Greg Wilkes (00:01):
The construction industry can be a tough business to crack from cashflow problems. Struggling to find skilled labor and not making enough money for your efforts leaves many business owners feeling frustrated and burnt out. But when you get the business strategy right, it’s an industry that can be highly satisfying and financially rewarding. I’m here to give you the resources to be able to create a construction business that gives you more time, more freedom, and more money. This is the Develop Your Construction Business podcast, and I’m your host, Greg Wilkes.
Greg Wilkes (00:36):
So I’ve got a fantastic guest lined up for my listeners today. She started the BBC hit series, The Apprentice in 2017 and made it through to the final three. Even though personally, I actually thought you should have won that Michaela, it was a good series. Michaela is also a serial entrepreneur and successful business owners. And the important thing for us listening is that she’s a specialist in the construction industry. A lot of her businesses relate around the construction industry, which is absolutely great for my listeners. So I know this interview is going to be of real interest to those who’ve subscribed to the podcast and who might be following on YouTube. So let’s introduce my guest today, Michaela Wain. So Michaela, great to have you here.
Michaela Wain (01:19):
Yes, thank you very much. I’m excited. I love anything construction, so it should be fun.
Greg Wilkes (01:25):
Absolutely brilliant. So Michaela, maybe first of all, you could just tell us a little bit about, I know you’ve got a lot of businesses in the construction industry. What are you currently working on? What are you busy doing at the moment?
Michaela Wain (01:37):
Everything. It’s like my life’s a joke. I have a construction company, facilities management, and to that which we’re working on quite heavily at the minute because it’s expanding, but day-to-day generally I work on a marketing agency within the construction industry and then I’ve invested in a few businesses, utility connections and other bits and bobs.
Greg Wilkes (02:00):
Fingers in a few pies, eh?
Michaela Wain (02:02):
Yeah.
Greg Wilkes (02:03):
That’s fantastic.
Michaela Wain (02:04):
Dot, I dar you about some one place, isn’t it?
Greg Wilkes (02:06):
Yeah, too, right? Yeah. Excellent. So brilliant. Well, I thought today, I know there’s a lot we could talk about because as I say, you’re doing quite a lot throughout the construction industry, but I thought we could just focus in on your marketing business. I know you are really successful in that area and that would be really useful for my listeners to discuss marketing and some strategies around that. So maybe we could hone in on that sort of stuff. So maybe just starting with the real basics in construction and marketing, digital marketing, why do you think having a good website is important for a construction business?
Michaela Wain (02:42):
I think construction is really far behind when it comes to digital marketing in any kind of marketing. So I started off 11 years ago with a magazine designer Build UK, and it was just a solid an online magazine. And the reason for that is we can give you analytics, we can say who’s clicked on it, we’ll send traffic to your website. And two years into having my business, I had to revert back to having a hard copy as well because we were losing so much business because people wanted to see you don’t feel a physical copy of a magazine. So they knew they got something. So I think that the construction industry, and we still have to produce a hard copy as well, and I think the construction industry when it comes to all forms of marketing are just really prehistoric and needs to get up to speed with things.
(03:34)
So many people who I speak to will say, well, we’ve got a website, we’ve got some online present, and I’ll look at it and I just honestly, it’s like, @#$%&!, I don’t know if I can swear on this podcast, but they’re just horrendous. You may as well not have any web presence because if somebody’s going to Google you and then find this underperforming, unattractive, pointless website that’s a reflection on your business. And everybody does do that now. They go onto social media, they look at your website and they judge you from that. So you better have nothing on there than to have something that’s rubbish. So for me, your website is the foundation of all marketing. If you’re going to do anything and you’re going to pay money for it, then you should be paying for your website because there’s lots of strategies that you can build around your website free of charge, and you’ll be able to do yourself developing, designing and working on a website. They’re creating a good one that works. However, you should invest money in it because if that’s right, you can see some real return on it.
Greg Wilkes (04:40):
Yes, definitely. I mean I know I’ve seen a few shocking websites myself. I think the thing that always frustrates me is sometimes you see people just haven’t got pictures of those. So all of a sudden you go on a website and it’s just like half-built structures and they look like building sites and an absolute mess and you think, what are you doing? It’s like show off your work
Michaela Wain (05:00):
And just the wording people get to, people use the opportunity but website to just talk about themselves. So we’ve been going 50 years, we’re so great, everybody loves us. We do this, we do that. And honestly, nobody cares if you are going to do your own website or any kind of marketing. You need to think about what you are attracted to. And it’s very rarely is somebody bragging about themselves ever, you’re not attracted to that. What you’re attracted to is somebody saying, this is your problem, this is the solution that you want and we have got experience in doing it by doing this, that and the other. And that’s how all marketing material and your website all should be written and structured with this is your client’s problem, this is the solution they want and this is how you can provide that. And that’s far more appealing.
