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Marketing your business online

Show Notes

Welcome to โ€œThe Better Way: A podcast by Buildertrend.โ€ Here youโ€™ll learn to simplify and establish processes that will make meaningful changes to your company and help you achieve your goals. Because thereโ€™s a better way. The Buildertrend way. Tune in this season as host Zach Wojtowicz, a corporate development strategist at Buildertrend, and our experts and consultants to teach best practices for sales and lead management.

The fourth episode of this season highlights ways to get the word out about your construction companyโ€™s abilities.

Listen to the full episode to hear Courtney Mattern, Buildertrendโ€™s director of content marketing, showcases ways Buildertrend can help you market your business and why social media is a marketing must.

Why do builderโ€™s need to have a social media presence?

โ€œBuyers influenced by social media typically spend about four times more on purchases. So, you want to be recommended on social media. You want to be on social media because if they’re asking about either their social media followers, their friends, who should I use for my next project, they’re going to be clicking on the ones who have Facebook pages. They’re going to be clicking on the ones who have websites. Social media, these platforms, are completely free. So, why not jump on the bandwagon if there’s a priceless return on investment? And I always say, โ€˜It’s not just return on investment monetarily. It’s a return on relationship.โ€™โ€

How can Buildertrend serve as a marketing tool?

โ€œRight from the get-go, one of the strongest ways to market your business with Buildertrend is just telling your clients that you use Buildertrend, that you have Buildertrend. And one of the most powerful tools is our Customer Portal. (Homeowners) expect that experience too when they’re doing their home projects, whether that’s a remodel, they’re building their home. They don’t want to do phone calls. They want to be able to text their builder whenever. And the (Customer Portal) is an excellent way to communicate with your clients. So, in our 2020 homeowners report, we learned how they value these digital interactions and how easy it is to communicate when they’re working with builders. Not only does it make your customers happy to have that tool, but this portal sets you apart from the competition by meeting those digital demands of today’s homeowners.โ€

Related content:

Click here to read more about the digital experience expectations in our 2020 Homeowners Report.

Download the Buildertrend Customer Badge and marketing toolkit to boost your marketing efforts here.

โ€œThe Better Wayโ€ a podcast by Buildertrend:

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Transcript

Zach Wojtowicz:

Welcome to โ€œThe Better Way,โ€ a podcast by Buildertrend. Here, you’ll learn to simplify and establish processes that will make meaningful changes to your company and help you achieve your goals. Here’s a better way to run your construction business, the Buildertrend way. Tune in this season as our experts and consultants join me to teach best practices for sales and lead management. In this episode, get best practices on how to market your business online with Courtney Mattern, director of content marketing at Buildertrend.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Welcome back to โ€œThe Better Way,โ€ Zach Wojtowicz here. We’ve got an exciting guest, as always, with me, someone who’s never been on either of our podcasts here, but she’s always been in the background, Courtney Mattern. She’s the director of content marketing here at Buildertrend. Courtney, for all our listeners, why don’t you talk a little bit about what you do here at Buildertrend?

Courtney Mattern:

Sure. I’ve been at Buildertrend a couple of years. I started as the content marketing manager. And what that means is I manage our blogs, our social media strategy, podcast episodes, all the content. And I have a motto to serve, not sell. So, my job is to come up with topics and content and things that people want to read and listen to that help them with their businesses.

Zach Wojtowicz:

So, if there’s something that’s going out to our customers, there’s a good chance that it’s based off your recommendations or your approval, or you were kind of always there, right?

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. I mean, I either could have started with an idea that I had, or my team had. I definitely have my eyes on just about everything that goes out, content-wise, on social media, on the blog, and on all the podcast episodes, including this one.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. So, we thought it’d be really great to bring you on, even though you had a decision on the content of โ€œThe Better Way,โ€ because we’re going to talk about something that I think is really important to our builders, that maybe they don’t have good access to guidance on, how do I actually market my business? How do I do it in the digital age? So, we thought, “Hey, let’s get Courtney in here because this is what she does for Buildertrend. And let’s see what we can get into while we tie it to the actual program and what we have available for our customers.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

So, I’m really excited to dive in. Let’s start with marketing your business online. Where do we begin? What are some of the things that you could advise our builders on how to better position their businesses for online marketing?

