Park City contractor marketing for the Wasatch Back

A lot of Park City homes aren’t anybody’s full-time home. A 2021 housing needs assessment found more than 70% of Park City homes were vacant or second homes.

So the call comes from:

• A property manager who looks after a stack of houses and needs reliable more than cheap.
• A caretaker or HOA manager calling for the owner.
• The owner, from out of state, who will never see your truck and judges you on your photos, your quote and how fast you answered.

Your website needs real job photos, because the owner can’t walk the site with you. Your quote has to be clear enough to approve from a phone in another time zone. And your phone has to get answered, because a property manager with a leak in an empty house will call the next name on the list.

Google Ads has a setting for this. The default, “Presence or interest,” reaches people in your area plus people who’ve shown interest in it. “Presence” only reaches people who are in, or regularly in, the area.

In the valley I usually pick Presence, so a guy in Denver doesn’t click your ad. For Park City, the owner in California looking for someone to work on their cabin might be exactly who you want. I don’t guess. I test it in its own campaign with its own budget, so it can’t drain the main one. More on how I run Google Ads for contractors.

In Park City, applying for a building permit means agreeing to the city’s Construction Mitigation Plan. A few things in it:

• Work hours: Monday to Saturday 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
• An approved parking plan comes with the building permit.
• Dumpsters go inside the approved work area. One in the street needs its own permit.
• Some dates are restricted, like holiday weekends and big city events.
• The contractor tells the neighbors about loud or disruptive work.

Those are Park City’s rules, inside city limits. Outside them, check with Summit County, and plenty of neighborhoods have an HOA on top of that.

An owner who lives out of state worries about fines, angry neighbors and jobs that stall. If you already handle the parking plan and the restricted dates, say so on your site and in your quote. That’s a real reason for them to pick you over the next guy.

In Summit County, outside work slows way down when the snow comes. Inside work keeps going. Push outside jobs early so they’re booked before the season closes, then lean on inside work.

The drive matters too. For a valley contractor, a small Park City call can lose money once you count the trip up the canyon and back. If you’re based in the valley, I’d point your Summit ads at the bigger jobs and leave quick service calls to contractors based up there.

Summit County is a small market, so fewer people search for any one service there than in the valley.

Low volume means fewer people bidding against you. It also means:

1. Small, separate budgets. Summit gets its own campaign, judged on its own numbers.
2. A Google profile that covers Summit County. Set the service area right on your Google Business Profile.
3. No Park City page until you have Park City jobs to show. A page with the city name swapped in is a doorway page, and Google calls that spam.
4. Property managers as a channel. One good relationship can beat a month of clicks.

Heber City is in Wasatch County. If you work both, they get separate targeting and separate numbers. Summit County is Park City, the Snyderville Basin, Kamas, Oakley, Coalville and the towns around them.

A demolition contractor I work with is based in Salt Lake City and does work in Summit County. Their Google Business Profile and Local Services Ads both cover Salt Lake and Summit County. No Park City page yet, per the rule above.

Here’s how I’d run marketing for a demolition contractor.