Want to learn how to start an asphalt business? Think there’s room for you in this space? According to statistics, there are over 50,000+ asphalt businesses are in America. This means this niche is clearly doing well. And it’s leading to more people asking themselves how to start an asphalt business of their own.
For those thinking it is impossible to start in this industry without large capital, remember that statistics include both large contractors and smaller ones and any variations or related companies to what an asphalt busies offers.
Although thousands of businesses are overwhelming, you don’t need to be intimidated by their sheer volume. Small asphalt businesses can be successful on the market by any means as long as they start properly.
To work around it, it is essential to have a strong foundation and be able to apply the best practices to get ahead.
Small businesses can provide financial security for you and your family. This type of business can be started with very little capital and requires only a few employees. It is also easy to expand, and you can work around different options depending on your long-term specialization.
For a successful start, a good business plan is essential, and you will get tired of reading about it, but for a good reason. It must include all details, including marketing, budget, and how you plan to approach your growth. Make sure it also helps identify and solve problems.
For other steps, you can just go over the ones we have for share:
Do Market Research & Focus on Feasibility Studies
Contrary to popular belief, market research and studies do not focus on your competitors. More aspects should be considered that are often related to your business and its future in specific.
Thus, as important as it is to know what your competitors are doing and how you can change things, you need to make sure you are going in the right way by determining how your business will proceed.
What does this mean? That you need to focus on:
Demographics and Psychographics
Asphalt will be used to pave highways, streets, driveways, and other areas. It isn’t a matter of how popular it is but rather how necessary it is in America today.
Based on this info, you should be able to assess your clients’ needs and identify their personalities. Are they companies in need of someone who can provide asphalt services? Or maybe individuals trying to get the best price for a unique project?
Maybe they are looking for companies that can provide materials and handle specific areas. This is where it is crucial to take into account the needs of customers.
Asphalt companies are usually the ones that rely on construction firms or those with projects involving the state. Unlike what many people think, large projects are split between several contractors while there’s always the main one who leads the process and gets the most out of the deal.
You may be able to partner with a complete construction company or any other related to your niche.
Real estate developers, builders, and others who need asphalt for whatever reason, or other related services, may also require your company’s participation.
You can also consider other factors, such as owners of small businesses or contractors working in the same field. They may also need your assistance if they are unable to work with clients.
Now, You Can Take a Look at Your Competitors
This market is highly competitive as it continues growing in the USA. If your service delivery is outstanding, you will be able to stand out and worry less, but your competitors still remain, so don’t underestimate how below you can fall vs. them.
You will be able to rise above your competition by staying current with industry standards and knowing what they are doing, so you have a good idea of where to stand.
Do not feel discouraged by the sheer number of competitors, but instead, be excited that you can stand out. This should encourage you to work harder as the industry is booming in America.
Research your strongest competitors. They may not be the most well-known brands, but it is possible they are the best.
Each state determines the best asphalt business in America. It would be incredible if every state had its own list. You can also add economic analysis to your research.
Always Prepare Your Company/Business Plan
A plan will not guarantee success, and it isn’t invincible. However, planning can save time, money, and lives as you have a roadmap of what is, probably, the best path to success and how you can avoid wasting your efforts.
The key to any venture’s success is planning, and this is where a business plan falls to.
There are many things involved in starting a business. For starters, it is crucial to know your market and the opportunities available for asphalt contractors.
Your business plan is your guide and compass that will help you navigate all the activities that will lead to success.
Many people ignore creating a business plan because it can be difficult. It is essential for your business development as well as to obtaining financing, and it doesn’t need to be a hassle as long as you go over a few guides.
Write down your services and decide where you want the business to be located. How much will your services cost? Do you have any ideas for the future?
These details should be added and ensure you make every detail be present in the plan. In this way, you will have a good overview and even predict some issues in the future.
All Paperwork Must Get Done
Depending on the location of the business, you may need to register it and obtain contractor liability coverage.
For example, to locate your business in the USA, you will need permission before you can submit jobs.
Contractors must have an asphalt license (in your case), even though the process may be different in each state.
