Social media has evolved beyond a platform for sharing personal photos to become a crucial tool for effective marketing. Today, effective social media marketing helps businesses expand their reach, build trust, and foster rapport with customers.
As the age profile of electrician customer bases changes to Millennials and Gen Z, electrical contractors must adapt.
These customers are tech-savvy and accustomed to email marketing and e-commerce—often using social media for brand research and decision-making.
To meet the expectations of their target audience, electrical companies need to build a strong online presence through social media marketing.
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What is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is the process of using social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube to promote and market products, services, and businesses. It involves:
Creating content
Engaging with followers
Building relationships
Driving sales through social networks
Social media marketing allows businesses to reach a wide variety of potential customers in an interactive way.
The two basic pillars of social media marketing are organic social (posts, stories, videos, etc.) and paid social (Facebook ads, influencer-generated content, etc.).
Why Electrical Contractors Should Use Social Media Marketing
Social media usage reached 4.62 billion in January 2022. And according to Statista, it will increase to almost six billion by 2027.
With more than half of the world’s population on social platforms, you want to be there too. Social media marketing holds great power for electrical contractors who want to attract more potential customers and grow their businesses.
Here are some of the key reasons why electrical contractors should use social media marketing:
Social media platforms are cost-effective
Social media marketing is considerably inexpensive compared to traditional online marketing. You can advertise your electrical services on social networks for free and reach a broad audience or use paid marketing campaigns (pay-per-click or PPC) to significantly boost your reach.
In-depth targeting options on social platforms allow contractors to choose the demographics they want to reach, measure success rates, and adjust their targeting strategies.
You can build relationships with your audience
Relationships are built on trust. If your audience trusts you, they are much more likely to turn into customers.
Successful electrical companies know this and rely on fostering trust with their customers.
Through social media marketing, businesses boost customer loyalty, reduce customer turnover, and increase the customer’s lifetime value. However, to fully benefit from the power of social media, you need the right strategy.
While there are multiple ways to go about it, these are essential tips for creating and nurturing long-term customer relationships through social media marketing.
Personalize the customer experience
Listen to customers' feedback
Share user-generated content
Provide value for your audience
You can build your brand and stand out
Social media marketing is a powerful tool for creating a solid brand identity and staying ahead of the competition. You can use a social media profile to create a unique visual identity, establish yourself as an expert in the field, and show off your personality.
To boost brand awareness on social media, electrical companies can follow these best practices:
Create an effective content strategy
Choose visuals that represent their brand
Engage with their audience
Post regularly (but don’t overdo it)
You can leverage the power of advertising
As mentioned above, social media marketing relies on two fundamental pillars: organic content and paid advertising.
Social media advertising is an effective and cost-efficient digital marketing solution that delivers paid ads through social networks like Facebook or Instagram. With its detailed targeting options, you can target the right people and get your message across most efficiently.
ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing Software can help you further simplify your advertising efforts. This software allows contractors to:
Track ROI on every campaign. With the right data, you will know how much revenue each electrical marketing campaign generates and can adjust your marketing dollars accordingly. You can avoid wasting money on ineffective marketing that doesn’t deliver results and double down on the ones that do.
Create trackable phone numbers. ServiceTitan allows you to generate unique phone numbers to assign to your new ads. This cloud-based system lets you track the revenue generated by the ad when your trackable phone number has been used to book new jobs.
Build automated email campaigns and optimize digital ad spend. Implementing automated and highly targeted email campaigns enables you to reach your customers more effectively and with content that is tailored to their interests and needs.
While social media offers significant growth potential, maximizing its power requires identifying the most suitable platform for your business.
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Social Media Post Ideas for Electricians
Social media offers electrical businesses a multifaceted platform beyond just images and stories for marketing themselves effectively.
It provides avenues for sharing giveaways, informative articles, how-to guides, videos demonstrating techniques or showcasing completed projects, interactive polls to gauge customer preferences, behind-the-scenes glimpses of company culture, client testimonials, and engaging with followers through comments and messages.
By leveraging these diverse features, electrical businesses can establish credibility, build relationships with their audience, and differentiate themselves in the market.
Let’s discuss these social media post ideas in more depth.
Giveaways
People love free stuff. Giveaways are a great way to offer your audience something for free in exchange for them sharing your profile or commenting on your posts.
This win-win situation not only engages your audience and builds relationships with new customers but also increases your brand visibility and helps you drive traffic.
As an electrical contractor, you might offer the following:
Discount coupons for your electrical maintenance services. Coupons can be great incentives for your audience to use your services.
Gift cards that contain a free electrical safety check.
Branded merchandise. Give away items such as branded t-shirts, keychains, caps, etc. Branded merchandise is a great way to increase awareness and visibility for your business.
Industry updates & news
If there is one constant in the electrical landscape, it is the changing industry regulations.
Electricians who stay up-to-date on the latest industry news and updates can help educate consumers; social media is a great platform for doing that.
Electrical contractors can share their knowledge and expertise with their audience through industry updates and news posts, thus building their reputation as experts.
For example, you can share changes in electrical regulations, new industry trends, recent technological shifts, current electrician pain points, or any other information related to the electrical industry.
Before and after the job
Before-and-after job posts are excellent tools for showcasing your work to potential customers. They provide a compelling visual representation of the progress made from the initial stage to completion.
For example, you can show a picture of a wiring job before, during, and after installation. This way, customers can compare each stage and better understand the scope of the project.
By sharing before and after images, you demonstrate the quality of your workmanship and give customers a clearer understanding of the outcomes they can anticipate.
These posts not only highlight the transformation achieved but also instill confidence in the level of expertise and professionalism your business delivers.
Customer reviews
95% of consumers read reviews online before making a purchase. People want to know what other customers say about your electrical services before deciding.
