Home service contractors from San Diego to Buffalo, and all points in between, have their ups and downs in terms of business volume. When things slump, there is a temptation to throw more money at digital marketing hoping to bring in new customers. Throwing more money at it could mean investing in more PPC. It could mean buying new leads from third-party aggregators. But is there a way to improve marketing without spending more?
A recent Forbes Agency Council post suggests there is. The post goes through a list of digital marketing failures home service contractors are prone to. Each one is a fundamental marketing mistake that cannot be fixed by boosting ad spend. With that post as a foundation, here are five ways contractors can improve their marketing efforts without spending more:
Table of Contents
1. Fix the Leaky Bucket
Follow-up is one of the most effective tools for converting leads into paying customers. But contractors, because of their busy schedules and tendency not to employ a full office staff, often delay following up on phone calls and emails. This creates what San Diego’s Pixsan refers to as the ‘leaky bucket’.
If a potential customer needs to wait hours for return call, he probably won’t bother. He will wait a little while before moving on to the next contractor. But how can a busy contractor guarantee customers do not have to wait that long? Through automation. Most reputable CRM platforms have automation tools built in. It’s simply a matter of setting them up to respond instantly to each and every new inquiry.
2. Shift from SEO to AEO
Contractors already investing in SEO should insist that their service providers transition to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization). Where SEO focuses only on search engine ranking, AEO prioritizes citations in generative search summaries.
Citations are the new search engine currency because they build trust and authority. If a contractor’s website is not being cited in search summaries, it’s not getting the views the contractor wants.
3. Take Advantage of Zero-Party Data
Cookies are officially dead. So marketers are now turning to first- and zero-party data. The latter is especially attractive to contractors because it can help them hyper-personalize everything from marketing emails to newsletters.
Zero-party data is solicited directly from both customers and leads through intake content. Think polls, quizzes, and preference surveys. The data customers intentionally share can be utilized to personalize outreach to each segmented audience. Personalization is the key to reaching a modern audience a wash in digital information.
4. Optimize the Google Business Profile
Although traditional search is quickly heading toward retirement, the Google Business Profile is still important. Generative search seeks to link business entities with geographic locations and brand authority. The Google Business Profile plays a big role here.
Contractors should optimize their profiles by consistently adding new data. For example, uploading photographs of recently completed jobs will do a lot more for marketing than additional PPC ads.
5. Consolidate Marketing Data
Finally, fragmented data makes marketing harder than it needs to be. Whether a contractor handles his own marketing or outsources it to a digital marketing service provider, a new focus on consolidated data is necessary. Consolidated data is unified data it comes together in a single digital environment to create one source of truth.
Even if a contractor doesn’t understand what all is means, his SEO or digital marketing provider does. A contractor is the service provider’s customer, so he has every right to insist that these five principles be implemented into his marketing strategies, hopefully improving marketing results without buying more ads.