Fatrank Podcast

Kasra Dash:
So I have just bought an excavator and I need a consistent flow of inquiries to grow my business. What do you recommend?

James Dooley:
So if you're an excavation company and you're looking to grow there's lots of different types of excavators, diggers, dumpers, ground works. I would want to know a lot more of exactly what type of work that makes you the most profit. Right okay. And then once you've got that a fractional CMO or someone that can help you out with your marketing overall can start to look at different avenues whether that's traditional marketing. I'm not a massive fan but traditional marketing could be billboards, TV, radio, magazines. Whether it's PPC to pay to be the top of Google, SEO search engine optimisation in trying to rank your website higher. I'm a massive fan of that. There are many reasons why which Kasra can touch on in a minute. Then you've got social media so consistently posting on social media, social media advertising that you can do whether that's Facebook ads, Instagram ads, YouTube advertising. And obviously lead generation.

So over at fatrank.com we do a lot of excavation leads, groundworks leads, landscaping leads, digger and dumper, man with a van type leads, man in an excavator type leads. So all the removal of debris, skip hire and all that. A lot of this falls underneath the excavation and groundworks industry. At FatRank we do a lot of the lead generation for that and the good part is that we guarantee a return on investment. With the guarantee you are only paying on converted jobs. So some of the stuff we're going to touch upon now with regards to SEO and PPC can be done for you and you're only paying on converted jobs. The only caveat is do not 100 percent put all your eggs in FatRank's basket for being the sole method of generating your leads. That should only be one method to help you grow your excavation company. There are others. What's your thoughts then?

Let's touch upon other lead generation companies like Bark, Checkatrade, Builder Builder, Yellow Pages advertising.

Kasra Dash:
So the issue that I've had with those businesses before is they resell the lead. I don't know if any of you guys know that but for example if excavation company one purchases that lead for 40 or 50 credits that same exact lead gets sold to four different companies. So it's not an exclusive lead and that is the annoying thing. It means you are driving down your price so whoever has the cheapest price ends up winning. That is issue number one. Then issue number two is sometimes you purchase the lead and you can't even get hold of that person so you have wasted money.

This is similar to PPC as well. We have spoken about this before. I'm not a big fan of PPC mainly for that reason. You need somebody full time in the ad account making certain that they are adding negative keywords to the list. Then you have click fraud. So competitors can literally click on your ads and burn your budget every single day. Then you have window shoppers. So they have clicked three different ads and they are just looking for a price. They are not invested into your service.

I would look to avoid those two. You can test it but for me I'm avoiding that. A much safer strategy is SEO. Actually ranking your website organically. There are a lot of cowboy SEO agencies so if you want a trusted SEO agency contact us and we can guide you depending on what your services are and where you're based. We have a handful of SEO agencies that we can help you with.

If you're going to do it yourself what I would be looking to do is list a load of services that you provide. So excavation, groundwork, drainage, grab hire, civil engineering. List all of these as services on your website and then create SEO optimised content for each of those services. A lot of business owners don't create dedicated pages. Google will not know you provide the service and they will not rank you.

Another play is Facebook retargeting. Anybody that lands on your website might not inquire. If 100 people visit your website all 100 will not convert. So retarget them next time they go on Facebook or Instagram. You can set up a pixel to say anybody that visits my website and does not enquire I want to show them these ads. That is another way of getting people back on to your site.

The good thing about retargeting ads is that they might not have enquired because they might not have felt trust. If you retarget with videos, testimonials or case studies it might push them to enquire. That is a huge play.

But also one big one is if you are an excavation company and you are looking to grow do not obsess too much on ROI from SEO specifically. SEO is also there to do your brand building and trust so that when you are buying leads you have better chances of converting. When someone looks at your brand online and you have positive branding, lots of five star reviews and videos you look more trustworthy.

I strongly recommend having some sort of budget for SEO to try to get high rankings. The major play is that if you can show investors or if you're ever looking to sell your excavation and groundworks company that you are generating your own leads your multiplier is higher. The value of your business goes up. Many people do not talk about that. If you understand that you get a higher multiplier you should be running SEO alongside buying leads whether it's PPC or lead generation.

Lead generation keeps you busy. SEO is the long term play. If you can generate your own leads that is the holy grail of owning an excavation company.

James Dooley:
So if you want help to grow your excavation company make certain to check out the link down below in the description or head over to fatrank.com.