Greg Wilkes (05:48):
That’s a really important point. As you say, that goes right through all your markets, doesn’t it, not just your website. So we’ll touch on that a little bit later. What sort of other content do you think should be on a website? What sort of things? I guess it could be a little bit daunting if you’re trying to start get a website going from scratch, you worry about how much content’s got to be on there. What are the big things you think should be on a standard website for construction?
Michaela Wain (06:11):
So you just want to keep it as simple as possible and to clearly see exactly what you do. So for SEO purposes, so to be appearing or ranking on such engines, ideally on your homepage or threaded throughout your website, you want to have around 150 a keyword or keywords planted around 150 times. So that seems like a lot, but actually you can be really clever with it. So if you wanted to be like a joiner in Bolton and that’s what you thought people was going to search for, you just thread that throughout your content. And as long as you can get that in hidden quite well, don’t build any other content around it, just only do it so that that’s your end goal. You want a hundred of these words built into your content, fluff it up to that point because that’s the point of your content.
(07:01)
Then when people are landing on your site, you want it to be visual so they don’t have to actually read all that content. I would say landing your website, have some nice video or time lapse or some good imagery as soon as they land on there, then going down your page, A really simple thing to do without having loads of edit is trusted by. So instead of saying, I’ve been working with KFC, McDonald’s and whoever else, you can just have their logos on there, get permission first if camera bothered, and then it’s simply, oh, this is who we work with without having to go on, we’ve been doing this, that and the other. Testimonials is a must have. It’s by far the bestseller. And this goes onto social media as well. It gets very little likes our comments, but for us, we just get an abundance of leads from putting testimonials out there because it’s just a case of Monkey See, Monkey Do.
(07:54)
So you’re showing that you’ve done something excellent for somebody else and it’s word of mouth, but on your terms basically. And the other key thing that I would say is a lead magnet, and so few websites have this, but if you have a website and you are expecting people to fill out a contact post form, I will tell you that it’s never going to work. It is pointless and your website will underperform. So you want some kind of lead magnet on the, and a lead magnet would be either some kind of white paper or a calculator, something that’s so valuable to the potential customer that they’re going to exchange their email address, telephone number and contact name to receive whatever it is you are offering. So on our website we offer a free content planner, a free social media content planner and a free marketing plan template. So I know people who are coming to our site are interested in construction marketing, they’re going to give me those details, and from that they’re added to my sales funnel and I can follow up with whatever our sales process is. So it’s really, really important. If you are going to expect people to take the time to give you their information, then you’ve got to give them something in exchange.
Greg Wilkes (09:09):
Yes, that’s really interesting. Yeah, thinking about that, some sort of lead magnet. So I guess just thinking in practical terms, what that might be for construction. So I guess maybe if you were a company that did extensions, would it be like a lead magnet, maybe the top 10 tips for kitchen designs or something along those lines or
Michaela Wain (09:24):
Yes, exactly. It’s got to be, I mean, we spend days creating these kinds of things, so I can’t just, but yeah, normally there’s a way of doing the calculator. They perform best. So for instance, we have an LED lighting specialist on our box, and for them we did, how much could you save on LED lighting? You have to put in, I have X amount of rooms, I use X amount of electricity, whatever it is. And then at the bottom, we’ll then say, give us your email address, contact name and number, and we’ll send you over the results. Then your results will appear. I can’t remember which way we did that one. So they do really well because for whatever reasons, people like clicking buttons and finding out about themselves and white papers are great, but it’s got to be something really creative. It’s got to be something that they’re not finding anywhere else. It can’t really be what would typically be a blog post because they’re not going to exchange for that. So it’s got to be perhaps a bit more inventive than the top 10 creative things. But yeah, I can’t think of the top the edge, but you’ve got to get creative with it basically.
Greg Wilkes (10:30):
No, that’s brilliant. No, that’s really helpful. So yeah, you need to get your creative juices flow for that for try and think of some content pieces for and try and be a little bit different.
