It’s a brand-new year and it’s time to build on your successes from last year and aim for higher growth in 2023. We’ve put together our 2023 home services online marketing plan so that you can simply follow along step-by-step to grow your home services business this year and beyond.
Set the stage for success
You’ll make the best of 2023 if you start by looking back at 2022. How did your marketing go last year? What parts of it were successful and what was less than optimal? What will you want to do more of this year and what will you want to leave firmly in the past?
Did you meet your goals last year, and if not, why not? What could you have done differently? What stopped you from achieving your goals and how can you prevent that from stopping you this year?
Clear the decks, ready for this year’s success, and then take a look at what you’d like to achieve in 2023. What are your goals and aims for your home services business? How much more would you like to bring in this year than last year, and of that revenue, how much would you like to be profit?
It’s important to set money goals so that you have clear targets to reach and you can calculate what you need to do and how many leads you’ll need to bring in to achieve your new income goal.
Think about your reputation online and whether you’re where you want to be. How can you do more to improve that this year?
Will you be expanding your business this year, perhaps with employee growth or perhaps with a new location in addition to your existing one, or how about adding on a new service to your offerings?
Once you know what you want to aim for, break it down and work backward so you know how you’re going to get there. Then set your marketing budget and allocate any resources.
Craft your marketing plan
There are many online marketing activities you could use to grow your business and build your audience, but for us, here are the main strategies that we’d recommend using to grow your home services business:
1) Website
For many potential customers, your website can be the first impression they have of your business, so it’s got to be good.
There’s no better time than the new year to take a good look at your site and see if it still reflects your business and does what you need it to do.
Start by looking at the design and the layout. Is your site still clean and modern or could it use a refresh? Does it look dated compared to your competitors? Is it cluttered with very little white space? Could you use a new website altogether?
Next, see how it works when a new customer visits. Can visitors easily find what they want? Is it clear what they should do to find out more or to contact you? Is the navigation easy to use?
Finally, check that your site loads quickly and that it works on all devices and browsers. You don’t want to put off any potential customers with a slow site or one that they can’t even use because it doesn’t work on their device.
Following your analysis of your site, you’ll now know whether you need a small refresh or a full new website.
2) SEO
While checking your website, look at your SEO infrastructure. Is your site fully optimized to rank in local searches for the services you provide? Are you using the right keywords and phrases in your copy and in your blog posts, articles, and lead magnets? Are you including local SEO keywords in your copy, too, such as “builder in Wisconsin”?
At a minimum, every piece of copy should have your main keyword in the H1 header and in at least one sub-heading. Include it in your meta description, in the first paragraph of your copy, and at least once in the body of your copy.
Don’t forget that you can also optimize your social media posts, directory listings, guest posts, and more for SEO for maximum impact.
3) Digital advertising
Paid digital advertising with Google Ads can help you get found at the top of the search engines, bringing what you do to your target market even if you’re only just starting off with SEO and building your audience.
You can also use Facebook Ads, and ads on other social media platforms to get attention from your target audience and generate leads.
You do need a budget for this, but you can start small and, as you find ads that work, you can build up your spend, copy and tweak the ads to try to recreate what’s working, and turn off spend on any ads that aren’t working.
Each platform is different, but with most, you can select from demographic and geographical information and define your audience to suit.
4) Review/reputation management
Every home services business needs reviews. You want people to write a review for you so that you have social proof for potential customers that they can trust your business. This helps you stand out above your competition and reassures people who haven’t used you before that you are good at what you do.
How do you get reviews? Ask as soon as the job is done. Sign people up for your email list and send them a survey. Add review requests to your email signature. Depending on what you do, you could create a feedback form for people to fill in. There are many ways to get reviews, but the important thing is to get them consistently. Many potential customers won’t read any reviews over a month old, so you need to keep getting them.
This should be an important part of your marketing plan that you make time for. That’s how you keep consistently getting reviews.
You also need to plan in time to respond to them – yes, even the negative ones – so that people get a sense of your business and your personality.
5) Directory listings management
Add your business to as many relevant, quality business directories as you can. It’s a great way to build your online presence, and you get backlinks to your website from the directory on many of them, which is one way it helps with SEO. Don’t forget to add your information to your Facebook page, and claim your Google Business Profile (GBP) too.
The more pages you have online with great information about your business that you control, the better.
What you must do is fill in every part of each profile, particularly your GBP. Take the time to add your services, answer frequently asked questions, choose the right category for your business, add your contact details and your website, fill in opening hours, and add quality images. And don’t forget to include your keywords and local keywords to further help with SEO.
A complete and fully optimized GBP could get you listed on the Local Pack on Google Maps in a prominent position at the top, so it is definitely worth taking the time to do this properly.
6) Social media marketing
Social media is another great way to reach your audience and impress them with your knowledge.
You can post about what you do, give advice, answer questions, show before and after shots, and provide tutorials and how-to guides, including on video, as well as written posts. This is an excellent way to provide proof that you know what you’re doing, help your audience before they’ve even hired you, and show how much of an expert you are.
