Digital Marketing Guide for Home Services

Digital marketing is a proven tool intended to help businesses, just like yours attract leads and accumulate valuable conversions.

 

Converting more leads for a home service business simply translates to more success and steady growth.

Depending on what industry you are in, home services are abundant.

Whether you specialize in HVAC, electrical, plumbing, roofing, pool services, or any other area of home service, you need to build a bridge of authority and trust between your business and your target customer for success.

As a business owner, you know your customers are out there looking for your services.

You just have to find the best way to reach them and build a lasting relationship that benefits the customer and your business.

For many years now, digital marketing has been a significant way of doing just that!

In this article, we are going to be sharing several impactful digital marketing strategies designed to attract and retain your target audience. Let’s get started!

Here’s What We Will Cover:

• Build a Home Services Website Designed to Convert
• Get connected: Local Directories
• Create a DIY Guide to Add Value for Your Customers & Build Trust
• Invest in Search Engine Optimization
• Claim & Optimize Your Google My Business Listing
• Social Media: Stay Involved & Available
• Invest in Paid Search Ads
• Become Google Guaranteed
• Embrace Reviews & Customer Engagement
• Become the go-to by Providing Fresh Content
• Capture Attention & Build a Reputation with Videos
• Stay Ahead of the Game with Digital Newsletters

Impactful Marketing Tips for Home Service Companies

Build a Home Services Website Designed to Convert

In today’s business world, accessibility and convenience are just as important as experience and skill.

You can be the best home services provider in your area, but without marketing your business properly, building success can be extremely difficult.

These days it’s all about technology, i.e., a digital presence.

For any chance at survival up against your competition, you need to have a website designed to represent your brand well, keep up with search engine standards, and attract/convert traffic.

Your website is an online reflection of your business.

Because of this, it is crucial that your site is easily accessible and navigable on all platforms to maintain design quality and user experience alongside search engine standards.

Example: Smartphones, desktops, laptops, tablets, etc.

Get connected: Local Directories

To maintain the exposure of your business, adaptation to change is essential.

These days, most local directories have gone digital.

To keep your business’s contact information readily available for potential customers, make sure to add your business information to virtual directories.

Beneficial directories will likely include; Google, Yelp, Angie’s List, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bing, Local.com, BBB, Yahoo, and 100’s more.

Keeping up with your business listings is an essential part of building a successful online business.

It is also vital that they are managed regularly with consistent information and kept up to date.

Create a DIY Guide to Add Value for Your Customers & Build Trust

DIY guides are a great way to draw customers in, address their challenges, build trust, and keep them coming back for more.

You may feel concerned about a loss in service by teaching your online audience how to change out their air filters or shock their pool, and that’s normal.

But in reality, you are building a relationship in which you become the authority they seek when they can’t figure it out for themselves, or a larger job arises.

Simple “how-to” guides and FAQs are a great way to accumulate online traffic by addressing the exact needs of searchers, educating them, and keeping your expertise readily available.

Invest in Search Engine Optimization

SEO consists of a wide variety of optimization techniques, all designed to put your website on the map and drive traffic.

SEO efforts typically include:

• Extensive keyword research and proper application
• Optimization of content- page titles, meta descriptions, image alt tags, link building, etc.
• Website navigation optimization
• HTML
• Site speed optimization
• Indexability for search engines like Google
• Mobile-friendliness
• Quantity and Quality traffic control
• Constant monitoring & research
• Schema markup
• Regular content creation, and much, much more!

Because SEO is such a multidimensional approach to marketing, it’s usually best to partner with a digital marketing company. Although you can do some of it on your own, you will need help to reap the full benefits of search engine optimization.

Claim & Optimize Your Google My Business Listing 

Google My Business has quickly become one of the most prominent ways for searchers to quickly spot what they are looking for in SERPs and make a selection based on customer reviews and overall appeal.

