Your Location Is Costing You Electrical Work? 144

Electricians leaving a gaping hole in their electrical business, letting leads slip through. 

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Transcript

Drop a bundle of 25mil grey off the top of your roof rack onto the Harbour Bridge as you drive across it for the seventh time today.

Welcome to Simplified Sparky Marketing.

This podcast I've been meaning to do for a while, and it was reiterated to me this evening. I received a comment on one of my Instagram posts, and I like to do a bit of digging when someone comments — particularly if it's an electrical business — just to see what they're about, what's going wrong with them, where the holes are in their business. And I spotted a desperately big hole with this business. That's what today's podcast is going to be about, and it is your location.

I think this is blatantly obvious, and this is where I think sometimes I need to wind myself back in and go extremely back to basics, because basics aren't so basic to some people. Because I geek out on this stuff and I'm an absolute nerd with it, I look a lot into things — overly look into things. But what I've been seeing predominantly is people fucking up by not putting their location on their socials, on their websites, and other places as well.

It's such a strange thing to me, because you would think you should state where you are. People tend to state they're far broader than they actually are, or they just don't put a location at all. I'm going to get into why that is such a bad idea.

I was checking somebody out on Instagram this evening that had commented on my post, and it was an electrician. So it was a personal profile, and then I went through the profile. They'd stated what their electrical business was, linked into the personal profile. So I went down a rabbit hole onto their electrical business page on Instagram. Does not state where they're located. So I was like, "Okay, cool. Wonder where he is." Clicked on the website that was on the profile. Doesn't say anything up the top — which is horrible, horrible messaging.

I speak a lot about messaging. Messaging is one of the most important, if not the most important thing in marketing. Being very clear what you do, who you serve, where you are, et cetera. Where you are is missing here, vitally.

So I scroll down the page, down the page, down the page, and finally find a part that says "About Us" — even though the About Us shouldn't be on your front home page. That should be tucked away in the About Us page, because it's got nothing to do with helping someone's problem. I digress.

I then see where they are, and it's a suburb that's the same as one in Sydney. Where that person's located is the name of a suburb in the Sutherland Shire in Sydney. So I was like, "Oh, he's actually not too far away." Then I looked further, and it said Victoria. So I was like, "Oh, there must be a suburb in Victoria as well called X."

My point here is, I'm not somebody looking for electrical services. I'm just having a little nose at this person's website to figure them out a bit and see where they're going wrong in business. But hypothetically, if that's somebody looking for an electrician — people look for that. People look for locality. They look for familiarity. They want to know somebody that's actually in their area legitimately.

That's why I state the service area on my electrical business — the pocket that I'm in. You could state you're in the Sutherland Shire. You could be Northern Beaches. You could be Eastern Suburbs. You have to put something. Don't be a greedy bastard and say, "I service all of Sydney."

That's where people go drastically wrong. You actually think that you're losing out on work by not saying you service all of Sydney. People have it in their heads that they're going to lose out on work because you're not Sydney-wide. The funny thing is, when you say you're in a specific pocket or area, lo and behold, you start getting work in that area. How good is that? It's in your locality. It's more efficient with you. It's more efficient with your staff. It's less fuel that you're purchasing. You can jump from job to job to job, like I do in my electrical business — 15-minute drive, 10-minute drive, 20-minute drive — everything is local.

If I rewind it back a little bit, it's more so for the person that's looking for your services. You're shooting them in the foot. If they can't see where you're located, that's a flag for them. If they're going down a rabbit hole looking for an electrician, they want to know that you're genuinely in the area. I know people do the gag of, "We're your local electrician," even though they could be 50Ks away. But if people legitimately see your map on your website — if you've got your Google Maps or Google Business Profile linked in, and you've got a map on your website, which I do recommend — then it'll be obvious where you are. But that's most likely tucked down the bottom on the majority of websites, and that's what I recommend as well. You should have your location up the top, because if you don't have your location — even on your socials — it's costing you business.

Hypothetically, let's just talk about the Eastern Suburbs. Let's say Mrs. Jones is looking for an electrician, or she happens to stumble across a post you did that was informative on Instagram. She clicks on your profile, and let's say Mrs. Jones is in Coogee, and your business is in the Eastern Suburbs, located in Randwick in Sydney. She pops onto your page and goes, "Oh, holy shit, I'm only two suburbs away from this person, this electrical business. I've got electrical work. I'm going to send them a DM."

But if Mrs. Jones goes to your page, and you've put up this really informative video, and she clicks on the page, and it doesn't state your location — that one little bit of friction of her going, "I wonder where that is. I wonder where he's located" — that's going to cost you a lead.

I've seen it with so many of you electricians listening to this podcast. I look at all your profiles. If anybody follows me, I look at your profile, I look at your website, because I'm that kind of weirdo. I look at all these little things where people are going wrong, and that is one of the biggest things I'm seeing at the moment — people not stating their location.

I don't know, is it a pride thing? Do they want to hide it? Do they reckon they service Australia-wide? If you're guilty of this — fucking get onto your developer, or go to your Instagram profile immediately and put your location in there. Wiggle it in somewhere. Delete some crap that's irrelevant and isn't going to help somebody. Because stating where you are is going to make it a lot easier for Mrs. Jones to briefly have a look at your profile and go, "Ah, they're just around the corner. They're actually in my area."

So that's my red hot tip this week. Go get a developer, get somebody in there, change your location, and put it in there. I'll chat to you next week when you've got your location updated.