How To Use Christmas To Kick-Start Your Construction Business’s Best Year Ever.
Who ever thought Christmas could be a time to lay some serious groundwork for an epic New Year?
Well it can.
Sending Christmas cards to your current and past clients (and Branded Christmas Gifts to those who are on big contracts with you in your business this year) or people that recommended you to someone who became a client can seriously leverage the way people think about you.
I know what you’re thinking.
Not everyone celebrates Christmas, so is it right to send cards and/or gifts to all my customers?
Designs with religious messaging – up to you.
What we do for our Trade and Construction customers is use the term ‘Seasons Greetings.’
We also create non-religious imagery on our Christmas card designs that actually focuses more on the brand and personality of our Trade and Construction client.
This works for both residential and commercial customers alike.
You just have to think about who you are sending the cards and gifts to, to make sure everything about this is in keeping with what your Ideal Client would appreciate.
So, here’s a list of all the reasons you should HIGHLY consider sending branded Christmas Card and/or gifts to your Trade and Construction customers and why it will help set your business up for an even better ‘next year’...
1. Send Trade and Construction Christmas Cards/Gifts because it’s polite and shows gratitude.
Raise your hands if you like ungrateful people?
…. (Tumbleweed).
Didn’t think so.
Whether it’s at our place of work or in our own homes, we want to be around polite, considerate, like-minded folk.
Manners don’t cost much.
Something important to remember is that our clients CHOOSE to work with us.
Be that a homeowner or a business.
Often, after considering many other Trade and Construction businesses first.
Saying THANK YOU goes a long way.
It can be the secret brand ingredient that builds your Trade and Construction business ten-fold if executed the right way.
Check out The Easiest Brand Idea You Can Use To Stand Out From Other Trades to find out more on saying Thank You.
What other time of year lends itself to show gratitude the most, but Christmas?
Sending a card and/or gift (to relevant clients) says so much about you as a Trade and Construction business:
🎁 You appreciate the customer’s business.
🎁 Take customer relationships seriously.
🎁 Organised.
🎁 Forward thinking.
🎁 Are customer focused.
This falls outside your workmanship and what you have left customers with on site on a job.
It goes towards sealing the reputation your Trade and Construction business has in the industry and setting you apart from others in your industry.
2. Not enough companies do anything for Christmas as part of their Trade and Construction marketing ideas.
You want to stand out.
There’s a tonne of plumbers, or electricians, or plasterers, or carpenters or whatever Trade it is you are in, on your doorstep.
You all offer similar services.
A few of you market in similar ways.
It’s the finer details that are going to set you apart from your competitors.
And often, it’s the small things that have the biggest impact.
Not enough Trade and Construction companies send any Christmas cards or Gifts to their customers.
Such a straightforward idea that is relatively simple and easy to do – yet hardly anyone does it.
Why not?
It’s beyond me.
One of the smartest investments a company can make - in my opinion – when it comes to your Trade and Construction brand and marketing.
We’ve been designing a bespoke branded Christmas Card for one of our Tree Surgeon clients for years now.
We created a set of characters based on some of the team members and every year we put them into a new Christmas scenario.
Our client makes NO exceptions and every year ensures his ever growing data-base of customers receives a card with seasons greetings.
They are one of the very few Trade and Construction businesses in the area to be doing this.
Yet he is known for it amongst the residential community he specialises in.
And understands that the investment he puts into sending thousands (yes he has grown a very big client base now!) of Christmas Cards he certainly gets back in terms of scoring repeat business and keeping his reputation immaculate.
What about commercial clients?
Companies that have used you throughout the year for all their business needs and have spent a sizeable sum.
Do you think spending £100 on something like a Hamper or Theatre Show tickets, or something personal that you know they will like as a Christmas Gift and Thank You for the year’s business might be worth it?
How would you feel if someone who you gave regular work to, sent you a token of appreciation at Christmas?
Would that be remembered positively?
Would you feel appreciated and that go a small way in you continuing to recommend them?
If Christmas Cards and Gifts are a great idea, help generate more work, keeps the current customers happy and on board and yet hardly anyone is doing it, what does that mean?
