Contractor Marketing Blog

Before you spend a dime on paid search advertising in 2013 make sure you read this article so you fully understand what you should be receiving from your paid search management company.

Well Google has done it once again, they came out with their “webspam” update on April 24^th and it was soon after dubbed Penguin. Since the original Panda update, Google has been vocal against sites that they believe are “webspam.” Webspam are those sites with poor content, keyword stuffing and suspect linking. These sites are often filled with content that does not read well or flat out does not make any sense. Webspam has become rampant since the original Panda update because unscrupulous sites used part of Google’s algorithm to raise their web rankings. Google’s Matt Cutts said this on a recent blog post about Penguin, “The goal of many of our ranking changes is to help searchers find sites that provide a great user experience and fulfill their information needs. We also want the “good guys” making great sites for users, not just algorithms, to see their effort rewarded.”

In the last few weeks I’ve started to get calls from home service contractors looking for help in generating plumbing, HVAC and electrical leads through PPC Marketing.  I’ve had an opportunity to dig into and review a number of PPC accounts and man what I found was down right dirty and disturbing.  Some of the prospects I met with were investing in excess of $30k / month to make the phone ring.  Most of the PPC accounts look like they were setup by amateurs.   This last wave of prospects all shared similar PPC pain points which included:

Inbound calls to your service organization are a precious commodity. The way in which you handle hot inbound calls from your marketing and advertising efforts can make or break your opportunity to run the call. I listen into hundreds of calls each week – here are some tips to help you get your foot in the door:

It’s Saturday afternoon around 2:00 – doing my thing at the coffee shop listening to some Bob Marley and my clients have already generated a total of 87 inbound calls so far through paid search and local SEO executions.  I love Saturdays.  Most inbound activity in any service business I have managed happens on Saturday.  And it is one of the only days throughout the week where the cost to make the phone ring is extremely low.  The average cost to make my clients phone ring this Saturday:

Earlier this week Comcast announced that it will be launching a new home energy management service to Xfinity customers.  The new service gives homeowners the ability to remotely control HVAC systems through a web-based software solution.  Comcast customers will be able to log in from any location and access and manage their home temperature through a smart thermostat.  I assume Comcast will be selling the equipment and software service as a monthly subscription – increasing customer retention and monthly recurring revenue.  This service compliments other Comcast offerings like home security, movie streaming and even computer tech support services.  Comcast offerings are moving far beyond the cable market and are now stretched into several service verticals including:  alarm and security, IT service, telecommunications and now HVAC. 

Just recently I was working with one of my clients who happens to be an exact match lead generation customer of Service Magic and found some disturbing information as I was reviewing his presence on the major local search directories.  One of the things we do to help our clients at The Service Coach is create, manage and publish enhanced business listings on over 250 local search directories.  These sites include Google Places, Yahoo Local, Superpages.com and more.  Placing your business profile on these sites will help you generate organic leads as well as increased authority back to your website – helping you rank above your competitors in the search engines.  Submitting your site to 250 local search directories can take a good 45-60 hours depending on how much content you place in your listing. I have a Free Resource – the Local Search Playsheet listing the top 50 search directories and we will also perform this directory submission for you as a service.   In my opinion it is worth the time investment  - I have clients who see 20+ calls per month just from local search directories.  So over the course of a year a typical client in a metro market can potentially see 240+ leads just from this one strategy.   

It is a harsh and unfortunate reality that in the world we live in there are predators that prey on unassuming small business owners so they can make a quick buck – especially in the small business internet marketing world.  Internet marketing can be overwhelming and complicated so I’ve put together the top deceptions, scams and the black hat practices that pose an immediate danger to your small business web presence.

When managed correctly and to best practices, paid search is one of the only advertising vehicles that delivers one of the best returns on your monthly marketing investment.  Whether you are starting out for the first time or already have active paid search campaigns I’m going to walk you through a number of proven strategies that can help you stretch your budget, lower your cost per lead and double your lead conversion rate.  Here it goes: