TARGET AUDIENCE
Know your people
Whether you’re a roofer or a painter or any other home services professional, you need to be marketing online.
Why?
For the simple reason that the internet is where your clients are. If you’re not there (and active there), how can they find you?
Having a solid online marketing strategy as part of your overall business plan is going to:
Keep these questions in mind as you get started on creating a digital marketing strategy for your home services business.
Know your people
Before you get started online, you need to first know exactly who your ideal client is.
Maybe your ideal client is a newlywed couple who make over six figures a year and lives in your hometown? Or maybe she’s a 55-year-old woman living in North Carolina who loves horses? Or maybe he’s an engineer that’s into motocross and wants new garage doors?
Once you know who your ideal client is, now you need to think about where they would hang out online. Are they on Facebook? Instagram? Reading online reviews? Watching videos or reading blogs?
The more detailed you can get, the more effective your outbound marketing efforts will be.
HOMEWORK:
Spend some time thinking exactly who your target audience is – it will help you with everything else you do online.
What makes your business unique
Your brand, especially online, is the overall message you want to get across to your prospect. And your brand online must be laser-focused. Why? Because online you only have a few seconds to impress your visitors.
Part of this includes your business USP (Unique Selling Proposition). What sets you apart from all the rest? What do you better than all of the other contractors in your industry?
Think of your ideal client and combine that with what kind of services you want to offer.
HOMEWORK:
Spend a day or two crafting your exact branding and your USP
Your business home, online
Your website is the foundation of the digital side of your business. Everything else you’ll do online will be to bring people back to your website. In a nutshell, it’s gotta be good!
Entire books have been written on website design but for now, keep the following in mind. Your website should:
After making sure your website is set up, you need to make sure you get your business listed in all of the various directories out there. At the minimum, you should be on Google My Business and Facebook. From there, you’ll want to add your site to as many directories as possible. It’s tedious but important.
HOMEWORK:
Ensure your website follows the simple guidelines above. Also make sure your business is listed in relevant directories.
Show your expertise
There’s a saying online that content is king.
What does this mean to you as a contractor? Easy, your job is to showcase your skills that prompt your ideal clients into hitting that Contact button.
Your use of before/after photos will be vital but be sure not to overlook videos as well as adding your own blog. Crafting your own unique voice is part of your overall brand and why clients will end up choosing you over your competition.
The key with content is consistency. Whether you choose to post daily, once a week, or once a month, is up to you but you must post. Being active online shows your potential client that you’re involved in your business.
HOMEWORK:
Craft a content creation calendar and stick to it, month in, month out, year after year.
Get found online
Just like website design, there’s enough information on SEO to fill volumes. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of adjusting and, well, optimizing your website in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines.
Ideally, it’s best to have your website come up first on the first page of the keywords being searched for (organic search – without paying for it). There’s a LOT to this but here are a few quick tips to do immediately on your own website:
Remember, this is a small list and SEO requires near-constant work for your website to stay relevant in the search engines.
HOMEWORK:
Develop a monthly plan to work on your SEO.
Keep in touch
Regardless of what kind of home services business you have, keeping in touch with your own clients will bring more business your way.
Because of that, you need to create and send regular newsletters to your people. This is where your blog and latest before/after photo galleries come in handy – you already have the content in place, now you’re just giving your people another way to view, if they hadn’t yet before.
You can also choose to share news about your business, any specials, especially around key holidays, and so on.
Make it easy to join your newsletter. Have an opt-in on your website as well as linking to it from your social media profiles. These days, people are more selective with their emails so you may choose to offer an incentive – a series of tips and tricks, possibly a coupon, etc.
HOMEWORK:
Be sure to add a newsletter opt-in to your website and decide on your mailing schedule (for most contractors, once a month is ideal).
Connect online
When it come to digital marketing for home services professionals, we cannot overlook the importance of social media. For contractor in particular, Facebook and LinkedIn are all still relevant. And if we consider YouTube a social network (which it is), having a presence there is also important.
Besides your email newsletter, social networks provide a place to connect with your past clients and possible new clients. You can post your amazing content (those before/after photos) on these networks and provide yet one more place where your ideal clients can find you.
HOMEWORK:
How much time you want to spend on social media is up to you but be sure to at least post on a consistent schedule as well as interact with the people who posted on your page.
What others are saying…
Do you know what’s being said about your business? You should! It could be drastically affecting your business.
We can’t overlook how online reviews factor into the purchasing decision making process. You should encourage your clients to leave you a great review after a successful job. You should also be sure to interact with those who leave you reviews, good or bad. Always be gracious and professional because the vast majority of people are “lurking” and reading both the reviews as well as what you share in response.
As far as where to focus your efforts, as of now, Google and Facebook are the big ones with Yelp still hanging in there.
HOMEWORK:
Double-check your Google & Facebook accounts to make sure you’ve got some reviews and on a regular basis make sure you check for bad reviews and respond appropriately.
Scale up, quickly
So far, everything we’ve covered has been free. In other words, besides your time investment, SEO, social media, etc are all free.
Advertising online is not free but it can be extremely effective and a powerful boost to your overall digital marketing strategy.
With the amount of data available, you can create hyper-specific lists of people to advertise to. You can even create different campaigns that target specific cities and neighborhoods, income, and more. It goes back to who your ideal target is and what specific service you offer.
How much you decide to invest is up to you, but once you see some initial results, you can scale up quickly by investing more.
HOMEWORK:
Set up an ad campaign, preferably begin on Facebook/Instagram and start out small.
When it comes to digital marketing, the key is consistency. Whether it’s posting on social media or sending your email newsletter or SEO, you must create a routine and stick to it. Even dedicating 10-20 minutes a day, you can create an effective presence online.
As you do the work online, your home services business will grow. You’ll get to the point where new clients contact you with their credit cards in hand ready to book the next appointment you have available.
We know because it’s happened with our clients!
We understand that doing all of the work to market online can be overwhelming! That’s why we’re offering a no-strings-attached complimentary strategy session.
You can chat with a member of our team and learn what would work best for your particular business. We specialize in digital marketing for:
Just Book a Demo and we’ll be in touch!