That you need to be doing it as part of your Trade and Construction marketing ideas.
That’s what.
3. Sending Trade and Construction Christmas cards is a way to re-engage with customers who haven’t interacted with your business in some time.
You’ve very likely heard of this gem…
‘80% of your business comes from 20% of your customers’.
Known as The Paleto Principle.
Or the 80/20 rule.
So if this is true – which would make absolute sense if someone has been happy with the work we’ve done in the past to continue feeding us their work – doesn’t it mean that we should be doing what we can to keep past and current customers front of mind?
I also found this for you.
Acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing customer. Increasing customer retention by 5% can increase profits from 25-95%. The success rate of selling to a customer you already have is 60-70%, while the success rate of selling to a new customer is 5-20%.
It's no wonder our Tree Surgeon client is adamant that he sends Christmas Cards very year.
Retention is key. 🔑
As your Trade and Construction business grows, it can be difficult to check in with past clients so often, right?
Time can run away with us.
Individual calls, emails and personal outreach can be difficult to do.
This is where your Trade and Construction marketing ideas need to be able to scale up.
A branded Trade and Construction Christmas Card design to all clients on your database is the perfect way to re-engage.
🎄 The time of year creates a non-salesy reason for your Trade and Construction business to show up.
🎄 Where social media and email can get over-saturated at this time of year, you’re showing up at people’s homes/places of work in a tangible way.
🎄 The design can be created once then mass printed (which works out better cost wise) – without you doing any extra work.
🎄 You can arrange your printers to print client addresses on for you (if you didn’t want to hand write/stick labels on) and even arrange the postage.
🎄 You can reach tens, hundreds or even thousands of clients with the same amount of workload.
How it works.
Example.
Let’s say you had a gardening business.
Your database includes customers you did a redesign for a few years ago.
But you’ve not spoken with them since.
If they are on your database and receive a branded Trade and Construction Christmas Card from you it might be the trigger they need to get back in touch and start discussing garden maintenance with you.
Perhaps a past client has lost your details.
And that Christmas Card was a welcome reminder of them to get in touch as they’ve been meaning to get round to revisiting the garden.
There may even be situations where a client has moved.
And by accident, the card gets opened by the new home or business owner who too, has been meaning to get round to looking at sorting out the garden.
It's one of those ‘Cover All Your Bases’ strategies.
4. Christmas Cards are great for Brand Awareness in your Trade and Construction marketing.
So you send one of your sh*t hot Trade and Construction branded Christmas Card designs.
And your client pops in on the mantlepiece.
Or office desk.
You have no clue as to who goes into your client’s homes or businesses.
Or how many Christmas Cards they receive or how they display them.
Take our Tree Surgeon from earlier for example.
Where we have created custom illustrations for their team members and dog mascot.
Imagine this on the mantlepiece or office desk and grabs the attention of a visitor.
Who happens to be in need of a Tree Surgeon.
Do we think they might be added to their list of enquiries given how unique is it that a Trade and Construction company have sent such a bespoke card and what impression that gives to us in terms of consideration, professionalism and reputation?
You never know where a piece of your branded Trade and Construction marketing ideas will end up.
Not only is it important to do it in the first place for extra exposure but also the WAY it’s executed means everything too.
It can give either the right impression – that leads to an enquiry – or the wrong one, which amounts to no action.
5. Upsell new services you offer in your Trade and Construction Christmas Card Designs.
What goes on INSIDE your Christmas card can do wonders in building your Trade and Construction business.
Business Christmas cards usually get posted around the beginning of December.
And once Christmas is out the way, the countdown to New Year begins.
Where, as business owners, we all hope to kick start our best year ever.
Often this includes introducing new services into our business.
Perhaps you’re a decorator and are looking at offering Venetian Micro cement.
Or you are a Commercial Cleaning company looking to add Window Cleaning as a string to your bow.
Just like our old pal Paleto mentioned earlier, 80% of our business comes from 20% of our customers.
And that it costs 5 times more to get a new customer than sell to a current (happy) one.
So if you are launching a new service in the New Year, then a little teaser inside your Trade and Construction Christmas Card design could be just the thing to kick things off.
