Excuse Me, Your Fly is Undone

Posted on November 11, 2009

The Web is a HVAC game changer. It has the ability to make a brand new company look like a well established member of the community and a long-standing, perhaps multi-generational HVACR contractor look like it just rolled off the turnip truck.

A professional website also has the ability to make a small company look big and, alternately, a sub-par site can easily make a big company look much smaller, says Brian Kraff, CEO of Market Hardware, a web marketing company specializing in the HVACR industry.

“You may have 40 years under your belt, and be on your second generation in a family business, but how come you look like you’re ranked number 65 out of the 66 contractors in town? You may be successful but [with an outdated website], you don’t look it.”

To cut to the chase of what works and what doesn’t for a good website in 2010, Kraff joins another HVAC marketing expert, Adams Hudson, at a special pre-conference “open floor”  session at ACCA’s 42nd Annual Conference and Indoor Air Expo, scheduled for March 7-10 in Tampa, Fla. The session allows conference early birds to take advantage of the up-close-and-personal access to these leading marketing gurus—for free.

Recognizing that perhaps the best way to learn is from others’ mistakes, Kraff will kick off his portion of the session by highlighting not-so-fabulous websites and pointing out areas for improvement and easy ways to maximize web exposure. “The first reaction might be, ‘I’m glad he’s not picking on my site,’ but once [attendees] shed that insecurity, they might say, ‘Maybe it is time to look at correcting some of these things I am doing.’”

If he showed a perfectly designed and managed website, contractors would naturally wonder if that type of presence is too far out of their reach. Showing mistakes, however, gives people instant ideas for improvements, Kraff says.  “It’s the functional equivalent of having your fly undone,” he jokes. “We’re going to point out mistakes that are often made because it’s easier to get an emotional reaction by showing what’s wrong versus what’s right.”

“The Web is changing so fast that last month’s topic is old,” says Kraff. “We’ll throw out 100 tidbits in the pre-conference session and any one of them, if a company is not already employing that tactic wisely, could be the difference between success and failure in 2010.”

To register for the annual event, visit the ACCA Conference website.