By posting customer reviews on social media, you can highlight the positive feedback from previous clients and show potential customers that you are reliable and trustworthy.
Furthermore, you can use customer reviews in combination with other content, such as before and after images, to further emphasize the quality of your services.
ServiceTitan's Marketing Pro - Reputation feature allows you to take control of your online reputation and makes it easier to collect, manage, and share customer reviews.
The Reputation feature lets users manage their reviews and receive alerts for every review posted.
The software also automates review requests by automatically asking customers for feedback on the completed job and sending them a link to a review site via email or text.
Company news
Company news posts are a great way to keep your audience up-to-date on the latest developments in your company.
This type of content can help you stay visible, build trust with potential customers, and show that you are an active business.
You can post about awards you have won, new products or services, customers’ experiences, new members of your team, and any other news related to your business.
Staff showcasing
Another way to build trust with potential customers is by introducing them to your team.
Staff showcasing posts help you put a face to the name and allow your audience to get to know the people behind your business.
You can post about each team member, their experience, specializations, etc. This type of content can help you create a closer connection with your audience and build your brand identity.
Social Media Best Practices for Electrical Businesses
What's the difference between social media accounts with millions of followers and those struggling to get noticed?
The answer lies in following the best practices for social media, which include:
Know your audience
Knowing your target audience and what type of content they are interested in is essential. Once you understand their needs, you can create content that resonates with them and encourages engagement.
For example, residential contractors have a different audience than commercial ones and may target different areas.
You can use specialized tools like social media analytics, Facebook Insights, or Google Analytics to find your target audience.
Have a content calendar
To make sure your social media posts are consistent and effective, it’s best to have a content calendar. This will allow you to sustain your users’ interest and provide a steady flow of content and information.
Creating a content calendar also helps you plan ahead and keep track of all the content you post.
You can use a digital calendar or an Excel spreadsheet to plan your content marketing. This way, you won’t miss any important dates or forget to post about something important.
Engage with your audience
Engagement is key to social media success. It helps build relationships with your followers and encourages them to interact with your content.
To engage with your audience, you can:
Respond to comments and messages promptly.
Ask questions or share polls on your posts.
Share user-generated content.
Create advertising slogans that your followers can hashtag.
Remember that as an electrical contractor, your business approach should be customer-focused. You want to ensure your audience is engaged and consistently interacting with your brand.
Don’t try to sell directly
Posting about your services and products all the time might come across as too salesy and turn off your potential customers.
Instead, try to focus on creating informative content that educates your followers about the industry and your services.
For example, you can post tips on maintaining electrical appliances or safety guidelines when working with electricity. This type of content will show that you are an expert in your field and provide value to your audience.
Try different types of content
Classic posts with text and an image are fine, but as social media users seek to consume different content formats, electrical contractors must also experiment with different formats.
Video content is one of the most popular types of content right now. It’s a great way to showcase your services and engage with your audience.
You can create videos about product demonstrations, customer testimonials, or even tutorials on how to do basic electrical repairs.
Think even more outside the box and post behind-the-scenes footage of your team at work or interviews with experts in the field.
Other engaging types of social media content include carousels, slides, gifs, or quizzes.
Following these best practices for social media marketing will help you strengthen your social media presence and build an electrical brand that people remember.
Now Over to You
The popularity of social media platforms and the abundance of content types they provide make it possible for electrical contractors to connect and build relationships with their target audience.
With the strategies and best practices outlined above, you are more than equipped to create relevant content that resonates with your audience and encourages engagement.
ServiceTitan's all-in-one electrical business software helps field service companies streamline operations, boost revenue, and achieve growth. Our award-winning, cloud-based platform is trusted by more than 100,000+ contractors across the country.
ServiceTitan Electrical Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive electrical business software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and achieve growth. Our award-winning, cloud-based platform is trusted by more than 100,000+ contractors across the country.
What Social Media Do Electricians Use?
There are so many social media platforms out there it can be challenging to decide which is the most suitable for your electrician business.
Depending on business goals and target audience preferences, electricians can use the following social media channels:
Facebook
Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms, with 2.94 billion active users.
As the king of social media, Facebook can help electrical companies reach large audiences through highly targeted Local Awareness ads.
By creating a Facebook page for their electrical businesses, contractors benefit from a widely used platform to advertise their services and connect with potential customers.
YouTube
YouTube is the second largest search engine and the ideal platform to share video content.
According to Hubspot, video marketing helps businesses improve their sales and increases user understanding of their products.
Jordan Farley, founder of Artisan Electrics, describes how he connects with his audience through YouTube videos: 'It’s more like a vlog of my day-to-day working life as well as talking about some of the issues of the trade or how I’ve fixed problems I’ve come across on the job.'
Instagram
Over 25 million businesses use Instagram to connect and market to their audience. Instagram might be the right app for electrical companies that want to target Millennials and Gen-Z audiences.
On Instagram, contractors can advertise their products, post DIY videos, share website links, and connect to their customers through visual content—which most people search for before purchasing.
Twitter
Successful social media marketing strategies often rely on Twitter to reach target audiences in more personal, quick ways.
As an electrical business, you can use Twitter to create concise and compelling ads, improve sales, and engage with customers by liking or retweeting their comments, especially those complementing your company.
LinkedIn
Many professionals and small business owners are on LinkedIn, making it a great platform for commercial electricians.
Commercial electrical contractors can use LinkedIn to build credibility and establish their businesses as industry authorities. The right LinkedIn electrician marketing strategy puts contractors in the driving seat when creating and managing their brand.
In fact, according to Sprout Social, surveyed B2B marketers revealed that 80% of their social media new leads came from LinkedIn.
All these social media sites hold valuable potential for generating positive marketing outcomes. But what strategies work best for electrical businesses?