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:
- Inability to measure response and PPC effectiveness
- Bleeding through budget and maxing out during the day
- Low rank and positioning
If you are a home services contractor and are investing more than $2k per month in paid search there is a great opportunity for you to have me personally take a deep dive into your adwords account and provide you with my experience and recommendations to make your PPC initiatives work harder for you.
Normally I would offer an open group webinar for all to join but since I have exclusive agreements across the county I can only divulge my PPC secrets to contractors in select markets. Click on the button below to fill out the form on the next page to schedule your deep dive with me to explore your PPC campaigns and get tips and advice on what you can do to make your PPC dollars work harder for you.
During our time together you will:
- Learn how to position your business for hyper local search.
- Learn how to setup and manage a campaign to maximize results.
- Learn about the things you should be doing to consistently achieve a higher position at the optimal cost per click in your market.
- Learn about the best practices in campaign management and optimization.
- Learn how small changes in your ad copy can increase lead conversion.
- Learn how to measure and manage by the numbers.
- Build confidence in establishing a budget that yields a tangible and measurable ROI.
Please click on the link below to go the form to request a PPC evaluation.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
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:
1. Lead the conversation – So many contractors let the prospect lead the conversation. Each of your calls should have a proactive predetermined process where you are leading them down the path to conversion and taking the next step of accomplishing your goal – booking the call.
2. Make the script mandatory – Use a call script and make it a mandatory practice in your organization. Anyone who answers the phone in your organization should answer it the same way. Make no exceptions. A uniform process will help you increase your conversion numbers. Follow the script to the letter and enforce its’ implementation. A good script will make or break your conversion numbers.
3. Be bigger than what you are - If you’re a solo technician it’s hard not to provide your expert opinion to service related questions when you are answering the phone. Don’t be an expert on the initial call and provide free advice. Your goal is to convert the call to a booked appointment. If your CSR has been around for a good amount of time they too also have skilled knowledge of service related issues. Don’t get into the weeds. Your prospect may use this information on their next call.
4. Don’t diagnose or quote pricing over the phone - As you know there are so many variables and moving parts on service calls. A doctor would never give you a prescription over the phone so don’t fall into the trap of diagnosing an issue and providing a price without getting an opportunity for a visual inspection – don’t even give a ballpark. Make it a formal practice to diagnose before prescribing.
5. Use an icebreaker - It’s important to establish commonality in a matter in seconds. Some of the clients I work with use the line – “How can I make you smile today?” as an icebreaker when they answer a call. This is what I call a “money line” - it establishes commonality as well as diffusing any hostility towards unexpected emergency calls.
6. Build value in your service call fees – If you charge a service call fee make sure you back up the fee with value. So many times I listen into calls where the CSR will say something like:
“Unfortunately it is $79 for us to come out and take a look at your problem. Would you like for us to come out?”
Instead make the service call fee an experience where the price is backed up with value:
“We will come out to your home with a truck full of parts and a licensed technician will diagnose your situation. We charge a low $79.00 service dispatch fee which covers our cost to send a licensed technician to your home. While we are out there we will inspect the unit and provide you with a number of options and give you a competitive upfront price to do the work. If you decide to have us move forward we deduct the service call fee from the total cost of the job. “ I have only two openings available today in your area. Which time works best for you 2:00 or 4:00?”
Notice the last line in this script? “Which time works best for you 2:00 or 4:00?” This is another money line. By ending the value statement with an action decision the homeowner has to decide which time they want you out – not whether or not they want to spend $79.00.
7. Work as a team and establish points of escalation. If a call goes south or you feel like you are losing control don’t be afraid to have it go to a manager or another point of escalation. This gives your organization an opportunity to reset the call and reassess the situation.
8. Document objections - You’re not perfect and you won’t convert every call. Sometimes personalities conflict and sometimes you are just dealing with a potential customer that is unreasonable. Write down your objections and prepare a rebuttal statement that confronts objections head on.
9. Role play – Schedule a time once a week to role play certain call situations. Pretend to be an aggressive price shopper. Practice situations where you are booked solid for the rest of the day and need to push calls out to the next day. Rehearse objections with a counterpart and don’t be afraid to be critical of one another – it will help you increase conversions.
