How to grow an excavation business? | Excavation Business Lead Generation
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What Does “How to grow an excavation business? | Excavation Business Lead Generation” Talk About?
This episode of the James Dooley Podcast features James Dooley and Kasra Dash breaking down the most effective strategies for growing an excavation business through smart lead generation and digital marketing. The conversation kicks off with Kasra posing as a new excavator owner looking for consistent inquiries, which sets the stage for a practical walkthrough of available marketing channels including billboards, PPC, SEO, social media advertising, and third-party lead generation platforms. James emphasizes the importance of first identifying which types of work generate the most profit before investing in any marketing channel, and both hosts discuss how a fractional CMO can help excavation companies navigate their options.
The episode digs into the major drawbacks of shared lead platforms like Checkatrade and BuildaBuilder, explaining how the same lead is often resold to multiple companies, forcing contractors into a race to the bottom on price. Kasra also breaks down why PPC campaigns are particularly risky for excavation companies, pointing to click fraud by competitors and window-shopper behavior as key budget-wasting problems. The hosts then pivot to advocating for SEO as the long-term foundation of any growth strategy, with specific advice on creating dedicated service pages for terms like excavation, groundwork, drainage, and grab hire so that Google can clearly identify topical relevance. Facebook retargeting ads using video testimonials and case studies are also highlighted as a powerful way to convert site visitors who initially left without inquiring.
A standout point in the episode is the business valuation angle that Kasra raises: excavation companies that generate their own leads organically through SEO command a significantly higher multiplier if they ever seek investment or plan to sell the business. The hosts also discuss FatRank.com's exclusive pay-on-conversion lead generation model as a lower-risk complement to SEO, while cautioning business owners not to rely on any single source for all their leads.
“if you can show potential investors or if you're ever looking to sell your escavation and ground Works company that if you're generating your own leads from your own website you will get a much higher multiplayer and a lot of people don't talk about that”
— Kasra Dash
Who Are the Guests on “How to grow an excavation business? | Excavation Business Lead Generation”?
James Dooley is a well-known digital marketing entrepreneur and SEO expert, best recognized as the founder of FatRank.com, a lead generation platform serving tradespeople and service businesses across a range of industries including excavation, groundworks, and landscaping. In this episode he draws on his experience building and operating lead generation systems at scale, offering excavation business owners a realistic look at which marketing channels deliver genuine ROI versus which ones drain budgets. His practical, no-nonsense style is evident throughout as he walks through everything from traditional advertising to pay-per-converted-job lead generation models.
Kasra Dash is a digital marketing strategist and SEO specialist who co-hosts and contributes expert commentary throughout the episode. Kasra brings a grounded, experience-based perspective on why shared lead platforms and PPC campaigns frequently underdeliver for trade businesses, and he provides actionable SEO guidance tailored specifically to the excavation and groundworks niche. His advice on building dedicated service pages, running Facebook retargeting campaigns with video testimonials, and treating SEO as both a lead generation and brand-building tool reflects a deep familiarity with helping local and regional trade businesses grow their online presence.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “How to grow an excavation business? | Excavation Business Lead Generation”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Excavation companies should identify their most profitable service types before investing in any specific marketing channel, ensuring budget is directed where it generates the highest return.
- Shared lead platforms like Checkatrade resell the same inquiry to multiple contractors, which drives prices down and forces businesses to compete purely on cost rather than quality.
- PPC campaigns carry serious risks for excavation businesses because competitors can commit click fraud to burn advertising budgets and many clicks come from window shoppers who never convert.
- Creating dedicated SEO-optimized pages for each individual service such as drainage, grab hire, civil engineering, and groundworks is essential because Google will not rank a business for a keyword without a dedicated page.
- SEO should be viewed as a long-term brand-building investment that also increases business valuation, since companies generating their own organic leads command a significantly higher sale or investment multiplier.