Courtney Mattern:

Sure. One of my favorite things about working at Buildertrend is a lot of our customers, a lot of our builders, are small- or medium-sized businesses. They might not have a marketing person on their team. They’re doing a lot of it themselves. And more often than not, what I’ve heard is that our customers… They go into business because they’re good at something. They’re good at building. They’re good at remodeling. They’re good at designing pools. But they’re not always good at marketing. There’s a lot of things that come with owning a business and running a business that you have to kind of learn on the fly. They’re required: marketing, sales, financials.

Courtney Mattern:

And โ€œThe Better Wayโ€ is here. The podcast in general covers a lot of those topics that they probably didn’t know that they were signing up for when they started a business. But it’s a pretty required thing to be successful, to market your business. And today, that begins online. All of our processes are digital, from Buildertrend to how people are shopping for houses, how people are getting recommendations for where to eat at night. It’s all online now. So, consider the internet, or your website, or your social media presence, the front door of your business. But a lot of builders don’t know… Buildertrend, yeah. It makes their business stronger in a lot of ways. Scheduling is usually one of the first features that a lot them use. But they don’t know that it can also be their best marketing tool. And one of the first things about strong marketing is starting with a strong brand, I always say, building your brand. And that probably begins before they’re on Buildertrend. Quality craftsmanship can’t always speak for itself, so that’s where the branding comes in.

Courtney Mattern:

So, for those of you who are listening, your construction company’s brand is the promise that you make to your prospective customers before the work even begins. So, with strong branding, you’re telling your clients who you are, what they can expect when they choose you. So, that could be your logo, your website, the colors you use in your marketing. How do you want to come off to customers? Do you want them to feel like they trust you? And you might not be…

Courtney Mattern:

You might already have a strong brand. But if you’re just getting started, this includes having an established logo that makes you more memorable, that helps set you apart from your competition and builds trust with your clients. They know who they’re calling. They know what they’re getting. They know who’s showing up at their house. So, some people don’t know that Buildertrend will help you have a strong brand by allowing you to custom brand your account and people’s experience when they’re using Buildertrend.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’ve seen that a time or two, someone who’s been with us for four years. And you log into their account like, “You still have the Buildertrend bee hanging out in your account. Do you want to update that? And in the past, you used to actually have to contact us to update that. But now, you can actually do it yourself in the program. So, you can go up in the set up, you can go change your logo whenever you want. I think you make a really great point about identifying people or businesses that you want to work with.

Zach Wojtowicz:

A lot of times, it is that primal reaction of like, “Oh, I like their logo.” And it catches your eye. And now, you’re digging into their website. You’re trying to figure out what is this company all about? And that’s the first impression aspect of digital marketing, right? If your logo is present and approachable, and you can easily get it out in the open, you’re going to generate more leads that way. Something as simple as that.

Courtney Mattern:

And Buildertrend makes it pretty easy. You don’t really have to twist anyone’s arm to get strong branding inside Buildertrend. You just call up your account executive or your support team and upload your logo. And then, it can appear on things like documents, proposals, emails. It’s just sort of built into the processes that you’re already using. Just make sure it’s there so that when people get… your customers, the homeowners, get communications from you, your logo is present. It just sort of subconsciously builds trust with the client.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I’m going to go off script here a little bit and just ask a question.

Courtney Mattern:

I’m scared, anytime you say that.

Zach Wojtowicz:

First time listener or first-time attendee never coming back because I beat her up on the podcast. But I’m just curious, how often should someone evaluate the effectiveness of their brand? Is that something that’s like a constant evolution, you should be always kind of having your pulse on it? Or is it something that every five years you want to take a look at and be like, “Ah, the logo needs a refresh”?