While some states require separate licenses for asphalt-specific work, others permit contractors to enter the state; others do not. Additional requirements include renewal standards, testing, application fees, and payment fees.
Get the necessary business licenses from your county, state, and the city before you start operations. Register your corporation’s name with the state government. Follow the regular requirements:
- General liability insurance.
- Property insurance.
- Commercial auto insurance.
- Workers’ compensation.
More paperwork will be your headache, but don’t worry too much about it in the beginning and focus on the previous ones.
Once you are clearer regarding what to do, you can work around the extra requirements and how to deal with them without risking your business being put in a bad position.
Get Started with Your Services
Realize that you don’t have to manage every aspect of your business but rather focus on the essentials and move on from there. With essentials, we mean your services and structure.
It is important that you limit the services that you offer to customers who aren’t relevant.
Your partners, if any, should discuss the jobs and services you are qualified to do. You won’t be able to offer services beyond what you can do. You will gain more experience and be able to take on bigger jobs as you limit your area of expertise.
To determine your costs and to offer jobs, you will need to use your pricing structure next.
You don’t have to start small, but it is what we would recommend if you want to have a stable start. Besides, this shouldn’t slow you down but rather boost your efforts later.
Multi-service offerings are a great way to attract more customers, but it is important to be realistic as a new business. Reduce your list and focus on the most requested ones and how you can work around them to deliver top services.
When writing your business plan, it is best to create a list of the services you will specialize in.
But don’t be as specified in the beginning. Yes, we know. It feels like we’re going a bit in circles with this, but it is a matter of finding a balance.
Think strategically when your business is at the top, and you start expanding your service options. What piece of equipment can you buy that will help you expand your service offerings? Are you offering services that complement your existing ones or what people need/want?
When hiring new staff, you want to be proactive and cautious. If they don’t work, or there’s not enough work, you’re effectively losing money twice.
It is important to be able to integrate technology into your business as well while working in your services.
Every industry is dependent on technology. It is, however, arguably the most effective way for small businesses to compete with larger companies or general contractors. How can you do this?
You can make it more convenient for customers by making sure that your job site is tech-enabled. It’s as simple as allowing customers to use their credit cards through e-readers. This is especially important if you are focusing on smaller jobs, such as residential areas.
Television and radio ads still work, but you’ll get a better ROI if you focus your marketing efforts on content marketing and social networking.
Get Ready to Start (Finally!)
After you have defined the scope of your company and developed a business plan, it’s time to get started on the planning phase.
All the tools and equipment you require are available. Make sure you do your research so that you can find the right equipment and tools to make your business last.
It is important to choose equipment that performs well. It is also up to you to decide if it is worth your money.
You’ll need different equipment depending on your job and your niche. We recommend renting large machinery that you are able to handle but still not able to buy.
You will also need to do extensive research on other aspects, such as setting your place and working around other logistics.
Networking is Your Best Friend
Before you open your business, you must have experience in the industry. This will make it easy to find work long-term and ensure you get some leads or clients thanks to meeting new people.
Participate in successful contractor networks and associations. Develop healthy relationships with them.
Learn from those who have been there. It is more than what you know when it comes to asphalt business success.
While you are networking, you’re bound to learn new factors in the industry and how you can work around them. How you can build your business around others’ success and path over the years.
In addition, you make contacts that will bring value your way in many forms.
Plan For Growth
Think big, start small. Don’t be afraid to take risks but don’t be extremely bold about your process.
Entrepreneurs who want to make this a reality must be visionary. Even if your business is small, you should have a 10-year vision. To ensure long-term growth, you must engage all relevant principles without losing the vision of what is possible.
Identify your target audience, and then figure out how to market your company. It is important to identify whom you want to work alongside and how to reach them. Remember what we said about clients and companies? You may want to review that part again.
You’ll be able to find more opportunities that will help you grow your company from where it is now to where it should be.
Also, remember to keep current with all the latest marketing techniques. You can also look for books on business and marketing.
