For electricians
Marketing for electricians, from someone who came off the tools.
I am not a sparky. I spent 15 years in plumbing, 10 of them running my own business, so what I know is how a trade business actually runs. The electrical side I have learned the honest way, by building and running the marketing for electricians.
In short
What does marketing for an electrical business actually involve?
Being findable when somebody needs a job doing, and being convincing once they land on you. In practice that is a website, the unpaid Google results including the map, and paid ads when the diary needs filling sooner than the rest can manage. Which of the three you need depends on what sort of work you are short of.
Where to start
Three things an electrical company can spend money on.
You will not need all three at once, whatever anybody has told you. Which one comes first depends on how soon you need the work and what sort of work it is.
- SEO for electriciansTurning up when somebody nearby searches for the job they need doing. Slow to arrive, and the only one of the three that keeps working after you stop paying.
- Google Ads for electriciansTop of the page from the day it goes live. Useful when a week opens up, and the easiest of the three to waste money on if nobody is watching it.
- Web design for electriciansA site that answers the only question a stranger has: are you licensed, do you cover my street, and can I ring you right now.
Which one first
Depends what you are short of.
The usual way this goes wrong is doing a sensible thing at the wrong moment. Find yourself below and that is roughly what you would get told on the phone.
- You have just gone out on your own
- The website first, and nothing else for a while. Everything else points at it, and there is no sense paying to send strangers somewhere that gives them no reason to ring.
- Next week looks empty
- Ads. It is the only one of the three that can put you in front of somebody this afternoon. Switch it off again when you are full, and do not feel bad about that.
- You want more EV charger or switchboard work
- Search, aimed at those jobs specifically. They are planned rather than urgent, so people research before they ring, and a page that answers properly tends to win them.
- You want commercial, not domestic callouts
- A different site, effectively. Property managers and facilities people are not searching the way a homeowner does, and a page written for a worried householder will not land with them.
- You are steady and want to stay that way
- Search, quietly, month after month. Nothing you could screenshot. The point is that the empty fortnight never turns up.
Plenty of electrical companies get sold all three together. If one of those rows is obviously you, do that and leave the others until it has had a fair go.
Being straight about it
What carries over from one trade to another, and what doesn’t.
- What a quiet fortnight feels like
- Work does not taper off politely. It stops, usually in a week you had budgeted for. Knowing which lever moves something in days and which takes a season is most of what you are paying me to know.
- That a quote is not a sale
- You hand somebody a number and then wait. Everything on your site either makes choosing you easier or gives them a reason to ring the next one, and almost nobody building these sites has ever sat in a van waiting on a yes.
- Why more calls is the wrong target
- Any marketer can get the phone ringing. Getting it to ring for the work you actually want, at the rate you want to charge, is the harder job and the one worth paying for.
- What I do not know
- Your regulations, your certification, and which jobs are genuinely worth chasing in your area. I will ask rather than guess, and I would rather do that than hand you a page about EV chargers when half your income is commercial maintenance.
Electrical work already done
Two sparkies, both still live.
Rather than tell you I understand electrical businesses, here are two I have built for. Both sites are live and you can go and poke at them.
- ChristchurchHays Electrical
A local sparky who needed to look like the safe option without ever saying so in those words. Plain, quick to load, easy to ring, with the reviews left to carry the argument.
1,500 site visitors, 170+ new enquiries
- DunedinHonest Electrical
Website, search and ads together, built on one promise: the figure you were quoted is the figure you pay. Underneath sits a page for each job he wants more of, across Dunedin and the rest of Otago.
There is more of this, electrical and otherwise, on the portfolio. Everything listed there is live on its own domain.
From day dot he generated us more leads than we could keep up with. Straight up, and the results speak for themselves.
The honest bit
None of this helps if the phone goes unanswered.
If quotes sit in the van for a fortnight, or calls roll to voicemail every afternoon, sending more people your way only gives you more opportunities to lose them.
I would rather say that on the first call than take the money and watch nothing change. Occasionally the most useful thing I can tell an electrical company is to sort the answering out and ring me back in a month.
Questions
Things electricians ask me.
What is digital marketing for an electrical company?
It is three things: a website worth landing on, appearing in Google without paying per click, and paid advertising for when you need work sooner than the unpaid side can deliver it. Everything you get sold is a version of one of those three, whatever it is called.
You were a plumber, not an electrician. Does that matter?
For the trade itself, yes, and I will not pretend otherwise. For the marketing, far less than you would think. The business underneath is the same shape: quoting, callouts, chasing payment, a diary that swings. What is genuinely different about electrical work I have learned building and running the marketing for electricians, and I ask rather than assume.
Which one should I start with?
One, not three. Usually the website, because the other two send people to it. After that it comes down to timing: advertising if you need work this month, search if you can wait a few months for something that lasts.
Most of my work is word of mouth. Why would I bother?
Word of mouth is better work than anything I can send you and nothing here replaces it. The trouble is that you cannot turn it up in a quiet month and it does not come with you into a new suburb. This is for the gaps it leaves.
Do you only work with electricians?
No. Most of my clients are trade and local service businesses, and the work rhymes across all of them. Electrical is one I have done a fair bit of, including websites, search and ads for sparkies in Christchurch and Dunedin.
Do you work outside New Zealand?
Yes. I am based near Christchurch and work with businesses in New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada. Pricing is quoted in your own currency.
Am I tied into anything?
No lock-in. A website is a one-off at a price agreed before anything starts. Monthly work runs month to month, so you stay because it is earning rather than because of a signature.
Let’s talk
Tell me what your electrical business needs.
What you do, where you work, and what is not happening that should be. You will get a straight answer on what I would do first, usually within one business day.