Michaela Wain (10:38):
An easy way to do it is think what are the top most frequently asked questions that your clients ask you before buying from you? So if they say, what’s the price for this or what’s this, that, and the other, whatever those questions are, then you build your lead magnet around those questions and have a real clickbait title. So whatever that most common question is, something that’s answering that question would be the best starting point for all companies, I think.
Greg Wilkes (11:06):
Yes, that’s a really valuable tip, Michaela, thanks for that. That’s absolutely great. Now you touched on SEO a little bit earlier and ways, obviously everyone wants to get on page one of Google. That’s the idea, isn’t it? It feels like it’s free once you’re sitting there. Is that something that people can be doing SEO on their website themselves? I know you mentioned putting a hundred, 150 keywords in or SEO always seems like a bit of a dark art that you need to be leading to specialists and experts. What’s your thoughts on that?
Michaela Wain (11:32):
Yes, I mean it is complicated, but I think because people make so much money from it, they overcomplicate it and it doesn’t have to be that complicated. However, you can’t just have a website build and do everything correct and get it all set up and then leave it. So you’ve got to continue to work on it. So another good way to work on your search engine optimization is doing blogs on news articles frequently, having social media attached to it. I can’t remember the bloody name now, but you could probably just put it into a search engine and find it. You can run a free analysis on your own website and it’ll tell you whether your grade A, B, C, D, E, R, F and where you’re failing. And that helps with your own optimization. So, if you have done it yourself, it’ll give you the results and you know where to improve and keep checking in on those kinds of things.
(12:27)
You need to be checking Google Analytics constantly once a month and seeing what’s working, what pages are dead, what pages are performing to really understand it. So it doesn’t take a genius to do it, but it does take time to do it. So what I suggest to everybody, and it’s just like in any business doing anything, if your time, if you’re going to lose more money by doing this, you may as well just outsource it and you don’t have to outsource it to somebody really expensive and go on the internet. You can find there’s really highly skilled people in other countries, so you can work on this fire. But yeah, I mean if you’re going to do it yourself, blog posts, news articles, linking social media, also sending out any articles you write or speaking to other construction companies that you related with and ask them to do backlinks, so you look like a trusted website, then that’s a really important part of SEO, getting trusted back links of people. But yeah, social media though, the reason social media is key is because search engines already love the likes of Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. So if you are getting links back from there, then it makes your website look better and will help you to rank higher. But it does take effort and it also does take time. So don’t expect it to happen overnight, but it is also very important.
Greg Wilkes (13:54):
Yes, it’s interesting you mentioned that about time because obviously we are living in an age now. We want to see results instantly, but to try and get onto page one of Google, depending on I guess how competitive your market is, it’s not always that easy, is it? So how long, if people set up a brand new website, is there a guide on how long they should expect to take if they really optimize their SEO? Is it a case of weeks or months potentially that they might
Michaela Wain (14:18):
No, yeah, it is months. I think if anybody tells you less than that, then I’d swerve on because they’re lying. It will take months. Six to 12 months will be a realistic target for it. You should be seeing results at six months, but to be close to the top of the first page, but again, it’s exactly what you said, it depends on how competitive these keywords are. So if you are searching for a joiner nationally, there’s going to be thousands and thousands. But if you can hone in on a more specific, like a joiner in Bolton and you can make it a bit more specific, then that’s going to help you ranking and you’re not going to be competing as much because in construction, not that many people work on it, I can tell you for.
Greg Wilkes (15:03):
Well, that’s good to know, isn’t it? Well, hopefully my listeners at the time that considering this, so they wouldn’t be, I mean this podcast is all about growing your business successfully and using digital media and things like that, so that’s fantastic. So, you mentioned a minute ago about how important social media is for boosting your website rankings. Now, I know some construction company owners just detest social media. It all seems a little bit overwhelming and there’s so many platforms out there, isn’t there? But why should they really be considering social media as a strategy to bring in more business?
Michaela Wain (15:36):
Because it works is the main reason. So if you are looking for incoming leads, social media and your website is the things that you need to focus on. So to put it in perspective around probably now a little bit less, but probably 70% of our business comes from LinkedIn along and we do quite a lot of business. So, I don’t have to have people winging out and trying to get people to come towards. Everybody’s coming towards now and it is because of social media, so it 100% work. But I think there’s a few things that you can do to simplify this because like you said, it’s very daunting. You’re thinking what time to post, it is tanking, nobody likes it, nobody’s following it, and it hurts your ego. You’ve got to let go of it all and really just put yourself out there. And as frustrating as it is, it is just learning anything new.