Courtney Mattern:

Well, I bet with our listeners, we have, it’s probably 50/50. You got half who, when they started their business, they knew that they needed a logo. They needed a little look and feel. But half, maybe they inherited their business from a family member. Maybe the logo was just whatever they typed out in Word, or they might’ve whipped it up and Paint, or let a family member make them a logo as a project. And then, it just sort of evolved from there. So, if you’re one of those… If you’re the people in the second 50%, now would be a good time to reevaluate and make sure it’s consistent, you have a logo that’s on your website, a logo that’s in all your Buildertrend communications.

Courtney Mattern:

And branding is more than the logo too. It’s kind of how you talk to your customers and how you make the pitch in an email, how you’re talking to them on the phone, on a sales call. But you want that brand experience of what a client or a homeowner gets when they interact with you to be consistent. So, if you’re very warm, maybe you want a very cozy logo too. You want all of your emails to be as personal as the first time that you interact with the client.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s a great point. See, this is the stuff that… There’s this whole psychology of branding that I find fascinating. And unless you’re really kind of actively thinking about it, it’s easy that it slips through the cracks. Now, let’s transition a little bit to obviously cover branding. And the idea of using Buildertrend is part of that brand.

Zach Wojtowicz:

How does that fit in to the customer experience like you were addressing? What is your perspective on a pretty bold statement that Buildertrend can be your most powerful marketing tool? What do you mean by that? What’s the context? Where’s that coming from?

Courtney Mattern:

Well, Buildertrend, in a lot of ways, establishes processes that make marketing yourself easier and make marketing more of a habit rather than an afterthought. And right from the get-go, one of the strongest ways to market your business with Buildertrend is just telling your clients that you use Buildertrend, that you have Buildertrend. And one of the most powerful tools is our Customer Portal. So, I would say… I don’t know, Zach, you probably know more on the real stats than me about… Some of our customers, maybe half, aren’t using the Customer Portal. And the customer portal is the login that you can give homeowners or your clients where they can check in on their projects. So, last year in 2020… It seems so long ago, but we did a data report all around the expectations of homeowners.

Courtney Mattern:

And what we found overwhelmingly is that homeowners expect a digital experience when they’re working with businesses. Now, you see this a lot already with how that people are buying homes. They’re looking at homes online, they’re Googling, they’re doing virtual tours. But they expect that experience too when they’re doing their home projects, whether that’s a remodel, they’re building their home. They don’t want to do phone calls. They want to be able to text their builder whenever. And the portal is an excellent way to communicate with your clients. So, in our 2020 homeowners report, we learned how they value these digital interactions and how easy it is to communicate when they’re working with builders. So, the other thing, not only does it make your customers happy to have that tool, but this portal sets you apart from the competition by meeting those digital demands of today’s homeowners.

Courtney Mattern:

