When businesses approach marketing in the modern era, they tend to do so with a slightly more cynical perspective than their customers do.
Business owners think that they need to pump out collateral outlining in great detail what their products and services are and what they can do. To stand out in a crowded marketplace, they feel like they need to have the most bullet points on their website, or the longest tech spec sheet, or something similar. In reality, they’re just overthinking something that is inherently very straightforward.
According to one recent study, people see between 4,000 and 10,000 ads every single day. We’ve gotten very, very good at tuning out the ones that don’t matter to us. But what does tend to draw us in every single time?
A good story.
According to another recent study, a good story can increase the perceived value of a product by up to 20x in some situations. The same research indicated that a massive 92% of consumers want brands to make ads that feel like a story. Stories are more engaging. They’re more memorable. They reflect positively on your brand, which in turn reflects positively on your home services. In an era when you need to do absolutely anything you can to differentiate yourself from your competitors, the importance of this cannot be overstated.
Yet at the same time, a good story is deceptively simple – you want to make sure you’re approaching things from just the right angle to truly create lasting impact. Thankfully, getting to that point isn’t necessarily difficult – but it does require you to keep a few key things in mind along the way.
It All Starts With Your Audience
Make no mistake about it: if you want to tell a good story, you need to start with your audience. Storytelling, even in marketing, is subjective to a certain extent. What resonates with one group of people may fall totally flat for another. Therefore, as you start to build the story of your home services business, you need to start not with yourself, but with the people you’ve dedicated yourself to serving.
Who are the people in your service areas? Where, exactly, do they live? What do they like? What do they dislike? What do they need more of? What problems do they have? The answers to these questions describe your target audience, and once you know that you have everything you need to begin shaping the story that is right for them.
Home services businesses cater to a variety of people, from homeowners needing repairs to renters seeking maintenance. Knowing their concerns, values, and pain points allows you to craft stories that speak directly to their needs.
While you’re at it, you should also highlight local relevance whenever possible. Don’t just tell the story of your home services business – weave into the story of the surrounding community, too. Focus on community-driven stories that connect with the local culture, region, and demographics. This will help let people know that you’re not just a cold, calculated business – there are real people at the heart of it all.
Creating a Consistent Story
Once you learn as much as you can about your audience, you can begin to think about the type of story you want to tell. Here, there are two main pieces of advice. The first is that you need to keep it simple. A complicated story may encompass everything you think you need to convey, but it will quickly get too unwieldy for its own good.
You could share how the business was started, what values it stands for, and the journey it has taken. A relatable founder story or a story about overcoming early challenges can build trust and make your company seem more approachable.
Next, remember the old saying “consistency is king.” Once you decide on whatever that story is, it needs to be consistent across every channel you participate in. This means not just your website, but on your social pages, on directories like your Google Business Profile, and more. Maintain a consistent voice and tone across all marketing materials to strengthen brand identity. Every single piece of collateral that you put into the world should feel like it’s coming from the exact same place. If it doesn’t, you run the risk of creating confusion and that is not a situation you want to be in.
As you work on honing your story, don’t be afraid to tap into the emotional side of it all. Home services are often tied to the home, safety, comfort, and family. Using emotions like relief, joy, and security in your storytelling can have a powerful impact on potential clients. Describe the problem your service solves in a way that makes the customer feel understood, then showcase the relief or happiness they’ll experience after using your service.
Focus on the Customers
As you begin to build out that story, the number one area to place emphasis should always be on your customers themselves.
This is why most marketers agree that testimonials and case studies are one of the most effective forms of brand storytelling in marketing that there is. You’re not just stating what your business can do. Anybody can do that. You’re showing what you can do for other people, which is exactly what people are looking for.
Customers’ stories of how your service solved their problems create authenticity and trust. Consider showcasing before-and-after scenarios or real-life challenges your service helped overcome.
According to another recent study, about 92% of buyers say they read reviews and testimonials before buying. Not only that, but using high-quality video testimonials can even increase website traffic by as much as 157%.
Letting your satisfied customers tell their stories in their own words is always effective – to the point where you should also start thinking about user-generated content as well. Encourage customers to share their experiences through photos, videos, or written reviews, and turn those into compelling stories on your website and social media.
None of this is to say that you shouldn’t also focus on your team members, because you should. Introductions are a great way to put a genuine, smiling face behind those home services pages. Share stories about the people who make your business run, from technicians to customer service representatives. Humanizing your team helps create emotional connections with customers. You could even use behind-the-scenes content to show day-to-day operations, challenges faced by your staff, and personal moments that make your company relatable and trustworthy.
It’s just that you never want the story of your business to be exclusively about yourself. Yes, you’re the founder. Yes, you put in a lot of hard work. But don’t shine that spotlight inward – shine it outward whenever you can for the best results.
Fitting Storytelling Into the Bigger Picture
In the end, it’s important not to take the term “storytelling” too literally when it comes to your home services marketing efforts. Yes, it’s true you want to paint a vivid picture for people. You want prospective customers to feel themselves in the shoes of your existing ones, seeing how you solved someone’s problem or made their lives better in some way. But that doesn’t mean that storytelling is what you should exclusively focus on, nor is long-form narrative the only tool you have in your toolbox.
As stated, especially when it comes to a home services business, you need to focus on things like local SEO for maximum impact. Regularly posting to your social channels, or making sure that your business directories are updated, and similar techniques will help you raise awareness and get noticed by the right type of people. Once you have their attention, your storytelling prowess can further draw them in and at that point, your actual home services can speak for themselves.
Getting to this point will require not only a fair bit of work, but some serious consistency as well. It’ll take time – which is an issue, since every minute you’re focused on that next story-driven blog post is a minute you’re not actually performing a service for someone that matters.
Thankfully, there are solutions out there designed to help – and Surefire Local is chief among them. Surefire Local was built to be a powerful all-in-one marketing platform that puts everything you need to make the digital impact you’re after at your fingertips. Directory management, scheduling and posting to social media channels, search engine optimization, and more is all condensed into one easy-to-manage tool.
The benefit of this is that instead of trying to use multiple tools for multiple tasks, everything can be handled efficiently from one tool. It’s a Swiss army knife for marketers, so to speak, and it’s one that will free up a tremendous amount of your time so that you can focus on more important matters.
If you’d like to find out more information about brand storytelling in marketing and how it may just make the difference that your home services business needs, 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 schedule a Surefire Local demo so that you can experience what a powerful all-in-one marketing platform can do for a business like yours.