(16:30)
Once you’ve got it, you’ve got it. And it’s actually very simple. What we do as an agency, we manage people’s social media. So we’ll do Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn. And we use a platform called, we changed it actually, but I pay for it. So I’ll tell you a free one. There’s a platform called Hootsuite and it’s free of charge to manage and schedule your social media posts. So what we’d do, we’d sit down and for half a day, I mean if you listeners are sole traders, I have a few people working for him just then, just spend the Saturday doing it, sit down for half a day and go right Monday, I’m going to post this Tuesday, I’m going to post that, get creative with your posts. If you sit there and spend all your time, just a couple of hours on it, and then you get yourself in a creative mood, you can plan it four weeks worth of posts, schedule it in Hootsuite and just let it do its thing.
(17:21)
And then what we do is work. I mean, we dip in all the time, that’s our job. But what I would suggest for people doing it themselves is every two to four weeks go on and have a look at, oh yeah, this performed well, I’ll do a similar post next time. This one was shy. I’ll change it. I’ll amend the wording. And also making sure that you reply to everybody instantly as fast as you can. Obviously if you’re on a roof, don’t wish your life, but as fast as you can comment back to people, it’s about that engagement and commenting also on other people’s things, trying to bring your community in as well, not just being self-centered thinking, oh, follow me, you’re not Jesus. Reach out to people and then hopefully they’ll start following you as well. So I would say Hootsuite and genuinely, I mean you will be added to a sales funnel if you do this, but you can tell Mr.Piss off if somebody rings you. If you go onto frameworkmarketing.co.uk, there’s a content planner on there and it is really good. So any new staff that we get in, abide by the rules that are on there, and it just tells you all the different kinds of posts. So there’d be your typical sales post, a blog post, a poll, an informative one, a journey one, a question and answers one. So it just gives you some ideas on different categories that you post should fall into. And then basically whatever is on that as well in case you need reminder.
Greg Wilkes (18:48):
That’s really helpful. So what I’ll do is I’ll drop that website address into the comments in a bit. And yes, I think sometimes we just need a few ideas just to get yourself going, don’t you with content wise. So if you want to go and download that content piece, then appreciate you putting that on your website, Michaela, that we can have a look at. So that’s really useful. Now, you mentioned quite a few channels there already mentioned Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. Now some may only be on one of them, some may be on none of them at all. So, is there a particular social media channel that’s working really well for construction, or does it have to be all of them or does it depend on niche?
Michaela Wain (19:24):
It does depend on niche, to be honest. And it depends on the kind of content that you’ve got. So I know lots of brick players, for instance, who were really successful on TikTok at the moment. That’s one that we don’t manage. It is video form. If somebody’s going to spend the time to video it, they may as well upload it themselves. So we don’t delve into that, but yet absolutely smashing it going viral on TikTok, really easy to do as well. So anything visual, I would advise going onto TikTok, recording that, and it just takes one on there. You’ll end up with hundreds of thousands of followers. Literally you can end up with hundreds of thousands. And it’s similar to Instagram. The thing is, once you’ve got the content, you can post it on everything. So if it’s visual and you’re going to put it on TikTok, then you may as well just smack it on everything else as well because you will start getting the crossover.
(20:13)
It’s just more difficult now because of algorithms to go viral on things like Instagram, LinkedIn is just honestly the best thing ever. If you’re not on LinkedIn, you’re doing your business an injustice, you need to be on there because it is simple content. It can be written content. It’s a lot of entrepreneurs on there or leaders on there, people who want to see other people doing well. So any stories you’ve got of success, celebrations, my year anniversary, all that nonsense, they absolutely lap it up and it’s great and I don’t want to do people down. I also love seeing other people’s posts like that. You think @#$%&! fair play how well done that, and everybody champions you on it. And if you’re in construction, you’ll already know this. Once you get into it with a client, then you’re doing it with that client basically as long as you’re doing a good job. And it’s quite cliquey on, especially in the construction industry. So I found it to be the most valuable social media platform for us, but I’m not really on building sites that much. I’m building anything that looks amazing, which is why we don’t do TikTok.
