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Estimates vary about the overall size of and projected growth track for the U.S. home services market. By most accounts, it’s a fast-growing industry that’s already worth at least a half-billion dollars. It’s also highly competitive. This makes creative home services marketing ideas increasingly vital for providers in the space looking to attract new customers, earn repeat business, and build market share.
The strategic use of technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), to support marketing efforts and enhance the customer experience (CX) can help move a home services business ahead of the field. Like most consumers today, home services customers want to have a seamless CX across online and offline communication channels, including the phone. Technology like AI is the key to enabling these omnichannel experiences.
In this post, we’ll look at 12 innovative home services marketing ideas marketers may want to try to help their organisations gain an edge over the competition. We’ll also discuss how and where technology, like AI-driven revenue execution software, can help bring these strategies to life. First, let’s delve a bit more into the purpose of home services marketing.
Consumers seek out home services providers for help in managing tasks or solving problems that will allow them to make their home a better place to live. Housecleaning, appliance repair, painting, landscaping, and pest control are some common examples of home services.
Because these services are typically rendered in and around a consumer’s property, effective home services marketing emphasises building trust with customers with the intent to acquire and retain their business. Marketing efforts also help to showcase a provider’s expertise and ability to provide effective solutions to homeowners’ needs.
In short, when it comes to home services marketing, you need to let consumers know why your business is the one they can rely on to help them solve problems that are literally close to home. Creative home services marketing ideas are the key to communicating that core message and helping your business stand out. And if you want to build credibility, and help consumers find you, you’re going to need to elevate your online presence, which brings us to our first strategy.
The internet is a starting point for most people to conduct initial research about home services providers. And research shows that 81% of consumers use Google when they evaluate local businesses online.
So, if you haven’t done so yet, you’ll want to claim your Google Business Profile (GBP). It only takes a few minutes to set up. (And it’s free — all you need is a Google account.) A GBP is an easy-to-use tool for businesses to manage their online presence across Google.
If you already have a Google Business Profile, make sure that it is accurate and optimised for search. (More about SEO in a moment.) Google pulls public information from online sources to create profiles but that doesn’t mean the information is current or correct. For example, if your website isn’t up to date, your GBP won’t be either.
GBP also offers a neat local SEO boost feature: the ability to list a service area rather than an office address. This can greatly boost local visibility since most home services businesses go to the customer rather than the customer coming to the business office.
Even if you are a regional or national home services business, you must think locally when it comes to attracting customers and growing your business. Having an updated GBP helps. But you can further optimise for local SEO (search engine optimisation) by making the most of your website.
Your business may be in a specific location, but it likely covers a broader service area. So, providing content relevant to the towns, communities, or neighborhoods in that service area can dramatically boost SEO. Content ideas include case studies of jobs you’ve completed and reviews (more on this below). You can also link to local resources, such as municipal planning and zoning departments, which post detailed information on local building codes and other regulations, or hyperlocal news sites like Patch.com.
If your home services business has locations in more than one market, consider creating separate location pages and GBPs, each with its own unique content. To strengthen your local SEO strategy further, be sure to use search and ad keywords relevant to local customers. If you need help choosing keywords, consult the Google Ads Keyword Planner.
Managing your online reviews may not sound like a novel marketing strategy, but it really can make a difference in your ability to earn consumers’ trust and build your business.
According to BrightLocal’s annual Local Consumer Review Survey, about three-quarters of consumers always or regularly read online reviews when browsing for local businesses. Many report that they read reviews on multiple sites such as Google, Facebook, Yelp, and TripAdvisor.
So, encourage your customers to leave reviews. You might even give them an incentive to create a review by offering them a future discount or a small prize, like a gift card.
Second, always respond to reviews, good or bad. In BrightLocal’s survey, 88% of consumers said they would be likely to use businesses that respond to all positive and negative reviews.
Thank customers for providing good reviews. And when responding to bad reviews, be professional. Make sure the reviewers (and readers) see your concern and understand how you have either already addressed the problem or intend to do so. Feedback, even negative, can ultimately help you to improve the customer experience and strengthen your reputation.
A focused content strategy that is optimised for search is foundational to your marketing success in home services. High-quality, informative, and relevant content on your website and social media channels will help you attract customers.
Decide what your content marketing strategy will include. Will you offer a blog? Podcasts? What resources could you post on your website (e.g., guides or problem-solving articles)? Will you feature informational videos and customer testimonials? (See #5 for more about that tactic.)
Also, here again, be sure to optimise your content for local search terms to help ensure your business appears in search results for people looking for home services in your area. Include location-specific keywords and create timely content based on local events or trends.
Video is a powerful medium for sales and marketing efforts for home services providers. A 2023 survey of marketers and consumers by Wyzowl shows that 82% of consumers were convinced to buy a product or service because they watched a video about it, and 44% said they would prefer to watch a video to learn more about a service.
And keep it short: Based on the Wyzowl survey, a video that runs for one minute or less appears to be the sweet spot for marketing success.
What kind of content should you feature in a video to promote your business? Here are a few video marketing ideas for home services to consider experimenting with:
Social media has become one of the most dominant communication tools worldwide. Consider that, in 2023, global TV viewership was 5.36 billion, or 65% of the total population. Meanwhile, the social media user population was 5.07 billion, or 62.6%, and growing at 5.4% annually — faster than TV. And according to Datareportal, internet users aged 16 to 64 spend almost 2.5 hours a day on social media.
