Running a home service business, or any local business for that matter, comes with its fair share of challenges. One of which is standing out in a sea of competition online. From a digital marketing standpoint, here are six must-haves for our clients in the home services space.
6. Build a Good Website
Create a site that is mobile friendly and allows customers to book services online (you’d be surprised at how many people don’t want to call you). Giving them a way to easily schedule a service will help you find new customers and keep you booked out for weeks.
One tool that we like using with our clients is Housecall Pro. Aside from helping to manage your home service estimates, project scheduling, invoicing and everything else, there are some key benefits from a digital marketing standpoint:
- Easy-to-set-up Online Booking Site
- Text a message with your picture when you’re on-your-way to your customer’s house
- Postcard & email marketing integrated to the platform
5. Implement Strong Local SEO
This is comprised of mainly Google My Business, Strong Online listings (at least 80) and Reviews. Oh man does Google Love Reviews.
Make sure to ask every customer for a review – build it into your process (ask on the invoice or follow-up email). And respond to EVERY SINGLE REVIEW. Especially any negative ones you might get.
- Curious how your local SEO stacks up? Use our free tool to quickly analyze how you stand up amongst the competition.
4. Get Professional Pics
It’s not that expensive. I like using websites like Snappr: For around $250, you can get some great quality pictures to post online, on your website, and social media.
These are much better than using stock photos, and make your company stand out amongst the rest that won’t take the small amount of money and a couple hours to do this.
3. Establish a Social Media Presence
Be there. Set up accounts with Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Tik Tok, or anywhere else your customers are. Post Before/After pics to them.
You can use a tool like CompanyCam to take before/after pics of all the jobs that you do (with your customer’s permission). You can post those to social media for great new content on a daily basis.
A tool like Hootsuite can help you to schedule them ahead of time or post them all at once – whatever works best for you!
2. Own Your Brand
Everything that is customer-facing needs to be consistent. Your messaging, your colors, your look and feel. From the ad you run online to your truck, shirts, invoices, envelopes, and how you answer the phone. Keep your brand consistent, professional, and give your customers every reason to say YES to you.
1. Thinking of Advertising? Go with Google Local Service Ads First
You’ll only pay for actual phone calls to your business. These are a bit different than Google Ads. You’ll need to pass a background check and have all necessary licenses and insurance. Once you get that, You can be listed at the top of Google Search Results with a phone number for folks to call. You get charged for leads.
There are many other ways to improve your online presence and drive leads that go above and beyond these six – however, these will give you a solid starting point, and are necessary to go to more advanced strategies and techniques.