Greg Wilkes (21:19):
Yes, no, that’s fair enough. So LinkedIn’s always one that I advise my clients to look at because it’s the way that if you want to go and connect with architects or interior designers or if you’re a main contractor, that’s the perfect place, that’s where you’re going to go and find them, isn’t it on LinkedIn? So it’s always worked really well. And the same too, if you’re just a trade and you’re looking to hook up with main contractors, then they’re going to be on there too, aren’t they? Some of the bigger main contractors,
Michaela Wain (21:42):
A hundred percent. You can search by job role, you can search by the companies, connect with. I think you can connect with up to 30,000 people. And again, it’s about the outreach as much as what it is posting the stuff on there, it’s about commenting on other people’s things. So I always find it really creepy and frustrating when people just email me straight away, inbox me like, oh, I want to introduce you to this because I think I have 46,000 connections now, so follow us, whatever they’re called on there. So I get it every day and it just looks so typical, bland and boring, that after first couple of sentences, I won’t even open it. However, if somebody is always commenting on my things, are always liking my stuff and I’m seeing the face all the time or the name all the time, then when they inbox me, I am going to open it.
(22:32)
So it’s really important to remember that if you are looking to get in with a particular project manager at a specific main contractor, then I would be really nodding them up and always commenting on the stuff and be like, oh, I love this. Oh, amazing. I’m going to share, share and just be real cheese there because if it gets you an hundred grand job, it’s well worth being cheesy. It’s not really in my nature to be like that, but I still do it anyway. And then when you email them and say, oh, I really love this project that you worked on, do you have anything else in the pipeline because we’re looking to expand, blah blah, blah, it’s going to feel a lot more natural and they’re going to be more likely to help you out.
Greg Wilkes (23:08):
Yes, that’s fantastic. And I guess that tip doesn’t just apply to LinkedIn, does it? I mean you could do that over Instagram and Facebook, couldn’t you potentially or Twitter? I guess comment on people’s posts. I think at the end of the day, a lot of us we post, and most of us don’t get massive traction from our posts unless we’re someone like you Michaela, but you might get one or two likes or a few comments you think, oh great. So if you are going to comment on an architects something that an architect’s done and they’re only getting a few comments, they are going to notice you, aren’t they? And it’s more likely you’re going to get
Michaela Wain (23:42):
A hundred percent. And it’s just don’t be like annoying with what people who comment on my thing promoting their business. I have other digital marketing companies commenting, oh, if you need digital marketing come to us. I’m like, delete, remove, block, bugger off, get your own. So don’t be trying to go in with the sell and the kill straightaway. And I would also follow people on all platforms. If it’s somebody who I really want to get in with, and this has happened a couple of times successfully for us, then I’d follow them. If they’re available on Instagram or Twitter’s another good one for the construction industry, then probably LinkedIn and Twitter would be where I’d be following them and just liking and commenting and things. They’re not being a creep and overbearing. But then after a couple of weeks of you saying a few bits and bobs, that’s when I’d be looking to approach. Once they give you a couple of comments back, because they do remember and people do read your inboxes and they do read the hidden inboxes as well. I get hundreds honestly, and I still read them. So if I’ve ignored it because I’ve chosen to ignore it. So be creative with what you’re saying as well and approach things with this problem, solution, attitude when it comes to socials, you’ll be a lot more successful.
Greg Wilkes (24:53):
Yes, that’s really good. Just coming back to Twitter, I’ve found I’ve had a lot of businesses as well, and I’ve always used Twitter across all my businesses, but I’ve always found out of all of them. Twitter was the one that I never really got any traction with, especially in construction. But do you find that’s working for your clients? What sort of people is it working for on Twitter or what have you got to be doing on Twitter? I’m probably doing it wrong,
Michaela Wain (25:14):
So don’t get me wrong. It’s not amazing. It’s not like LinkedIn at all. And it’s a real hostile place at times. People are awful, I swear. Honestly, I’ve been told a lot, but I stick at it anyway. But yes, I think it’s more about you following the right people on and doing the outreach, the commenting, again. It’s never one that you get loads of likes on and it’s not something that you’re going to, I might get two or three likes in it, but you’ll be amazed at them who pops up in your inbox after it. You can’t go off the likes. And like I was saying earlier on the testimonial posts that you do, or I did a post on LinkedIn the other day about, do you want the free content planner that I just said, go to this link, whatever. And I think I had maybe 13 likes, but I had 30 odd people going download it.