“do not obsess too much on the return on investment from SEO specifically SEO specifically is there to also do your brand building and Trust so that when you are buying leads from a lead generation company or you're getting the leads let's say from fat rank.com that you've got better chances of of converting those inquiries”
— Kasra Dash
Is “How to grow an excavation business? | Excavation Business Lead Generation” Worth Listening To?
This episode is worth listening to for any trade business owner who has wasted money on shared lead platforms or PPC without seeing a clear return. James and Kasra go beyond surface-level marketing advice and explain the actual mechanics of why certain channels fail, including the specific problems of resold leads, click fraud, and window-shopper behavior that quietly drain excavation company budgets. The conversation is structured around real scenarios rather than abstract theory, making it easy to immediately evaluate which of your current marketing activities might be costing more than they earn.
What sets this episode apart is the business valuation insight that most marketing podcasts never address. Kasra's point about how generating your own leads through SEO raises the multiplier when selling or seeking investment in an excavation business is the kind of strategic thinking that goes well beyond day-to-day lead generation. Combined with the practical walkthrough of Facebook retargeting using video testimonials and case studies as trust-building tools, this episode gives excavation and groundworks company owners a clear and prioritized roadmap for sustainable growth rather than just quick fixes.
Who Should Listen to “How to grow an excavation business? | Excavation Business Lead Generation”?
This episode is ideal for:
- Excavation and groundworks business owners looking to reduce reliance on expensive or unreliable lead sources
- Trade company founders considering SEO but unsure whether it is worth the investment compared to paid advertising
- Entrepreneurs planning to eventually sell or seek investment in their trade business who want to maximize their company valuation
- Digital marketers or fractional CMOs working with local service businesses in the construction and civil engineering sector
Where Can You Listen to James Dooley Podcast?
You can listen to James Dooley Podcast on all major podcast platforms:
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You can also subscribe using the RSS feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/james-dooley-podcast
What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“Finally someone explained why my Checkatrade spend never made sense. Hearing that the same lead gets sold to four different companies and you end up in a price war made everything click. Really practical episode with advice I could act on straight away.”
“The point about creating dedicated pages for each service like drainage, grab hire, and groundworks separately genuinely surprised me. I had no idea Google needed that level of clarity to rank you. Going back to rebuild our site structure based on this.”
“I appreciated that James and Kasra were honest about PPC being risky rather than just pushing it. The click fraud point and the window shopper explanation were eye-opening. The bit about SEO increasing your business sale multiplier was something I had never considered before.”
Kasra Dash: so I have just bought an excavator and I need a consistent flow of inquiries to grow my business what do you recommend
James Dooley: so if you're an excavation company and you're looking to grow there's lots of different types of excavators diggers dumpers ground works I would want to know a lot more of exactly what type of work that makes you the most profit right okay right and then once you've got that a fractional CMO or someone that can just help you out with your marketing overall can start to look at different Avenues whether that's traditional marketing I'm not a massive fan but traditional marketing could be Billboards TV radio magazines whether it's PPC to pay to be the top of Google SEO search engine optimization in trying to rank your website higher I'm a massive fan of that there's many reasons why which kazra can touch on in a minute um then you've got social media so consistently posting on social media social media advertising that you can do whether that's like Facebook ads Instagram ads YouTube advertising stuff like that um and obviously lead generation yeah so over at fat rank.com we do a lot of escavation leads groundw Works leads Landscaping leads Digger and dumper man with a van um type leads man with um an man in an excavator type leads so all like removal of um Deb skip higher and all that a lot of all this kind of Falls underneath the excavation and ground Works kind of industry so at fat rank we do a lot of the lead generation for that and the good part is that we guarantee a return on investment so with regards to the guaranteed the return on investment you're only paying converted jobs so some of the kind of stuff we're going to touch upon now with regards to SEO and PPC all this can be done for you and you're only paying converted jobs the only Carri out to this is don't 100% put all your eggs in fat ranks basket just for as being the sole method of generating your leads that should just only be one method to help you grow your escavation company there is others what's your thoughts then let's touch upon other lead generation companies like back check a trade build a builder Yellow Pages advertising