So, you should tell your clients, or prospective clients when you’re trying to make a sale, close the deal, that you have this portal that they’ll be able to check in on their projects. They’re making a huge investment and they want to know how that’s going. They want to know if they’re under or over budget. They want to know what selections they’ve made and that they’re being kept track of. Our most successful customers offer the customer login on their website. And you can use this feature as a marketing tool. And we can add it to your website for free. And Zach, you can tell them more about how they can get it on their website.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. So, great point. In our previous episode, we talked about how you could also get your contact form and push lead interactions directly to Buildertrend. This is a similar experience that, if you call it and you’re like, “I want a contact form” ask about the login box. It’s a very simple set of code. We can stage it on your website. We can even put it in place for you, if you’re willing to share your log in credentials with our web hosting service that you’re actually using. And then, it just lives on your website. We can create a header that’s like “log in”. And then, you can go and get directly into Buildertrend. So, a lot of our customers, they will say “We use an online software” and just say “We have an experience for our customers” and you don’t necessarily have to bring up Buildertrend.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And a lot of customers, to your point, are fearful of allowing people access because they feel like they’re giving the client control. But the important thing to focus on is that it isn’t about dictating what happens with the schedule, or where things are going with the project. It’s a way to channel their energy into a way to communicate with the builder and give them an experience that they’ll be like, “Wow, my builder was responsive and my builder was attentive.” The biggest thing is if this is about sales and you sell that experience, you better deliver on it as well in order to make sure that you’re coming through and keeping up your end of the bargain. So, I always preface the Customer Portal is my favorite thing about Buildertrend. You don’t have to tell the customer that you’re going to do everything in the Customer Portal.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Just say, “We’re going to communicate through it. And we can look at selections first.” That’s where you start. And then, over time, you’ll kind of adjust and do more things. And I think it’s about learning what the software has to offer, learning how the features function, and then blaring it on. And I always also recommend to people find a Guinea pig. You don’t have to open it up to all of your 20 projects immediately. Find a customer that you feel like you trust, maybe you have a previous relationship, you’ve done work with them before, to position yourself and say, “Hey, I’m trying out this new process with customers. I think you would be a great fit. Would you be willing to give it a shot with us?”

Zach Wojtowicz:

And I’ve found a lot of people get a lot of success after they kind of rip the Band-Aid off, do it with their first customer. They showed them the schedule. And a year later, everybody’s on it and they love it.

Courtney Mattern:

I just had a conversation with one of our customers about how they use Buildertrend in their sales pitch, like when they bring in clients into their showroom. They pull up Buildertrend on a big TV. They show them how the Customer Portal works. And they say that’s like their big kicker, a grand finale of their sales…

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s the deal closer.

Courtney Mattern:

… presentation is showing them, “This is what sets us apart from our competition. We will keep you updated. You don’t have to worry about the investment you’re making. You’ll be able to watch your project.” And I think it’s also been extra powerful in this post-COVID world that we’re living in, where people can’t do as many meetings in person. And they also don’t want to drive and walk through the house every day. It keeps homeowners connected to the projects and gives you bonus points as a builder for making their experience better.

Courtney Mattern:

So both on the front-end, as a sales tool, just having Buildertrend and using the Customer Portal, that’s a powerful marketing play. Tell all of your customers, all your clients, all your sales, your leads, that you’re using Buildertrend and their experience will be better. And then, when they are customers, they’re going to have such a good experience that they’re going to give you positive feedback. They’re going to be sharing word of mouth with their neighbors…

Zach Wojtowicz:

… which is probably even more impactful. How many people do you talk to day to day where it’s like, “Oh, I need someone to do my countertops.”

Courtney Mattern:

And word of mouth is so… People think of it as so old school, like people aren’t talking. But that’s happening online too. People are asking, on Facebook, “I’m looking for a contractor to start this new project. Who are you using?” And you can get so much more… As a homeowner, on their side things, you can get a lot more recommendations more quickly on the online side. And if you’re a builder who’s using the Customer Portal, you’re keeping your customers happy, you’re going to get more of that word of mouth online.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. And all that is at a cost of nothing. Right?

Courtney Mattern:

Yes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You follow through. You use the Customer Portal that you’re paying for the Schedule for your own internal administration or our job costing whatever. This is a supplementary piece, but it can do so much…

Courtney Mattern:

Yes.

Zach Wojtowicz:

… from a growth standpoint.

Courtney Mattern:

And remember, in my first point, we talked about custom branding. Your logo can be added into the portal too, so your company always looks extra professional, extra polished. And it just gives your customers a sense of trust with you. They know when they’re logging in that they’re working with a builder who takes themselves seriously and is professional and going to get the job done in the right way.

Zach Wojtowicz:

So, let’s… We’ve kind of danced around this topic. I always told my clients when I was working with them, look, the Internet’s not going away. And trends that obviously become more concrete and are here to stay, it’s better to embrace it, to be on the cutting edge, rather than to be the person who “Do you have an Instagram now? Do you have a Facebook now? Do you use a Customer Portal?” No.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And what I’m getting at is social media. And anybody who knows me at Buildertrend knows this is a place that I’m not fairly adept at understanding either.