Creating Your Listing:   

• Log in to the Google account associated with your business, or create one if you do not have one already.
• Go to google.com/business and click on (start now) in the top right corner.
• Accurately and thoroughly fill out your account information as requested.
• Choose an account verification process.
• Begin optimizing your account with images, location, business hours, and other important information.

If your home services business already has a GMB listing, you must go through the necessary steps to claim that listing and correctly optimize all of the information for search engines and user experience.

Social Media: Stay Involved & Available

Many forms of social media marketing play a large role in business marketing these days.

To stay relevant and in front of your target audience, it is essential that you are available on social platforms where potential customers frequent.

Creating a Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn page to manage your online presence/reputation is a smart way to build relationships that may turn into business.

Building business to business relationships through social media is also an essential part of growth.

Although you may not always see instant gratification, using social media, and other forms of networking have been proven to significantly improve brand reputations and growth rates.

Invest in Paid Search Ads

Paid digital advertising is a powerful way to hone in on your target market, get in front of them, and make a connection.

Paid ads create significant exposure that you probably wouldn’t have had otherwise and help to improve your overall web traffic and lead rate.

For the best results from paid advertising, you need to have a qualified partnership or team member capable of adequately optimizing and targeting your ads to create real results.

Become Google Guaranteed   

If you are in the home services industry, then surely by now, you’ve heard of the Google Guarantee Program, also known as Google Local Services.

Google Guarantee is a program that backs up the legitimacy of your business as well as the quality of services you offer through third-party validation.

Google guarantee also places your business’ listing above paid search results, which dramatically increases your overall exposure, leads, and conversion rate.

To learn more about Google Guarantee, Click Here!

Embrace Reviews & Customer Engagement

Customer reviews are incredibly important!

Reviews have become one of the first aspects of an online business that customers look for before reading about the details of your service offerings.

Reviews also build a sense of legitimacy and trust for customers contemplating using your services by reassuring your industry’s authority and reliability.

It is also important to professionally respond to both good and bad reviews regularly to show that you care about your customers and take responsibility for your work.

Become the go-to by Providing Fresh Content

Fresh content creation is a significant part of building and maintaining online authority in your industry.

Regular content creation is one of the major ways that search engines (like google) recognize your online presence and the value you have to offer searches.

It is crucial to remember that Google is a business and that its success comes from taking searchers exactly where they need to go and offering them the best resources and experience available.

Fresh content creation (like blogs, service pages, FAQs, etc.) shows Google your authority, expertise, and relevance.

It also fuels the need for Google to bring you qualified traffic and help build relationships with your customers by providing an excellent user experience and valuable resources worth sharing.

Capture Attention & Build a Reputation with Videos

It’s no secret that videos grab people’s attention.

Videos are often easier to digest than written content and also create a convincing and fulfilling experience for the end-user.

Videos build trust and a sense of familiarity with your target audience.

If you have time to create original videos (whether it be of your work or even customer testimonials), you can potentially gain a lot of trust and recognition by bringing your business’ brand and reputation to life and putting a face to your company.

Stay Ahead of the Game with Digital Newsletters

Digital newsletters are a great way to build a community of past and present customers.

Just because you’ve already provided your services to a customer doesn’t mean it has to stop there.

The relationship could potentially grow through digital newsletters and continue to benefit your business.

Newsletters are just another way to keep building your business relationships, establish authority in your market, and stay connected to your audience.

With a regular newsletter, your current customers get to see other services you offer, while past clients are reminded of your business and receive updates on new services and current promotions.

You still get emails on promotions and services from that company you bought your laptop a year ago because they work!

Assuming they offered you a quality service or product the first time, eventually, you will need something else, in which you will likely choose that same company to do business with again.

