It’s no secret that effective marketing is at the heart of any successful business. And the internet is saturated with advice promising to take your marketing strategy to the next level. But with countless marketing resources available at your fingertips, it’s hard to know where to begin or what advice applies to the home service industry.
From CRMs to email marketing to social media and beyond, we’ve compiled the 25 best home services marketing tips and strategies to help you reach your target audience and turn prospective clients into revenue.
There’s a reason Housecall Pro is a top-rated home services business software. Our comprehensive all-in-one platform is easy to use and designed to help you focus on what matters most… keeping your clients happy while increasing your ROI. Keep reading to learn more about how Housecall Pro’s field service management software can help streamline your workflow and marketing strategy today.
What is Home Services Marketing?
Home services marketing is the marketing and advertisement of residential services to their target audience. This includes industries like plumbing, electrical, house cleaning, landscaping, etc.
There are many ways to promote your home service business and attract paying clients, such as print and mail, word-of-mouth referrals, and most importantly, digital marketing.
Why is Home Services Marketing So Important?
It’s naive to assume people will find your service business solely based on a Google search. Although it is one way to generate leads, you must reach deeper into your marketing toolbox to stand out from the rest.
The home service industry is highly competitive, so a calculated marketing plan is essential to growing your clientele and maintaining your current customer base.
What are the Benefits of Home Services Marketing?
With the right approach, the benefits of home services marketing might surprise you. These benefits include:
- Increased brand awareness
- Abundant lead generation
- Building a reputation that clients trust
- Attracting a loyal following
- Improved profitability
25 Home Services Marketing Tips
Ready to embrace home services marketing? Give these 25 tips below a try.
1. Identify Your Target Audience
Knowing your target audience is key to developing a strategy to pull them in. With your existing clients in mind, ask yourself what they look for in a service provider. What are their interests? Where do they live? What are their pitfalls and pain points? The answers to these questions will help identify your target audience.
Pro tip: Tapping into clients’ pain points can do wonders for your home services marketing content.
2. Build Your Brand Identity
Brand identity is more than just a company logo. It’s the colors, designs, and uniformity that represent your business across all platforms. Consistent branding helps clients distinguish your business from the others, ensuring consistent sales along the way. Thorough competitor research can provide insight into what works and what doesn’t.
3. Develop a Marketing Content Strategy
A marketing content strategy is the blueprint for all marketing efforts on this list. Consider your business goals along with the needs of your clients, and how your content will influence both. This should include plans for newsletters, blogs, email and social campaigns, competitor research, keyword search, content management, and more.
4. Create a Quarterly Content Calendar
Creating and publishing marketing content can feel overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. Content calendars are essential to executing your content strategy and allow a high-level overview of what is coming in the weeks and months ahead. This also allows you to batch content production – giving you more time to focus on your clients.
5. Manage Social Media
Social media management is changing how marketers reach their target audience. People expect businesses to have a social presence. It demonstrates relevance and transparency and builds trust with prospective clients. Companies often employ a social media manager and/or use content management software to automate scheduling and publishing.
Pro tip: Consider influencer and affiliate marketing to help grow your audience and clientele.
6. Encourage Positive Social Engagement
Social engagement is measured by the number of likes, shares, and comments your social media content receives. Ways to promote positive social engagement include posting frequently, asking questions, replying to client concerns, and designing eye-catching visuals.
Pro tip: Promoting user-generated content is a fun way to help you connect with your audience and get them involved with your brand.
7. Hold Contests & Giveaways
Contests and giveaways are a wonderful way to generate leads and encourage social engagement. Getting your followers involved creates a buzz that people want to be a part of. Besides, who doesn’t love free stuff?
8. Harness The Power of Email Marketing
Building a connection with your audience is a vital part of any successful marketing strategy. Email marketing continues to be one of the most efficient ways to market your services while keeping your existing clients informed.
Pro tip: Have a social post that performed well? Maximize your marketing efforts by repurposing similar content tailored for email marketing.
9. Employ a CRM
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) combines technology with methodology to track and evaluate data to automate your marketing strategy. CRM software is the platform used to map and analyze the customer journey, while a CRM model defines how the data collected influences the business, from sales to operations.
10. Manage Your Business Profile
Register and verify your home services business profile for sites like Google, Yelp, etc. This will help get your company name out there and improve your SEO.
11. Prioritize SEO
Search engine optimization (SEO) is improving website content searchability by using backlinks and prime keywords clients use when searching online for a home services provider. There are many tools available to aid in understanding and improving SEO. Consider your competition and location when enhancing your content with SEO-friendly keywords.
12. Build Backlinks
It’s important to build backlinks to your website. Backlinks are when a trustworthy outside source links your website to its content. A reputable referral to your target page can positively impact your SEO results. However, not all backlinks are created equal. If your backlink comes from a low-quality or irrelevant source, the search engine may consider the link spammy, creating a lower SEO result.
13. Maintain a User-Friendly Website
People want a hassle-free experience while searching the internet, and a problematic webpage is one way to turn off a potential client. With Websites by Housecall Pro, you can expect a professional SEO-optimized business site in just a few clicks.
14. Offer Live Chat
Adding a live chat function to your website allows you to connect to your audience, giving them access to answers without picking up the phone to make a call. Live chat also improves SEO and achieves a higher lead conversion rate.
15. Run PPC Ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads are a form of marketing where the advertiser pays each time a user clicks on their ad. Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta for Business, and LinkedIn Ads are among the top-rated platforms running PPC ads, and the list is growing.