Courtney Mattern:

You don’t even have a Facebook.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Right. You can not find me very easily on the internet, for all of our listeners out there. And so, educate me. What is the value of social media? How are people using it? What is your perspective on this emerging industry, really?

Courtney Mattern:

Oh gosh. Well Zach, it’s not emerging. It’s been here since I was five years old, it feels.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Good point. Good point. Speaking of living in the past.

Courtney Mattern:

No. I think if you’re a small… a medium-sized business, a large business, you can’t ignore social media anymore. And I do consulting with lots of types of small businesses. And I tell them, “You’ve got to get on social media.” Social media use is one of the most popular online activities for all humans in 2020, more than 3.6 billion people. We’re using social media worldwide. That stat comes from statista.com. They’re not just sharing gifs and photos though. And pictures of their lunches, maybe circa… That was probably so 2005, right? But they’re using social media to research their purchases. So, 54% of social browsers are using social media to research the products that they want to buy. And buyers influenced by social media typically spend about four times more on purchases. So, you want to be recommended on social media.

Courtney Mattern:

You want to be on social media, because if they’re asking about either their social media followers, their friends, who should I use for my next project, they’re going to be clicking on the ones who have Facebook pages. They’re going to be clicking on the ones who have websites. So, social media, these platforms, are completely free. So, why not jump on the bandwagon if there’s a priceless return on investment? And I always say, it’s not just return on investment monetarily. It’s a return on relationship. So, you get to have a two way conversation with prospects, with customers. And that’s why contractors need to get creative, strategic, and personable when it comes to cultivating an online presence. So, I always tell businesses, any business, just get started, just do it. Nike is going to come for us, for me saying just do it. But you just-

Zach Wojtowicz:

Cease and desist letter, first on the podcast.

Courtney Mattern:

The first one. Just get started and start with at least one platform. You don’t have to get on Tik ToK and Snapchat and Instagram and Twitter all at once. And in fact, I always recommend the big two, which is-

Zach Wojtowicz:

I was just about to ask. If you didn’t have one, what would you pick?

Courtney Mattern:

Well, I guess it’s hard to pick just one because there’s two…

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s like picking your favorite kids.

Courtney Mattern:

… maybe one or the other, but they make it so easy. So, Instagram and Facebook are referred to as the big two. And now that Facebook owns Instagram, it makes it really easy to sync your posting. So, start with one platform. Facebook is really popular. It kind of depends on the age of your customer. So Facebook, you got older customers, 35 to 55 are using Facebook a lot more. If you’re looking to target millennials who aren’t the youngโ€™uns anymore, they’re buying homes now. They’re renovating homes. I would get on Instagram.

Courtney Mattern:

But you can sync your posts to go on both places. And Instagram, I think I see a lot of builders having a lot of success there because it’s so visual. They have before and after pictures, which are just social media gold. There’s nothing more instantly satisfying on social than being able to swipe and see, “This is what it looked like when I started. Here’s what it looked like when I finished.” You tell such a big story with just those simple pictures, right? Is it a story is worth or… I’m going to… This idiom, I’m butchering it.

Zach Wojtowicz:

One picture is worth a thousand words.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. So, one picture is worth a thousand words, right? But even more so, when you have a before and after, it shows all the progress you made, the quality of your work. So, I’d say maybe start there on Instagram. But if your customers are a little older, Facebook is a good place to be. If you want to make any sort of investment with online social ads, start with Facebook. You have to have a Facebook account anyway. And even a tiny investment in social media advertising, boosting a post, can make a real big impact and make sure that more of your followers are seeing your posts.

Courtney Mattern:

And then, always give a CTA, which is marketing speak for-

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, here we go.

