How to Market Your Trade Business – Volume 1 | Marketing Guide for UK Tradespeople
How to Market Your Trade Business Volume 1: Your Digital Foundation
Build the online presence that brings the work to you brand, website, SEO, Google Business Profile, social media, paid advertising, reviews, and the truth about lead generation platforms.
You’re excellent at your trade. But being excellent at your trade has never been enough to fill a diary and word of mouth alone puts a hard ceiling on how far your business can grow. The tradespeople winning the best work in your area aren’t necessarily better than you. They’re just easier to find, easier to trust, and easier to choose.
Volume 1 of How to Market Your Trade Business gives you the complete digital foundation for a UK trade business written specifically for electricians, plumbers, heating engineers, builders, decorators, landscapers, roofers, window cleaners, and every other trade. No marketing jargon, no theory for theory’s sake. Just what to do, in what order, at what cost, and what results to realistically expect.
Across 20 chapters and five parts, this volume takes you from a business that relies on luck and word of mouth to one with a professional brand, a website that converts visitors into enquiries, a Google Business Profile that dominates local search, social media channels that actually generate work, paid advertising you control, a five-star review engine and a clear-eyed strategy for Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Rated People and the other lead platforms, so they work for you rather than the other way round.
What's inside Volume 1
Part 1 Before You Spend a Penny on Marketing (Chapters 1–3).
Why most tradespeople never grow, how to identify your ideal customer domestic, commercial, agricultural or industrial and how to build a brand that makes you look like the professional you are: name, logo, colours, workwear, vehicle graphics and more.
Part 2 Your Online Presence (Chapters 4–11).
A website that actually gets work, SEO explained in plain English, the full Google Business Profile playbook, and how to use Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn as a trade business which channels suit which trades, and what to post.
Part 3 Paid Advertising (Chapters 12–15).
Google Local Services Ads, Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram Ads, and Bing Ads how each works, what it costs, and how to avoid burning your budget.
Part 4 Review Marketing (Chapter 16).
The system for getting a steady stream of five-star reviews the single most powerful trust signal a local trade business can have.
Part 5 Lead Generation Platforms (Chapters 17–20).
Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark, Rated People and the specialist platforms honest, up-to-date analysis of costs and returns, a decision framework for choosing (or leaving) a platform, and how to escape the platform dependency trap.
Every chapter gives you
- A real-world trade business story showing the principle in action
- Step-by-step instructions you can follow the same day no prior marketing knowledge needed
- Recommended tools with current UK costs, including the free options
- Ready-to-use AI prompts that produce your copy, posts and plans in minutes
- An action checklist so you know exactly what ‘done’ looks like
Who this book is for
Sole traders and small trade businesses across the UK whether you’re just starting out, stuck at a plateau, or tired of relying on lead platforms that charge more every year. If you can use a smartphone, you can implement everything in this book.
Get Volume 1 today
And start building an online presence that brings customers to you, pre-sold and ready to book. Then continue with Volume 2 to build the marketing assets nobody can ever switch off.