Find Out Whom Will Send You Materials
For small jobs, bags of raw materials that are just enough for a couple of meters or kilometers will be enough. You are good to go with the basics. But where can you find high-quality materials, and how will you handle larger projects?
You need to envision all this before you take big steps next.
For larger projects, you may need to rent heavy machinery to ensure you can process the materials properly and handle the size of the job. We say “rent” because buying them without knowing if your business will end up being profitable is way too bold.
This sounds easy, but it can be difficult to find a source that provides the same quality and brands as you want. You also need to ensure that they will deliver the goods on time.
Therefore, be patient and take the time to do this properly. This will ensure that you have the best materials at your disposal on time. You also get to work with clients who value you.
How to Finance Your Business Activities
The startup costs of a new business include the purchase of equipment and supplies and enough money to cover overheads until the company has positive cash flow.
We have already mentioned the need for all materials, locations, equipment, and so forth. Did we mention the cost of it?
Calculate the amount of money needed and then determine the source. They can be drawn from savings, loans, or business credit cards. They could also be borrowed from outside investors.
No matter the source of funding, the new owner of a company must clearly outline how they plan to finance it.
There are many options available, such as online lenders who will place bets on your company. You must find reliable sources.
Be sure to know what you can afford, and then set your budget and expenses. You will find yourself with loans that you cannot pay, even within the first few months.
Market Your Services
To promote your concrete business, create a marketing plan.
Place classified ads in your local newspaper and send out a press release announcing the opening of your new business.
Make a website about your business—post flyers on bulletin boards for the public to see. To solicit referrals, establish a network of local contractors and businesses. Online strategies are the best of all options.
Top Tips for Starting an Asphalt Business
We have already reviewed the steps you must take in order to get started, and don’t be afraid of adding new steps as there’s no specific formula to start your business; rather, we just provided the best and essential ones for it.
We thought it would be a smart idea to include relevant information so that you can see what the majority of people are doing wrong and what you should do instead.
These tips will make a huge difference in your life and ensure you are starting with your right foot when it comes to being an entrepreneur:
Be Prepared for the Unexpected
Asphalt is a tough world that doesn’t die in the material alone. But if we focus on it, it’s important to remember it is sensitive to temperature, moisture, and cold. A small weather change could cause delays while workers wait for the right conditions.
It is important to keep track of the weather forecast to determine what day will be good to start working on a project.
Invest In Training and Hiring
Professionals believe that asphalt jobs can make profits and losses in the field. Fieldwork success depends on the performance of field workers.
To increase your job profits, you need to attract top-quality workers. Working with asphalt is more difficult than you might think. All workers will have to work hard, even with the best equipment, and ensure they know what they’re doing to avoid wasting raw material and time.
Thus, take the time to retain and hire good workers. This means investing in your employees once you have hired them. This will ensure that both parties benefit from the business—as they should.
You must invest in your employees’ happiness growth and offer them opportunities for continued training. Also, be open to new technologies that may make their job easier and more efficient.
Technology is an investment in the productivity of your employees. They need to understand what you expect from them.
Mobile technology allows staff to do more with less. It also keeps field teams in touch and allows them to make changes quickly. All team members can see standard reports in real-time, which allows them to better understand key factors like performance and schedule. This will help them make an informed decision.
Update Your Materials Tracking
Is it possible to track the time materials arrive? Asphalt contractors have a hard time tracking when materials are delivered. Because timing is crucial in this area, you want to ensure you’re working with great timing.
This is especially true if there is not enough space to lay down the materials. If materials are not stored properly and in a timely manner, it can lead to major headaches.
One solution is to integrate sensors connected to the Internet of Things in operations to improve tracking. These sensors track suppliers’ trucks and fleets so you can know when they will arrive.
Stay Up-To-Date with The Latest Concrete Innovations
Asphalt contractors need to be up-to-date on the latest trends in their work as well as all technological advancements.
This will allow you to offer the best services to your clients, and you will be able to work around what they need, want, and how you can deliver it best.
Of course, this is often hard considering all advancements that appear every day, but we’re confident you will get there.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Asphalt Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Asphalt Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Asphalt Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.