How to Improve Your Marketing and Generate New Leads in the Restoration Industry

When COVID-19 hit, one of the first expenses restoration businesses began questioning was their marketing spend. After all, in hard times, cash should be spent just on keeping the lights on, right?  It’s a difficult task to navigate, but arguably one of the most important things you can do to keep your business strong during this pandemic is have a strong presence where your customers are.

In our recent webinar, expert marketing panelists John Braun of HitMan Advertising, Trina Lo of FreshInk Communications, and Timothy Miller of Business Development Group, gave us some insight into how you can accelerate your marketing in the restoration industry during this global pandemic.

Here’s how you can finish 2020 strong by understanding how your marketing can help you navigate the turbulent waters that is the global economy right now.

What an Average Day Should Look Like for the Marketing Department During COVID-19

For starters, it’s important to remember that just because there is a pandemic, it’s not an excuse to throw away all the hard work the sales and marketing team has accomplished up until this point.Don’t let your team use COVID-19 as a way to get out of conducting regular sales calls. The fact is, Zoom should be second nature at this point. As Timothy Miller of Business Development Associates urges, “Sales people do not use the Coronavirus epidemic to avoid doing the hard work of getting on the phone and working your sales process [...] it’s very important they continue the same process that got them there”.

Maintaining your regular sales and marketing processes even during the pandemic will ensure that business relationships and partners are still strong post-covid.

Take the time to market not only to potential future clients, but also past clients. There are likely  services your construction and restoration company still offers during COVID. Many clients don’t even realize a lot of those services are available, so reach out to your past clients with phone calls, emails, and Zoom meetings. Use the opportunity to check in, because you never know what work a person might need completed during these times.

How to Build Relationships Digitally as a Marketer

Building relationships can be tricky, even when we’re not in a global pandemic. When those relationships are suddenly moved online in the blink of an eye it becomes even more of a challenge. As marketers, how can we reach out to people online and continue to build those relationships?When we get bored, many of us gravitate towards social media and being active online. As marketers, you can use this to your advantage. Going where the people are (virtually, of course), will let them know that you’re still there and still open during this pandemic. Many people aren’t actively seeking out the services your company provides because they might not realize you’re open. Having a strong voice and a strong online presence will help your team continue to build relationships with present and future customers.

If you want to take an even more assertive role in community building, host your own Zoom party. This is a great way to maintain some of your current relationships, and meet some new friends. Rather than staying quiet and waiting for the storm to pass, bring some of your past clients (or potential clients) into a Zoom room and chat about how you can help them during this time, and hopefully, how they can help you. Clients will remember that you were the ones there during hard times and they will appreciate that, Trina Lo of FreshInk Communications says, “One or two little nuggets can be remembered for a lifetime in a business”.

Marketing Tools That Every Restoration Company Should Utilize

It’s easy to get lost trying to decide what software platforms are the best fit to help your company succeed on the marketing side. Our panelists John Braun of HitMan Advertising, and Timothy Miller, helped name some of the best tools to stay on top of your marketing in the restoration industry:

• A solid CRM software like HubSpot
• Video Conferencing Software such as Zoom
• Lead Generation Applications like GetResponse
• Xactimate, QuickBooks
• Email Marketing Platforms like AWeber, ConstantContact

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Which Marketing Platforms are Working Best Right Now

The best platforms to broadcast your company's message are always fluctuating, and depend on your audience. As marketers, it’s important to stay educated on which of those platforms are currently strong, and which ones are weak, in the eyes of your audience.

We all have a lot of time on our hands right now, so social media is inevitably going to increase as a viable marketing platform because people are spending so much of their time scrolling their news feeds. Within the various social media channels, the platform that has opened up as a major marketing platform for smaller businesses is Facebook Advertising.

Pre-COVID, Facebook Advertising had been quite expensive, but ad prices have recently dropped, creating room for other businesses. Many large corporations have pulled their ads from Facebook Advertising thanks to the drop in consumer spending due to the pandemic. As Trina of FreshInk Communications explains, “A lot of the major players with the big expensive products aren’t really spending their money there right now, because not a lot of people are buying brand new cars. Those types of companies pulled out of a lot of their digital marketing strategies, so different sizes of companies now have more opportunity and more ground to play with there”.

Marketing during a pandemic can be stressful and daunting. With the right tools and tactics available to you, it’s possible to help your business stay strong and resourceful through these times.Thanks again to our panelists Trina, John, and Timothy, for helping us break down the world of marketing during an era of physical distancing and COVID-19.

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