Gone are the days where calling your business ‘AAA Electricians’ got you first listing in the white pages. With the advent of the internet, there are hundreds of ways to attract customers. How can you stay ahead of the game?

Most small businesses don’t make it to two years – in fact, more than a third of businesses fail before 24 months is up. Then, 50% of business fail without making it to five years. Running a business is incredibly hard.

If you want to succeed, it’s about more than just knowing how to be an electrician. It’s understanding accounting, knowing how to hire people, getting business insurance, and it’s knowing how to grow your business. And while word of mouth will always be important for a sparky, the internet can’t be ignored.

These five strategies will help get you ahead of your competitors and in front of your future customers.

1. A great electrician website

Even a single page website gives you credibility. And 75% of people judge a company’s trustworthiness based on their website design. Even though you are only focusing locally, it’s important to have a simple site where people can see the services you offer, that you’ve had happy customers in the past, and where they can see your face.

• Make sure it’s ‘mobile friendly’. This means you should be able to easily use the site when you’re on a computer or a phone. Increasingly, people use their phones to search and browse the internet, so make it easy for them.
• You need to have an SSL certificate . This is when your HTTP site becomes HTTPS, and basically means your site is secure. An SSL certificate is cheap and simple for a web developer to do, but means your customers are safe to use your site, and Google rates it higher in search results.
• Make your site loads fast. Most people click away from your site within three seconds if it doesn’t load. So get rid of flashing lights, moving images, and big image files.
• You want the design to have great ‘UX’. This means the user can easily navigate around the site and find everything they need easily, having a great experience.

2. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

You’ve got a great website—now, you need to make it so people can find you. Basically, when people go into Google and type in ‘electrician Auckland’ or ‘heatpump install Christchurch’, you want your website to pop up first. To do this ‘organically’ (without buying advertising), you need SEO.

It optimises your site to help you up the ranks on Google. There are loads of things you can do and there is an art to it.

There’s on page SEO , which includes things like writing blogs, using relevant keywords (like ‘heatpump install Christchurch’) and using specific naming formulas for on-site images. There are off-site techniques such as backlinking (getting your website address added to other good websites) and social media.

3. Google My Business

When someone Googles your business name, do they get directed to the right place? To ensure that your potential customer gets to see your contact details, you need to set up a Google My Business page. You’ll have to sign up for it via Google and enter your details. You want to include things like what hours you work and link through to your website.

This is also where you get customers to review you—the best type of advertising you can get is happy customers.

4. Get content on your site

Content is basically anything on your website- well written information that provides valuable information to your future customers. 61% of customers buying decisions are influenced by custom content—this is a train you need to board so you don’t miss out!

Blogging is something you need to do. Think about questions that your customers ask about and write blogs about the answers. You want to provide lots of added value to them. This helps with SEO too, as well as making customers trust you more.

5. Paid advertising with Google – PPC (Pay Per Click)

When you search on Google, generally the first few results that come up are paid advertisements. You can buy these spots from Google- and you pay per click. They can be very effective, especially for geographic targeted ads, which you will be.

You choose a range of factors that help determine who your ads get shown to. This includes your proximity to the user.

Start advertising today

While there are many ways you can market your business, these are the top five ways that electricians can create their marketing strategy. Create a strategy today that appeals to your target market and start increasing your customer base.