Courtney Mattern:

… for call to action. Make sure you’re linking back to your website. I think your website’s really important because what if social media goes away one day, you want people to know where to find you. And if you’re using like a Buildertrend-built website, with our Pro Websites, which I believe we have a whole episode in this season of the-

Zach Wojtowicz:

Alex Suarez is going to be joining us to talk about our website service.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. All about websites. If you have a Buildertrend website, you want to send people back there because it does integrate with lead tracking and directly in Buildertrend. But always send people back to your website, or a form, or you can even just tell them, “Send us a DM if you’re interested in a project. We’re getting ready to fill in our schedule for next year. Send us a message.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

It can be overwhelming, I can see, for a builder when… It seems like this takes a lot of work. But I think, as you build it into your habits to promote… You look at it as a business promotion tool, not something that is a chore, but it’s actually going to serve long-term benefits. And then, there’s this other side that I want to get into, a little unique feature in Buildertrend is email marketing.

Zach Wojtowicz:

And this is something that all companies obviously try to do to an extent, because you can reach so many more people via email than manually having to drum up leads. Right? So, what’s your recommendation on email marketing and how to get started with that?

Courtney Mattern:

Sure. Well, what I always tell people… Like email blasts always seem pretty old school, right?

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah.

Courtney Mattern:

Send an email. I don’t know if you had those chain emails from your grandpa that are like “Forward this if you want to have a good day.”

Zach Wojtowicz:

It’s that Nigerian prince, just still waiting on the payments.

Courtney Mattern:

Still waiting on that $10,000 they promised me. But if social media went away tomorrow, how would you get in touch with your leads? How would you get in touch with your customers? So, maintaining an email marketing list ensures that you can quickly and strategically get in touch with customers, whether you have an offer, a promotion, or you just want to stay in touch with a prospect who, maybe the first time you talked to them, was kind of interested in getting a project, but you want to stay front of mind. So, you can maintain a contact list in Buildertrend and you can set up auto email campaigns. So, once you have one contact with them, it sends them updated emails along their journey.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. And this goes with something that Marge spoke about in her episode, where you have the ability to set up activity templates that auto feed these pre written email campaigns that you basically just apply, what we would call, almost like a drip, that associates to the lead. And if you get really good at using the Buildertrend sales side, you can start filtering in on people you contacted 365 days ago, last six months, gauging their interest, and start doing mass actions to apply these in one fell swoop.

Zach Wojtowicz:

It takes a little bit of work. Reach out to support team. They have a lot of experience kind of helping people manage the concepts of setting up activity templates. But once they’re in place, it’s just a few clicks to apply these things. And we see that all the time where people will do other feel good type emails, not just, “Hey, remember you got a quote from us?” But just “Happy holidays, hope you’re doing well.” You get that from a lot of different companies, but you can kind of take an approach that a lot of people aren’t using in the construction industry to separate yourself even more so.

Courtney Mattern:

Correct. And setting up those auto emails can be kind of difficult. But with Buildertrend, you have your support team. They can make it easy and help you automate that journey. And another thing with… Another tool in Buildertrend that I forgot to mention with social media was there’s a part of your process that you’re probably doing to create content that you can post on social media, that you can put in email updates, if you have like a company newsletter that goes out once a month.

Courtney Mattern:

And that’s your Daily Logs. So, with Daily Logs, you’re tracking every day, the progress on your projects, you’re uploading photos. People love to see those behind the scenes photos. And you can turn those into Instagram reels, if you want to get really creative.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Oh, here we… We’re tying it all together.

Courtney Mattern:

You can post it. You can put pictures of finished projects in email blasts to show off the kind of work that you do, or this is the big project we finished in October. Make sure you get on our schedule for winter. Or if you’re not working in winter because it’s too cold, in the spring time, you’re already collecting that content. Why not put it into an email, put it up on social media? People love to learn more about the behind the scenes of your business. And it’ll help you build relationships.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You heard it here first. Courtney says spend your holidays working on your marketing game.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. That is a good time to start reevaluating your marketing, just because if it’s a slower season…

Zach Wojtowicz:

And at the turn of the year, right?