(26:05)
Apparently you could have liked it as well as downloading it, give me something. And the same with testimonials. You get very few likes. But I remember this was maybe two months ago, I put a testimonial, I got seven likes and we ended up getting 10 clients off it, and that’s not why I got 10 new clients off it and not all of them even likes it. So you really can’t go off that. You go off your inbox on what business it’s bringing you and Twitter, Twitter’s the same as that, but it’s more of an outreach place I would say with Twitter and being nice to people. My clients do a bit on that, but I think it’s going to support what you’re doing on your other rather than being solely focused on Twitter. That should be a support for what you’re doing elsewhere.
Greg Wilkes (26:48):
Yes, that makes complete sense. So that’s really good. And just coming back to your tip on putting references and testimonials, I mean it’s absolutely huge, isn’t it? Because it just establishes you as someone credible, trust gets transferred, doesn’t it, across when you’re doing that type of thing. So testimonials are always a big one to keep plugging.
Michaela Wain (27:07):
And I’ll give you a tip on the testimonial front as well because you’ll end up with this, oh, Dave’s really nice, we ended up going football together, his wife’s lovely and his kid’s, great job, I’d recommend him. And you’re like, what has that got to do with the extension there? So to ensure that doesn’t happen as lovely as it is, we’ll say to people, oh, can you write as a testimonial and would you mind answering these questions? So again, it would be, what was the problem that you had? What solution was you looking for? Why did you choose framework marketing? Would you recommend us? And then they’ll write it out like a story, and that’s the exact story that you want your potential clients to read. So we wanted a new extension. We couldn’t find anybody reliable in the area. We really wanted a local builder to put back into the economy. We chose Dave because he lived down the street and he had experience. I would 100% recommend him. Here’s some pictures of what he did. So that’s exactly what you want to read, not about the football match.
Greg Wilkes (28:05):
Yes, no, that’s a really valuable tip there. So yeah, write that one down on everyone if you’re listening to that. So that’s really useful. So thinking about just moving on from social media, obviously we only get certain reach, don’t we, depending on how many followers and whatever else we’ve got. So a lot of people then consider paid advertising on Facebook or whatever platform they’re on. But again, that’s quite daunting because you think I could go and do that and waste a lot of money. Is paid advertising where people should be looking in construction? Is that something to consider?
Michaela Wain (28:39):
It’s a minefield. It’s just a minefield. It is so difficult. It’s difficult for agencies to get it right. You need to be put in big money behind debt. There’s 100% a place for it definitely. But this is a place for SMEs, looking to grow to large contractors in my opinion. Or for the construction industry I’m talking about if you’ve got an e-commerce website, that’s different. If you’re a supplier and you can sell something direct from there, I think that’s different. But if you were somebody, a contractor of some sort and not selling something off your website, my tips on this would be you’ve got to get your organic post right first. And the reason for this is that is a test. So if you do an organic post and you’ve done something along those lines for three months in a row and each time it’s gaining traction, then this post would potentially work if I put some money behind it, never ever for the love of God boost your post because it is going to knacker you up on your organic.
(29:44)
And it does absolutely rock all fire. So if you are going to do paid socials, then you need to do it the correct way, which is going through the backend of Facebook and Instagram. If we’re talking about social media, doing it through the backend. But what you need to look at is it’s got to be a campaign of three. So it has to have some kind of image in there realistically or a video. And then you’ll do, the way to get the most out of your money is to go, I’m going to put X amount of money behind this. This is going to be my first image. Those people who click on the first image or review the first video for a period of time, you can advertise to them again. So if you’ll create a sales kind of funnel, like a marketing funnel, I’m trying to put it in layman’s terms and not technical. So you’ll have your first video, there’ll be a bit bought into but may not have purchased from you. So then you’ll do a second one, which will be a bit more of an upsell, offering them a different aspect of the first one that they’ve done. And then you’ll do a third one. And by this point, you’ll be converting people at every point. And by the third point, if they’ve not converted, then you’ve done with them and you move on to the next one.
