Hiring a great general contractor can make all the difference to a building or repair project. You know you and your employees to a great job every time. But, how best to go about marketing your general contractor business on a budget?

Traditional advertising such as the local Yellow Pages, or radio and television, however small the station, are just too far out of the advertising budget that many general contractor businesses have to work with. In addition, how well this kind of investment works is almost impossible to track. You may indeed be gaining a new project and client as a result of a commercial they have seen or heard, but the chances are you will forget to ask, and they will be too busy explaining their ideas for the work they need done to remember to mention how they found out about your services in the first place. However, in order to survive and prosper, marketing your general contractor business successfully is crucial.

There is another, very effective and economical method of marketing your general contractor business that you may have never considered, or even heard much about. In today’s economic climate, the savvy contractor should consider the great power of online advertising. Thanks to the great spread of everyday Internet use by exactly the people you need to target and the power of major search engines like Google, you can target specific geographical areas for people searching basic keywords, in this case things like “house renovation” “building” or simply “general contractor”. Even better, online advertising lets you target the specific demographic you are seeking. By inputting such specific keywords into a search they are already demonstrating an interest in the kinds of services you have to offer. That is half the battle won right there.

But how does this kind of marketing really convert into great general contractor advertising? Most effectively you need to direct the person who clicked on your brief little online ad to a more expansive “landing page”. On this page you need to create a great and compelling reason for this potential customer, or visitor (they are “visiting” your page now) to share their basic contact information with you. This is a great showcase for a general contracting company. You can add visual examples of your great work that will pique the visitor’s interest in your company even further. If you add a coupon for a free or discounted service in return for the visitor entering their contact information into a short online form, you should be onto a winning marketing strategy. The data from these forms is emailed to you immediately, allowing you to follow right up with these hot leads while your company and services are still at the forefront of their minds.

This is the true beauty of using the Internet and this kind of general contractor business advertising is how little it costs. You will only be charged for potential customers who take the time to “click” on your ad specifically, those people who are demonstrating a real interest in your service. Online advertising like this really is the best and economically sensible way to make the best of your general contractor business marketing dollar.