10. Measure.. Measure.. Measure – Get in the habit of measuring your call performance. Result each and every call with a disposition of booked or not booked. Keep score among CSR’s and provide incentives for top performers. It’s easy to measure call to booking conversions with call tracking software and you can easily measure CSR performance with a spreadsheet.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
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:
- HVAC service & repair lead: $27.24
- Plumbing lead: $18.74
- Electrical lead: $16.92
I make it a point to now and then listen in to my clients’ actual calls through call tracking technology to get a feel for lead quality and call to booking conversion. Here are some tips to make the most out of your weekend inbound call activity:
1. Answer the phone - More than half of the calls I listen into that go to voicemail result in a hangup or missed opportunity. Make sure to answer the phone live within the first ring. If you source your call center over the weekend make sure your call center has a service level agreement where they too guarantee a live operator on the first ring.
2. Eliminate Saturday service call fees - Prospects are going to shop your weekend emergency service call fees. Be the company they call that does not charge Saturday service call fees. Reduce your barriers to entry by treating Saturday as a normal business day.
3. Staff saturday as you would any other day – Be prepared for routine service calls on Saturday. Your best people should be working on your busiest day.
4. Spend heavy – Push your paid search strategy budget in full throttle mode and don’t be afraid to spend heavy. Your ROI will be there. Most PPC guys are 99 percenters and are not around to make quick changes to paid search campaigns over the weekend. They’re still sleeping. Slight changes in budget and bids will place you on top. Find yourself an aggressive PPC manager (like The Service Coach) who will be there to manage your budget.
5. Develop a weekend advertising plan - Change your paid search ads on the weekend so they reflect your availability and competitiveness. Your changes will need to be posted late on Friday so you get the full effect over the weekend. You can work in phrases like:
- “Available for Saturday Same Day Service”
- “No Weekend Service Call Fees”
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
For all of you plumbers out there I am going to walk you through a number of strategies that will help you tune up your Google Adwords water heater campaigns and increase sales:
Paid Search Management Tips for Water Heater Replacement
1. Time your ads: Unless you have an unlimited budget and can compete against the big box retailers run your water heaters ads from 4AM to 11AM on weekdays. It is very easy to bleed through budget when you are competing against big box retailers in your local area. Run your advertisements during the time of the day where it makes most sense to pick up customers who have an immediate need. Through my experience in listening into hundreds of water heater calls – Early AM is the best time to capture new customers.
2. Organize your campaigns: When running a water heater campaign in Google Adwords I’ll have a number of different adgroups running within the campaign at the same time. I segment my adgroups so there are only a few keywords within the adgroup. This is a best practice and it keeps the relevancy of my campaign tight and increases my overall Google Quality Score – lowering my cost per click and increasing competitive positioning. For example within a water heater campaign I’ll have adgroups for the following:
- Water Heater Installation
- Water Heater Replacement
- Water Heater Repair
- Water Heater Cost
3. Create a dedicated landing page for water heater replacement: The landing page should be specific to water heater installation and replacement and should reinforce your ad copy. Make sure to keep your landing pages free from external links so a prospective customer does not bounce off page. Below is an example landing page format that we use with a number of our clients that has converted hundreds of water heater opportunities.
4. Make ads mobile: Make sure to optimize your advertisements so they work on mobile devices. Mobile search is becoming increasingly popular. You can easily turn on mobile search within a Google campaign and you may consider building a dedicated mobile landing page for water heater replacements.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
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.
Love them or hate them, Comcast executives understand the consumer service market and are slowly increasing their market share outside of the cable market through value-added service offerings. Here are 3 lessons you can take away from Comcast:
- Exclusive Differentiation – What can you deliver that no one else delivers in your market? Comcast has enhanced product offerings built into their Xfinity service offering. These services increase customer loyalty and build long term retainable value of customer relationships. Let’s say I pay $199 per month for cable and internet service. Over a 5 year term I’m worth $12k to Comcast. With the new home energy management service, which may be valued at $19.95 per month that increases not only the customer revenue value by $1200 per year but may also increases my retainable value to a potential 7 or 10 years as a Comcast customer.
- Place a Net Around Existing Customers - Generating a new customer is expensive and is much more difficult than increasing the long term value of your existing customer base. Comcast does a great job of including value-add special offers in monthly billing statements, frequently runs direct mail campaigns to existing customers and runs ads on their TV network for upgrades and enhancements to service. What can you do to communicate with your existing customers to consistently stay in front of them and provide value-added services?
- Customer Convenience – Purchasing or upgrading from Comcast is as easy as pressing a button on your remote control. Infact, you can even purchase items from home shopping networks by pressing buttons on your remote. Comcast has done a good job of taking the guess work and has reduced the barriers to make a purchase. This includes technology, a 24 hour sales call center, customer support and various internet executions.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
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.