Kasra Dash: yeah so the the issue that I've had with those businesses before is obviously they they resell the lead I I don't know if if any of you guys know that but for example if excavation company one purchases that lead for let's say1 or50 or whatever or 50 credits um that same exact lead gets sold to let's say four different companies so it's not an exclusive lead and that that's the only Annoying Thing so then that basically means that you are basically driving down your price so whoever has the cheapest price ends up winning um so that that's issue number number one then issue number two is sometimes you actually purchase the lead and you can't even get get hold of that person so you've just wasted a load of money um this is kind of similar to PPC as well I like we've spoken about this before um I'm not a big fan of PPC uh mainly for that reason first of all you need you need somebody fulltime in the actual ad account making certain that they are adding negative keywords to the list um then you've obviously got the likes of Click fraud so for example you can competitors can literally just be clicking on your ads and burning your budget every single day um and then further of all you've got while it's called Window Shopper so for example they've just clicked three different ads and they're just looking around for for an actual price um and they're not actually fully invested into into your actual service so I would look to avoid those two I mean you you can definitely test out right but for me I'm I'm I'm avoiding that um a much safer strategy is probably SEO um actually ranking your website organically um obviously there are a lot of cowboy SEO agencies so if you guys do want a trusted SEO Agency contact us and we we can guide you depending on what your services are and where you're based and stuff we we've got a handful of different SEO agencies that we can help you out on with that but if you're going to do it yourself what I would be looking to do is list a load of services that you provide so for example excavation groundwork drainage grab hire civil um engineering Etc list all of these as actual services that you want to offer on your website and then create SE optimized content for each of those um Services a lot of business owners they don't actually create dedicated Pages I'm not certain why um but if you don't actually have dedicated pages on your website Google won't know that you actually provide that as a service and they won't rank you for that keyword um so look to do that um another play that you could probably do as well is Facebook retargeting so anybody that lands on your website might never or let's say 100 people visit your website all 100 people will not convert into actual leads so what we wanted to try to do is actually retarget those people the next time to go on Facebook and also Instagram it's called me ads and you can set up a pixel on your website to say anybody that visits my website site and doesn't inquire with me I want to show them these ads over here for the next 30 days or for the next seven days or whatever and that's just another way of getting people back on to your website The Good the good thing about doing the retargeting ads is that they might not have enquired with you initially because they might not have felt you might not be the right company because they might they might be lacking in certain trust signals so if you start to retarget them with certain videos of jobs that you've done or video testimonials or case studies is that might reemphasize that trust to say okay I'm going to go back to that site and now inquire they do look like a good business so that ring for me is is a huge huge play but also one big one is that if you are an excavation company and a ground work company and you are looking to grow do not obsess too much on the return on investment from SEO specifically SEO specifically is there to also do your brand building and Trust so that when you are buying leads from a lead generation company or you're getting the leads let's say from fat rank.com that you've got better chances of of converting those inquiries because if someone's looking at your brand online you've got a positive branding you've got lots of five star reviews and all the rest of it you got lots of videos and nice images of you digging certain jobs out and stuff like that so I'd strongly recommend on having some sort of budget for search engine optimization to try to get high rankings but also the major play for this is that if you can show potential investors or if you're ever looking to sell your escavation and ground Works company that if you're generating your own leads from your own website you will get a much higher multiplayer and a lot of people don't talk about that and understand that when you start to understand you're getting a higher multiplier you should be running SEO alongside buying leads wherever it's from people PC or whether it's from a lead generation company where they're giving you a consistent flow of inquiries that keeps you busy SEO is the long-term play you're going to keep trying to build it up and build it up for conversion but also if you can start generating your own leads that's the Holy Grail of owning an excavation company so if you want help grow your excavation company make certain to check out the link Down Below in the description or head over to fat rank.com
Creators & Guests
Host
James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.