(30:50)
But I mean, I’ll be honest with you, I understand this process. I have an agency who runs this and there’s absolutely no way that I’d be touching it. I get my staff to do that because it is difficult and you can really put a lot of money behind it. And not do well. And there’s a lot of people out there who are like me who understand it, but honestly, I would not take money off somebody to do it because I wouldn’t trust that I do them justice. You really need a tech geek specialist, somebody who understands analytics, create your marketing campaign with somebody else and then perhaps get a tech whizz to do it if you want to do it that way. But just make sure whoever’s doing it understands analytics and understands the process. And I just wouldn’t advise it if it’s not your forte. It’s like I wouldn’t go and put windings in myself. I know if I put windings in, there’s absolutely no way I’d do it. They’d fall out. So just pay somebody else is my honest opinion on that.
Greg Wilkes (31:47):
Yes, I think I agree with you on that. Yes, there’s some things we can do DIY, and we can have a tinker about and play with. But I think when you’re spending, especially if you’re going to spend a fair bit of money, then you want someone who knows what they’re doing. And that’s the thing is, I mean the beauty of the ads though, I know that you can really hone in on your audiences, can’t you? With the algorithms that Facebook and Instagram have got, you can really get quite defined, can’t you, on who you’re?
Michaela Wain (32:10):
If you get somebody else to do it and you’ve got the right person, they’re amazing because you can go down to location, gender, age, interest, everything into real detail and get the exact target audience who you want. What you would hope for is if you have got this lead magnet on your website, you’ve been capturing people’s information, then over time you’re going to build your own database. I hope this doesn’t get too technical now, but if say you had a thousand contacts, a thousand email addresses that you’ve done business with, you can put that information into the backend of Facebook and Instagram and it will create a lookalike audience. So people who share similar interests of similar age group and are doing the similar things on the platform, and they will advertise to all of those people for, so once you’ve developed your own database as well, it can be really useful for creating this lookalike audience. But it’s not as simple as just creating that you have to do A/B split testing. So again, this is why you need to use somebody else, but what I’m saying is the first place to start is your website, get your own data, get your organic post going so that you’ve done the research and you understand this is what people are responding to. So if you are going to throw money into it, which perfect do, but make sure that it is going to be done properly when you do.
Greg Wilkes (33:34):
Yes, that’s really useful. And just to hone in on that, just to give my listeners an example. So if for example, this lookalike audience that Michaela was mentioning, if you’re, let’s say you’re a window fitting company and you supply to the construction industry or main contractors and you’re looking for those type of people, you might have a list already of ones that you’ve already sold to in the past that you can upload into the Facebook portal, but then you can do Facebook, obviously the algorithm is so good that it will then find other lookalike people that are like those construction companies. So you’re just massively expanding your customer base, aren’t you? Even if you’ve only got a relatively small list of context. Did I explain that right, Michaela? Yeah,
Michaela Wain (34:15):
Yes, that’s exactly right. Yes, sorry. It’s difficult to explain it without getting too technical, but that’s exactly right. If you earn, basically it will give you the people who look like that, like we say, look like that. But I’ve got similar qualities as the people that we’re already using you because generally your avatar is your avatar and it is going to be the same for the lifetime.
Greg Wilkes (34:39):
Yeah, that’s absolutely brilliant. So Michaela, I’m conscious we’ve taken a bit of your time up here. You’ve given some absolute gems and real value to my listeners, so I really appreciate that. And as I said, my listeners are generally construction companies that are looking to grow their business to the next level. So a lot of them will be focusing on how they can do that, what platforms they need to be on, and they may well be looking for some more support in their digital marketing. Some will listen to this and think, oh, I’ll give it a go myself. Some will think I don’t want anything to do with it. Let me concentrate on what I’m good at and get a specialist to do it. So if they wanted more help Michaela, where would they need to go to get some more help with their digital marketing?
Michaela Wain (35:19):
So our website is said www.frameworkmarketing.co.uk where that content planner is. There’s also a free marketing template that you can download on there as well. So if you are going to do it yourself, then there’s loads of information, loads of blocks, then feel free to use all that free. And I’m on all social media, even Michaela Wain or Michaela Wain Won because there’s this really beautiful model called Michaela Wain and she’s infuriating sometimes. I’m Michaela Wain won, but you won’t get the two of us mixed up. She’s a stunner.
Greg Wilkes (35:52):
There you go. That’s absolutely brilliant. So Michaela, I really appreciate your time. That’s really valuable and I wish you all the best with all your construction businesses and everything you’ve got going on. Thanks a lot.
Michaela Wain (36:03):
Yes. Thanks.
Greg Wilkes (36:10):
If you’d like to work with me to fast track your construction business growth, then reach out on developcoaching.com.au.
