Think like an average customer. Search keywords online and find your business. Don’t cheat. They don’t know you. They don’t know what to search for other than prompt assistance suggesting your service “near me.”
Bryan Phelps is the founder of Big Leap, a Utah-based marketing company. He says that while the market has shifted, it’s all about adapting wisely to the changes in marketing, especially with the impact AI is having. For Construction Pros connected with Phelps for more on what concrete contractors and independent rental businesses can do to improve their marketing strategies, avoid wasted ad spend, and generate qualified leads again.
It would be safe to say that Phelps fell into the digital marketing world. It started with tinkering and figuring out search engine optimization while building his own websites. Soon, he learned how to drive traffic and monetize them with ads and affiliate networks. Today, his company Big Leap takes a full-service approach working with small businesses.
For Construction Pros: How do you work with smaller independent clients?
Bryan PhelpsBig Leap
Just with how competitive businesses are now, for a lot of clients having a unique aspect to what they're doing, or how they view things — almost what's your shtick as a business — what's different about you, what stands out. You've seen it over the years of people saying “we're customer-centric” or “customer oriented,” that can be great and fine but when you look at some of these businesses and websites that may be super transaction-oriented, the website or AI can help sell a potential customer before they ever call or click the button to reserve equipment.
For Construction Pros: What is a confidence signal?
Contractors and businesses like that are my favorite people to work with, because they're great people and then are just good at what they do. But a lot of times, a lot of them don't have the time or the background experience. They know they're good, they do good work, and they have those relationships. But if I put myself in a homeowner's shoes and need to tear out my driveway and redo it, [the company] is probably not in my network.
Ultimately, the website should reflect the contractor or the business owner of their motivation, what stands out for them. That shows up in different ways. It could be through pictures and imagery (before and after examples). Some people offer guarantees or things like that. We like to layer reviews in as well and show all the experience and all the good work that they've done. That's a starting point — that's the stuff people need.
We still find that most small businesses that come to us don't have that. Maybe they did it once but it hasn't really been maintained and updated.
For Construction Pros: Walk me through what options contractors and rental shops have in marketing their businesses?
We like to start these conversations with “the why” and trying to understand who their buyer is, or their customer.
With concrete, they can vary a little bit. That might change the answer of what our options are and where we want to spend our time. For example, Google is still the biggest player in the residential space. AI is becoming more common and more popular but we're actually seeing a lot of data and studies that show that AI is not really replacing Google search — it's adding to the pie, in a sense. People are using both pretty frequently, and especially in what we call “the local search” space, Google still dominates there. Within Google there's a whole world of possibilities. You have Google ads. There's Google Local Service ads. There's the Map pack, then there's organic results. There's a lot of things even within that you have to focus on. That's what we do as a business: trying to help them dominate there. If people had to pick one, that's where I would emphasize.
Social media is great — even TikTok and things like that — as another confidence signal if you can get a contractor to get on camera. You don't have to be awesome at it. You don't have to be a big personality or have a production to it. It's just showing who you are. I think that builds a lot more confidence than any of the other stuff I talked about, because I feel like it's a real person. It’s not just some website where you fill out a form, and not know what's going to happen after that.
For Construction Pros: You mentioned the AI summary and considering it a tool within searching. How has that changed the way people search for businesses and services?
Where we've seen the biggest change is the different types of searches. If you go back before AI, people did a lot of searches like they were trying to understand. For example, understanding concrete costs: “I know I need to run my driveway. I don't know what it costs.” I'm going to go to Google and try to learn that. They haven't historically gotten good answers on that, because there's lots of different factors: the size of the driveway, location, etc. Google sometimes could answer that but sometimes it gives you a range, but it wasn't always great. Not that that's dramatically improved. If you do that same search now, it will answer a lot of those questions. You can get examples: how much is a stamped concrete versus brush costs.
The biggest change we're seeing is the research that people do. They can do better on AI and get better answers than how it used to be done. Go to Google, click on five different websites, and come to your own conclusions — AI answers that. What we've seen is that it has actually reduced the amount of traffic that a business will get because they're getting that information from AI. But then, AI is ultimately still driving and funneling people to a business if that's what they want. I could do those searches, and it would say, “Do you want me to give you a list of five contractors in your area?” But once they do that and click on a contractor, they're usually going to convert at a really high level, because they've already had a lot of their questions answered. It's changed the interactions people have with websites.
