What’s Your Specialty?

Finding your niche in a vast home improvement market is easier said than done. It requires experience above all else to determine what you do best—better than the rest of the competition.

Once you have a solid understanding of your specialty in your market, consider how well you advertise it to potential customers. Maybe your previous clients understand the superiority of your work with, say, metal roofs, but what about everyone else? It’s important to focus your marketing on what you do best in order to appeal to new and existing customers. When someone accesses your website, consider what they see first. Are they greeted by a stock photo of contractors working when your primary concentration is installing a certain style of window?

Here’s a great exercise: try and summarize your business (specifically, the kind of work you want) in only one sentence. If your answer is “I’m a roofing contractor”, you’re probably wasting your (and the customer’s!) time. For example, do you do residential or commercial business? What kind of products do you use? What areas do you focus on? Do you replace roofs or repair them? What about new construction?

If you’re trying to do it all, chances are you are aren’t doing a good enough job in any area. Contractors are specialized for a reason, and you may be doing your business and your customers a disservice by spreading yourself too thin.

When you’re considering how you brand yourself on your website, social media, and in other advertisements, keep your specialty in mind. You may not attract as much initial attention, but you’ll have an easier time selling yourself to the ones you really want.