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah.

Zach Wojtowicz:

You know? You’ll be ready to go.

Courtney Mattern:

Start strong in January. But if you want to make it even easier, our marketing team did create a special tool for all of our customers. And that’s the Buildertrend customer badge. So, if you go to badge.buildertrend.com… I’ll say it again, badge.buildertrend.com. You can download a special logo that says that you’re better with Buildertrend. So, you can put that on your website. You can put that in your social media. You can put it on your contracts, on your login box, to show your customers like, “Hey, we mean business. We use Buildertrend. We’re going to take care of you.” But that’s not all.

Zach Wojtowicz:

The plug. Wait, there’s more. There’s always more.

Courtney Mattern:

But it also comes with a free marketing kit because we know that social media, marketing your business, it can feel like a challenge when you’re just getting started. It can feel like a big mountain to climb, just probably like syncing your QuickBooks and getting all your job costing together. I’m sure marketing strikes fear in the hearts of those who haven’t done it before. But in that marketing kit, you’ll find social media posts, social media images, images to use on your website.

Courtney Mattern:

And it comes with a style guide to show you how you could use it in pamphlets and brochures. And you download it. And you can use it to market your business online. It’s totally free for our customers. Just go to badge.buildertrend.com and you can download that badge and all those marketing materials. They’re just waiting for you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

That’s amazing. I didn’t even know that.

Courtney Mattern:

Well, you learned something new. Now, you got to go to badge.buildertrend.com.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Even the host of โ€œThe Better Wayโ€ is learning something today.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah. It’s pretty sweet. We put a lot of thought into it. And really, like I said, this goes all the way back to the beginning, my motto is “Serve, not sell.” What can we give you as customers that makes your business stronger? And then, we get back to the sell, right? If you build trust with your customers, if you give them helpful information, if you’re helping them grow, then it’s sort of a no-brainer whether they like you or not. And you can use that in your own philosophy in your construction business as a contractor to serve your customers, answer the questions on social media that you get asked a lot.

Courtney Mattern:

If there’s a certain part of the process that’s often confusing, that’s a good thing to show in a video on social media, like how do we install custom cabinets? Or why is it important to get extra quotes? Explain those things to your customers. And it will set you apart from your competition and make you a stronger business owner.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Man, I was going to ask if you had any final thoughts, but that was eloquent, well said.

Courtney Mattern:

Thanks. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think marketing… I think it’s sort of a no brainer when you stop thinking of it as pay-per-click or billboards, and you start thinking about it as serving people and building relationships.

Zach Wojtowicz:

I love it. Well, we’re out of time, Courtney. I am officially petitioning that you take over my job. You did fantastic. Thanks for joining us on โ€œThe Better Way.โ€ Hopefully, we’ll have you back in the future.

Courtney Mattern:

Yeah, sure. My pleasure. Happy to be here. And I hope this whole season of โ€œThe Better Wayโ€ helps all of our business owners and our customers become stronger businesses by being able to market themselves and manage their leads and just have more business.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Yeah. We’ve got an entire season here just full of sales processes laid out. This was great content. Don’t forget to check out our sister podcast, โ€œThe Building Code,โ€ where we talk about other thought leadership topics in construction. We’d love to have you check out with my cohost, Charley Burtwistle, there as well. Courtney, thanks for joining us. Come back for โ€œThe Better Way.โ€ Thank you.

Zach Wojtowicz:

Thanks for listening to โ€œThe Better Way.โ€ If you’re a Buildertrend customer, schedule training to learn more. All listeners, be sure to rate, review, and subscribe to The Better Way wherever you get your podcasts. Visit buildertrend.com\podcast. To sign up for the email notifications when the next season drops. And explore our original podcast, โ€œThe Building Code.โ€ Don’t miss our next episode focused on ensuring customer satisfaction.

Courtney Mattern

Courtney Mattern | Buildertrend


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