What was disturbing to me is that I learned Service Magic charges a premium on these leads. Anywhere from $22 - $55 for a service contractor to be part of the “exact match” club. If your generating 100 calls per year that can take a serious dent out of your marketing budget and can be applied to other executions like paid search. And let me be clear I’m not bashing Service Magic here – I was once a customer when I owned a contracting business and was partial with their service. If you do take part in this service you will see leads – there is no doubt about it. (You’ll just pay a premium and share those leads with others :) However there is a better way for you to get the same result at an enhanced ROI. Here’s what I have identified their model to be:
1. You receive a call tracking number owned by Service Magic: When your listing appears on major local search directories your prospective customer will call direct into a Service Magic call center where they will qualify your lead and send the live transfer to your office. By the way – I tested this out and found that if you ask the call taker for a number of estimates from multiple contractors they will not hesitate to give your information to others and STILL charge you for the premium exact match lead.
2. Local Search Directory Hijacking: From what I have identified Service Magic places you in a limited number of major local search directories. They will create a profile, use your business address, the call tracking number and your service magic landing page – so if you ever terminate service your listings would be inaccurate and you will never get the calls that you are optimized to receive. In addition it will be extremely difficult to go back and modify or request that these pages be taken down. Here is a partial list of local search directories where we have seen them place submissions:
- Yellowpages.com
- Superpages.com
- Whitepages.com
- Switchboard.com
- Merchantcirlce.com
- Insiderpages.com
- Mojopages.com
- Judysbook.com
- Aol.com
3. Reviews: You will notice, if you are an established Service Magic customer your landing page will contain customer reviews. These reviews are indexed on the search engines and drive traffic to your Service Magic landing page – so you would be paying for leads that come in through people searching for customer review keywords or local search modifiers. Service Magic aggregates reviews from like contractors and creates optimized landing pages where your profile is combined with others competing for the same business. Here is an example… If you type : “Replace plumbing fixtures andover” into Google you will notice that this is the first listing:
http://www.servicemagic.com/tloc/Andover-MA/Faucets-Fixtures-and-Pipes-Repair-or-Replace/
A better strategy is to collect and publish your OWN reviews on your website so you own the content and are able to collect the organic traffic and leads that come from these reviews.
If you need some help or would like to get a local competitive assessment feel free to reach out and register for a 20-minute business development session where we will identify local search and lead generation opportunities along with outlining together a number of strategies that can help you push the lead generation needle for your service business.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
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.
1. Taking Domain Ownership – It is important that you have complete control over your domain. It is easy to register or transfer a domain so that you are the legal registrant. Deceptive small business internet marketing companies will offer free domains or require you to transfer your existing domain to their control. As a domain owner the only thing your internet marketing service provider should require is DNS access or name server access. This is simple and easy to administer with domain providers like GoDaddy.com
2. Preventing or Delaying Access to Web Performance Metrics – If you are paying someone to manage your organic or paid search efforts you can track and monitor progress with free tools like Google Analytics. It is a best practice for a small business internet marketing company to set you up with Google Analytics and provide you with access. Do business with a transparent company that will partner with you to achieve results.
3. Preventing Access to the Backend of your Website –I am a firm believer that your website should have a backend CMS or content management system like Wordpress. A CMS makes it super easy to add and make changes to content and graphics. Wordpress is as easy as using Microsoft Word. Some small business internet marketing providers will build you a website without a backend CMS making it impossible for you to make changes, thus requiring you to retain their services to make simple changes. Some web designers will argue that a CMS will impact your site performance but I have yet to see the validity of this argument.
4. Engaging in Link Schemes – Back linking is becoming a thing of the past. It really doesn’t matter how many back links your site has. Each link from a domain has a certain level of authority that it passes on to your website when linked. Link farms and other black hat SEO tactics can actually hurt your web performance. A more organic approach in building web authority is content creation. Be aware of small business internet marketing companies that sell links or linking services. Make sure to question their methodology and ask for example reports of existing customers to see the quality of sites they are linking to.
5. Keyword Stuffing - Keyword stuffing is when you write an article and repeat the keyword that you want to rank for more times than it makes sense. The content reads funny and it does not flow. Remember the goal of a small business internet marketing strategy is to not only attract prospective customers to your site but to also engage them with interesting and actionable content. When investing in content development make sure the internet marketing agency is writing content that flows, makes sense and is relevant to the products and services you sell.
