website promotion?

Question

The last time I asked this, it was hijacked by a stalker. So let's try again.

How would a trade group for a service industry get people to check their website for contractor names, instead of going to the Yellow Pages? Feel free to cite your own experience.
.

Answer 1

Right away, at the top of my mind i recommend pay-per-click advertising. Let's say you are association of local cleaning services providers and you have members from all types of the cleaning business like carpet cleaning, windows cleaning, industry buildings cleaning, etc. and to continue the example, one of the options that your trade group website provides is to search for the best contractor in the comfort of ones office/home and to be able to read about services, prices, location, and other terms of service.
In that case (or any other service marketing case) when the business is looking for service they will first check search engines. i mean, really, really huge percent of the people who look for service provider will check google before even considering to open yellow pages.
Now your job has two parts - first you have to have a good and by good i mean informative website. What is the information about contractors that potential clients are looking for? - include it.
second, you have to do the right on line advertising campaign (i recommend you to hire someone who is google adwords certified professional or yahoo search marketing ambassador) to identify the key words appropriate for your on line ad campaign.
The rest is matter of budgeting and break-even between expenses for ads and benefits from having clients finding your contractors.