Again, use descriptive keywords in your posts. Make sure you’ve also filled in your profile, including your website, about section, and how to contact you.
With social media, you can expect that people will ask you questions in the comments and sometimes in direct messages too. People do expect that they can contact businesses in a variety of different ways and still get their questions answered, whether it’s on social, via email, on their website, or by phone. You do need to be responsive and to provide great customer care here too.
7) Content marketing
Content marketing done well can build your reputation, provide educational content to help your audience, establish you as an expert, build your brand, and so much more.
You can use the same types of content and topics as you would on social media, only here you can also go more in-depth with blog posts, articles, white papers, and more, if it suits your audience and what they want.
If you’re not sure what to post, ask! You’d be surprised how many people will be happy to tell you what they want to know. You can also look at your website stats to see what people are searching for, and check out your competition and what they’re posting for ideas.
8) Email marketing
Build your email list. Seriously, do it. If you build your business only on other people’s platforms, such as Twitter and Facebook, what will you do if they change their algorithms or even close down and you haven’t built your email list?
Make this a priority and you’ll always have a list of engaged subscribers who want to hear what you have to say and buy from you.
Consistency is key here too. You can’t email once and then forget about it. Set a schedule for your mailing list, work out topics and promotions in advance, and then stick to it.
9) Lead nurture
If you deal with emergencies, such as leaky roofs or broken windows, chances are you don’t need to do as much lead nurturing. People are likely to simply pick up the phone and book once they’ve checked your business out to make sure they’ll get what they’re paying for.
However, lead nurturing can help those people who haven’t yet made up their minds about whether they’ll use you or the competition, so it is good to have this in place.
When new leads find you, what they want initially is information. They want to see if you provide the service they want. They need to know that you know what you’re doing and that they can trust you. What they don’t want right now is a push to call you or to book. That could well push them away if you ask for that too early. Instead, provide great content that reassures and persuades. Guide them to your blog, to your how-to guides, and to your frequently asked questions. Let them find what they need by showing them where it is. You can then guide them deeper into your sales funnel until they’re at the point where they’re ready to take action, whether that’s signing up for your mailing list, requesting a demo, making a call, or even placing an order. Provide the right content at each stage of your sales funnel and you will keep and convert more leads to buyers.
10) Text message marketing
As well as building your email list, it’s also a good idea to build a list of people who are willing to receive marketing texts from you. Again, it’s better to build something you own yourself, rather than relying on someone else’s platform. The other reason is that text message marketing works.
How often do you pick up your phone each day? Is it ever very far from you? Probably not. And it’s the same with your potential customers. So many people do everything on their phones now, including buying and booking services. And the people on your text messaging list are likely to be more engaged and keen to hear from you or they wouldn’t have signed up for it in the first place.
11) Analytics
You can’t run a successful marketing campaign without analytics because you will have no idea whether it’s working or not and whether you’re anywhere near reaching your goals.
Dig deep into your analytics and keep your eye on your budget, and on what’s working and what isn’t. Watch your paid ads for which ones are performing well and which should be deleted. Measure how well you’re doing on social media, with your content, and with your email marketing.
You can then make informed decisions on what to do next and whether to continue as you are or do something else that’s even more effective.
Execute your marketing plan
You can now bring everything together and plan out what you’re going to do on a monthly calendar to maintain consistency. Plan your content, email marketing, and social media posting in advance so that you aren’t struggling with what to write each time you sit down to make a post. The other advantage of doing that is that you can get ahead of yourself when it’s quiet. You can write blog posts, social posts, and emails in advance when you’re not as busy and schedule them to go out when you want them to.
In addition, you can use professional marketing software to help make things easier and save yourself some time. Look for software, like the Surefire Local Marketing Platform, where you can plan ahead, schedule in advance, automate, and get clear and useful analytics to help you make better marketing decisions.
Set the stage for growth
With marketing, it’s never the case that you set your plan up and then rigidly follow it until the end of the year. You always need to adapt and change your marketing to respond to your audience and to the results that you’re getting with your marketing.
That means you need to keep analyzing and testing everything. You need to know where your customers are coming from so that you can target them better. And you need to be prepared to reallocate your marketing budget as needed to optimize conversions and new customer growth. The more you analyze, tweak, and adapt, the greater your revenue.
Working like this also helps you to choose potential new online marketing activities to try and add them to your marketing plan at the right times.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform demo
Surefire can help you more easily implement your home services online marketing plan with our business intelligence marketing software that comes at a fraction of the cost of other tools or agencies.
You can manage the most important online marketing activities all within one platform from our easy-to-use dashboard.
Manage your social media, emails, and content marketing. Easily update over 80 business directories, including Google Business Profile with a few clicks, manage, request and respond to your reviews from your dashboard, and get all the analytics and data you could need to show you how your marketing is working. Get in touch with us today and book your marketing software demo.