6. Producing Duplicate Content – Two years ago it was easy to take a piece of content for one company, change a few words and publish it on another company website to rank for keywords. Today duplicate content can get you into trouble. Google recently launched Google Panda which only gives credit to a piece of content once. Make sure your content is fresh and original. If you recently lost rank and positioning on the search engines it could be you are sharing content with another website managed by the same small business internet marketing provider.
7. Unable to Access Paid Search Accounts – There are some small business internet marketing companies out there that will set you up with paid search accounts and not provide you with direct access to those accounts. It is important that you know what your true costs are when starting a paid search campaign. So if you see your ads running on sites like Google, Bing or Yahoo you should see reports that come directly from these advertisers. Smart deceptive small business internet marketing firms will write their own reports and mask the margins they are making on your paid search dollars. Make sure you have a direct billing relationship with your advertisers and only pay for paid search management. You could be spending 70% or more margin on the backend for paid search services and not even realize it – so if your phone is not ringing ask why.
8. Selling a Small Group of Keywords – This is a deceptive small business internet marketing sales tactic. A sales person will sell you a small group of keywords and claim that you will be number one in the paid search listings. They may even sell you an organic package. The keywords they choose will be long tail keywords or phrases which normally contain 3 or more words. You will be charged for the management of these keywords and not necessarily the performance. It is very simple and fast to rank for long tail keywords.
Awhile back I worked with a client that was paying a small business internet marketing company more than $800 each month for the following terms:
- Pensacola heating and air conditioning contractor
- Pensacola HVAC Contractor
- Best Pensacola Air Conditioning Contractor
I took over the campaign and ran with the same keywords for a period of 30 days. The true cost to get found for these keywords was $0.00. The ads would show up when you typed in the search phrases, however there was no one searching these specific phrases.
9. Blocking the Search Engines – I’ve seen small business internet marketing companies that will block your website from being indexed from search engines like Google by inserting a piece of code – “no index, no follow.” This prevents your site from being crawled, indexed and ranked on a search engine results search. It is common for a deceptive internet marketing company to block your site when you terminate service. Maintain control over your domain and make sure you have access to the backend of your website to prevent this from happening. When you sign an agreement make sure you have it in writing that your site will be indexed and followed along with ownership over your content.
10. Misrepresenting Google – Google employees do not make cold calls. If you are receiving cold calls from internet marketing companies claiming to be from or affiliated with Google I would highly recommend asking them for their phone number and website address so you can verify the claim.
About The Service Coach
The Service Coach helps service businesses of all sizes develop and implement proven digital marketing strategies. Below are a number of common challenges we help service business owners solve:
Website Visibility and Performance: The average small business website has only 14 indexed web pages and most require IT involvement to make changes. We make your website work harder with an easy to use content management system. The CMS has built in tools that make it easy to create pages, measure performance and track critical marketing metrics like traffic and conversion.
Automating Proven Marketing Executions: You have had success in the past launching campaigns that delivered a positive ROI but it is difficult for you to systemize and repeat proven marketing executions without a significant amount of time and resources. We take proven marketing executions and make them easy to deploy.
Long Sales Cycles: You write estimates for high ticket, high margin replacement installations and find that it is taking longer to close deals than before. We help you develop and implement sales tools and communications that speed up the buying process.
Customer Retention: You have worked hard to generate new customers but do not have a process in place to grow and develop long term relationship with them. We help you constantly stay in-front of your customers through a number of marketing executions including newsletters, blogging, social media and promotions.
Consistent Lead Generation: Lead flow is sporadic and unpredictable. We help you generate a steady flow of leads at scalable costs through a number of layered lead generation strategies including paid search, email, local search directory placement, content development and more.
Turning Service Offerings into Easy-to-Sell Programs: People purchase products and services that offer perceived value. Without value it is often difficult to position your offering at its’ optimal price. This typically leads to missed opportunities and contracts agreed to at a substantially discounted price. We transition your product and service offerings into easy-to-sell programs.
Selling Recurring Revenue Preventative Maintenance Plans: One of the best ways to secure a customer relationship is to implement a recurring service model where the customer belongs to an exclusive offering where they have peace of mind knowing that your company will respond at a moment’s notice and take care of their equipment. We help you build and develop recurring revenue streams and customer service plans that build long-last relationships.
Running Blind: You may have heard the old adage “About half of my ads work, the problem is I’m not sure which half.” If you’re running blind without visibility into marketing performance we can help. We’ll wire up your marketing department so you’ll have visibility into marketing performance. With data you’ll be able to make informed decisions and control costs. You’ll know exactly how much a lead will cost, how much it will take to generate a new customer and more.
