For busy home services businesses, marketing can feel like an afterthought. But your community is packed with opportunities to help your business grow. From improving your website to target local searches to investing and volunteering in your local community, there are plenty of ways to reach a new audience.
What do we mean by home service marketing tactics?
Home services marketing tactics are the activities that help promote and advertise your business.
The objective is to reach new customers within your local area. New customers mean increased revenue, more referrals, and a better reputation.
So, how should you start your home services marketing campaign?
Volunteer or sponsor within your local community
Sponsoring a local project, such as a local soccer team or community building, can give your business a huge boost. This will give you the opportunity to network and get your branding out within your local area, for example, on soccer shirts.
If you don’t think you can afford to sponsor a project, you can also volunteer. By volunteering in your local area, your team could build relationships with people and businesses in the local area. As well as this, it can also improve trust with the local community.
Local SEO for your website
Local SEO can attract plenty of new customers in your service area. So, what do we mean by local SEO? It’s optimizing your online presence to attract local customers in a specific geographic area.
Firstly, take the time to fill in your Google My Business page with the specific towns and communities you serve. This means that when someone searches ‘builder near me’, your building company is more likely to feature in the search results. This also works for your website. Say the name of your town or service area on the titles of your pages, so instead of ‘Air con repair’ it becomes ‘Ashville Air Con Repair’.
You can find out what keywords to use on a website like SEMRUSH or Ahref. Alternatively, you can employ a freelance SEO expert to do this for you.
Wrap your trucks
Your trucks and vans are the most commonly seen part of your home service business. Make sure they’re working as local advertising. Sure, wrapping a truck costs money, but think about it as an advert for your services and you’ll be hard-pressed to find advertising that reaches so many people for the money.
Three things to remember for your truck wraps:
- It has to stand out – a sticker on a white van is not memorable
- It needs to say what you do in as few words as possible
- Have a clear call to action – include your phone number and website
Consider flyering your local area
You might think that flyering is only for yard sales, but according to The Private Postman, 45% of respondents regularly keep flyers for future reference. You can also go door to door in an area where you’re working and meet other residents.
While this form of marketing can be seen as old-fashioned, it can work really well for some customers. It’s especially effective if your flyer includes an introductory offer or referral discount for customers to take advantage of.
Incentivize referrals
Offering a referral incentive can be a great way to introduce new customers to your business. When you’ve developed a program that works for your business it can be a self-sustaining word-of-mouth marketing strategy. But what should a referral incentive look like? While most assume that introductory offers will always be a discount, they don’t have to be. You can build your own referral program that could – for example – enter the customer into a giveaway to win a voucher. You could also improve your home services reputation by offering to donate to a local charity for every referral.
Ask your customers for reviews
With 98% of customers reading reviews for local businesses before they purchase, online reviews have never been more important for your home services business. But how can you ensure that your customers are leaving reviews? Train your team to ask customers at the end of a job to leave a review. You can also create business cards with QR codes so that it’s easy for customers to leave a rating. Be clear in what you ask as well to make it easy for customers. It can literally be as easy as saying, “Please leave us a five-star review on Google.”
Responding to every single review, even the negative ones, can improve your reputation. It can be tough to respond to these. But try not to take them personally and remember that you’re responding as a business. Look to resolve the issue with the customer. And even if you can’t resolve the issue immediately, it’s crucial to show you’ve tried. Other people will see you as a business that cares about doing the right thing, even if you don’t have all the answers.
Looking to build on your home services marketing strategy? We’ve created a range of resources for professionals across the home service business sector. Find yours below and get ahead of the competition.