Digital Marketing Benefits for Home Services Companies

• More growth opportunities
• Higher conversion rate
• Establishment of your reputation and authority
• Solving customer problems
• Better ROI
• Higher revenue
• Computable results
• Expanded reach
• Steady growth
• Stay ahead of your competitors
• Adapt and overcome

Digital Marketing: Become the Authority in Your Home Services Industry

Proven digital marketing efforts like these are the most effective way to get your home services company to the top of Google search results pages and keep it there.

Your online presence is just as significant as your brick and mortar, and in some cases, even more so.

If you have any questions on how to utilize these marketing tools to the fullest for your home services business, Give Visibly Connected a Call Today, we are happy to help!

 

Home Services Marketing: Survival of The Fittest

How far are your Home Services marketing efforts really taking you? Let’s face it, Home Services companies are abundant, especially in the Houston area.

Because of this, old and new businesses alike are all facing the same challenge- How to stay on top and how to remain relevant in their respective industry. Chances are you’ve dabbled in some type of marketing before. However, if you’re reading this article you likely haven’t gained much from your previous efforts.

Marketing comes in many shapes and sizes and it’s important to understand that no two tactics are the same and not all tactics benefit every business type.

As a Home Services company, there are many proven methods of getting and retaining the business you want.

Keep reading to find out more.

SEO For Home Services

SEO, or (Search Engine Optimization), is the evergreen fountain of youth when it comes to marketing, especially for a Home Services company looking to gradually gain some ground and stay ahead of its competitors for the long haul.

SEO works in many ways, the most notable being its ability to control where you fall on the list of search engine result pages in relation to webpage quality and keywords searched by your customer.

For example, “AC Repair in Houston” is a pretty strong keyword with a fairly high search volume, 1k-10k searches a month to be more specific. If you own an HVAC company and your web pages are optimized according to search engine standards and utilize strong keywords, your ranking goes up.

What does that mean?

That means that when someone types “AC Repair In Houston” into a search engine like Google, you have a much greater chance of being favored by the search engine and shown in the list of results ahead of your competitor.

When it comes to search results, the early bird tends to get the worm, after all, someone with a broken AC unit isn’t going to spend a lot of time going through pages and pages of HVAC companies just to find your listing.

Harnessing The Power of Reviews

We simply cannot stress enough the importance of reviews for any business looking to scale and stay successful. We live in an extremely techy world these days and businesses have to adapt to that in order to keep up. The Home Services industry is no different.

Reviews establish trust and reliability. They also either attest to or diminish your quality of work and your business as a whole. People don’t just pick up the phonebook and call like they used to. Now, the first thing everyone does is look for a Google My Business account and check for reviews.

Creating a well-optimized GMB account along with building a strong list of quality customer reviews, can exponentially boost the success of your business. Sure, it’s great to get reviews on Facebook and Yelp, but Google is where the money’s at and where you want to send all of your customers to leave a review.

Google Guarantee (Local Services)

Local Services by Google is a relatively new advertising platform that has been released by the almighty Google. This newer platform shakes up the traditional concept of paid advertising with Google.

Typically, when using Google Adwords, your ads display based on a bidding strategy. This means that the more you are willing to pay for a click on a particular keyword, the higher your ad will display in the list of other advertisers.

Not the case with Local Services. Quality work and the use of the Local Services dashboard are rewarded with better ad placement. This means if your company has a larger number of quality reviews and uses the dashboard to accurately mark leads as “Booked” when you win the customer, you will overtake your competitors in placement.

This service is a great supplementary tactic to use in tandem with SEO and traditional PPC advertising. You can read plenty more about it by clicking here.

Paid Advertising for Home Services

Now we can explore the traditional PPC (Pay Per Click) tactic a little further.

Paid Advertising has been a mainstay for all Home Services companies when it comes to digital marketing for quite some time. This service is the modern-day Yellow Pages in that you are able to capture someone in the EXACT moment they are trying to solve a very specific problem – such as “Water Heater Installation Near Me”.

With PPC on a platform such as Google Adwords, you have the ability to get very granular with your advertising. You can build and deliver ads for very specific problems based on the user’s keywords.

