"
"sussex electrician"
[crawley electrician]
"sussex electricians"
"crawley electricians"
[sussex electricians]
[crawley electricians]
[sussex electrician]
You will notice that the terms have the following extra characters:
[] Exact Match - Terms within these brackets will only trigger your ads when this term only is searched for.+ Broad Match Modifier - Terms with pluses will need to appear somewhere in a phrase in any order.“” Phrase Match - terms within speech marks will need to be searched for in this specific order but other words can appear before or after the speech marks.
If a term has no characters with it then the terms will be broad matched which is similar to braod match modifier but you will ads may appear on similar terms. Google will make a judgement on this so I prefer to opt for “broad match modifier” in most situations.
Step 2 Create your campaigns
The key thing about creating a paid search campaign that is locally targeted is that you need to create two campaigns. This may seem like a lot of extra work but it is essential as it allows you to use keywords that a broader in one campaign such as “electrician” and locally targeted keywords such as “electrician crawley” in another which are not geo-targeted.
It is important that you set up the two campaigns with the following settings:
Campaign 1 – Local Terms such as “Crawley Electricians” Targeting a national audience
Location – England
Languages – English
Networks – Google Search
Devices – All
Budget – Set your maximum budget per day
Ad Delivery – Show ads
The key thing above is that this campaign targets all users in England.
Campaign 2 – General Terms such as “Electrician” Targeting a local audience
Location – 10 Mile Radius of RH10 9JY
Languages – English
Networks – Google Search
Devices – All
Budget – Set your maximum budget per day
Ad Delivery – Show ads
This campaign will only show to users based within 10 mile of your location. You can edit this and set the radius to be whatever you want. However remember the bigger the radius the more clicks will be generated.
Step 3 Create some ad copy for your ads
Your ad copy needs to be related to your keywords, enticing to users, include unique selling points and a call to action. It is also important to point your ads to a page that also includes your keywords and is relevant to what a user has searched for.
What is important to remember is that by grouping keywords together, having relevant ad copy and having a landing page that contains relevant keywords you will be rewarded by Google with a better quality score which in turn will lower the amount you pay per click.
I have written 2 different examples of ad copy below one for a local keywords and one for national:
For Crawley Terms:{KeyWord:Crawley Electrician}NICEIC Approved Electrician CrawleyDomestic/Commercial. Free Quotes.www.TradeSkills4U.co.uk
For General Terms:{KeyWord:Electrician in Crawley}Crawley Electrician NICEIC ApprovedDomestic/Commercial. Free Quotes.www.TradeSkills4U.co.uk
The use of the KeyWord automatically inserts a user’s search term in the ad title automatically making it very relevant meaning your ad title will stand out more and be likely to be clicked on.
Both ads are very similar as it is important that the location is prominent in both ensuring people only click on your ad if they think you are near to them.
Setting up your account
Armed with this information you will need to set up your Google account and create the two campaigns. This is a fairly simply process. Simply visit this link, click get started with Adwords and follow your nose:http://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/ads/index_con_2.html
Moving forwards you will need to track conversions on your site by setting up analytics with goal conversions or adding conversion tracking code to your contact forms. You will want to monitor which campaigns, keywords and ads perform best and if possible assign more budget to those that work best.
As with all marketing you will need to monitor your spend and your results to ensure this is working for you. My advice with paid search is to always start small and focus on the keywords which are most relevant and targeted to what you do. It is also wise to keep the location targeting close to you. You can expand to local towns or cities but you will spend more money and get a lower conversion rate.
Keeping things tight ensures that your campaign only spends on keywords that are likely to generate leads. If I currently search on Google for the term “electrician” the first ad that comes up is for an electrician in Huntingdon event though I am in Crawley.
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This is likely to get clicked by mistake as it is first and waste a lot of money for this company.
Before embarking on a paid search campaign it is essential that you have a professional looking website otherwise you will find user won’t call or email and you will waste your money.
Adwords can eat money so be careful, play it safe to start with and if the enquiries don’t come there may be an issue with your campaign. The great thing about paid search is it is instant. You can turn it on or off immediately meaning you can use it as and when required.
If you are feeling brave dive in if not think about speaking to a specialist at least to set up your campaign.