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Over the past 10 years, digital marketing has radically transformed how home service businesses develop and execute marketing strategies. The days where you could effectively reach your customers through print, radio, billboards, word-of-mouth, and direct mail are long gone. Today, and for the future, your emphasis should be on reaching new customers through the digital world. 

With 2020 quickly approaching, many businesses are revamping their digital marketing strategy. We recommend that you take into consideration these changes we have seen in the marketing industry over the last 10 years.

We believe that “the best way to predict your future is to create it”.

-Abraham Lincoln

Leveling the playing field

The good news is that digital marketing has helped level the playing field in the competitive marketplace for the home service industry. Since digital marketing rewards targeted and intelligent effort, not just large budgets. With effective digital marketing,  small and mid-size businesses can compete for their share of customers.

If handled well, digital marketing can actually cut the cost of traditional promotion. By effectively representing yourself online through your website, digital ads and social media, you can bring in customers without having to spend exorbitant amounts on traditional marketing.  

Another great feature of having digital marketing become accessible for small and mid-sized home service businesses is that you can hire out full-service digital marketing agencies that cater to your needs without breaking the bank. Having experts handle your online marketing can stretch modest budgets even further by skyrocketing your ROI(Return On Investment).           

Data is King

Data collection and analysis are essential to run successful digital marketing campaigns. Today there is such a rich landscape of data that we can understand your customers’ online behavior with much more clarity than before. With a variety of tools including Google Analytics, we have extremely accurate ways of evaluating traffic patterns in great detail. There are many metrics that are relevant to your home care business but these are the few we think are the most important for securing future business.

Website Analytics

Maintaining analytics on your home service website can give you insight into the importance or unimportance of certain webpages. In addition,  you can see important metrics such as how people are entering your site, how they are exiting your website and whether landing pages and conversion pages are working. All of this information can then help you or your marketing team to determine how to make strategic changes to your website to get more jobs.   

Success Rates

With any marketing campaign, it is essential to know what the success rate is. What ads brought in new customers? Did your targeted email campaign work as intended? Did an exclusive deal bring in new customers and did that translate into added ROI? The data can provide answers to these questions and more. Data is essential to understand how to make your marketing campaigns as successful as possible. 

Social Media

We saw a huge increase in business involvement in social media over the last decade. Home service businesses have been quick to realize how critically important social media is to create brand awareness. Many home service businesses have embraced the idea that in order to be successful you have to take the conversation to where YOUR customers are. You need to go where THEY like to hang out, and that is on social media. 

Creating a social media presence gives you a golden opportunity to start conversations with potential customers Social Media also offers you an opportunity to have conversions and get customer feedback instead of just talking at them with traditional marketing methods. 

However, creating an engaging social media presence does take time, commitment and some digital expertise to really elevate your brand. The payoff is having a constant brand across channels, more meaningful engagement with customers and greater brand recognition. 

Content Marketing

Over the last 10 years, content marketing has taken the digital world by storm. Essentially, content marketing is providing your audience with something that is useful for them at no cost. This small gesture of goodwill then turns around and creates better brand recognition and loyalty for your business. 

If you want to go even further to create awareness and set yourself apart from your competition, content management can bring in customers without a big budget.  A great way to get started is to create blogs and videos that showcase your extensive knowledge in your industry. You can also begin collecting customer emails to distribute newsletters. This provides a way to market additional services and stay in contact with customers which will help create brand loyalty in the future.

Reputation Management

With the world shifting primarily to digital advertising, managing your home service business’s online reputation is crucial. Credibility can make or break a business. It is important to manage your online presence in a way that is authentic to you. We promote focusing on your long term strategy and building trust with your audience. 

Customers used to go to only one or two websites before deciding on a home service business. Now they view multiple sites, look at reviews, social activity and how that business deals with customer service. 

This new extended research process is why it is so important to manage your reviews. One disparaging review on Google, Yelp or on your Facebook account can hurt your business's reputation. Answering customers’ complaints-- and acknowledging their positive feedback--is a fundamental of sound online reputation management. Especially in the home service industry, you want to ensure that your business is viewed as credible and respectable in the long run.

Conclusion

Your business and your customers have changed dramatically over the past 10 years. From the way your customers access information, to what influences their buying behaviour, to how they shop, it is important to adapt to these changes so that you continue to grow and stay relevant among your competition

 If you’re ready to start implementing all these strategies we have learned over the last 10 years, our digital marketing experts are ready to help. We specialize in digital marketing for the home service industry, and we have the experience to help you elevate your digital marketing for the new year. Contact us to learn more and to book a call with our team.