How to Boost Home Services Lead Generation

Home service companies need to reach more potential customers in your service area. Generating leads through conventional marketing efforts can be expensive and not provide high-quality leads. In today’s digital world, utilizing a data-driven lead generation platform is the best way to reach your target audience.

Valve+Meter Performance Marketing is a leading home services marketing agency with a clear understanding of generating leads efficiently and improving conversion rates. There are a few keys to discovering qualified leads that all home service business owners should understand.

4 Guiding Principles for Homes Services Lead Generation

Rule 1 – Focus on Your Customers

Lead generation strategy for home service providers should always focus on the local homeowners and businesses. This may seem obvious but many many digital marketing strategies are designed for national businesses and e-commerce business models. High quality leads are only relevant with the geographical area you serve and the specific demographic that use your home services.

Building a lead generation strategy includes researching local keywords and designing paid advertising that target your specific audience. The more information you can discover about your current audience and the homeowners within the area you serve, the better your lead generation campaigns will become.

Rule 2 – Follow the Data

Assumptions and guesses lead to wasted effort and money. Great lead generation for home services begins with looking at your previous customers and building what ideal new customers may be. As more leads become customers, data helps your lead generation strategy adapt and grow. Online marketing including pay-per-click (PPC) helps you discover more about your audience.

Rule 3 – Repeat and Scale

Home services lead generation should improve over time. Reduce home services marketing that is less effective. In some markets, social media advertising may be less effective than search engine marketing campaigns. All digital marketing provides clear data that you track through your lead generation website. As you optimize your return on investment (ROI), you should repeat the most effective campaigns and reinvest in marketing to capture more high quality leads. Using an informed and data-driven lead generation model is key to scaling your home service business and increasing revenue.

Rule 4 – Tests and Measuring

Current customers and repeat customers should be nurtured as valuable leads and sources of referrals. To build brand awareness, you may not solely rely on the trends of past customers. In the home service industry, new competitors and lead generation tools are constantly emerging. Testing new ideas, lead generation channels, and measuring the results of new strategies keeps home services providers ahead of competition instead of behind.

At Valve+Meter Performance Marketing, we use these guiding principles in our marketing efforts for home service business. Our highly skilled team has curated the following information on how to use these principles to generate home service leads within your business.

Why Home Service Lead Generation is Unique

As previously noted your home services business needs high quality leads in a specific service area. This sets the industry apart from other digital marketing. Home services provide a large scope of offerings aimed to enhance the quality and functionality of a residence through maintenance, repair, and improvement services. These services can include:

House Cleaning
Landscaping
Plumbing
Electrical
Pest Control
Heating, Ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC)

Just within these few examples, these companies appear quite different. The common denominator is business serving homeowners and businesses on site. While a restaurant, retail store, and other brick and mortar businesses operate in a specific local area, home services providers travel to homeowners.

Another key distinction between the home services industry and other business models is the type of demand. Homeowners can save time and energy by turning to home services companies for help enhancing and fixing their residential properties. Many home service leads are transactional. For example, a leaking pipe prompts the need for a plumber. Home service leads are time sensitive and highly competitive. A problem is created and home service providers offer a solution. No one needs a plumber, they need their pipe fixed.

For these reasons, home services marketing needs a few key elements to attract leads, engage, and convert.

Digital Marketing Tools for Home Services Lead Generation

When Valve+Meter analyzes a home services business, our specialists focus on three things:

First, you need to assess the volume of home service leads in your area. To grow a business, you need to understand the total size of the market. The rules to home service lead generation relies on accurate data to guide your budget and scope of effort.
All home service businesses need a lead generation website. When homeowners have a problem they will ask search engines and social media for solutions. Your online marketing will capture home services leads and a high quality website will convert leads to new customers.
Finally, home services demand fast response and effective solutions. Potential leads are lost to other local businesses if you cannot provide fast and effective solutions. Every home services business must embrace high quality customer services, responsive sales teams, and prompt operations.

A Concise Lead Generation Strategy

Home service leads are local, guided by search engines, and demand speedy responses. Once you have the infrastructure of a lead generation website as well as sales and operations to meet demand, you are ready to generate leads.

When it comes to acquiring leads for your home services company, there are three main methods to use: inbound marketing, paid ads, and outbound marketing. Each of these tactics has its own strengths and weaknesses. But when properly implemented into your business’s marketing strategy by the experts at Valve+Meter Performance Marketing, each approach will result in an influx of leads.

1. Inbound Marketing

Inbound marketing is the process of creating content that appeals to potential customers to entice them to visit your digital platforms. This strategy uses helpful, insightful content tailored to your target audience to build trust with them. This also helps establish your home services company as an authority in the home services industry. Inbound marketing is a cost-effective tool that ditches traditional outbound marketing practices for the following techniques:

Optimize your website for search engines. Focus on your home services website architecture to ensure it’s both easy to use and optimized for keywords that are relevant to your services and target audience. In home services, local search engine optimization focuses on establishing all of the services you provide and where you offer these services.
Create high-quality content. This message takes the form of blog posts, articles, videos, and other forms of content to boost your digital channels. The key is to make sure all of the information you present is consistent, informative, and optimized for common keywords. Potential home service leads are earned through people focused content.
Use social media. People focused content extends from your website into all channels including Facebook and Instagram. Sharing your home services content on your business page allows you to communicate with possible customers in a new way. You can also utilize the various chat options on social media platforms. Shareable content helps discover new leads and appeal to satisfied customers.
Implement Local SEO. Local search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the top strategies in digital marketing. Since home services can be highly specific for specialized areas, it’s important to know the common keywords used in internet searches for home services in your service areas. This way you can narrow the focus of your digital content on your target audience and appear at the top of search engine results lists.

