It's Not a Revolution, It's Execution

4. How do I get more leads?
Once you have ensured your current leads are being handled in an appropriate manner, you can concentrate on bringing in new leads. Contractors who follow these advertising tips will not only survive but thrive:

• If you can't capture and compile reports on where your leads are coming from, I guarantee you will waste a lot of money. The Internet needs to be your primary focus. It is the way people look for answers to questions about everything, especially purchases.
• It is not enough to just have a website. That website has to be search engine optimized (SEO) to appear on the first page of results from a search engine. Nearly 70 percent of Internet users click only on search results from their first page of results.
• Google is king. Get someone to help you land on the first page of good search results. It helps if that someone understands your business or at least understands the key words and phrases your customers type to look for the things you do.
• Get e-mail addresses and use a company like iContact or Constant Contact to help you with e-mail marketing campaigns and e-newsletters to help you stay in touch with existing and potential customers.
• Embrace the power of social media. Have a Facebook company page and promote special offers and projects to your fans and followers on a consistent basis. You will need to use e-mail or some other type of contact to encourage your customers to follow you on Facebook or Twitter.
• Create videos and post them to YouTube.com. Include projects and testimonials and link to your website and social media pages. You can optimize these videos to appear on the first page of search results with your contact info.
• Join sites like Concretenetwork.com and Concreteideas.com, which are industry experts in achieving high rankings for your potential subjects.

Internet leads are second behind referrals as a source of our dealer revenues. Hopefully, you can ask the manufacturers you buy from for some help with these endeavors, but ultimately it will fall on your shoulders to come up with solutions. More importantly, you will need to find some folks you can count on and trust to help you.

Remember, marketing in today's economy is not a revolution; it's all about execution.

Joe Primavera is director of sales and marketing for SUNDEK. He began his decorative concrete career "in the bucket" on an installation crew for a SUNDEK contractor. Primavera is an active member of the American Society of Concrete Contractors (ASCC) and serves on its Decorative Concrete Council; he helped launch both the DCC Awards and the ASCC Webinar Series. Reach him at jprimavera@sundek.com.