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.