These days, local service businesses face a myriad of different challenges when it comes to not only meeting customer demands, but building their online presence at the same time.
For starters, those “customer demands” are in a constant state of flux. Especially when you consider everything going on in the world over the last few years, it’s clear that the marketplace can change quickly. Services businesses need to be able to pivot just as fast to keep up, or they will find themselves left behind.
They must do so in the face of increased competition – especially with the rise of various digital platforms. That, coupled with limited resources, and even local SEO challenges, make it difficult to stand out in a crowd. If you can, you need to make sure you’re standing out for the right reasons – meaning that building trust and credibility are of paramount importance.
Assuming that you are able to capture an audience’s attention, you need to do so by building a strong sense of brand identity. That means creating memorable (read: positive) customer experiences as often as possible. Not only can this heightened experience potentially justify premium pricing in the future, but it’s also the key to building the type of long-term relationships that will sustain your service business for years to come.
But it’s equally important not to “put the cart before the horse,” so to speak. If you’re a home services business like a roofer, HVAC professional, or construction worker, or are in a similar position, you need to focus on outshining the competition in any and all ways that you can at the local level. Getting to that point is less the product of any one major move and is more about a series of smaller and more strategic ones.
Tactics to Stand Out in a Crowded Online Marketplace
Develop a Unique Value Proposition (UVP)
There may be a lot of other businesses in your area that do what you do… but nobody does it quite like how you do it.
This is called your “Unique Value Proposition,” otherwise known as your UDP for short. This is the thing that you need to hone in on and broadcast as loudly as you possibly can.
Create a clear, compelling statement of what makes your business different from everyone else. You should be able to succinctly explain it in just a few seconds. Then, make sure that you are communicating it prominently across ALL of your marketing channels.
Optimize Your Online Presence
Next, you’ll want to optimize your online presence – beginning with your website. Remember that even in an era where social media sites like Facebook seem to run the world, most people will still discover your business for the first time via your website.
This means that not only should your site be fast to load and feature a sleek, attractive design, but it should also have an enjoyable user experience as well. You should spend time enhancing for SEO (search engine optimization) to elevate your visibility as much as possible.
A big part of this will depend on your ability to create high-quality, valuable content that addresses your audience’s pain points. Start with your audience and ask yourself who these people are, what they like, what they want, and what they need. Then, create content that speaks to that as often as you possibly can.
Leverage Branding and Visual Identity
It’s equally important to make sure that you don’t neglect your branding and larger visual identity as well. When someone looks at a piece of marketing collateral you’ve created, they should be able to tell who is behind it even if they don’t read any words.
That means using consistent colors, fonts, and messaging whenever you can to create the strongest brand image possible. Invest in professional design elements to enhance your visual appeal. At the very least, this will go a long way towards making your brand visually distinctive.
Utilize Data-Driven Marketing
If you truly want to stand out from your competitors, you need to understand as much about those competitors as you can. That, in essence, is what data-driven marketing is (in part) about.
Use competitive analysis tools to understand your closest competitors in terms of what their strategies are and any gaps that they’re creating that you could potentially swoop in and fill. At the same time, leverage targeted ads (and retargeting) to reach specific segments of your audience.
Marketing success and standing out from your competitors are all about getting the right message in front of the right person at exactly the right time. Targeted ads to reach specific people will be enormously beneficial to that end.
Enhance Customer Engagement
As a part of your ongoing efforts, you should also be taking advantage of every opportunity to enhance the customer experience as much as possible.
Tailor your communications and the offers that you’re sending out based on the customer data and preferences that you’re learning about. As you begin to develop a better understanding of your target audience, you’ll get a sense of what will resonate with them and what won’t. Send out personalized communications and specific offers that appeal directly to the people you’re talking to.
You should also try to publish as much interactive content as possible to keep the engagement quality and consistent. That means not just polls but also quizzes and interactive posts. Not only is it a perfect way to keep that connection consistent, but it also lets you gather additional insights that you can use to inform the rest of your campaign as well.
Build a Strong Community
In a larger sense, you’ll also want to leverage social media to foster relationships with your customers. Reach out to people and proactively answer the questions they’re having. Pay attention to the conversations they’re having and interject whenever you can. All this goes a long way towards maintaining a regular presence in people’s lives.
As a part of this, you should also encourage your existing, satisfied customers to leave positive reviews and share their experiences whenever possible. Social proof is tremendously important these days, to the point where people start to value online reviews more than they value the opinions of people they actually know. Every positive review that you can get will help significantly – and it might just be the positive impression that someone needs to pick up the phone and give you a call.
Innovate and Adapt
Finally, you should also be prepared to innovate and adapt whenever possible because you truly never know where the market (or your audience) might take you. Stay current on all the latest industry trends and when you see something that might appeal to your target audience, don’t be afraid to adapt to it.
Likewise, feel free to experiment with new approaches as you discover them. Test new marketing tactics and technologies as you’re able to. Some won’t work, but some absolutely will. It’s not just a great way to stay ahead of your competitors. Sometimes it may just be the thing that helps you leapfrog them entirely.
How Surefire Local Can Help
In the end, standing up to competitive pressure as a services business requires a point-of-view shift away from what you may be used to. It’s not that you want to take on those competitors head-on. It’s that you want to instead address the people who matter most: the prospective customers in the specific zip codes you’re targeting.
Always develop a unique value proposition that helps people differentiate you from every other business like yours. Optimize your online presence and leverage branding and a visual identity to play to the strengths that make you unique. Utilize data-driven marketing and enhance customer engagement whenever possible. As you start to invest in tactics like these, you’ll soon begin to rise above the rest – and at that point, you’ll be in an excellent position to let your services speak for themselves.
None of this is something that you “do once and forget about.” Continuous improvement is the name of the game. The minute you assume that you’ve “done enough” to stand out is the minute that you WILL find yourself left behind. That will require you to capitalize on opportunities for legitimate innovation whenever they present themselves.
At Surefire Local, we offer an all-in-one marketing platform designed for small businesses like yours. We want to help localize and optimize your online presence by distilling SEO, social media marketing, and more into one easy-to-use platform. Everything you need can be handled under one roof, so that you can get back to doing what you do best: running the most successful local services business that you can.
If you’re interested in finding out more about local service business marketing strategies, or if you have any additional questions that you’d like to go over with someone in a bit more detail, please don’t hesitate to contact us today. You can also click here to attend a Surefire Local demo so that you can begin to get a better sense of exactly what this powerful, innovative marketing platform can do for you.