Pro tip: Devise an ad strategy that caters to your budget and business needs before jumping right in.
16. Try Local Services Ads
Google Local Services Ads are similar to PPC ads but operate under a pay-per-lead model, only charging when a user contacts the advertiser directly from the ad, not just by click. While your advertising approach may vary depending on your ad strategy, service businesses marketing to their limited regional demographic may find Local Services Ads a better fit for their needs.
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17. Explore Video Marketing
From social media to commercials, the future of marketing is video content. Given the rise in short-form content, video marketing is a must-have for any marketing strategy trying to stay competitive.
Pro tip: Stay up-to-date on trending videos and try out something similar for your business. Measure how well it performs against your other videos and who knows… you may go viral!
18. Use Text Campaigns
SMS text campaigns are a direct way to contact prospective and existing clients, update them on new promotions, send customer satisfaction surveys, and more. With the Housecall Pro Marketing Center, you can automate email and SMS text campaigns all from one centralized platform.
Note: The Housecall Pro Marketing Center is only available to customers in the U.S.
19. Consider Offline Marketing & Advertising
Although digital marketing is front and center for most marketers, offline marketing is still a relevant way to reach your audience. Radio commercials, billboards, magazine ads, you name it. By getting your business name out there, people are sure to notice.
Pro tip: Have a clever marketing campaign? Run digital ads simultaneously with your offline efforts and double your exposure.
20. Deliver Exceptional Customer Service
No amount of marketing can offset bad customer service especially when they share their experience with others. Exceptional service creates a loyal customer base and can increase revenue when they refer your business to friends and family.
Note: While rewarding your clients for referrals may seem enticing, it is important to research local and federal laws before incentivizing a referral program.
21. Manage Reviews
There’s no denying how reviews impact a business, especially when your reputation is on the line. A successful marketing strategy will prioritize review management, and provide quick follow-up to questions, concerns, complaints, and praise.
If you’re tired of juggling reviews across the internet from site to site, Housecall Pro’s review management software helps you track, organize, and respond to reviews in real time, all from one convenient location.
22. Offer Promos During Peak Seasons
These days consumers are shopping smarter. They want to hire a reputable home service company with reasonable prices. Avoid the temptation to hike up rates during peak seasons and give your clients another reason to use your service when they need it most.
23. Analyze & Compare Your Marketing Data
Marketing data analytics are key to understanding and improving your client interaction. Data analysis can identify opportunities to connect with your audience and provide insight that can shape your plans for the future. Don’t be afraid to switch up your approach based on the results.
Pro tip: Need help breaking down the numbers? Employ an AI analytics tool to do the work. Many AI resources are available ranging from free to paid subscriptions, so do your research to find the right AI tool for your business needs and budget.
24. Enlist a Marketing Agency
Not every business owner has time to focus on all aspects of their home services marketing. If you are willing to pay the price, hiring a marketing agency to do the work for you is also an option. On the one hand, it helps to collaborate with experienced professionals, well-versed in marketing trends and best practices. On the other hand, they may lack industry knowledge, leaving you to fill in the blanks.
25. Get Involved With The Community
Clients want to feel good about hiring a company that brings value to their community. Public service can help grow your business and strengthen your brand identity. Volunteer your time or sponsor a community outreach event to raise awareness for a charitable cause.
Pro tip: Share your charitable endeavors with your social media following and email database to encourage their participation and show the impact of your community involvement.
Home Services Marketing Key Takeaways
To summarize what we covered, here are the key takeaways from home services marketing:
- Keep your brand identity and target audience in mind when formulating a marketing content strategy.
- Develop a content calendar to help manage your content quarterly.
- Focus on digital marketing efforts: email, text, and social media content.
- Ensure your website is user-friendly, offers a live chat feature, and has content rich with SEO value.
- Devise an ad strategy and run PPC and Local Services Ads to your target audience.
- Prioritize quality customer service and word-of-mouth referrals.
- Manage your business reviews and respond with urgency.
- Analyze marketing results and adjust your strategy over time.
How Home Service Business Software Can Help You Grow
Business owners have a lot to consider when running a successful home service business. Bookkeeping, payroll, expense reporting, equipment costs, client information, marketing, and the list goes on.
With Housecall Pro, you can manage all aspects of your service business in a single user-friendly platform, leveraging profitable results and saving time in the process. Sign up for a free 14-day trial with Housecall Pro and jump-start your operations and marketing strategies today!
Home Service Marketing Frequently Asked Questions
- What is a Home Service Business?
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A home service business is a company that offers specialized services for residential homes, such as plumbing, electrical, landscaping, house cleaning, etc.
- Why Do You Need a Website for Your Home Service Business?
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A business website is vital to the success of all home service businesses. People use the internet to search for products and services, and the only way to stay competitive is to have a user-friendly website to represent your business online.
- What is Home Service Business SEO?
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Home service business SEO is the process of improving content searchability by enriching the business website with backlinks and prime keywords clients use when searching online for a home service provider.
- Does SEO Work For Home Service Businesses?
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SEO is a key element in maintaining an online presence for your service business. Positive SEO results mean your website content has the right backlinks and keywords to optimize your searchability online.
Each service trade has different keywords relevant to its SEO value, so the SEO for an HVAC business may differ from the SEO for an electrical business.
- Is Home Service Business Marketing Worth It?
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Absolutely! Marketing is central to the success of any business, but due to the specialized and competitive trade industry, home service business marketing is key to thriving now and in the years to come.
