4 Data-Backed Insights for Pool Builder Marketing

You won’t see these tips on the websites of big SEO companies because those companies are busy with multinational SEO clients, chasing down Fortune 500 contracts and putting their junior SEO’s on accounts like yours. Want proof?

But, for the last 3 years, Singularity has worked with Brisbane Pool Builder MFP Easy to help them build up their web presence using a mixture of SEO and PPC services. Over those 3 years, I’ve found a lot of what works and what doesn’t work for marketing a pool builder but, I wanted data. So, I went out and got it by looking at almost 300 pool builder website and compiling that into a pool builder stats page.

In this article, I am going to draw on that data and experience to give you some deeper insight into what it means and what you as a pool builder can do to improve your marketing.

Stand Out Using Design

As counterintuitive as this might sound changes in your design will lead you to success. Pool builder’s websites are overwhelmingly blue and white (85.5% of them based on our data). So differentiating yourself from the pack is vital if you want a customer to remember and engage with your website.

Based on our data, here is what we recommend you do if you want to stand out from your competition by using design.

Design your website around colors that stand out from the sea of blue and white websites. The best way to incorporate color is to stick to a theme that you can carry into your ads, uniforms, and even your vehicle wraps. For example; Flamingo Pools in FL could leverage pink in their website design over the standard blue and white.
Change up your pool photos– every pool builder wants to show off their installs but, if you were to show a picture of your pool vs competitors it would be hard for them to remember. We suggest taking your install photos with something in the pool that is uniquely yours. Again, if you were Flamingo Pools you could add a large inflatable Flamingo in the pool every time. But other ideas work too. Try having the customers jump in there, or your team (in clean clothes of course). The limit is your creativity.
Create a mascot – this isn’t as hard as you think and can be really helpful in differentiating yourself. If your company is not named something as handy as “Flamingo” pools try going with something that makes sense for your region or, in the context of water or pools. Alligators or dolphins are popular but you can just as easily use a palm tree or a sun or anything else you can think of.
Do something different – when you’re revamping your site and brand take a look at how people are displaying things and do something different. For example, if everyone shows their pool pictures as square images try adding yours as different shapes. If the competition uses a lot of images, try using video on your site more.

In a market full of lookalikes going against the grain is an important step in gaining more visibility for your brand.

Slick Socials

43% of consumers use social media to find and shop for goods and services (pymnts study). So your customer could very well find you based on your social media presence. They also tend to use social media as a research tool when landing on a website. This isn’t a new trend. However our data shows that almost 30% of pool builders don’t have their Facebook profiles linked from their website, 75% are instagram-less, 80% don’t have Youtube, 76% aren’t on X (formerly known as Twitter) and 74% don’t use LinkedIn.

There are good reasons to not have all social media channels running at once. The most common being the time it takes to post on all of them and to keep them all updated as each requires slightly different text or image lengths. Despite this social media tools have long been able to help with crossposting, scheduling and fitting images and text into each platform.

The statistics above show that one of the best things that you can do as a pool builder is to engage in as many of these platforms as possible. Right now, our agency doesn’t have the data on how often posts are being made to Facebook or any of the channels linked above but if you’re going to stand out then linking your socials and engaging in one social channel along with facebook would be a surefire way to get ahead of most of the market.

Takeaways:

Create social profiles on all platforms and link to them on your website.
Get ahead of the market by engaging in one channel that isn’t Facebook 70-80% of competitors likely aren’t there.

Connect Emotionally

As a pool builder, you can do something many products and services can’t do easily – connect with customers on an emotional level. Even though it’s tough – no matter your industry – it’s worth the time spent thinking about how a pool makes your customers feel and what it is they value about it.

Most products and services struggle to connect on an emotional level with their customers because not only is it hard, but their products are not exciting or interesting in the way that a backyard pool is for people. It’s tough to make someone smile about their brand of dishwasher or the patio chairs they buy. But a backyard swimming pool is many things those products aren’t. They’re fun, and engaging, they foster family and friend connections, and they are a living space outside the home that memories are created around. That is the opportunity you have as a pool builder to connect with people.

With our complete list of pool builders in FL at hand we looked at the first heading on the page for each pool builder in Florida and asked ourselves the question; “Does this attempt to emotionally connect with the customer?”

The answer for 85% of the headings we looked at was no. Most pool websites are focused on something generic like a welcome message or, some turn of phrase to help them rank for pool builder SEO. Of those who were attempting to connect with the customer the best examples were headings like;

Our goal is to exceed your wildest expectation
Luxury Pools for Luxury Living
Ready-Made Enjoyment
Making your dreams a reality since 1980

While these are some good examples because they put the customer first, and attempt to connect with an emotion or lifestyle want like luxury or ‘ready-made enjoyment’ the overwhelming majority of sites we saw were more generic using the biggest and first heading on their site to say something like;

Welcome
Trusted Pool builder in Pensacola
We are the premier pool builder in [Location]

All well-intentioned attempts but not something that holds much sway in the consumer’s mind. In marketing the first battle is to get a consumer’s attention, the next is to hold it. Messaging like this is unlikely to do either.

Takeaways;

85% of Pool Builders don’t use customer-centric messaging – so you should.
Connect with a customer’s emotion over telling them about you.
You have a product that is emotionally charged and fun use that to your advantage.

Write More Content

Unsurprising that an SEO company would tell you to write more content, I know. But, it’s true that it is a massive advantage in the FL pool builder market. What we’ve learnt in our research is that most pool builders’ marketing is inconsistent or non-existent leaving them open to the whims of the economy and luck.

Our recent SEO study of pool builder websites revealed that most pool builders have just 600 words on their homepage. It also appears that most aren’t producing much more content than that either as 50% of the pool builder sites we reviewed ranked in Google for 22 keywords or less.

Content can be scary but creating a plan and executing the plan is the only way to grow and outpace your competition. The best way to start if you have no SEO or content marketing experience is to write about what you know and what your customers are asking. For example; concrete vs fibreglass pools, which is better? Can you install a pool on a slanted block of land? How long does it take to install a pool?

All of these are questions people ask Google and salespeople when thinking of buying a pool. If you take an hour to sit down with the team and write out a list of every one of these questions you will have 30-50 ideas or more you can prioritise and write on a weekly or monthly cadence and publish on your website. Over time you will see the traffic and Google love come trickling in.