For home services businesses like HVAC or roofing companies, one of the great things about the digital-first era is that it has effectively made the world smaller. It’s never been more straightforward to connect directly with those in your local area – not at where you hope they’ll be, but where they actually are.
Having said that, it’s important to note that “straightforward” and “easy” are two different concepts.
Thanks to the versatility of the Internet, local businesses face a number of unique challenges in the digital age that simply didn’t exist 20 years ago. Your business name, address, and phone number must be consistent and accurate on ALL online platforms – and there are probably more of them than you realize. Managing local SEO requires you to be almost intensely proactive.
Customer messaging. Responding across platforms. Acquiring reviews. The list goes on and on. These are the things your home services business needs to do, at a bare minimum, to meet customer expectations as they exist today.
Understanding the Digital-First Customer Journey
Within the context of a home services business like a roofing company or HVAC organization, the “digital customer journey” involves those touchpoints required to take someone from prospect to paying customer. It’s the process in which you take someone from A) thinking about making a purchase, to B) ready to make a purchase, to C) ready to make a purchase from you.
According to one recent study, it takes approximately eight touchpoints to accomplish this goal with the average home services customer. Although every business is different (and therefore every audience will have different needs, there are still a number of stages along this journey that you’ll want to carefully consider. They include ones like the following.
Awareness
This is the point at which potential customers discover your local home services business, likely for the first time. Statistically speaking, this will probably happen via a search engine like Google. But it can also happen thanks to referrals, on social media, from voice search, and through similar avenues.
Consideration
Here, a prospect is likely researching multiple businesses in an attempt to find the one they trust the most to address their need or solve their problem. They’re comparing different companies to one another and are evaluating the credibility of each.
Estimation
At this point, you can expect an initial interaction where a potential customer will seek out an estimate for their needs. Keep in mind that they’re probably doing this for more than just your specific home series company.
Decision
Having collected as much information as possible, the prospect will now choose which local service business to work with. They will do this based on trust, reputation, and pricing. If all those stars align, yours will be the one they select.
Post-Service
Even after the service has been completed, your relationship does not stop. You still want to make sure that the customer is satisfied with the work that you’ve performed and if they have any additional needs that you’re doing whatever you can to meet them.
Mapping Strategy to Your Customer’s Journey
As stated, every target audience is a bit different from the next. Some of this will be dictated by the specific people you’ve chosen to serve, but others will be set in stone based on the type of home services business you’re running. The needs of someone looking for a new air conditioning unit aren’t quite the same as someone looking for a new roof, for example.
All this is to say that you need to understand your unique customers and the touchpoints they need to make the most informed decision possible. Which stage of the aforementioned journey is someone in and what type of collateral do they need to move them effectively to the next one?
Only by understanding your unique customer contact points will you be able to select the marketing tactics that put you in a position to meet their needs and potentially even exceed their expectations.
Meeting Customer Expectations Throughout the Customer Journey With the Help of Surefire Local’s Marketing Platform
When putting together your small business digital marketing strategy, you’ll want to make sure you have access to the resources necessary to meet your customers where they are. Surefire Local’s all-in-one marketing platform is poised to become an invaluable resource to that end.
Rather than forcing you to work with a lot of disparate solutions based on which stage of the funnel or channel you’re targeting, Surefire Local can bring everything together into a “single source of truth” for your efforts.
Awareness
The Surefire Local platform offers a number of features that can help you at this stage, including things like Directory Management, Content Publishing, Social Media Management, Google Business Profile Sync, Website Photo Galleries, Cloud-Based Photo and Video Storage, and more.
- It’s finally easy to make sure that your local listings are both accurate and consistent – the most important of which is your Google Business Profile.
- You can also create informative website content with a fraction of the time and effort it used to take. This, coupled with relevant social media content, will help illustrate to customers that you understand exactly what they’re experiencing.
