Fatrank Podcast

Kasra Dash:
So James if I am looking to grow my scaffolding business what would you recommend, where should I invest my money into to generate more inquiries.

James Dooley:
So if you're looking to grow a scaffolding business I would potentially recommend a holistic approach of being seen in as many places as possible because sometimes it's not really an emergency niche. It might be something that's coming along for you needing it for solar panels or roof repair or it could be for an extension on a house. It could be for commercial purposes as well. So there's lots of different plays of what you can do.

I'll list off a few different things and you can say what you think might work best. You've got SEO which stands for search engine optimization for anyone that doesn't know, where it's optimizing pages and doing backlinks to try and get your website to rank higher in Google. So if someone's searching for scaffolding in London or wherever you're based, you're trying to show up in position number one.

You've got the Google Business Profile which is the maps listing where you need to try to get lots of reviews. You've got PPC which stands for pay per click which is within Google where you're paying to be at the top and you're paying per click through to your website. That's not per conversion it's just per click. You've then got traditional marketing like TV ads, radio ads, billboard advertising, magazines, stuff like that. I'm not a massive fan of it because I can't really check the KPIs.

You've got organic social media, so consistently posting every single day of jobs that you've been doing. And then you've got social media ads where you can be trying to target a certain demographic of client that you can be going out to do.

These are all different major plays of what you can be doing. For me, obviously we work at fatrank.com with a lot of scaffolding companies and we do a lead generation service which guarantees a return on investment. You only pay on converted jobs for the scaffolding leads of what you do. I think it's a great strategy to help you grow to get a consistent flow of inquiries that are coming in for scaffolding leads.

I'd make certain you fill in the form. You need to qualify so you need to make certain that the branding looks good online and you do work across a large demographic area in the UK. I would not put all your eggs in one basket and as the founder of FatRank I'm telling you don't throw all your eggs in one basket. Diversify to try and get as many different places to generate leads as possible, FatRank just being one of them. But I can guarantee you the return on investment there.

Other lead generation companies like Bark, Checkatrade, Builder Builder, all those places, some might generate you leads. The big major play is that they might resell that lead to four or five companies, where ours are exclusive leads.

But back on to the different ways where I just kind of touched upon the different methods of marketing like SEO, PPC and lead generation. If you were a scaffolding company looking to grow what would you think would work the best.

Kasra Dash:
So obviously the lead generation would probably work the best. But to diversify I would also look to outsource my SEO because I'm going to assume that a scaffolder isn't an actual expert. So hire an SEO agency, vet them out properly. If you guys do need help with that just fill in the form with FatRank, we can obviously guide you on who we think is probably the best depending on the area and the services and stuff.

And then for the actual SEO, if you're going to do it yourself, what I would look to probably do is actually building out location pages. So for example commercial scaffolding in ten or twenty different locations.

Another play that you could possibly do, and this would probably be the cheapest way, is when you're actually putting up scaffolding you could print off a couple of your own signs. And I know you just said that traditional marketing doesn't work but the reason why you're saying that is because a billboard might cost you let's say 10 grand to actually rent out, whereas if you've already put up your own scaffolding, you've got your own little sign there, it's kind of free.

James Dooley:
Yeah definitely do that. That's a great play. Doing a scaffolding wrap on it as well where you can put the signs on with telephone numbers and email address and stuff like that.

Kasra Dash:
Yeah so I mean once you've got that done it's not going to cost you. You don't need to print off additional signs every single time. Go and get 10 signs printed off and for the next 10 jobs that you actually put up you can do that.

I think the Instagram would work, like organic Instagram would work really well. So if you're actually posting photos of your actual work, just getting the word out there. Obviously Google Business Profile, getting as many reviews as you possibly can. So whenever somebody's searching for scaffolding near me you've got a much higher chance of actually showing up for that keyword.

PPC I'm not a big fan of because it is expensive. And again if you're not actually, if you don't know what you're doing, like anything it can be expensive. You can burn a lot of money on click fraud. So that's basically when your competitors are clicking on your ads and you're not getting any actual leads from it.

You do have a lot of what I like to call window shoppers. So people that just click ads and they will just not fill in the form at all. You've actually also got some of your competitors that are looking at seeing what you're doing and they're clicking through to it and checking out your site, seeing what wording that you're using so they can steal it. But every time they're clicking on it might cost you in the scaffolding space maybe 35 or 40 per click. So it can get pretty expensive.

James Dooley:
But also as well if you are a scaffolding business owner, I've said FatRank does lead generation but I've also said don't throw all your eggs in one basket and to diversify. Another major play, which you speak about quite a lot, where a lot of business owners don't know whether they're a scaffolding business owner or whatever industry that it is, some people become obsessed. Now I love a return on investment but some people become obsessed with a return on investment of SEO thinking that okay if I spend £3,000 a month on SEO I need to be bringing in this amount of work.

But what they're not realising is that SEO is a long-term play. But also if you can as a scaffolding company generate your own leads on your website, so trying to get all the different types of scaffolding of what you do and trying to rank it in all the different locations, if you can generate your own leads and if you ever look to go and sell your scaffolding company the multiplier of what you sell your site for would be worth more.

If you're 100% relying on PPC or 100% relying on lead generation companies, and me being a scaffolding lead generation company, I'm saying that's not good for your business. Do it to help you grow and consistently keep growing to get those consistent inquiries. But make certain you are putting some money into brand building to keep building up your reputation online because it also will help if you're 50/50 and you're equal on price with one of your competitors. And they go and search you both, make it certain you've got better reviews and a more positive branding online because that might be a difference between you winning and losing jobs as well.

But also like you said, it gives you the higher multiplier if you can generate your own leads if you are a scaffolding business looking to grow your company.

So if you guys do want a consistent flow of inquiries, fill in the form at fatrank.com. The form URL is in the description. Fill it out and see if your business can actually get accepted.