Why Your Home Service Business Needs to Be Online
Have you found yourself questioning whether your home service business needs to be online? We totally get it. The internet can be a time suck and your home service business is doing great without it. Why bother?
There are three crucial reasons that any business should be online, but especially home service businesses like yours. Being online gives you an advantage over your competition, helps establish trust with your customer base, and gives you more opportunities to offer services.
Let’s take a look at each one of those reasons in detail.
The Digital Landscape and Home Service Businesses
For most businesspeople in the home services field, marketing has always been easy—mostly because marketing has taken care of itself. If you’re like most people offering home services, you’ve gotten a steady stream of customers simply through word of mouth. When somebody needs a plumber, an electrician, or a landscaper, they ask a friend or a neighbor, “Hey, who did you hire?”
Word of mouth will always be a key marketing strategy for so many small businesses, especially those that work closely with their clientele and their clientele’s biggest asset (in other words, their home). But it’s smart to acknowledge that, yes, the direction of society is going the way of digital. More and more people are turning to the internet to find home services in their area and assess the quality of the work they do. When we started ASMM Digital seven years ago, we talked about being online as a really good thing to do, but not a must. Today, it is most definitely a must. You have to be online.
Think about it: If you needed to hire a home service other than the one you work in, where would you go to find somebody? Your connections in the field might mean you already know somebody who is a good fit, though if you weren’t connected to home service professionals, you’d probably pull up good ol’ Google or a similar search engine.
Of course, some people may always trust the recommendation of their friends over what they find online. For those people, you’ll have to continue relying on word-of-mouth advertising. But for younger generations, specifically Millennials and Gen Z, they’re more likely to use the internet. Having an online presence will give you a competitive edge over others out there, especially if you’re active on social media and frequently gaining exposure to users.
An online presence also gives you 24/7 availability, which is not something people will get with word of mouth. If they need home services at an inconvenient time when they’re not able to solicit recommendations from their friends, the internet is still there for them. Even if you don’t do round-the-clock service, you can still have your information available (along with options to book appointments), so that somebody panicking in the middle of the night can lock in a job with you ASAP. Better yet, today, you can offer people scheduling right on your website. This takes a big weight off your shoulders.
Building Trust and Credibility Online
We say this all the time: Trust and credibility are the most important things you can have with your customers. Nobody knows that better than home service professionals, because, as we already stated, you’re often taking care of your customer’s biggest asset. They want somebody they can trust to do a high-quality job in their home.
When you have an online presence, you have all the opportunities to show your customers that you’re the real deal—you’re trained, experienced, professional, and trusted by many customers.
How? First and foremost, there’s your website. This will showcase your services and credentials, and it will ultimately instill confidence in your potential clients. If you’re active on social media, this will give you the chance to interact with customers, share updates, and demonstrate your expertise.
Finally, and maybe most importantly, there are customer reviews and testimonials. Platforms like Google My Business allow customers to leave starred reviews and share about their experience. Positive reviews not only look good to potential customers but also boost you in the rankings when people search on Google. So if somebody goes to Google and types in “flooring contractor” or “painter,” and you’re the highest-rated professional on the platform—well, that potential customer is going to see your name first. And with all those positive reviews, they’ll feel confident in hiring you.
Online Marketing and Expansion Opportunities
You’d be surprised by how much you can do online. In fact, you might already be taking advantage of the opportunities yourself, as many of them are a great fit for home service professionals. For example, there are some consultations you could provide virtually, where a potential customer can show you the problem via their phone screen, saving you the trouble of going out there in person if there’s a bigger problem that needs to be solved.
You can also put together webinars and tutorials that provide extra value to your customers. Are there topics you wish you could broadcast to everyone to save you a lot of trouble when you show up on the job site? Why not create a webinar titled “10 things you should know before you hire a…” or maybe “Here are some home jobs you can do yourself”?
Even though your word-of-mouth marketing is working for you, and even though being online seems like a waste of time for an already busy professional (hey, who doesn’t feel that way sometimes?), it’s important to remember that the digital realm is one of the best opportunities you have for expanding your business in ways you never thought possible.