Let’s say you want to run ads for Water Heater Repair, Water Heater Installation, Plumbing Repair, and Plumbing Installation. Those are 4 similar, yet very different pain points for your potential customers. You wouldn’t want a Water Heater Repair ad to be served to someone searching for Plumbing Repair just because they both fall under Plumbing repair work, would you?

Google Adwords gives you the ability to add positive and negative keywords that will determine which ad title and ad copy are displayed when a user is searching for your service. This type of specificity allows you to speak directly to your potential customers about the exact topic they are searching for. Very powerful.

Adwords gives you the ability to determine a monthly budget that you want to spend on each ad and also specify a maximum dollar amount you are willing to spend per click on certain keywords. These kinds of metrics allow you to really pinpoint where you want your marketing dollars to work hardest for you.

Retargeting

In a perfect world, every person to click on your advertisement and every visit to your website would translate into a sale.

Let’s be real – this isn’t happening.
The fact is, a majority of the traffic that is sent to your website will not convert into a lead on their first visit. It’s just the name of the game.

That’s where retargeting comes in. Retargeting (or remarketing) allows you to reach the audience of people who have visited your website or seen your ads and have yet to convert. This type of audience is known as a warm audience as they have already heard about you or are aware of your offer.

You can use this opportunity to create a more tailored advertisement to the user and hopefully capture what would have been a lost lead by aligning your message with whatever stage they are currently in such as reminding them to take advantage of an offer, to schedule a service appointment, etc.

Home Services Branding

Branding is a huge part of building and sustaining a successful business in today’s culture. With everything available at the touch of a button and millions of brands pulling our attention in one direction or another, standing out is a must!

When looking into branding and creating a name for your business, here are a few things to consider and portray:

• Who are you as a business and what makes you different/better?
• Who are your ideal customers and what are their needs?
• Do you have an interesting theme/connection your customers can relate to?
• Do you have a particular service you specialize in?

These are all important things to consider when trying to reach an audience and grab their attention. As a Home Services company, another great way to get your name out there and draw in some business is with service vehicle branding.

Service vehicle branding, depending on your design and color choice, command a lot of attention on the road and is a great form of Home Services advertising!

Ready To Take On Marketing Strategies That Work?

When aimed properly, marketing works! All you have to do is decide what your company needs and what forms of marketing can get you there.

At Visibly Connected, we specialize in Home Services marketing strategies and success building. If you’ve found yourself ready to take the plunge and grow your Home Services company to its fullest potential, give us a call. Check out our proven methods and success stories. We have the experience to guide you through the process and give you exactly what your business needs for success.

The Uncanny Similarities Between a Great Workout Plan and a Great Marketing Plan

 

When it comes to digital marketing, we here at Visibly Connected see a lot of similarities between a marketing plan and the concepts behind hitting the gym.

In an ideal world, calories wouldn’t count against us, and pizza would be considered a healthy option, and yet, we know that here, in reality, we all have to do things to maintain a healthy lifestyle.

Eating vegetables, drinking enough water, and of course, exercise.

But getting in shape isn’t an overnight process, and neither is marketing your business.

Are you ready to feel the burn?

Grab your sweatbands and your dumbbells and get ready to put in some work.

 

You’re Going to Need to Change Your Lifestyle

In the same way that getting into a healthier space only occurs once your lifestyle begins to change, your marketing efforts will only see the results you desire when you change what you are doing.

Understanding that your digital marketing plan takes time and effort from multiple facets of your business is the first step in creating a viable plan of action to gain qualified leads for your business.

 

Discipline and Consistency are Key

If understanding the need for a digital marketing plan and acknowledging that changes need to be made are the first steps, consistency falls shortly afterward.

Failing to contribute to your marketing plan or put in the attention and work it requires will set your company up for failure.

