Contractors: Hands down, Facebook and Instagram are the best source of new sales leads:

If you want to fill your sales pipeline with qualified sales leads, you need to be advertising on Meta platforms Facebook and Instagram. The leads will not sell themselves, but when you add a well constructed sales process to the latest artificial intelligence tools, you have a winning combination.

5 steps to building a successful Contractor Marketing System that uses A.I. to close more high-paying clients.👊

1. Advertise on Facebook and Instagram

On January 31, 2024 Pew Research reported that 70% of adults in the US use Facebook and Instagram. From an age standpoint, about 70% of adults over 50 use Facebook while 70% of adults under 50 use Instagram. What does this mean? Your customers are on Facebook and Instagram and if you want them to pay attention to your business, you should be advertising there as well.

But wait, there's more ... Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has the most amazing A.I. tools to identify exactly who should see your advertisement. So, while a billboard puts your message in front of everyone who drives down that street, Meta will put your message in front of people who are actually interested in buying what you sell.

The result is the impact of your advertising goes much further because you are not wasting your advertising spending on people who aren't interested in buying what you sell.

2. Use lead forms to simplify conversion tracking

Step 2 is to use Meta's built in lead form for capturing the name, email, and phone number. There are several reasons to use Meta's built in form rather than a form on your website.

First is that when someone opts in, all their information is known to Facebook and that means their internal A.I. can do a better job of finding other prospects for you. If you send users to your website first, it is critical to build all the conversion tracking properly so the AI can work effectively.

Second, the forms pre-filled which makes the process easier for users and you can still add in any other custom questions you want.

Finally, this really simplifies the marketing process for contractors. No need to build out complicated landing pages on your website.

3. Respond immediately using an A.I. Chat Bot

What happens when someone replies to your advertisement at 9:30pm? Are you ready to immediately call then to ask about their issue? What about at 2:00pm when you are knee deep in a construction project? No. But here's the thing, if you don't reply within 5 minutes, your conversion rates will go down by 70%.

Here's where the newest A.I. Chat Bots can really help. Within seconds of someone responding to an ad, you can start a conversation with them and if appropriate, schedule a meeting with them. Whether at 2:00pm or 2:00am.

4. Call to follow-up as soon as possible

My number one piece of advice for all business owners, is to not rely completely on the technology. That means, while the AI can identify and engage with leads, there is nothing like a direct phone call. If you hate making sales calls, hire someone to do it for you. Otherwise, as soon as possible, pick up the phone and call every prospect. If nothing else, this is a first step to building the know, like and trust you will need to close the deal.

5. Nurture continuously

The most expensive part of lead generation is getting that lead in the door. Once you have their information, you can market to them forever for practically nothing. Just think, if you generate 100 leads per month, within a lead you will have 1,200 leads. Within 10 years 12,000 leads. What's the power of that, well if you convert just 1% of leads in any given month, in 10 years, your database should be generating 120 projects per month.

This is because while the initial advertisement got their attention, they may not have been ready to buy right now. But if they get an email a week from you, your newsletter every month, invitations to other events, occasional calls, do you think they will reach out and call you when they are ready to buy? Of course they will. Here's the thing, when the lead comes in they don't know you. After a month or two, they will know you, what you do, why you are different from the competition, and they will indeed buy from you when the time is right.

Any lead nurturing needs to be focused on educating your audience about how they can solve the problem they need solved, what they can do to be a more educated consumer, what they can expect when they buy from you.

This needs to be constant. After an initial 10 day campaign (a text message and email a day for 10 days) we would want to put leads into a weekly cycle with a monthly newsletter.

Akela Contractor Marketing System

A done-for-you platform that does all this for just $97 per month plus from $50 per lead. Learn more here.