7 Home Services Marketing Tips to Get More Customers

Are you looking for home services marketing tips that will help you get more customers? If so, you’re in the right place.

The market is more competitive than ever, which means home services companies need to be competitive. If you’re not marketing your home services company, you’re missing out on potential customers.

Customers have a lot of options when it comes to home services, which is why marketing is so important.

There are a lot of different marketing channels you can use to reach potential customers. The most important thing is to identify your target market and figure out where they spend their time. Once you know that, you can start creating content that will reach them.

In this article, we’ve gathered seven helpful home services marketing tips to help busy business owners get more customers.

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Home Services Marketing Tips for the Busy Business Owner

The past few years have not been easy on home service businesses, as supply chain issues have forced countless companies to up their prices, and continue to seek better revenue to contend with growing costs. 

On the bright side, we know homeowners intend to continue spending more on home improvement coming out of the crisis, meaning now is the perfect time to capitalize on a potentially growing market and invest in customer acquisition. 

Building the right marketing plan for your home service business depends on several factors, including your existing web presence and local marketing plans, your established reputation, and what the competition is up to. Building a strong marketing plan requires specific knowledge about what you need, and what you’re working with. However, there are tips and tricks that are near universal when it comes to advertising home services. Here are a few simple tips any home services business can use to grow their customer base this year.  

Here are six home services marketing tips to get more customers.

1. Focus Your Messaging

Home services marketing is most effective when it directly addresses a customer’s common pain points. 

Emphasize the importance and convenience of home services over DIY, and place special emphasis on the time and money saved investing in a professional repair and maintenance company over the liabilities and risks of addressing common household problems with no experience. 

Offer advice and information on taking care of certain repairs and problems yourself, but make note of the dangers and risks involved, from further damage to personal injury. Customers like it when you’re upfront and honest – and the honest truth is that few homeowners are equipped with the tools or the experience needed to completely redo a roof, install new insulating windows, or remodel a kitchen from scratch.  

2. Leverage Local SEO

Home services are an indisputably local industry. To that end, it is doubly important to invest in local SEO.

Local SEO involves targeting key phrases that utilize your location and ensuring that local searchers are more likely to be directed towards your business than the neighborhood competition. Search results often vary depending on the searcher’s location, search history, and device. To maximize the visibility of your company, it’s important that you optimize your website for the keywords your target customer is using to search for information.

In addition to optimizing your website, it’s important that business owners optimize their local listings and attract reviews across the various review platforms. The more positive reviews you receive to your local listing on Google, Yelp, or other review platforms, the more likely people are to reach out to you for your help. This is word-of-mouth on the web, and it can make or break a home services business.

Optimizing your Google Business Profile can dramatically boost the visibility of your brand and services to local customers.

- Chris Rice, SEO Manager

Optimizing your Google Business Profile is critical to ranking well in home services-related searches. The more complete and active your Google Business Profile is, the more likely it is to appear in searches related to home services. To make sure your profile is as complete as possible, include the following:

  • Your business name, address, and phone number (NAP)
  • An optimized description of your business
  • Hours of operation
  • A link to your website
  • High-quality photos
  • Recent posts

The more you share and the more you’re active, including attracting reviews from recent customers, the more likely your Google Business Profile is to attract attention from your local communicty. The more you increase the visibility of your brand and services, the more customers will interact with your profile (click to your website, call your phone number, ask for directions, or message you directly.

Home Services Google Business Profile

Getting reviews from past customers is also important. Google uses customer reviews as a ranking factor, so the more positive reviews you have, the better. You can encourage customers to leave reviews by asking them directly or by providing an incentive, such as a discount on their next service.

Quick tip: Follow up with your customers via email after you’ve completed the job and ask them how many stars they would rate your service.

For the best results, ask them three different questions to inspire their review. This takes the guesswork out of the review and provides them with several directions they might consider during the review.

The easier you make it on your customer to review your service, the more likely your customers are to review your service.

local business reviews

3. Do Not Underestimate Paid Online Advertising

Organic SEO goes a long way – when people look up home services closest to them, Google will make recommendations based largely on the relevance and authority of applicable businesses and websites. 

Paid advertising is another way to land on the first page of Google, often before any other results. Promoted search results, or pay-per-click ads, can massively increase your traffic.

In addition, Google offers local home service providers the opportunity to be Google Guaranteed. This program is exclusive to local businesses interested in advertising to their local community. The program features local advertisements from local businesses along with the Google Guantee badge at the top of search results.

This captures the attention of potential customers and offers ease of mind. The guarantee provides customers who came to your business through Local Service Ads the comfort of knowing they will be reimbursed by Google if they’re not satisfied with your service. To qualify, local business owners must pass a Google screening and verification process.

Making the most of that traffic is another thing. 

4. Showcase Your Knowledge Online

A solid digital content strategy can set you apart from the competition, help improve your local SEO, and help turn visitors into customers. Posting frequent and useful information, from DIY tips to full-blown tutorials, also helps draw in potential customers who might start out looking for a way to address a problem at home alone, only to turn to your help after finding out how involved the process can get. 