You can’t lose weight and maintain a healthy lifestyle from inconsistency in your diet and exercise schedule. Marketing is no different.

Creating a plan is nice, but sticking to it is key.

 

How you Fuel Your Marketing Plan Will Dictate Your Results

Marketing online is a tricky component for any business because the marketplace rarely, if ever, stays the same.

Target markets and audiences are always changing, and your business has to adapt.

A digital marketing plan that receives no content or support is as useless as walking a single lap at the gym before hitting an all you can eat wing special.

Look, it’s not always convenient, but this goes back to the lifestyle change we spoke on before.

You’re going to have to stop what you’re doing and explain to your marketing partners or team the details of what you’re an expert in while providing content for them to pick apart and use.

You’re going to have to step up at the moment and create content for your social media in the form of live videos or stories to get others engaged at the moment.

Just as eating the wrong diet won’t help your pump in the gym, a marketing plan that doesn’t feed fresh content isn’t going to yield the results you are looking for.

 

Be Patient, Growth Comes From Hard Work and Time

There are no shortcuts.

You get stronger by doing pushups.

You gain endurance by running longer.

You push yourself.

Digital marketing has no shortcuts.

These plans take time and dedicated effort.

One of the biggest misconceptions that we see is in the realm of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and the immediate return businesses expect to see from it.

While SEO is a powerful tool that is a necessity for modern business, it takes a considerable amount of time.

To have a website ranking towards the top of the search results your brand’s customers are looking through takes a great deal of keyword research, content creation, citation monitoring, site speed monitoring, and more.

Weeks and even months of hard work can produce tremendous results for your company, but to achieve overnight success or “viral” acclaim is a needle among a haystack.

Focusing on fundamentally sound SEO and Content Marketing distribution practices will help you find more customers and vice versa, but you’re going to need a bit of patience.

 

A Personal Trainer to Help you Along the Way

Even the toughest gym rats can use a push here or there.

Personal trainers push their clients to fight passed their perceived boundaries and assist in providing real results through real advice and techniques that facilitate growth. Visibly Connected is ready to help your business get into peak digital marketing shape.

Contact us today and start your “membership” where the results of higher search engine ranking, better Social Media presence, and more qualified leads through an enhanced ad campaign speak for themselves.

Questions Your Digital Marketing Firm Should Be Asking

There are many digital marketing firms out there from which to choose.

So, how do you know which one is right for you?

There are some key questions that you should receive from your digital marketing firm.

These questions will let you know that they are selective to find the right clients for their firm to do their best work.

Below are the questions your digital marketing firm should be asking to do an effective job representing you.

Download our free ebook, The 27 Greatest Tips, Tricks & Ideas for Home Services, and start generating your own home services leads today.

Who are you?

That’s a pretty broad question, but sometimes a digital marketing firm needs to start here before even agreeing to take on a client. We often visit with clients who have not yet worked out their brand or their business, and they are struggling to identify who they are as a company.

The following questions may be able to help you fill in the gaps before even visiting with a digital marketing firm to be sure that you are ready for a marketing strategy:

• What products and/or services do you offer?
• How is your brand unique from your competitors? (In other words, what is your unique selling proposition – what makes you different or better?)
• What social media platforms do you see as popular in your industry?
• Do you currently have any place for your audience to interact with you (e.g. a blog, forum, social media profiles, etc.)?
• What is the personality and voice of your brand? If your brand does not have an established voice, what would you like most portrayed in the voice of the brand (e.g., boldness, integrity, loyalty, wit, etc.)?
• How has your brand voice changed in recent years?

These questions will help you determine if your brand is ready to launch a digital marketing strategy.

Perhaps first you want to work with a digital marketing firm to define your brand and voice. Perhaps you are not even ready for that step.

Agreement on focus and branding within a company and its decision makers is essential to move forward with a great digital marketing strategy.

Who would you like to reach?

No marketing firm (digital or traditional) can help your business if they are not familiar with your target market.