It's going to show that the content on your website, in a sense, matters a little less than it used to because they're getting that in AI. It's filtering people out before they ever get to your website.
When I say “going back to our roots,” is understanding the audience and their behavioral drivers.
For Construction Pros: Are there any other aspects that they should be aware of in marketing?
In the last couple of years, I feel we've almost gone back to marketing roots a little bit. I'd say most businesses have over-indexed on what we call performance marketing (which is, as an example in terms of Google ads or Facebook ads, the thinking that if you spent $X and got one lead that converted, this was my ROI). That way of thinking is a singular focus on a channel. There's still room in place for that. But when I say “going back to our roots,” is understanding the audience and their drivers — their behavioral drivers.
We also try to understand the buyer’s journey, in a sense. In our example of concrete, it's probably pretty common that people will do some of those kinds of searches to understand the process, the costs, and try to find contractors. There's this path that people go on to get some other businesses.
We find that people aren't doing really as much research, because it's usually more of a “I need this now” situation. We call it the bow tie funnel. It's like a sideways funnel, and there's the discovery aspect down to conversion. We know it's important to have a good brand and we help our clients with that, but when people need something, they're going to Google, and they're calling the first person on the list, or they're calling one of the first people on the list, but it’s often a brand they recognize.
That's where the branding piece comes in. We had the research piece, the conversion piece, and the research piece…this is where we’re going back to the roots, a little bit of understanding of buyers and their process. And how to make sure that a business owner is showing up at those important stages.
For Construction Pros: I like the idea that old school ways still have their use. Are there some tools that have been working for decades that are still effective?
It does feel like it's come around full circle a little bit. If you've ever watched the show Mad Men, the ad world is coming back around a little bit — you see it with bigger brands and these big campaigns. We're doing more of that for some of our clients. I think there's probably a simpler version for a local service like a contractor or equipment rental because they're not going to run big national campaign ads for [local] equipment rental.
If you took five equipment rental people in the space, and you stripped out their logo on their websites and put them side by side, would anybody be able to identify which website is theirs? Often, it's very rinse and repeat. Very similar look and feel. How do you stand out? How do you differentiate a little bit? We've seen that AI in particular is rewarding that, in a sense. It is noticing that that looks a little different, and it may be more likely to recommend a business than one that looks like everybody else.
@vegefox.com - stock.adobe.com
From that customer behavior perspective, people notice different, they align to genuine and evangelize delight.
For Construction Pros: How has social media changed?
The algorithm seems to adapt daily, and you never know what's going to happen. Everybody's feed is different and all the platforms handle things differently.
We're seeing this across lots of channels. It used to be that if you had 1,000 followers on Facebook and you posted something, 1,000 people would see it. Now, you don't even necessarily get that. You're on this rented ground, basically. You don't really even own your audience in that sense.
We always emphasize quality over quantity in social media. A lot of people think they just have to post something every day…to keep the lights on, but it comes out really generic. It's not very unique to their business. It could look like any other contractor or any of the rental business. That, I think, hurts your engagement. That reflects in your overall account performance. We always emphasize with our clients to not post just a post, let's have something worthy of posting.
From that customer behavior perspective, people notice different, they align to genuine and evangelize delight.
If I follow five concrete companies and they all post something pretty generic, there's nothing really different. But if someone posts something unique. Something interesting. I'm going to notice that. You have my attention now as a potential customer. I can align the genuineness of someone. I can see that it's a real person. I like their approach or how they do things.
The last piece is the referral part of a business. That comes into the post-sale customer experience. We try to take that methodology of how to stand out. How do we help them align to genuine versus prompting AI to write a blog post about concrete costs — you're going to get the same posts that anyone else that puts in that prompt.
For Construction Pros: What is your advice to business owners developing a strategy but have no ideas? How do you develop the plan?
This is where AI can be very useful. It comes down to the experience of using it and how you prompt it. If you put in a generic one-liner, you're going to get something generic back. We've seen great examples of this exact scenario, where you feed it the right information, such as what your goals are, what is unique about you, and we use that brand ideology to help inform the AI response we get. We feed it all this information before we ask for something back like a content calendar for social media. It's genuine because we've fed it so much information.
