PeakLeadsGetting work
How to get more customers for your trade business
To get more customers for your business, start with the ones you're already losing: missed calls, slow call-backs and quotes nobody chased. Next, make yourself easy to find and trust, with your Google Business Profile in order, every customer asked for a review, and a website that turns a visit into a call. Then pay for more reach: Google Ads when you need work this month, SEO for work that keeps coming after the ad spend stops, Meta ads for quiet weeks, and exclusive leads when you want enquiries delivered.
The order matters because ads and SEO only send people your way. Whether they become customers still depends on who answers the phone, what your website looks like on theirs, and whether anybody follows up the quote. Sort those out first, and whatever you pay for next has a better chance of turning into booked jobs.
Start with the customers you're already losing
Before you go looking for new customers, look at the ones who already tried to reach you. Scroll back through last month's missed calls. Find the WhatsApps you only answered the next day, and the quotes you sent and never heard back about. Each of those was somebody who wanted the work done, and some of them may have gone to whoever answered first.
These habits come before any marketing:
- Answer, or call back quickly. A homeowner with water coming through the ceiling can phone the next name on the list while yours rings out.
- Follow up every quote you send. Ask whether they have questions, and whether it's the price or the timing that's holding them back.
- Keep a list of every enquiry: who it was, what they wanted, where they found you and whether it became a job. It's the same job book we suggest in SEO or Google Ads first?, and it's how you'll know which of the steps below is working.
It's also why we tell trades to fix their call-backs before they buy lead generation from us. Exclusive leads only pay if you call.
Ask every past customer for a review
The customers you've already done good work for can bring you new ones. They recommend you to people they know, and they leave reviews that strangers read before they phone. Both need asking. For recommendations, ask at the end of the job whether anyone they know needs the same work, and leave a card or send your number on WhatsApp so it's easy to pass on.
Reviews show next to your Business Profile in Google Maps and Search, and Google says more reviews and positive ratings can help your local ranking. Ask every customer, not only the ones you think were happy. Google's rules for content on Maps don't allow a business to ask only its happy customers, to offer an incentive in exchange for a review, or to ask for specific content in it. That includes asking customers to name the person who did the job.
Google lets you make a link or QR code that customers can use to leave you a review. Send it with the invoice, while the job is still fresh, and reply to the reviews that come in, the unhappy ones too.
Even someone a neighbour recommended can look you up before they phone. What they find is your chance to back up the recommendation.
Make sure people nearby can find you on Google Maps
Search for your trade and your suburb on your own phone and look at the map. The businesses on it are there through their Business Profiles. Google picks them mainly on how closely the profile fits the search, how near the business is and how well known it is, and it says there's no way to pay for a better local ranking.
So most of the work goes into the profile itself: the right category, the services you offer, the areas you cover, photos of your own jobs and replies to your reviews.
If you work from home or out of the bakkie, you can still have a profile. Google's guidelines use a plumber who runs the business from home as their example: a business that travels to its customers can have a service-area profile, with the home address hidden and the areas it serves set instead.
Whether a profile is enough without a website is a fair question, and Do you still need a website if you have a Google Business Profile? answers it.
Give people a website that turns a visit into a call
A profile gets you seen. A website gives each service and area you want work in a page of its own, and gives your ads somewhere to send people.
Test yours the way a customer would. Open it on your phone and try to get hold of yourself:
- Can you phone straight from the page you landed on?
- Is there a quote form, and do the enquiries reach somebody who reads them?
- Does each service you want more of have its own page, and each area you work in? How many pages does a small business website need? explains why that matters.
- Do the photos show your own jobs, or stock pictures of strangers in hard hats?
If any answer is no, fix it before you pay for traffic. That's how we build websites: phones first, with click to call, a quote form and booking on every page, and a page for each service and area. If yours already passes, keep it. We'll tell you so on the call, and the rebuild-or-keep table on our web design page lets you check most of it yourself first.
Then pay for more reach, in the order your diary needs
When the basics hold, these are the ways to reach people who've never heard of you. They do different jobs.
| Option | What it does | Start with it when |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | Shows your ad to people searching for the job right now. With cost-per-click bidding, you pay for each click. | You need work booked this month, and you have a page that can turn a click into a call. |
| SEO | Works your website and Business Profile up the normal results and the map. It's the slow lever, and it keeps bringing calls after an ad budget stops. | The diary is full for now, and you want work that doesn't depend on paying for every click. |
| Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) | Puts your work in front of people before they've started looking. | You have quiet weeks to fill, a trade that photographs well, or a new area where nobody knows your name yet. |
| Exclusive lead generation | Runs campaigns under your own brand, checks each enquiry and sends it to you alone. | You'd rather have enquiries delivered than run the campaigns yourself, and you can call all of them back. |
Which to start with comes down to your diary, and the last column of the table is the short version. SEO or Google Ads first? walks through that choice with example trades, and Google Ads vs Facebook ads for South African trades covers what each ad platform is good at.
For how to set each one up, from keeping ads to your own area to boosting a post, see How to advertise your business online in South Africa.
If you'd rather buy enquiries than generate them yourself, find out first whether anybody else gets the same enquiry. Exclusive vs shared leads explains why that changes what a lead is worth to you. How to choose a lead generation agency has the other questions to ask first.
And if your diary's already full, more customers isn't your problem yet. Say so on the call and we'll tell you to hold off on ads.
Where Peak Leads fits
Our services cover all of it: websites, SEO with the Google Business Profile work included, Google and Meta ads, and exclusive lead generation. That doesn't mean you need all of it. On the call, Bradley maps your market, your goals and where jobs are leaking, then tells you what we'd do and what it would cost.
What to do this week
- Go back through last month's missed calls, late replies and unanswered quotes, and get back to the ones still worth a call.
- Start an enquiry list with a column for where each customer found you.
- Make a review link in your Business Profile and send it to every recent customer.
- Find your website through a Google search on your phone, the way a customer would, and call yourself from the page you land on.
- Look at your diary, decide whether it needs jobs soon or a steadier flow later, and pick the paid option from the table that fits.
Then book a call and we'll go through it with you.