Your Christmas Card is going out to past clients who you have already completed great work for.
If you are a gardening company who now also offers jet washing of drives and your clients were over the moon with your gardening maintenance work, it makes sense that if they needed the drive jet washed that they might ask you first, right?
Given they already know, like and trust you.
But if they don’t know you offer this service then they aren’t going to ask, are they.
Someone else will get the gig.
If you do decide to announce a new Trade and Construction service within your Christmas Card design, then you might want to consider going one step further and the fact this is going to past clients, offer them some kind of incentive to be one of the first to take you up on the offer.
6. Promote your Social Media Channels for your Trade and Construction marketing.
If you are going to go all in to make your Trade and Construction Christmas Card design work for you, then make sure you treat it right.
Of course, you want this to be eye catching and have a personal touch, but we can’t forget that this is still a piece of our Trade and Construction Brand and Marketing cake.
Be sure to include your contact details (maybe on the back of the card) along with your Social Media Channel that you want clients to interact with.
Therefore, having your own Trade and Construction Christmas Card design created bespoke for you is MUCH better than going to the shops and buying a pack of pre-made cards to send.
Your bespoke design means you are in total control of everything that goes on and in that card.
7. Create engagement on your Trade and Construction Social Media Channels.
Christmas Cards are a great way to build some engagement on your Social Media pages.
You might think about running a festive competition where clients who receive your card have a small task that involves your brand and a photo to pop on their social media page and tag the company in.
Great way to use other people’s audiences to increase your visibility!
⭐️ PRO TIP: Think about your Ideal Client before you choose what kind of competition you might run and how you present it in your card.
If you serve residential Homeowners for example, a competition you could run might be to take a creative photo of the Christmas Card in a homely festive setting.
(A client of ours did exactly this a few years ago).
But if you also have commercial clients where you’re dealing with companies that have a more formal brand, this won’t be as appropriate.
If you serve two totally different Ideal Clients in your Trade and Construction business you might want to think about running two sets of Christmas Card designs.
Or if you only have a few commercial clients (but they are large contracts) perhaps they get sent a branded gift and your residential clients get the Cards.
There’s LOTS that can then be done when others have posted online for your competition – not only in that their audiences will be exposed to you, but you can comment (as your business) on their images, share them on your company page, reshare them in years to come…
9. Christmas Cards and Gifts goes towards helping retain your Trade and Construction customers.
We mentioned it briefly earlier, but we’ll finish with it too.
Showing appreciation helps us identify the kind of people we are working with.
As customers, we want to feel appreciated too.
Especially when we are parting with lots of our hard-earned cash for your services.
Why let the great experience we’ve had with you end when you’ve finished the job and left the site?
Keeping in touch with us on as personal level as is possible (as your business grows), makes us feel ‘thought of’.
And continually appreciated.
Psychology at its finest – it keeps us bought into you and your company brand.
And as we know from earlier, retention of clients costs so much less than finding new customers.
CONCLUSION: It’s never a bad idea to send a Trade and Construction Christmas Card design.
It’s down to you understanding the number of reasons and the power in them for you to start getting the wheels in motion. ⚙️
⬇️ How To Use Christmas To Kick-Start Your Construction Business’s Best Year Ever Rundown:
🎁 SEND CHRISTMAS CARDS/GIFTS BECAUSE…
1. Polite and shows gratitude.
2. Not enough Trade and Construction businesses do it.
3. Way to re-engage and remind customers you are operating.
4. Great for Brand Awareness when propped up in a home or office.
5. Way to up-sell new services.
6. Promote your construction social media.
7. Create engagement on your construction social media.
8. Builds (memorable) reputation.
9. Goes a way towards retaining clients.
🛠 Need a little more help nailing your Trades and Construction Marketing Ideas?
Course you do.
First. Let’s work out where you are with all things Brand and Marketing.
Got 3 minutes?
Take our Trades Quiz to discover how you score with all things ‘Off The Tools’.
We have heaps of tips, tricks, and hacks for your Trade and Construction business in our cheat sheets, videos and ideas waiting for you on the other side… i.e., your results page.
So, you can improve your score. And NAIL your Trade and Construction business.
Nice.