If you have a compelling content strategy, a creative social media marketing strategy can be a cost-effective way to maximise the impact of your content. It can help your home services business reach a wider local audience, establish greater brand awareness, drive website traffic, and even engage directly with consumers.
Social media encompasses many platforms, so you’ll want to decide which ones are the best tools for reaching target audiences. Meta’s WhatsApp and Facebook platforms are a good starting point for businesses of all types to reach over 3 billion monthly active users worldwide. Some ways you can use these channels to promote your home services business include:
Effective email marketing can add luster to your home services marketing efforts. Email allows you to reach out to your best leads with special promotions, product updates, and new offers.
You can even use email lists to distribute newsletters and other components of your overall content strategy. In addition, the expansion of broadband means that more customers can view rich content, such as videos, GIFs, and cinemagraphs (i.e,. short looping videos).
Some other creative marketing ideas for home services that use email include:
Paid search ads offer a simple but high-impact way for home services providers to boost their visibility with consumers, especially if their businesses are new.
Pay-per-click (PPC) or Google Local Services ads are cost-effective tools for getting your name out there quickly. Google Local Services ads appear at the top of local search results. Businesses are only charged when they are contacted because of the ad.
Paid search can also be used as a complement to organic search once your business is more established.
See these 16 PPC optimisation tips to help supercharge your strategy and avoid wasted spend.
Here’s a creative marketing idea for home services you might not have thought about: tracking phone calls driven by your marketing campaigns.
You can use call tracking software like Invoca to compile data from calls and gain a wealth of information for your marketing strategy. This data includes which campaigns drive calls, even down to the actual ad and search keyword. (Learn more about call attribution here.)
When you can account for sales conversions from offline calls as well as online clicks, your marketing team can make data-driven decisions to optimise their marketing spend, reduce cost per acquistion (CPA), increase the return on advertising spend (ROAS), and more.
Invoca’s call tracking software uses AI to deliver granular details from every phone call so that marketers can fully understand how their campaigns drive conversions over the phone. This allows them to push resources into the most effective strategies and campaigns and pull back on efforts that are falling short of expectations.
With AI-driven software like Invoca, you can analyse and extract insights from phone calls in real time. You can use the detailed insights you gain from customer phone conversations to further optimise your marketing ideas for home services and elevate your ad targeting.
How do insights from phone conversations help you improve how you target ads to customers? Let’s say you run a landscaping business. Several consumers call your business in response to an ad but don’t convert to a sale, even with a discount offer for the service they called about. Instead of giving up on these sales opportunities, you can analyse data in the calls to see if there is a common pattern to use to retarget the callers with a different, better offer.
You may realise, for example, that the original discount you offered had to be used within seven days. The callers who did not convert were not ready to begin their landscaping projects so soon. So, you create a follow-up ad with an open-ended discount, which ultimately helps you win the business of several of those retargeted customers.
Whether your refrigerator is broken, you have an ant infestation, or you’re just tired of looking at your scruffy yard, there’s nothing more frustrating than calling a home services provider for help and being placed on a long hold. Worse is being transferred to the wrong person to manage your inquiry, especially when the need is urgent. It leads to a very poor CX. And for the business, it can mean earning a bad reputation and losing sales.
With the right technology in place, home services providers can provide an exemplary experience without adding to their headcount. Invoca, for example, bridges the gap between a customer’s online journey and the moment they call your business. When a call comes in, the solution will tell you all about the customer’s journey, including what they looked at on your website and which pages they visited.
This insight can guide the call to be intelligently routed, which means it will be automatically sent to the most qualified agent to handle the inquiry. This helps to create a seamless CX for every customer that reaches out by phone. The benefits of providing such an experience can include more positive online reviews, more conversions, a better brand image, and higher revenue for your home services business.
Creating a friction-free omnichannel experience may sound like a daunting task. But with tools like Invoca PreSense, it’s easy for your home services business to make it happen for every customer who calls.
PreSense gives sales and customer service agents responding to calls a snapshot of the customer’s digital journey in an easy-to-digest screen pop that appears before they take the call.
This screen pop contains insights such as the customer’s name, which webpages they visited, and which page prompted the call.
This real-time insight allows reps and agents to make callers instantly feel like VIPs by greeting them by name. It also reduces the need for the caller to explain the reason for their call, making calls more efficient for both sides.
PreSense is also a valuable tool for marketers, who often take the lead on owning the customer experience for a brand or business. It can help them ensure that they are creating a frictionless customer journey that leads to attributable conversions, sales, and, ultimately, greater revenue.
Given the crowded playing field in which many home services businesses operate today, creativity is a must for marketing campaigns to be effective. The strategic use of relevant technology can make all the difference in supporting those efforts and delivering a great CX.
Invoca’s AI helps home services businesses establish a positive customer experience by gathering real-time data insights from the online journey and supplying them to reps and agents so they can start building relationships with customers from the first call.
Invoca uses AI to capture data from every call to provide actionable insights that help marketing teams develop winning marketing ideas for home services that attract customers, drive sales, and enhance the customer experience.
Watch the short video below to see how Invoca works:
To learn more about how Invoca’s technology can help amplify your home services marketing efforts, provide a competitive advantage, and boost profitability, see these resources:
You can also book a demo to see for yourself how Invoca can help your home services business create standout experiences for your customers.
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