There is no denying that 2021 was a fantastic year to grow your home service business revenue. But are you ready to beat last year’s sales by garnering a better market share in 2022? The home service landscape continues to evolve, and it’s now critical for you to rethink your approach to driving new customers.
Your marketing decisions will impact how you will spend your advertising budget between building your brand vs. improving your immediate lead generation. You should question if branding in the home service industry is still alive, thanks to Amazon and Google, who contributed to consumers’ “on-demand” service mentality.
As a marketing and advertising firm that has spent years helping grow home service businesses across the country, let’s talk about the do’s and don’ts we have learned along the way.
Branding in Home Service Is For Preference Score Recall
Google and Amazon have helped reshape the home service industry over the past 10 years.
Branding is less predictable for sales growth as Google’s data suggests homeowners are most interested in immediate availability, reviews, and pricing.
According to Google, over 55% of homeowners find a home service business by first searching the internet. 75-90% of consumers have no specific company in mind when searching for a home service provider. This challenges home service businesses that are progressively being perceived as convenience commodities.
How does this affect your marketing budget?
It’s best to have a portion of your advertising dollars in your branding bucket to keep your business “more familiar”. You also need memorable creativity, a jingle, a spokesperson, or unexpected and entertaining storylines to help you stand out. You must become memorable in a world where consumers are exposed to over 10,000 brand messages every day.
Branding alone won’t help you reach your sales goals. Lead generation is your lifeline to new customers. However, branding will help customers choose you in the internet search or public reviews. We have helped home service businesses more than double their customer pipeline across the country when they dedicate a portion of the marketing budget to building up their brand recall score.
Franchise or Independent?
We work with many franchise home services businesses from coast to coast. We see similar issues and possibilities across all markets. It’s easier for an independent home service business to drive less expensive organic leads than a franchise operator most of the time. Here are some pros and cons to help you decide if you should buy into a franchise opportunity in your local market.
Pros to buying a home service franchise territory:
The entry barrier is low, and the franchisor will introduce you to preferred customer relationship management (CRM) systems, sales software, and provide turn-key marketing solutions with a branded look and feel. In addition to your initial investment, you will pay an ongoing royalty fee to the franchisor. Some of this fee may go back into your market as advertising to help you grow your business brand. Competition between franchise operators may motivate you to grow your home service business revenue rank within the parent company. Your branded look will appear professional to your customers. If you are buying a franchise, with no REAL core customer base and brand recognition in your territory, you will pay a considerable price in your ROI to own that franchise.
Cons to buying a home service franchise business:
No franchisor can overcome the fact that Google continues to build momentum by controlling leads in the home service industry. Despite a national company’s best effort to build a recognizable brand, 75-90% of consumers have no specific company in mind when they search for a home service company. (Google LSA source above) If there is no forward brand equity to be purchased by a previous franchise operator in your desired territory, you are much better off to stay independent. You can better offset the cost of paid leads with a fierce search engine optimization (SEO) marketing partner. If you are contemplating a franchise, it’s highly critical to consider where your online presence will live. If the answer is inside a parent company website, this will severely limit your ability to drive local search SEO leads (your least expensive lead source).
Where do you find home service customers?
With the merger of Home Advisor – Angie’s list, and Amazon looking to be a more prominent lead generation provider, you will have a sales battle on your hands. You must have a strong, methodical online game plan for sales success. You need a competitive market budget for Google’s Local Service Ads (currently representing 14% of all consumer search clicks), old-fashioned Google PPC Ads, Bing Ads, and an expert company for your Search Engine Optimization to drive leads. ComScore reports that 78% of all mobile searches for home services result in a sale within 24 hours of conducting that initial search.
Google data shows that searches for home service businesses are significantly on the rise.
Home Service Lead Generation SEO Plan
In the battlefield of dangling your business where the home service consumer is making home service purchasing decisions, you will garner your most abundant organic leads in Google’s local search maps. Map listings are where customers feel like they make their own decisions. Google is perceived to serve up the best businesses first, and consumers feel they are choosing independent of being influenced by advertising.
The maps are where customers are the most direct and intentional with their searches relevant to the location or by keywords like “HVAC near me” on mobile.
How will your home service business win more customer leads?
Radio, television, digital ads, social ads, or out-of-home advertising will help make your business more familiar to potential customers when they see you online.
Customer reviews also matter greatly. Before contacting a home service provider, many customers seek reviews on Next Door, Facebook, Yelp, your Google My Business (GMB), or other social group platforms. Therefore, maintaining the integrity of your local home service business is imperative for your success.
Krush home service marketing tips
Your overall business model should include up to 50% of your sales leads via your organic search efforts. On the other hand, 40% of revenue should come in via paid search ads or other lead generation companies you use. Branding your business in the local marketplace will consistently help you achieve maximum leads for these two categories.
Pitfalls that will hinder revenue growth for home service business
- You service a large territory within a major city but do not have a physical location in that city.
- You haven’t contracted SEO help for your business, or your current SEO provider has not been able to improve your lead volume. (You will then need a more expert SEO partner to increase revenue).
- You do not advertise and build your brand in the marketplace regularly. Brand building advertising does not include paid search advertising. Lead generation and brand-building advertising are not the same concepts.
- You are not proactively monitoring your online business reputation. Positive reviews are critical for your business, and publicly responding to negative reviews (in a productive and empathetic manner) will impact your lead volume.
- You rely on Home Advisor/Angie’s List for your leads (note: they have merged) and don’t have a strong presence in Google or Bing.
- You are not leveraging Google LSA’s against Google PPC.
Final Thoughts
SEO is a true craftsman skill set, and the right partner will deliver exponential results within 6 months. Paid search and branding are critical to jumpstart your sales and ensure your future market share. The home service business is thriving and expected to jump to over $800 billion in sales within the next three years. What piece of the pie is your business ready to devour?
Krush is a full-service strategic marketing and advertising firm servicing local, regional, and national clients in all marketing and advertising capacities. Call us to discuss your home service business expansion goals and how you can grow your home service business revenue at (405) 603-5355.
Krush is a full-service advertising agency in Oklahoma City. We specialize in brand development, graphic design, media planning, performance tracking, print services, SEO, social media, video services, as well as website design and development. Our focus is to grow your brand and your bottom line–we are your strategic marketing partner! Check out our portfolio of work and contact Krush today!
