Introduction
As a UK business owner and limited company contractor, can you claim for advertising and marketing costs through your business? If you can claim for contractor marketing costs, what types of costs are tax-deductible? in addition, if you can also claim for advertising for contractors, what sort of costs can you claim? In this article, we will investigate marketing & advertising ideas for UK limited company contractors. We will also look at what is the best advertising for contractors in the UK. Furthermore, we will also pay a particular focus into UK contractor advertising ideas and what you should consider here. In addition, we will take a look at contractor advertising online and see what this entails.
Many UK contractors will advertise themselves, and those who do this effectively will land new UK contracting work. Therefore, when you are contracting in the UK this is something to think about. In particular, an online presence is something that is definitely worth your time and consideration.
Initial thoughts
Contractor advertising
When you are a contractor, and you run your own company, there may come a time when you would like to promote your services. As a result, you may look to drum up some new business. Therefore, you should consider how to get clients as a contractor and try and think up some good advertising ideas which relate to you and your UK contracting business. I if you start a campaign with some of the best advertising ideas this may help lead to potential new clients and help to grow your business. In addition, your existing customers may see these adverts for your contracting business. The result of this could be it may help to build your existing customer relationships too.
Contractor best practices
In this article, let us investigate some of the best online advertising for contractors. This is in addition to an overall contractor marketing plan, which may help you in the future. If you know how to market yourself as a contractor this can hold you in good stead when it comes to promoting your services. To sum up, some good and effective contractor advertising could be key. It will help you promote your skills and showcase your work to a wider audience.
Best marketing strategies for contractors
Preliminary thoughts
Initially, you could take the time to look for the best contractor advertising ideas. In addition, you can also look into a marketing plan. Basically, many small businesses in all industries will investigate marketing strategies. As part of this they will look into how such strategies could best benefit them. As part of your contractor ideas, it will be useful to know some contractor marketing tips. These will help assist with your own contractor marketing plan. Today, many contracting individuals will use contractor digital marketing to advertise. They will aim ads for their products or services at certain target audiences. Therefore, when we look at some ideas for advertising in general and online advertising for contractors you could include the following ideas:
UK contractor business marketing on social media platforms
There are many freelancers and businesses that offer contractor marketing services, as well as marketing for other businesses. You could consider looking for one of these to help you with you overall plan to find new contracting work in the future.
Adverts in local press
You could place your contractor ad in the local or national press. Such press can include on the news organisation’s website.
PPC advertising
Another area to think about some PPC advertising. PPC stands for Pay Per Click and this means you will be charged every time someone clicks on your contractor ad. Therefore, you could investigate some pay per click advertising for contractors.
Other ideas
Two other initial ideas to land future new contracting work could include:
- Consider some email marketing. This will need further looking into if you consider this.
- Placing some ads on contractor advertising websites. If you do this, it will require investigation in respect of where to advertise for contractors.
Further considerations
Contractor advertising and marketing
Each component of internet marketing for contractors is worth looking at for your business. Furthermore, many business owners, including lots of contractor limited company owners, now have their own business websites. When they have this can use it to help stand out on search engines and make posts on social media. We will go over these in more detail later.
Older types of advertising strategies will include flyers and adverts in the media. These may also be of use, depending on what type of services you offer.
Some good marketing ideas for contractors and a great plan around this overall can lead to potential new customers. Therefore, if you think carefully about how to approach this, your marketing efforts may pay off in the future.
As a result of paying for some advertising and marketing costs, can you now claim these as genuine business expenses through your UK contracting company and save Corporation Tax?
Advertising for contractors and recent times
In many senses, being a limited company contractor is no different from many other businesses out there. Many years ago, most would not even consider marketing and ads for contractors as genuine business costs. However, times have changed though, with the presence of the web and social media in today’s digital world.
The internet is now where many UK contractors find new contract work for their company. Therefore, contractor advertising online is the place where you should aim your focus. To follow on, you may look to create some contractor ads for your company and your profile with a view to increase your chances of landing your next contract.
