“If I could just spend more money to market my home services business to more people across the city and region, we could get more service calls and grow this business.”
Maybe. But probably not.
Many home services business owners who are trying hard to grow believe that more marketing across a wider area will get them more customers. But the truth is many of them are already spending a lot of money on all kinds of marketing efforts all over the place with few and inconsistent results.
Instead of more marketing across a wider area, we want you to get strategic by marketing to fewer people over a smaller area. You’ll be surprised at how many more service calls you’ll get by targeting your marketing to a smaller geographic area.
First things first… Your home services business must have a powerful, appealing brand. And you must have developed your preferred customer avatar. If you have your brand and avatar, you’re ready to get a surprisingly strategic advantage by marketing to fewer people. (For more on brand and avatar, see my book The Secrets Of Business Mastery.)
Get the word out
When someone has a plumbing emergency, they’re not going online and looking up customer reviews because they don’t have time for that. You want your brand and company name to be at the top of their mind so that in an emergency, they’re going to call you, not a competitor that they’ve never heard about. The most important thing you do as a business owner is to invest in marketing that gets the word out about the benefits of your home services company.
Tell them at least seven times
When I was marketing my electrical, HVAC and plumbing services, we got the best results when we used multiple marketing channels at once. We used to do marketing with just direct mail, and we got a good response rate. But when we added on radio ads, we got a higher response rate. When we combined both of those with billboards, telephone blasts, and pay-per-click advertising, the response rate skyrocketed!
The Marketing Rule of 7 states that your prospective customers need to come across your offer at least seven times before they’ll notice it and take action. You must grab their attention and share your message frequently to rise above all the other chatter. But how can you afford this much marketing across your city and region?
Zoom in
You know from your customer avatar where your preferred customers live. Target that prime neighborhood, zip code or, if you need to make it even more affordable, focus it down to just one street. Market to them in every way possible so they get your message at least seven times—so frequently that your company becomes a household name in that neighborhood.
By targeting that one neighborhood, your service calls will all be close—that’s convenient—and you’ll get the added benefit of everyone in the neighborhood seeing your company truck at one house one day, down the street the next day and at a still another house the day after that.
Summary
Too many home service business owners make the mistake of spreading out their marketing too thin across too big an area. Target one neighborhood with your marketing and keep at it until you’ve won the largest market-share in that neighborhood. Then slowly expand your target area. Take your city street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood.