Look different. We don't want to copy the contractor next door. But looking at anyone's similar industries, and who's doing and what they're doing. Who do you follow and what do you notice about what they post? What stands out to you? How can you apply that to your business and your industry?
It's a little scary to do, putting yourself out there. The first 100 videos might not get much traction, but seeing someone recording the day-to-day stuff of a business has become really interesting and really popular across lots of different channels.
It's a time commitment. There's some work that goes into that. And recording all your day-to-day interactions is probably a pretty extreme example, but there’s a spectrum. The other end is you don't put out anything. There's a big range in there that people can live in and still have success.
Not ignoring the long-term value of building that brand and reputation is really important.
For Construction Pros: In general, what are five things contractors and equipment rental businesses can do to start improving their business marketing today?
To start with, if your goal is in the SEO world and publishing content, there's still a huge gap there. That's where AI is getting a lot of information about pricing or the process, etc.
But if you go back a long time ago, the SEO companies will always recommend to write blog posts to drive more traffic. It might have driven traffic but it wasn't traffic that probably converted very well. We don't really recommend that for a business. Creating content around the FAQ stuff: the process, how long it takes, when can I drive on it again — the questions that people really are going to have that are in that research stage of the funnel, or closing or converting aspect of deciding this company versus that company. We’ve seen that type of content been really successful.
Continue to create content but focus on people closer to the bottom of the funnel versus the top of the funnel. Generic topics like the types of stamps for concrete are probably not going to do a lot for businesses. Create what we call middle or lower funnel content.
Reviews. A lot of people have great reviews but one thing we've seen change in the last year in this arena with AI, is it looks a lot more at review recency and velocity. It's great if you have a ton of great reviews, but if they're 10 years old, AI takes that into account. It's a signal to them that maybe this business isn't super active, or they're not getting a lot of reviews. Having a consistent, steady process to get new reviews.
Of course, good reviews is always better. That's going to help a lot more in the AI world right now — they're factoring that in.
When people talk about brand marketing, a lot of people want to tune it out because they think it's like sponsoring an arena or something, for an extreme example. But even "brand" comes into play with local businesses.
Everyone knows the landscaper that's been in the space for the last 30 years and has a great reputation. They equate reputation and brand. Often with marketing, people are trying to find what are the little quick, short-term things like “how to get more leads today” and there's a need for that, but we try to focus on the long term picture.
If you can consistently work on the brand side, it's going to help and serve you for a long time. It's building that brand, that reputation. We've seen AI be able to recognize that and see that — they leverage that a lot in terms of who they recommend. It shows up in a lot of different areas too. There are companies have been around a long time that have built a great brand, and then if I go to Google and there's three people in the maps pack … I'm more likely to call the one I recognize.
Not ignoring the long-term value of building that brand and reputation is really important. It influences your marketing costs. For example, Google ads — people who have built a good brand actually have to spend less on ads because they are more likely to get clicked on and then convert. They close more business from it, too. It makes their ad costs more tenable.
For Construction Pros: What about SEO and making adjustments to their websites?
Probably the biggest change we've seen, and how SEO strategies change, has been where we used to focus on volume of content and rank for everything. But what we found is that the noise isn't what drove conversions. I think it's focusing on that buyer intent type of copy. The website is always a good conversation. Common with small businesses is they don't always have the budgets to redesign and revamp websites every year, but some things are always good to go look at. It doesn't have to be a full rebuild and redesign every year, but look at the small things, such as looking at if your copyright date on your website is up to date. That's a simple fix to change that. But it's not just that date. It's your content. How long has it been since you published a blog post? Is it accurate?
If you know your team page has changed, or your process may have changed from 10 years ago, it's always wise to refresh and update that.
When you talk about AI, they're coming to your website like Google does. They look at your content and take it. If I'm a buyer and I'm getting all this information from AI, if it's using outdated information on your website, of course it's going to be inaccurate. As a customer, that gets frustrating.
What you say about yourself on your website actually influences quite a bit. What you say on your website, they're going to pair it. They're going to repeat. That comes back to writing something unique that stands out so people can identify you versus the other five contractors that they might get bits from as well.
