Three steps to make this your most profitable year EVER

As trade business owners, every year we grow wiser and more battle-hardened - regardless of whether business tanks, booms, or bounces around.

Especially after the madness of 2020 left most of us with a few scars.

But in tough times, there’s an opportunity to grow - and the last twelve months taught us new ways to scale and adapt our businesses to a rapidly changing marketplace for tradies. 

The reality is that after a period of tough economic conditions, customers are gun shy. They’re waiting longer and longer to buy.

So in 2021 a wide-reaching, multi-faceted, cutting-edge, digital marketing strategy is really important to keep bringing in new customers and maintaining contact with your existing ones.

You need to learn lessons from the last twelve months - how your own business performed, and how the market has changed - without dwelling on your losses.

That’s why we’re suggesting THREE KEY STEPS you can START IMPLEMENTING TODAY to make the next 12 months the most profitable you’ve ever experienced as a business owner.

Buckle up.

1/ DEFINE YOUR GOAL AND YOUR STRATEGY

Your goal is what you want to achieve, and your strategy describes how you’re going to achieve it.
For example, you might want to double your revenue, expand your service area and bring on two new staff members. 

Your strategy to achieve this might include a brand new Facebook ad campaign, or nailing down your SEO so you’re more visible in searches in your local area. 

Trade business owners have a tendency to put things off, especially mapping out the long-term future of their businesses - but you’re going to be undercutting what you can achieve if you’re running your operation day by day, without a greater vision. 

Be ambitious, set your target, and create a strategy. Factor in the lengthened buying cycle; this means you need to create more touch-points to establish brand trust while your customers decide what to do. 

That’s your first step.

2/ BREAK IT DOWN INTO SMALL, ACTIONABLE TASKS

Whatever your goal is, you need to think about what action you can start taking today to begin working towards it. 

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Whatever you want to achieve, you’ll probably need to work on it consistently over a long period of time before you see results. 

If you want to hire new staff members and double your revenue, you’ll probably need to generate more business first. 

If you break this down into a daily task, you might want to spend an additional 30-60 minutes each day optimising or expanding your marketing campaigns, to reach more people.

You might want to refine your website, and your quote letter, too. Set the time aside each and every day to build towards your goal. 

3/ DEFINE AND CLARIFY YOUR BUDGET

How much do we need to spend in order to achieve all this?

Take your data from 2020 into consideration. What worked, what didn’t work. Refine your plan accordingly. One key metric for determining your budget is average spend per sale, or what marketers call the “average cart value” - this will help with your long-term projections.

Those are the keys to planning your most profitable year ever.

Start planning, implementing, and growing.  

If you want to learn a little more about how to optimise marketing for your trade in 2021, check out our guide with six strategies you can start implementing today.