Blue Collar Marketing: Kingston business reinventing contractor marketing
*Paid Business Feature*
Over the past few years, the construction industry has seen a boom in business, and one local enterprise is ready to keep that trajectory on track by improving the online presence of blue collar businesses.
Local entrepreneurs Wes Mann and Chris Mackey have launched Blue Collar Marketing, a web design and marketing business to support those blue collar industries that simply don’t have time to market themselves.
“The construction industry is notoriously behind when it comes to digital marketing,” Mann shared. “However, we are starting to see a divide forming. More businesses are adopting digital, and the ones that aren’t are falling behind. It’s been a great couple of years for the industry, but the good economic times don’t always last. Business will start to dry up and having a strong online presence is going to be very important.”
Mann and Mackey have a passion for the trades. The pair ran a property maintenance business while they attended Queen’s University. With around 45 employees, they offered services including deck building, landscaping and interlocking stonework, painting, and window cleaning.
Now, they’re taking that experience and combining it with their award-winning design business, Imperium Social, to provide website and marketing services for those blue collar businesses.
“Imperium will continue to operate as a high-end web design agency taking on clients from any niche. Then Blue Collar Marketing will handle all trades clients,” Mackey explained.
“We are able to balance between the two because we have an amazing team and standard operating procedures in place that allow us to handle the growth. We are firm believers in investing in our people to properly scale a business!”
Blue Collar Marketing has been in the works for over a year and, after recent successes working with Ken White Construction, Cavanagh Construction, and WRC Contracting, the Imperium Social name spread through the Ottawa area quickly. The demand for trade websites surged, and quickly became the most common type of project for the web development team, leading them to an accelerated launch of Blue Collar Marketing in November 2022.
From logo design and web design to a new solution they call the “Blue Collar Partner Program,” this venture offers, search engine optimization (SEO), Google Advertising (pay-per click), marketing consulting, graphic design, reputation management, and more to trade businesses.
Blue Collar Marketing’s digital partner program is the “single best solution on the market to help you grow your business,” Mann stated. “It allows you to focus on running your company and leave your marketing to us for less than the cost of a minimum wage worker. We partner with you long term and help you succeed, year in and year out.”
With three in-house staff, and a team of remote employees — all of whom have blue collar work experience — Blue Collar Marketing is dedicated to seeing contracting companies reach their potential.
The team’s passion for the trades and web design shows through in their work. Visit the Blue Collar Marketing website to learn more and contact the team.
This article is sponsored by Blue Collar Marketing. Interested in a Business Feature on Kingstonist? Contact [email protected]