Your target market is not always easy to define, either. You should be able to work with your digital marketing firm to identify who your target market is.

It may vary between the different services or products you provide.

Your marketing firm should have a solid grasp of all parties you are working to reach to create a successful, comprehensive marketing plan for you.

Knowing your target audience reaches far beyond gender, age range, marital status, occupation, and level of income.

Those are all important to know, but your digital marketing firm should be interested in much more about your target audience.

For example, the questions below can help both you and your digital marketing firm get to know your target audience better:

• What are the goals and values of your target audience?
• What are some challenges they face?
• Where does your target audience go for information?
• What kind of blogs and websites do they visit?
• What books are they reading?
• Who do they look to as gurus for information?
• What kind of conferences are they attending?
• What are their objections to the sale?

If you cannot answer these questions, it will be harder for your digital marketing firm to represent your voice effectively.

If your digital marketing firm is not asking at least some of these questions, how will they know who to reach?

What is your current marketing strategy?

Again, this is a pretty broad starting question, but you have to start somewhere.

A digital marketing firm should be interested in what you are currently doing to market your company. They should want to know the current online channels you use for marketing and how that process is managed. They should also be asking about your current website conversion rates and bounce rates.

Other questions that can help hone the focus of the current marketing strategy are as follows:

• What channels are currently producing the most traffic for you?
• What is the goal of having a customer visit your website: purchase a product or service, fill out a contact form, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.?
• How is your business currently performing in online searches?
• What are the results of your current digital presence?
• What offline marketing do you currently utilize?

All of these questions can help your digital marketing firm get a feel for where your business has been and where it currently is with marketing strategy.

A successful strategy will only be formed after considering these things and moving forward with the questions that follow.

How do you measure the success of a marketing strategy?

This question can help manage expectations of both you, as the client, and of your digital marketing firm.

Initially, many clients may see the only measure of success as a direct increase in sales. This is often a measure in more traditional advertising and marketing methods.

However, the very way in which sales cycles progress has changed significantly in recent years.

Social media, specifically, has affected purchasing decisions much more significantly, often more influenced by user-generated content than brand-generated.

[image src=”https://visiblyconnected.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Ecommerce_sales.jpg” ]

This question can often also serve as a springboard to a necessary conversation between a client company and a digital marketing firm. Having the same goals from a digital marketing campaign can mean much more success for a client company and digital marketing firm.

Other questions that can contribute to this conversation are these:

• Are you currently working with a public relations agency?
• If so, what services do they provide for you?
• Would we be able to communicate and collaborate with the PR agency?
• Have you worked with any digital marketing firms before?
• If so, why did you terminate the relationship?
• What would you like to see us do differently than any previous partnerships?

This part of the conversation between the digital marketing firm and the client will help to ensure that the client’s goal is something that can be realistically accomplished with digital marketing.

How can we work together to achieve your goal?

This may be more logistics than strategy.

However, this part of the conversation is also essential. Putting the right people in touch with the right people, making sure that content isn’t being duplicated, and working efficiently are the goals of this part of the conversation with a digital marketing firm.

Some of the questions that can help with this are these:

• Are you currently making any changes to your website?
• Do you have in-house web developers or designers?
• Are you currently creating or have created content in the past that can still be useful going forward?
• With what organizations or associations do you connect?
• Who will serve as the main contact for our firm?
• Is that main contact a decision-maker or strictly a communicator?
• How often would you like to hear from us for updates and/or adjustments to the digital marketing strategy?

All of these questions can often lead to more questions and discussions to be sure that everyone is on the same page.

Even though we have listed many questions here in this post, these are likely questions that will be discussed over a series of meetings.

Working with a digital marketing firm is a big and often necessary step in the success of your business.

Expecting these types of questions can help you be prepared for what that partnership will entail. It can also help you determine if you have found the right digital marketing firm for your particular brand and business.