For many home service businesses, marketing is one of the last things you think about. Even if you have slick brochures and a fancy website, very few contractors proactively market their home services business. If you’re looking to get more jobs, stop waiting for customers to find you. Instead, be proactive with your marketing in order to get in front of customers before your competition. Keep reading to learn what proactive marketing is and how you can use it to grow your home services business.
What Is Proactive Marketing?
Proactive marketing is a way to take control of your marketing strategy and develop a process to bring in more customers. Unfortunately, most home service companies rely on a reactionary approach to marketing. In this case, they react to needing more jobs by hopping on the latest marketing trend.
Although this can work occasionally, it’s usually only temporary at best. With a proactive approach, you will build your marketing strategy slowly. While you need to try different marketing options to get more jobs, track the data and make adjustments based on what works. In the long run, this ensures you will consistently get more jobs.
Why Proactive Marketing Is Important for Your Home Service Business
One of the biggest mistakes in marketing is to try a whole bunch of things based on trends and hope they all work. Unfortunately, most small businesses rely on this kind of reactive marketing.
While it sounds like a great idea, it’s really hard to see what actually worked. Unless you are tracking your marketing costs and know where every lead came from, it’s just a guessing game.
With proactive marketing, you have a clear picture of which channels generated leads and which wasted money. You can then use that information to make an informed decision about the best way to market your services.
This becomes a repeatable process that builds on itself. As you continue to optimize your marketing, you’ll get higher quality leads at a more consistent cost.
How to Proactively Market Your Business
Instead of worrying about getting more jobs, you need a plan to proactively market your business. Below are the basic steps to creating an effective proactive marketing strategy.
- Create a Marketing Plan – First off, you absolutely need to create a clear marketing strategy for your business. Without a plan, there is no way to consistently grow your business.
- Track Your Spending – Make sure you track all of your marketing costs. From website design costs to your pay-per-click budget, know how you spend every dollar.
- Measure Your Success – As with your spending habits, it’s important to have a process for tracking where every lead comes from as well as whether you landed the job.
- Act on the Data – When it comes to making marketing decisions, always rely on the data and shift spending to the marketing channels that perform the best.
- Change With the Times – What works for your business today may not two years from now, so be flexible. Review your strategy regularly and let it evolve over time.
4 Proactive Marketing Changes That Will Improve Your Business Right Away
Creating a proactive marketing strategy will take time. However, there are a few simple steps you can start making right now to get more leads for your home service business. With these four processes in place, you can step back and develop a more comprehensive marketing plan to get more leads and book more jobs.
Ask Customers for Reviews and Referrals
One of the easiest ways to start proactively marketing your business is to start asking customers for reviews and referrals. Although many businesses undervalue the importance of reviews and referrals, 90% of customers will read a review or ask for a recommendation before hiring a home improvement contractor.
For reviews, make sure you claim your business listings on Google, Yelp, and other popular websites. Also, update your company profile and add your logo and photos. This way it’s easy for prospective customers to find your listing and add their review. Then make time every day to read and respond to those reviews.
With referrals, you can leave a business card or a magnet behind, but avoid leaving too much clutter that customers will just throw away. Better yet, text them your contact card so they can forward it to anyone that needs your services. When you get a referral, make sure you call that customer to thank them.
Work With Your Team to Improve Customer Service
Next, work with your team on their customer service skills. From how your team answers the phone to the way they deal with customers in their home, the way they behave impacts how customers view your business. In the long run, you won’t need to work as hard to sell customers. Plus, it’ll be easier to get more reviews and referrals.
First impressions count, so start with the team that answers your phones. Make sure they can answer common questions as well as qualify the lead.
Train your service and installation technicians on how to work with customers. From communicating timelines to acting appropriately in the home, they can have a big impact on the customer experience.
Finally, work with the rest of your staff to make sure everyone understands the value of each customer. This makes it easier to cross-train your staff. While creating a training plan will take some time, it’s an important step in developing a successful, proactive marketing strategy.
Make Sure Your Website Looks Good on Mobile Devices
The majority of customers are searching for your services on their phone, so it’s important that your website looks good for them. If they can’t use your website, the chances are high they will leave. Start by testing your website out on your own mobile device as well as having employees and friends check it too.
Make improvements so that your website looks good and loads fast. If you need help making the changes, contact your hosting company or hire a website designer. Although this will cost you, you won’t get many jobs if your website doesn’t work for prospective customers.
Create Content that Answers Common Questions
Another important proactive marketing strategy is to create content that your prospects are searching for. Most prospective customers don’t just decide to have a new roof installed out of the blue. Instead, they start by researching their options, and most importantly, they want to know how much it’s going to cost them.
Write blog posts for your site that answer common questions. As prospects do their research, they also learn about your company, building your brand reputation. This way, you will optimize your content and website to meet your prospects’ needs. This increases the chances they will choose you when they are ready to hire a home service contractor.
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