Advanced Marketing for General Contractors

I’ve written about marketing essentials for high end residential contractors here and here: Marketing Essentials and houzz: are you resisting? why?. Don’t overlook the basics. I’m also assuming you have items like yard signs and truck signs etc. Words the wise. When starting new marketing add only one strategy at a time. Any of these strategies will … Read more

Contractors (Almost) Universally Overlook this Marketing Essential

This post is for myself. I’ve failed multiple times at getting general contractors to listen to me on this. Every time I first meet with a contractor I find this one essential marketing task has not been done. Often it’s still not done at the end of the project! I’d do it for you or them, but I can’t. … Read more

Mobilegeddon: Was it all hype? What do we do now?

Several clients contacted me to ask about alarming Mobilegeddon emails from other web companies. The emails I saw from 3 separate companies claimed any website that wasn’t optimized for mobile by April 21 would see their traffic disappear and their business drop. My clients were asking how to respond to such dire predictions. Google did … Read more

5 Important Marketing Strategies for Home Builders

Thanks to my work building websites for high end home builders, I often get to talk to generals about marketing: what works for them and what confuses them. As any contractor can tell you, the industry operates on word-of mouth-referrals. After all, building a house is one of the biggest financial decisions people make. Wouldn’t you … Read more

4 Features of High Impact Websites for General Contractors

Thanks to our association with Contractor’s Coach Paul Sanneman, we’ve had the opportunity to complete multiple websites for general contractors in San Francisco and around the US. These websites are geared to contractors who are building relationships with architects and attracting projects from Houzz. Houzz sets a high bar for photography; Homeowners and architects now expect gorgeous home photos that are expertly … Read more

How to Avoid Scope Creep — Hourly versus Project Pricing

Scope creep! I think every independent web professional I’ve spoken to has said this is an issue for them. Sometimes they’ve even quit the industry due to project creep. I’ve made it one of my 2014 goals to learn more about how to avoid the issues surrounding scope creep. Yesterday a marketing colleague of ours gave a … Read more

Website Hacked? 7 Steps to Keep Your WordPress Site Secure

by Karen Nierlich, Tod Abbott and Allison Rolls WordPress has grown in popularity exponentially over the last 5 years.  Unfortunately, hackers have been turning their attention to the platform because of its popularity. Prior to last year, hacking was very rare in our experience with small and medium business clients. Last year we fixed several … Read more