What should an established Halifax business spend on first?
The searches people already make for what you do, and a page for each one that is worth landing on. An established business in Halifax usually has a reputation its website does not carry: twenty years of work, a full order book from word of mouth, and a site with one services page that mentions everything and ranks for nothing. Fixing that is the cheapest marketing there is, because the demand already exists and you are simply absent from it.
RB Electrical is the local example we point to. Each of their services, EV charging included, has a page of its own with enough on it to rank, and that structure has produced an average of around two organic leads a week for five years. Those are organic leads, meaning nobody paid Google for the click. A page that answers the search, and a business that can back it up.
Does the same approach work for construction and trades?
Yes, and the trades are where we have the longest record. Bond Brickwork in Brighouse have had their website and search work with us since 2018 and sit at the top of Google for the commercial brickwork searches that matter to them. Standeven Flooring at Hipperholme rebuilt their site around completed jobs, then let us film the jobs as they happen, and showing that work has helped them win more large contracts.
What the trades need is proof more than polish. Housebuilders, main contractors and facilities managers want to see scale, real sites and real clients before they ring, so the marketing that works is a page per service, photographs and drone footage from live jobs, a Google Business Profile that is kept alive and reviews that mention the actual work.
What about professional services firms in Halifax?
The same three parts, with more of the weight on trust. An accountant, solicitor, architect or surveyor is chosen after the buyer has compared three or four firms, read the reviews and looked at who they would actually be dealing with, so the people, the guides and the case studies do more of the work than they would for a roofer.
Search still comes first, because the comparing starts with a Google search. But the page that wins is the one that explains the service in plain English, shows the team, answers the questions a nervous client is asking and makes booking a conversation easy. Expertise-led content, meaning guides like this one, is what separates a firm from the directory listings around it.
Where do social media, photography and video fit?
Behind the search and the website, feeding both. A single visit to a job usually produces photographs for the website, the Google Business Profile, a case study and a month of social posts, which is why we take the camera and the drone ourselves. Gareth at Standeven put it simply in his review: the site update, the on-site video and the social posts arrived together, from one team.
Social on its own is a poor plan for most Halifax businesses, because the buyer is not scrolling Facebook for a flooring contractor. Social fed by real work is different. It builds recognition with the people who already know you, it gives the search engines and the AI assistants more evidence that you exist, and on LinkedIn it does real business for contractors. Jack Lunn, a Leeds main contractor, saw LinkedIn growth and engagement from exactly that kind of drone and video work.
Do I need a marketing strategy or just more activity?
A strategy, and it does not need to be a long document. Ours fits on a page: the results that matter most to you, the customers you want more of, what those customers search for, the proof you have and the proof you need, and the one thing to do first. More activity without that is how a business ends up paying for a website, an SEO package and a social media freelancer that all say something slightly different.
That page is also what keeps the spend honest. We measure the results you told us matter, we only do the work that makes the biggest difference to them, and every month you know what was done, why, and what it achieved. If a channel is not earning its place it comes out of the plan.
What does this look like month to month?
A fixed monthly budget, spent on whichever part will move the needle first, with a report at the end of it. Early months usually go on the website and the search foundations. Once those are working the mix shifts towards content, filming, reviews and AI visibility, and the enquiries the plan was built for start arriving with their source attached, so you can see which page or profile sent them.