Video content is another avenue you might want to pursue. Of course, for this strategy, charisma goes a long way. It’s one thing to post dry content – it’s another to create an engaging and entertaining tutorial or video that remains entirely informative from start to finish, respects the viewers’ time, and improves your brand awareness through the sheer quality of the work. 

If you’re feeling adventurous and your showmanship skills are up for the task, you can even consider getting into a gimmick such as an advertising mascot. However, these little touches should always play second fiddle to the quality of the information and content you are providing, completely for free. 

5. Create A Modern Website

The home service provider’s website is one of the most important digital marketing tools today. It’s critical to have a website that’s aesthetically pleasing, informative, and easy to navigate. Potential customers should be able to quickly and easily find the information they need to make a decision regarding who to call for help.

Clients will form an opinion about your website that determines whether they stay or leave in 0.05 seconds. So a modern, appealing design is vital and needs to be comprehensive, navigate seamlessly and be intuitive. Great design and usability go hand in hand and cannot be successful without each other.

- Becky Wisniowiecki, UX/UI Visual Designer

Creating a website that turns visitors into clients requires modern web design that’s responsive to mobile devices, provides helpful information, and offers accessibility options for all abilities.

sketching web design

The great thing about these requirements is that they often coincide with ideal SEO guidelines, meaning you get to hit two birds with one stone – create a webpage that visitors and search engine crawlers alike can enjoy.  

It takes 2.6 seconds for the visitor’s eye to land on the area that will have the most influence on their impression. Research has shown that the eye will first go to items like the menu, logo, and social media. When you create a good first impression in these areas, a user is more likely to stay on the website.

- Becky Wisniowiecki, UX/UI Visual Designer

Don’t be afraid to orient yourself towards a tech digital marketing company that specializes in competitive SEO. Modern SEO requires top-notch UX, which means that your website should be intuitive and a joy to use. They can help you convert your existing content and branding into something that will blow the competition away. 

6. Stay Connected with Social Media

Social media development is a great way to reach potential customers. You can use it to create awareness about your home services company and build relationships with potential customers.

Make sure you’re active on the social media platforms your target market uses. Post interesting content that will help you get noticed, and interact with other users to build relationships. If you’re not sure what to share, consider sharing your work in progress. Social platforms, such as Instagram and Facebook, are visual platforms, so sharing images tends to capture attention more than text posts.

home services social media

With that being said, you will need to receive the homeowner’s permission before taking pictures in their home and sharing those pictures online. If you do receive permission, be sure to avoid specifics pertaining to the house.

If you have an office, share images of the exterior and interior of your workspace. If you have a team, share images of your team members. The more personable you make your business, the easier it is for other locals to connect with you.

Sharing your work is one of the best ways to attract attention via social media. The more you share, the more attention your home services business will receive in your local community.

7. Word Of Mouth

Perhaps unsurprisingly, word of mouth remains the most effective way to get new customers in the home services industry. Advertising is a great way to reach new customers within a local community, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the importance of online reputation management and word-of-mouth from happy customers.

Let’s not forget that 8 out of 10 people will call a professional for home improvement and maintenance tasks – for countless potential customers, the first place to look for a professional would be through a friend or relative who just had their own maintenance or repairs done. 

Every customer your business satisfies is not just money in the bank, or a chance at repeat business – it’s a potential fresh lead or even multiple leads. 

Can you improve your referral rates? Simply asking satisfied customers to provide referrals for your services in the future can make them more likely to recommend you to their friends and family members.

There are two simple ways you can do this: 

  • Ask for a referral during the initial conversation with the client but make it conditional. It’s a simple way of promoting confidence in the quality of your work – tell your client that your service will go above and beyond, and in return, they’ll spread the word. This sets up the expectation that your services are a cut above the rest – and if they prove to be, the client will keep up their simple end of the bargain and recommend a service they were already impressed. 
  • The other way to ask for a referral is to do a great job, and then ask for one at the point of billing, or right after the customer delivers their final notes and praise for your work (“I’m glad you like it! Would you be kind enough to let others know about us if they’re in need of any work around the house?”)

While most businesses understand the importance of word of mouth and are entirely aware of the effectiveness of a good referral, very few ask customers to consider making one. While it’s true that good service can speak for itself, a simple reminder can go a long way – it’s call-of-action 101.

Conclusion

There are a lot of different marketing channels you can use to reach potential customers. The most important thing is to identify your target market and figure out where they spend their time. Once you know that, you can start creating content that will reach them.

Home services companies need to be competitive in order to attract new customers. Digital marketing is one of the most important aspects of any home services company, and there are a lot of different marketing channels you can use to reach potential customers. The most important thing is to identify your target market and figure out where they spend their time. Once you know that, you can start creating content that will reach them.

Marketing your home services business online can be difficult – especially if you’re facing stiff competition locally. If you need help, consider scheduling a consultation with Sachs Marketing Group – our team has years of experience helping home service professionals reach their local customers.

Have you explored any of these digital marketing tips for your home services business? If not, what’s holding you back?

 

 

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SEO virtuoso, CEO @Sachs Marketing Group. Focused on being of service to business owners - helping to better position them in the eyes of their audiences.

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