Request a one-on-one consultation and learn how The Service Coach can help your organization. Call 1-866-532-6224 or fill out the form here.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
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:
Start with a small territory and build your campaign out one product or service at a time. Starting out small will give you a sense for the competitive landscape, average bids and will give you a feel for traffic volume.- Start with Google. Google is the main search player when it comes to paid search. They own close to 70% market share. Master Google first and explore other options like Bing and Yahoo after you have established a scalable paid search model.
- Understand the Google Quality Score. Every time a searcher types in keywords that match your campaign your ad will appear. This is called an impression. If the searcher clicks on one of the paid search listings (yours or a competitor) than an online transaction or auction takes place and you or your competitor will be charged a click by Google. (By the way there are over 400 Million Google searches everyday) The cost you pay for the click and your ad position is determined by your Google quality score. The quality score measures relevance which is factored by a number of different components. The higher the quality score, the lower you will pay per click and you will receive better competitive positioning. It is quite possible to bid less on a keyword and receive a better position than your competitor if you follow these best practices:
- Place your keywords into an adgroup that is very specific to the campaign. For example if you manage a plumbing company you should have over 30 different adgroups. One for water heaters, one for tankless water heaters, one for toilet repair, so on and so forth. Place like keywords and assign them to an adgroup. Grouping your keywords in this manner gives you the ability to make your adcopy extremely relevant and actionable.
- Work your keywords into your ad copy.
- Create urgency in your ad copy. Here are some urgency phrases that work:
Same Day ServicePrice Match GuaranteeCall for PricingAvailable NowOperators Standing By
- Create landing pages for each adgroup. Most paid search management companies for small business do not do this and this is a huge part to the success of your campaign. Dropping a prospective user to your home page hurts lead conversion. Setup a landing page so you can measure response.
- Use a separate phone number and call tracking software to monitor phone calls.
If you require paid search campaign coaching or need professional paid search management we can help. Call us at 866.532.6224 to setup a time for us to connect and discuss your paid search needs.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
It has become an unavoidable fact of life – in order to be as successful as you can possibly be, you simply have to market your business online or risk obsolescence. Home computers have become as nearly commonplace as a telephone. In fact, you can say they’ve become more commonplace as an increasing number of people are getting rid of their home phones in favor of their cell phones. As more people gain Internet access, more people are using it to find a service business. You not only need an online presence, you also need a way to differentiate yourself from your competition in making it easier for prospective customers to find you. One of the best ways of doing this is through paid search marketing for your service business.
The Yellow Pages have almost become a thing of the past. When most people need a service, they conduct a Google or other Internet engine search. They type in a phrase like “Boston plumbing service” and then the most relevant results will come up highest on the page. If your site is not among these top results, then you are not getting the first shot at those customers – your competitors are.
Paid search – the best way of getting the best results
The fastest way to drive customers to your company’s website is through paid search marketing, also known as “pay per click.” Google is the de facto search engine of choice, and the best way of gaining exposure on Google is through the company’s paid search marketing platform, which brings faster results than building exposure through social media marketing or search engine optimization, which can both take time to take effect.
How to take advantage
It’s simple – the more exposure your business has on a search engine, the more traffic moves to your website. Here are some steps to take in order to drive as much traffic to your site.
1. Hire a professional to manage your paid search marketing campaign. It is one of the forms of advertising that can make you spend money much quicker than you might think.
2. Commit to running the campaign for at least two or three months. It takes some time to get 100 percent accurate data, plus this amount of time lets you get data you can use for other components of your marketing.
3. Do not merely direct paid search marketing to your home page, but rather a quality landing page. A good landing page can lead to increased conversion rates and also ultimately reduce your cost per click.
If you would like to learn more about how paid search marketing for your service business can bolster your bottom line, call Steve Teneriello with The Service Coach at 1-866-53-COACH.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here
This is an example of a Boston Plumber who received a gas fired tankless water heater lead today. Everyday The Service Coach works with service businesses like this local Boston Plumber to help generate leads. Call the Coach today to learn how we can help you - 866.532.6224.
About The Author: Steve Teneriello is the Founder of The Service Coach and is a seasoned senior marketing strategist and business development professional experienced in both residential and commercial sales and digital marketing. Throughout his career Steve has worked with over 300 small to medium-sized service business owners helping them develop and implement systematic and formula driven marketing, sales and operations strategies that fuel growth and profitability. Learn More About Steve
Here