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In a world where time is money, let’s just get straight to the point. 

Chances are that as an entrepreneur you are making mistakes with your digital marketing. Most business owners do because there is a lot to know and a ton of strategy that goes into executing effective marketing campaigns. The consequences of these mistakes may be minimal or huge, causing you to lose revenue every day if you don’t correct them.  However big or small,  making continuous marketing mistakes is like having a leaky faucet dripping out money repeatedly. 

We know that it’s not easy to get everything right. It takes time and a lot of experimenting to see what works for your unique industry. But that’s where we come in.  We have had years of experience working specifically with the home services industry and we know what works. 

It’s time to roll up your sleeves and fix the leak. We’re glad you’re here,  and we want to help. Keep reading to ensure you don't repeat these mistakes yourself so you can get back on track to reach your business goals.

MISTAKE #1: Not Capitalizing on Google Ads Leads For Search

Why would you want to miss out on revenue coming in?  You don’t. If you have empty spaces in your schedule tomorrow, your ads better be running at full budget to try to fill the gaps.  And in the home service industry, Google Search Ads is one of the most effective tactics for ensuring you capitalize on the people already looking for services your business offers. 

Google Search Ads are ads that appear on the Google search engine results page. This is valuable to your business because it is displayed right when your prospective clients are searching for the services you offer. Buyers at this stage have already identified that they need your services and are now doing their research to see if your business can meet their needs.  You want to do your best to make sure these people see your business and not your competition. 

A common mistake we see is that businesses are losing out on these impressions due to not having enough budget behind their ads. By not having enough budget behind your search campaign your business will miss out on the leads who are already looking for your services. The people who are already searching for what your business has to offer are much lower in the sales funnel and are one of the most profitable demographics to target. 
First, in order to determine if this is you, the metric you need to find is your Search Impression Share Loss Due To Budget and also your Search Impression Share Loss Due to Rank. Let’s take a closer look at what these mean for your business.

Search Impression Share Loss Due To Budget:

This is the percentage of time that your ads weren't shown due to insufficient budget. This data is available at the campaign level only. Impression share (IS) is the number of impressions you've received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.

Search Impression Share Loss Due to Rank:

When your campaign is losing impression share to ad rank, it means that your keywords are entering the auction with an ad rank that isn't high enough to win you an impression some percentage of the time.

If your search impression share tells you the percentage of times you’ve appeared for your keywords. If you’re not at 100% or close to it, you’re missing out on potential customers.

Or you also might be wasting a lot of your investment on keywords that are never going to generate revenue.  You need to track the revenue directly to the keyword level.  A great software to help with this is ProfitFill.  

What’s important here is that you are continually responding to how full your current schedule is with your Google search ads. If you have empty space in your schedule for the next week your search ads should be running at full budget. But if you are completely booked for the next 2 weeks it makes sense to slow your ad spend down or pause altogether. But remember, this should only apply to the search budget. Your digital branding campaigns should always be turned on and running.

MISTAKE #2: You don’t invest in YouTube Advertising

YouTube pre-roll ads are the short ads that play before a user watches a youtube video. You’ve experienced these before when you start a youtube video and an ad pops up, which you can skip in 5 seconds. What most business owners don’t know is that these ads are highly effective and very underutilized.  These ads are so effective because users on YouTube are in a perfect position to be targeted by advertising. 

Okay, let’s assess a YouTube user.  

1. They are 12 inches away from the screen as opposed to 12 feet (compared to watching TV).  
2. They are actively looking for a specific video so they are engaged in the content to follow your ad.  
3. They are allowed to skip after 5 seconds, prompted to do so with a button, and you only pay as an advertiser when someone watches 30 seconds or the whole thing.  
4.  They can click the ad and go to any page you want them to go to on your website.

Oh yeah, and you can use YouTube in your remarketing strategy, so you can show a unique video to people who have already been to your website.  This means you can start narrowing down your sales funnel and take people from the Awareness phase to the Purchase phase quicker. For more information on the sales and marketing funnel check out our blog here. 
All of these things work in your favour! Not to mention video content is much more engaging than static ads.  It will take some effort and an effective video, but YouTube preroll ads are such an important tool for a home services business. To find out more about how to use youtube pre-roll to increase brand awareness, we have an entire blog dedicated to this topic.

MISTAKE #3: You aren’t using Responsive Display Advertising

You have probably tried Display Advertising in some capacity. Display ads are the image ads you see around the web. It could be on the side of an article, a home page, a newspaper or mobile app. Responsive display is similar but there is a difference that’s important to know about.

“Traditional” display advertising, while still relatively new in marketing, is quickly going to become a thing of the past as responsive display starts showing better and better metrics.  Image-based ads, while pretty and show your brand off nicely, are great for almost solely branding purposes. Plus they can be very costly if you are hiring a graphic designer who would have to redesign them for each promotion.

Responsive display ads are ads that combine short headlines, long headlines and descriptions, multiple images and you allow Google to use machine learning to display the best combination.  When you use tCPA (target cost per acquisition) you’re telling Google to optimize the campaigns to show the best combinations to convert clicks into leads as profitably as possible. The longer your campaign runs, the smarter it gets.

This also allows you to gather data much faster than regular display ads. When you’re testing multiple headlines, descriptions, images, and layouts on multiple sites, you’re able to gather so much more information about what your audience is looking for.

Responsive display turns digital display advertising from a branding play to a dual branding-lead generation play. Getting you more value for your ad spend and more data on what headlines and imagery work for your target audience. Plus they are less expensive. Definitely a win-win.

Knowledge is Power

By no means is this list complete. This blog just skims over our top 3 mistakes.  We have put together this blog to get your mind turning on how you can stop wasting your money on campaigns that don’t work. Of course, if you have any questions or need help getting started, reach out to us. We would be happy to help you make the most out of your marketing.