Social Media For Pool Builders
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When it comes to social media for pool builders, there is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Some say it’s worthless and a waste of time, others say it’s most important thing you can do.
We view social media as just another tool to keep in your arsenal to supplement other marketing activities such as PPC ads as well as engage with prospective leads..
There are dozens of different social media sites so it’s easy to lose focus. We’ve narrowed all of them down to the 5 most effective ones we recommend every pool builder be active on. Here they go:
This is the 800-pound gorilla of social media. Everybody (even my grandmother) uses it and spends an average of 40 minutes on it per day, so you need to have a presence on it. It’s a great place to keep past customers and new leads up to date with what’s going on with your company and any news that might affect pool owners.
Here’s the real game changer: Because of how much information Facebook knows about people, the targeting options for running advertisements is unmatched. And so much attention is being spent on it (especially on mobile), that it is the perfect marriage. It’s like 20 years ago having the ability of combining the targeting ability of direct mail, and adding the attention span of television. You can target a 42 year old home owning mom that has a 6 year old with a nice ad of a mother playing with her child. And then you can target your male demographic with a picture of a woman in a bikini.
Pro tip: As soon as a lead comes in through your website, add them on Facebook. Almost no-one is doing this and it can have a huge impact. First of all, it’s a way of showing that you are interested and take care of customers. Second of all, if you don’t close the lead immediately, you’ll still stay on their radar through the social media networks.
Google+
Although not nearly as popular as Facebook, having a profile on Google+ is an absolute must. If integrated with your website, Google+ reviews and photos will show up right in the search result, giving you better visibility and more real estate on the front page of searches
*Pro Tip – don’t worry about posting updates to Google+. It has no relevance anymore and Google has even come out publicly as stating that it was a swing and a miss. Facebook had already captured the market share for Social Media.
Instagram is quickly jumping up our list of important social media channels to pay attention to. It’s where a lot of consumer attention is right now. It’s built on photos, so builders that have the best photos will win on Instagram. As soon as Instagram cleans up their ad targeting options and delivery, Instagram is going to be a BIG player for advertisers.
To read our entire article on Instagram, check out our article on Instagram For Pool Builders.
YouTube
Few people know that Youtube is actually the world’s 2nd biggest search engine, with watch time growing 50% each of the past three years. If your company produces any kind of videos you should be posting them on YouTube and linking this videos back to your website.
I’m not a big fan of advertising on Youtube. How annoyed do you get when you go to watch a youtube video and there is one of those 5 second, 10 second, or the dreaded 30 second pre-roll videos. Yuck! Don’t associate your business with those types of intrusive marketing avenues.
Lastly, youtube is a great place to upload a testimonial video from your happy customers. As soon as you close on the pool, get out your camera and ask them to speak for 30 seconds on what this new pool is going to mean to them. Then post these videos on your website and share them on Facebook.
Houzz
Houzz is a great platform to showcase past projects. Users create “ideabooks” which they fill with pictures they love. With Houzz, pictures are everything. So if you have professional pictures of past projects (and if you don’t, you have a much bigger issue to resolve), make sure to upload them into your Houzz account.
We recommend taking the time to set up your Houzz page correctly, filling it out 100%. Then it’s time to get people to leave positive reviews on your Houzz account.
Pinterest is a great place to target the female market. 80% of Pinterest users are female. It’s basically a search engine for picture ideas. Make sure you have some of your best project photos uploaded to your account, and have them tagged properly with the right keywords.
Pinterest also has an emerging ad platform that we are SUPER excited about. They are working out the kinks, so as soon as that is been improved upon, we see Pinterest ads being VERY big for builders.
Three years ago I would have told you to be active on Twitter, however their lack of evolving their product has put them at a severe disadvantage. Twitter simply doesn’t have the impact that it used to because when Twitter was blowing up, everyone tried to follow everyone, and it has lead to a complete over saturated market place of content and sharing. If you post something on twitter these days, it will get about 5% as many eyes as an Instagram post.
My recommendation for Twitter is to have a profile for you r business that includes a link back to your website, however I would not recommend spending any time posting here.
Conclusion
If you are not yet signed up for all of these platforms, make sure to create a profile for your company for each of them with a link back to your website. Then run ads on Facebook. Optimize your campaign, and then repeat.
If you have any questions about Facebook, call me at 512-796-4989 or email me at geoff@poolbuilder-marketing.com.