The difference between marketing and advertising
The role of advertising is where a company pays to deliver its message to a target market. In contrast, marketing will cover much more. The marketing process will include all of the aspects of the advertising-related work. However, it will also include the market research which is required to serve those adverts properly.
Furthermore, marketing will include the overall planning process and the work needed to price the goods and services competitively. It will also include how to monitor the efficiency of all activities undertaken. Notably this could comprise looking at consumer behaviour and planning which advertising campaigns will be conducted.
Good ideas for UK contractors
Marketing tools and contractor advertising online
There are several main types of contractor marketing ideas which are available to help you sell products or sell your services. These will form part of an overall marketing campaign and are:
| 1 | Online advertising. This can help boost your profile or website by carrying out some contractor advertising online, either via social media or actual online adverts. |
| 2 | Social media marketing activities. Again, this can help improve your online presence on social media and boost your advertising online. |
| 3 | Customer Relationship Management (CRM). |
| 4 | Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to help your business appear higher in search results. |
| 5 | Creation and design of content marketing for contractors. |
| 6 | Video marketing. |
| 7 | Event marketing. |
| 8 | Lead capture and conversion. |
The types of marketing and contractor advertising costs that you can claim
Let’s now look at some advertising ideas for business that can help form part of your contractor ads. When we consider these, they may be well worth paying for and we will take a look at these below.
Update your CV professionally
You could hire a CV professional to review your CV and help you update it. We have a great contact on this website that can help with this who has thriving LinkedIn and FB communities. Indeed, the CV professional can add your job and contracting experience and detail your knowledge and skills as well as other factors. As a result, this may help attract potential hiring managers to you in the future. Certainly, this service is relatively cheap and could be a good investment for your future.
Update your LinkedIn profile
One can consider hiring a LinkedIn profile expert to take a look at and `spruce’ up your profile. As part of this, they can ensure that the layout is correct and it shows your experience and achievements. In addition, they will also ensure that they show certain keywords, which recruiters use when searching LinkedIn for new candidates. Just like the above, this service is also not very expensive and could be a good move for the future.
Set up your own website
You could create and run your own contracting website and look after your brand management. When you do this, you could carry out any updates in your own home office. Notably, many IT contractors have an idea of where to start, but if you are unsure about certain aspects, you could use a template like WordPress. WP will help you with the basics. Alternatively, you could hire a web designer for specific elements that you do not understand, such as web templates and a logo, etc. What’s more, your website will have annual hosting costs on web servers, and the yearly fee is typically less than £100. Furthermore, when your site is up and running you could look into some website advertising ideas.
Contractor advertising ideas -other costs which you can claim
When we investigate advertising for contractors, there are some other types of business advertising ideas and marketing-related costs. During the course of your work, you may incur these and they could include:
- The cost of a business computer that you can use for your business activities, which includes advertising and marketing.
- The cost of a web domain or domains that will show your business name. Basically, this will give your business a professional image when it has its own domain. It would help if you used this in conjunction with your business website. What’s more, you could also use the domain name for business emails. Notably, you will need to renew domains on an annual basis, and this typically costs less than £30.
- Other web costs may include Google Adwords, Facebook, and Twitter adverts. In addition, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for your website is another area to consider. Indeed, search engines the main one of which is Google ranks websites on content. What’s more, well-written content is what search engines look out for when ranking sites on the internet.
- Advertisements in the UK press and media. When you do this, such adverts could be both in the local and national media. In addition, you might also choose to use some of the UK online business listing sites.
Final thoughts
Marketing and advertising for contractors are genuine business expenses. Therefore, it is good to come up with some contractor advertising ideas as well as contractor marketing ideas to assist you in the future. Importantly, you can deduct these against your UK contracting company tax bill if they are solely for your business.
Finally, if you may be looking to market your business through forms of business entertainment. This could include meals out with past, present, or potential new clients. If so, you can treat these as business expenses, however they are not tax-deductible. Please read our business entertaining guide which covers this area in more detail.
Link to Contractor Advice UK group on