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Here are 3 “low-hanging fruit” actions that most home service businesses aren’t doing but can start today to close more deals right away.
LSA - Google Local Search Ads
The adoption of Google Local Services Ads is a must for any local service business. It’s a gold mine.
All you need to do is tell Google what kind of leads you are looking for and what industry you are in. Then, they start sending you those leads on a pay-per-lead basis.
Here is a real example: Daniel owns a junk removal company called Junk Start in San Antonio, and he converts 65% of his Google Ads leads into paying jobs.
This strategy can be used in any home service business.
When potential customers search for your services, e.g., “electrician near me,” this is what they will see. If you pay for Google Local Search ads, you will start receiving calls immediately as your business listing is boosted to the top of the search results.
LSA Ads work well for home service businesses because they target local searches, which are often conducted by homeowners in need of immediate services. These ads are displayed at the top of search results, giving businesses high visibility and increasing the likelihood of capturing potential leads.
It’s only $20-$40 per lead, but depending on the type of service business you run, you can charge a lot more than you pay to get those customers.
For example, if you run a cleaning service business, you can charge $150-$500 per clean. If the cost per lead is $40 on the high end, you clearly see an easy return on your investment to acquire a new customer.
This doesn’t include the recurring revenue that you will make on repeat business or the referral opportunity when the customer is happy with your service. If you’re a roofer, plumber, HVAC, etc., you will be charging a whole lot more for your services, so the return will be even higher. This is a no-brainer for any service company right now looking for more leads and to grow their business.
Here is a breakdown of the ROI your company could achieve if you start using LSA ads.
The goal is to reinvest the profit you make into more ads and see month-over-month growth.
Approval requires a short verification process, and they only serve certain industries. See if you are eligible here.
Here is another example: Max owns a cleaning business. He landed a big customer with LSA - Google Local Search ads.
This strategy can be done with any home service business; all you need to do is get started and look at the numbers.
To get started:
- Get Registered
- Follow the application steps
- Start getting customers
The effort to start these ads is so low, and the upside is so high.
Business Texting
In 2024, business texting is a must. Your customers text people they love, and now they are starting to text businesses they love.If you’re not convinced why you should use business texting, let’s go over some numbers.
If you’re not convinced why you should use business texting, let’s go over some numbers.
- 90% of texts are opened and read within 3 minutes
- 99% of those texts are replied to
- 90% of people want to have text conversations with businesses
- 80% of people ignore calls from numbers they’re not familiar with (even local numbers).
The most successful companies use business texting to communicate with their customers, and you should do the same.Chris owns Time Machine Hot Tubs in Texas and loves Chekkit’s texting feature.
“Chekkit has been GREAT! We have sold 18 hot tubs in the last 7 months as a direct result of interactions using Chekkit on our website. We are tremendously pleased with your company!”
Here is an example of his website using the website Textchat feature.
Chris has closed new sales directly from his website and also collected the contact information of potential customers shopping around.Village RV uses texting for service, sales, parts, and more. These texts are automatically routed to the appropriate department so that someone from the correct team can help customers.
One of the biggest reasons to use Textchat for your business is the speed-to-lead time.When a homeowner becomes a lead for your business, you have 5 minutes to respond before your chances of converting that lead to a paying customer drastically decrease.After 5 minutes, your chances decrease by 900%. Every business has probably experienced getting back to a potential customer only to find out they decided to go with another. Most of the time, it’s due to slow responses.
That means if you fall within the average response time to get back to a potential customer, you are missing a lot of new customers and growth for your business.While offering text messaging to your customers now is still considered a differentiator, it won’t be that way for long. A lot of your competitors will be offering this to their customers soon if they don’t already.Neel Parekh runs one of the most successful cleaning franchises in North America, called Maid This Franchise.
Don’t leave potential customers waiting on hold, email, voicemails, or waiting to hear back from a slow website form submission. If they request a quote or service, you should have the ability to immediately respond to them with a text.Right now, local businesses are increasingly using canned text messages to instantly respond to new customers.Max owns a commercial cleaning business. When a customer is looking for a quote on his website, he sends them a text right away, something he now can’t live without.
You can set up these pre-made templates or smart replies with Chekkit that allow you to create canned answers when customers are inquiring about your services on your website.
Get Google Reviews
The third thing you can do to get more leads for your business is get a ton of Google reviews.Getting Google reviews is one of the most important factors in local search rankings for your business.For organic leads, getting new reviews is so important but often overlooked. Most businesses forget to ask for a review after service is complete. This is a great opportunity.You can see approximately how many people are searching for your services in your area.Right now (see below), you can see that anywhere between 2.4k-5k people are searching for a plumber in Dallas, Texas.Your city might look a little different, but the point is, that's a lot of leads and potential new customers.
This, of course, applies to any home service business in any city.Getting Google reviews means ranking higher, which in turn means tons of new leads every day for your business.The goal is to be #1 or at least top 3 within 30 miles of your business location.
Pro-tip: Are you only asking for a review once? Marcus runs a lead generation firm and helps out lots of home service businesses.
One easy thing to do is to start asking for Google reviews or use software that makes it easy to collect them.
To recap quickly: the 3 things you can start doing immediately to get more leads to grow your home service business:
- Start Local Search ads – generate new customers instantly.
- Add business texting to your business and website – Use text to close deals faster, and make it convenient for customers to get a hold of you right from your website, turning those customers into lifetime customers and lifetime revenue.
- Get Google reviews – make this a priority for your business and reward employees for getting reviews. These reviews will not only boost you to the top of local search but will also set your business apart, winning more organic leads.
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