2. Paid Advertising

Paid Advertising has some similarities to other lead generation methods, but it also has its own qualities and benefits. Paid advertising can encompass both traditional and modern digital tactics. The main benefit of paid ads for home service leads is that you can identify and cater to a specific target audience in order to boost the success of your home services ad campaign.

In the digital marketing world, paid advertising, which includes the practice of buying leads, is different from creating content in that you are paying to place ads on search engines and social media platforms rather than posting content to your business’s own digital platforms. Three of the most effective paid digital lead generations services include:

PPC. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) means that your company pays every time a person clicks on your home services advertisement. Home services businesses can benefit greatly from this strategy because the cost of leads is measured. The most effective campaigns can be repeated and less effective strategies can be modified. Every campaign becomes more advanced reducing lead acquisition costs and increasing brand awareness.
Paid Social Media. Interacting with potential customers on your social media platforms is called organic social. This communication doesn’t cost your company any money. But in order to interact with your target audience, they first have to find your page. Paid social media ads are typically sponsored posts that will appear on possible clients’ newsfeeds and drive them to your platforms where you can engage organically. Home services lead generation through paid social has become extremely effective as many homeowners use social media to discover new services and solutions for their property.
LSA. Google Local Services Ads for home service lead generation is highly effective for local businesses. Like PPC, LSA allows you to target key audiences and control your budget. Home services businesses can get immediate results quickly. This information helps you optimize your paid advertising more effectively to reach your target audience.

A combination of inbound marketing including strong search engine optimization paired with paid search engine and social media marketing is extremely effective to jump start home service lead generation. Ongoing marketing includes earning positive reviews from satisfied customers on Google Business Profile and other online review sites. Reputation management is essential to how home services businesses are viewed across the internet. As a local business, home service leads can be discovered by strengthening your local citations and network. This can be as simple as participating in the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and Chamber of Commerce. However, there are many online marketing tools with local communities and regions that are valuable.

3. Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing refers to traditional methods that push your business’s ads out to potential customers. While the previous strategies for your digital platforms are important, they are limited by consumers’ actions. If people don’t get online and conduct internet searches or browse through social media pages, then they will never interact with any of your digital marketing, no matter how high the quality.

Our professionals at Valve+Meter Performance Marketing can help your home services company identify and execute the best outbound marketing strategies for your needs. Implementing the following practices will make sure your business never misses out on a chance at generating new leads. While some industries solely rely on inbound and paid digital strategies, home services marketing can measure results and yield benefits from outbound lead generation.

Direct Mail

It sounds old school, but sending physical advertisements through the mail is still one of the most effective ways to reach potential customers directly at their homes or businesses. With direct mail, you can quickly promote your home service offerings to your entire specified service areas in one fell swoop. Just-in-time direct mail can help your home service company reach existing customers in seasonal industries and cultivate new home service leads.

Email Marketing

When effectively used, email for your home services business builds brand awareness, customer engagement and can generate high quality leads through referral programs. Sending emails to a curated list of past clients or potential new customers keeps your home services brand at the top of their minds. A good email campaign should include a variety of content from newsletters to service updates. Offering incentives and special promotions are another key to successful email marketing. These offerings encourage prospective clients to interact with your content. This generates new leads and often results in increased business for your company.

Attend Industry Events

When your home services company is trying to generate leads in your local market, it’s crucial that you network with people who know about the home services industry or know what services they need. Attending industry events will allow your business to build relationships with these leads and turn them into future customers. A home service provider that is visible within the community is far more likely to meet and interact with potential leads. In a digital world, you can stand out by shaking hands.

Partner with Other Businesses

The heart of outbound marketing comes down to relationships. When you partner with other businesses which offer services related to your home services offerings, you create a new avenue for leads to generate. Having positive partnerships with businesses in your service areas also gives your company credibility in the marketplace. Many of these opportunities are exclusive leads with great potential for conversion.

Become a part of Online Directories

There are an array of online directories, so first identify the one that’s best for your home services company. Once you find the list that’s right for you, adding your business to the directory is as easy as locating the “join” button and inputting the required information. Listing your business in home services online directories is an effective way to increase your company’s visibility and, in turn, generate new leads.

Offer Free Consultations

Like email incentives, free consultations are an enticing offering that attracts prospective customers. Free consultations take the pressure off the client by being commitment-free and act as a way for both parties to get to know each other’s respective needs and solutions.

Follow up with Leads

Once you’ve utilized these inbound marketing, paid advertising, and outbound marketing strategies to generate an abundance of leads for your home services company, don’t forget to follow up. It sounds like common sense, but many times new leads can sit for too long. By the time they’re followed up on, the prospective customers no longer have a need for home services or even found a different home services provider who did follow up on their leads.

The goal is not to simply generate home service leads, you need to convert leads with quick response times and engaging sales representatives. Following up with leads will not only roll them over into successful service opportunities, but it also shows potential clients that your home services company cares about their needs and has quality home service solutions to meet them in a timely manner.

Contact Valve+Meter Performance Marketing

At Valve+Meter Performance Marketing, we can help you achieve measurable positive improvement to your home services company’s digital marketing with our lead generation services.

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How to Increase Home Services Lead Generation