5 Tips to Build a Great Portfolio for Your Contracting Business

When you’re trying to get the business of a new client, it’s common for people to ask you if they can see a portfolio. Portfolios are an excellent way to show off past work that you’re proud of, and give prospective customers visual evidence of your knowledge and skills. Here are five tips to help you build a great one.

Hire a Photographer
As a contracting business owner, you probably already feel like your time is split in a dozen different directions. The last thing that you need is to be responsible for setting up, taking and editing photography for your portfolio. This is an excellent reason to hire a professional photographer. Not only does a photographer know about the latest trends in construction photography, they have specialist equipment to get great photos and years of experience editing them, to show off your projects in the best possible light. When you don’t have a lot of references, photography of great projects can still advance your business faster than word-of-mouth.

Use Your Best Photos
When you create an online portfolio, it’s tempting to include all of your photos simply because you can. It’s not like a printed portfolio, where you have a limited amount of pages that you can add. Be selective about this process, because prospective clients may not have the interest or attention span to browse through dozens of photos about the same project. Instead, select the photos that you like the best, and make sure that they come early in the slideshow. That way, readers are more likely to see them, even if they don’t look at all the pictures.

Cover Your Services
Think of your portfolio as images that you add to a menu of services. If you went to an upscale restaurant that showcased photography of its most popular dishes, you might wonder what to expect from the ones they choose not to show. Similarly, clients want to know what they can expect from all of your possible services, not just one or two. When you find that you have a lot of photographic evidence of one service but hardly any of the others, invest the time to balance this out. If you haven’t had a client request a particular service yet, see if you can afford to complete it on your own home or other property. That way, you can still show off what you can do.

Consider Options for Showcasing Projects
Once you have a selection of photos, you’ll need to think about how you want to organize them. Many contractors choose to publish their portfolio on their business websites, with links to specific projects. You may also want to consider showcasing some of these photos on your social media accounts. In either case, it’s wise to browse a few different options so that you can choose the best one. Focus on scan-ability and accessibility, because your effort won’t be rewarded if prospective clients cannot get to the portfolio in the first place.

Provide Additional Details
For each project, it’s a good idea to provide a handful of additional details that help readers to recognize what they are looking at and which parts of the visual your business created. You don’t have to write paragraphs and paragraphs about it unless you want to showcase a fine level of detail. Even just a few sentences describing the goal of the project and what you did to meet client expectations may be sufficient.

Creating a beautiful portfolio is a great method to show clients what you can do for them. Before you can do that, you’ll need to complete a few other steps, such as taking your contractor licensing exam. To get started, visit CSLS today!