Get more contracting work with Facebook
Facebook is a great place to keep up to date with what is going on in the lives of your friends and family, especially during a pandemic!
But have you ever thought about how you could use Facebook to grow your contacting business? We use Facebook every day to grow Machinery Partner; you'd be surprised at how well it can work for construction and contracting work!
We're not here to talk about getting more likes or becoming an excavator influencer; you don't need that. So here are some straightforward and actionable ways you can start using Facebook to get more contracting work!
Set up a Facebook page
This one is pretty obvious. If you want to get more jobs from Facebook, your business needs to have a presence on the platform. So you should set up a Facebook page for your business, but make sure you set up a business page!
This will give you more options to add information your customers might be interested in, like a shop for your contracting services or contact/location information.
Once you've set up your business page, you should do your best to fill out as much information as possible. Think about it like you are the one discovering your business on Facebook for the first time. You'll want to see where the company is based, what they do, and maybe some photos of their work.
If you want to go further and add a professional feel to your facebook page, here are a few things you can do:
Use the call to action button
This button sits at the top of your page and can be set to direct customers to your website or to give you a call about your contracting services. You can use this to receive messages and get more leads from potential customers visiting your page.
Add a professional banner
A professional banner, paired with a nice profile photo, can make your page look very professional and stand out from others. This is a really simple customisation that makes a big difference when users land at your business' page. Don't worry if you don't have the design skills to pull this off; you can just upload a nice picture of your work, or even consider paying as little as $5 on Fiverr to have someone make one for you.
Pin a post to the top of your page
If you've got a post that explains a bit about your business and services, or one that you feel shows off your business well, you can pin it to the top of your page so it's one of the first things people see when they discover your company. We've pinned a nice video testimonial from one of our customers in Texas to the top of our page; take a look below!
Use Facebook groups
Groups are a little bit different from Facebook pages. Think of them like small forums within Facebook where people with similar interests can post and chat about their specific topic. There are thousands, if not millions, of Facebook groups. So it's no surprise that there are plenty of construction, mining, and contracting groups out there.
Here's a few that you might find useful:
8.9k members, a place for people who share an interest in crushing and screening machines
2.3k members, If you are a customer looking for a contractor or sub, or if your contractor looking for work, then this is the group for you!
Companies and people who need Contractors
18.7k members, This group is for people who have construction jobs; our aim is to help our community with construction services.
But why are Facebook groups so useful?
These groups are a great source of both customers and information because they're filled with people that are interested in the same topic. If you own a company that screens topsoil and you can put your services in front of 2,000 people in a group that are interested in screening topsoil for lawn work, then the likelihood is that someone is going to hire you.
If you don't feel like there are any Facebook groups that apply to your business, you could always start your own! This might sound hard, but it really isn't. If you got as far as setting up a Facebook page, starting a group is just as easy. You can even link your new group back to your page to drive more people to it.
What's important to remember is you can't just start a Facebook group for anything. Think about what is interesting to you and what might be interesting to your customers. Then do a quick search to see if there are already similar pages out there. If there are, that's actually a good thing! It means people are interested in joining groups like that.
If you come across a large group like Companies and people who need Contractors that has more than 18,000 members, you can pick a niche inside of this topic. So for example, you could start a page for people who need contractors in south Florida. You could even try promoting your new page inside of the larger page to get some initial members.
This group will be much smaller, but smaller communities can also be a lot closer knit and provide more value. Bigger isn't always better!
Use a post scheduler
If you don't know what a post scheduler is, running your Facebook page is about to get a whole lot easier!
These tools will let you create a bunch of posts and schedule them to be posted at a later date. They can even post your content to other social media apps like Instagram and LinkedIn.
These tools are really useful because you can queue up a lot of content and not worry so much about posting all of the time. You can also schedule posts so they are published when your audience is most likely to be on Facebook.
You can check this for your specific following by using the insights Facebook provides on your Facebook page. Just go to the left panel of your page and click insights > posts, and you'll see when your past posts have reached the most people.
As you can see below, our audience is most active at 6:00 AM and 6 PM.
We use Hootsuite, which even comes with a free tier where you can add up to 3 social accounts and schedule up to 30 posts!
If you don't want to use a separate app and you're only interested in posting on Facebook, you can also use Facebook's built-in "Publishing Tools" (also in the left panel) tool to schedule content.
When it comes to what you should post, we always think it's best to keep it casual and go for quality over quantity. You don't have to post every day; just share whatever contract jobs you're working on with photos or videos. People find this stuff interesting, especially your customers!
Live videos and stories also do really well for exposure because Facebook pushes this content at the top of everyone's news feed, so it's easy to discover!
You could also consider running a competition or giveaway and asking people to like or share the post. This sort of "shareable" content does very well on Facebook because the more people that share the post, the more will see it. But be careful, because likes are new followers you get from free giveaways and usually won't be of very high quality when it comes to getting you new business.
A better tactic for shareable content might be to post a picture and quote from a recent happy customer and tag them. Chances are they will probably like or share the post, meaning all of their friends will see it too. This definitely won't get the same volume of likes and shares as a competition, but it will build up trust with potential new customers and will likely bring you a lot more business in the long run!
Ads and boosted posts
Facebook ads are daunting for most people, and we get why! They can be really complicated! Luckily, there are some simpler ways you can use Facebook ads to promote your contracting business.
Boosted posts
Boosted posts are a great option if you want to get more exposure for your business quickly and easily! Facebook gives you some quick options to either target people that might be interested in your business or people that have already shown an interest by liking your page or one of your posts.
We recommend sticking with people that have already shown an interest in your business. Marketing your contracting business on Facebook is all about reminding people of your business and services, so the more you show up to people that are interested in your business, the more likely they are to hire you for a contract!
Quick ad set up
If you want to get a little more specific, without diving into all of the technical details, you can use the quick ad setup tool. This will give you a little more control over who sees your ads; you can also target by location, which is very useful if you only take contracting work within a specific region.
When you start to use more specific targeting like this, it's important to remember that testing is very important. Chances are, the first ad you set up isn't going to work that well, but the more you try different tactics, the more effective your ads will become! Just be aware that it might take a little bit of money to get up and going.
Ads manager
If you want to get super technical about Facebook ads, you can use Ads Manager, which will give you full access to all of the power of Facebook advertising. But beware, this is not for the faint of heart!
If you aren't willing to spend a large amount of time and money optimising your advertising campaigns, maybe give this option a miss.
If you do want to delve into more complex advertising to get more contracting work, check out this guide, or get in touch with us! This is something we do a lot of, and we'd be happy to help out if we can!
Note: Beware of companies who offer services to run your Facebook ads. Not all of these companies are bad for sure, but there are a lot of them out there that will take advantage of people who don't know how ads work. If you choose to use an agency or other to run your ads, make sure you do some research, maybe even chat to someone that has used them before. This will ensure you aren't getting ripped off or wasting your money!