- Surefire Local helps you showcase successful projects and customer testimonials on not only your website, but also on your blog, and your social media profiles.
Consideration
Local SEO Website Optimizations, Local Website Content, Email Marketing, Text Messaging, and a Centralized Inbox for Customer Communications are just a few of the key features that Surefire Local offers at this stage of the customer journey.
- Your website must be user-friendly and mobile responsive to stand out in the modern era and the Surefire Local platform can help you do that.
- You can communicate clear, concise information about your services, pricing, and process. Do this via text message, email, or even in-person.
- Surefire Local also helps you offer (and keep track of) free estimates for potential customers via email or SMS text message.
Estimation
Especially during this phase, communication is king. That’s why Surefire Local prioritizes Text Messaging, Lead Management, Email Marketing, Blog Publishing, Website Updates, and similar features.
- When a potential customer sends you a message, respond as quickly as they need and schedule on-site assessments as soon as possible. The lead workflow is finally all captured in one place. You can update lead status, share notes, and even listen to recordings of phone calls, all from within the platform.
- Surefire Local helps you present a professional, highly detailed estimate with fully transparent pricing via email or on your website.
- You can also explain to customers exactly what the process will be like and answer any pertinent questions they might have. This can be done however they prefer – be it in the form of a blog article, an email, a text message, or even a page on your website.
Decision
When someone gets to this stage of the customer journey, you really just want to be available for them as much as possible as a local home services expert. You know exactly what they’re using to make a decision – now, it’s time to hammer those points home as much as you can.
Surefire Local helps with this by allowing you to build trust. You can again highlight your experience, certifications, and previous satisfied customers who may be in the neighborhood of your prospect. Do this on your website, via email campaigns, on social media profiles, and even by way of directory listings.
All the while, you can tailor your proposal to the customer’s specific needs. Never underestimate what a major difference this level of personalization can make.
Let people know that you offer flexible payment options, too. Payment processing and financing can all be managed efficiently within the Surefire Local platform. All this is in addition to helpful features for this specific stage like:
- Fast and easy website updates.
- Social media publishing.
- Blog publishing.
- Email marketing.
- Financing/payment processing.
Post-Service
Finally, you have the post-service phase of the process. You’ve illustrated that you can meet a customer’s need, you’ve differentiated yourself from your competitors, and the actual service has been performed. This is when you continue to put in the effort, exceeding their expectations. If you do so properly, you can take a satisfied one-time customer and turn them into a repeat buyer.
Surefire Local helps with this by making it easy to follow up after the project to guarantee satisfaction. If you provide customers with an easy way to review your business online, they’re more likely to actually do so.
You can also offer details about warranties, maintenance plans, and anything else you think would help. This can be a page on your website or even a comprehensive PDF document that you can share via email.
If you want to take one satisfied customer and turn them into many, you can take advantage of referral program functionality. Easily encourage your happy clients to refer others by staying in touch with targeted email campaigns moving forward.
Ultimately, Surefire Local includes a number of helpful features for this stage, including but not limited to ones like:
- Reputation Management
- Text Messaging
- Email Marketing
- Blog Publishing
Putting the Digital-First Landscape to Work For You
Overall, this represents the digital-first landscape as it exists today. It’s a unique journey that potential customers are embarking on that is dictated not only by your target audience, but by the specific type of company you’re actually running.
But the most important thing to understanding all of this is that it can and often does change. For long-term success, you need to be agile enough to adapt to that fact. Always prioritize continuous learning to make sure you’re up-to-date on what the digital-first journey currently looks like. Never let yourself take anything other than a customer-centric approach to what you’re doing. Stay in the loop about all the latest industry trends as a way to gain traction with your local community. Rest assured that if you don’t, your competitors will.
If you’d like to find out more information about what it looks like to meet customer expectations in the modern era, or if you’d like some help with your own small business digital marketing strategy, please don’t delay – click here to attend a Surefire Local demo in your area.