A Marketing Plan Breakdown for Home Services Providers
By FrancesMary Loughead
January 4, 2022
Whether you’re in remodeling, HVAC, landscaping or other home services, you’ll need a good marketing strategy and action plan if you want to gain new customers. You’ve got the right tools, people, and mindset for the job. Now it’s time to grow it.
Many location-based businesses will often use word of mouth and customer referrals to gain new clients. This strategy is excellent. However, you can also implement a marketing strategy that will help boost your business. A sample marketing budget might include advertisements, the cost of creating brand content, organizing special events to promote your business, etc.
In this article, we’ll discuss a marketing budget breakdown to help you understand some basics and a few ideas that you can implement in your strategy.
Why is a Marketing Plan Essential?
A strong marketing strategy will make a significant impact on your business. Marketing continues to be a differentiating factor for home services businesses, as brand reputation and outreach matter when reaching the local community. With $378 billion spent on digital advertising in 2020, companies across the globe are honing in on their digital efforts to reach more customers.
Defining a clear and effective marketing strategy that includes digital advertising is a great way to set your business apart from competitors. However, with any marketing strategy comes a budget, so it’s important to define clear guidelines on what to spend your money on to be effective.
Marketing Strategies To Implement
Now that you understand the importance of a marketing plan, here are some strategies you can use to get started today.
Optimize Your Website
If you haven’t done so already, be sure to regularly update and optimize your website. Think of it as a location for your business. However, this location is always open—unlimited by geography and time zones. Your website will need updates based on services offered, any deals you may be running, and ensuring your contact information is correct.
A website will also help your customers:
- Find contact information about your business.
- See what services you offer.
- See social proof like testimonials from past clients.
- Book an appointment online.
You can hire a professional to build and optimize your site or use a website builder to limit expenses. Website builders like Go Daddy and WordPress are easy to use and customizable. Explore your options to see what will work best for your business. Often, the only thing you need to get up and running is a host and domain name.
Get On Social Media
Social media is a gold mine for new customers. But be sure to know your customer demographic before you begin. Who are your customers? How old are they? Are they from a specific group?
For example, if you have a landscaping business, your customers will probably be homeowners or businesses. Therefore, it’s essential to research your audience to reach them best.
There are five big social media platforms that advertisers consistently target. Depending on your customer demographic, you can find people on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, or TikTok.
If your target demographic is homeowners, you will most likely find them on Facebook instead of TikTok. You will need to know both who and where your audience is.
The next step is to create a business account. That way, you can start crafting content like videos, posts, or tweets. Posting content creates engagement and helps you build an audience. Social media is a great way to generate more brand awareness for free!
Use Google for Business and Local SEO
If you don’t have a Google for Business profile, create one. It’s free! It also helps you target the customers in your area looking for services or products that your business can help them with. If you do have one, be sure to regularly optimize it. Think of it as your digital storefront. Ensure your contact information and business hours are up-to-date, especially during holidays. Add an alternate contact number or email address to ensure you never miss a customer inquiry.
Start a Google ad campaign if you want to take it up a notch. You pay Google to advertise your business when customers search up specific keywords. This approach is known as local SEO (search engine optimization).
Essentially, you’re trying to capture the customers searching for businesses in your area. SEO is a great way to help your business get discovered.
How To Determine If Your Marketing Strategy Is Effective
Remember, marketing is an investment. You won’t always see the return on investment (ROI) right away. So, give your marketing strategy some time and make sure you observe, record, and watch the different trends.
A straightforward way is to establish some key performance indicators (KPIs) early on. Examples of KPIs that you can measure are page views, click-through rates, and open email rates. Another way is to compare the number of sales from the month you started your campaign to the month before. Think of KPIs as a marketing budget calculator.
A strategy called A/B testing can help you determine which ads or content are working. You split your audience and test different campaigns to see which content is more successful. You can measure this by the number of clicks or responses that you receive.
If your marketing efforts aren’t working, you might need to try something different. Perhaps you need to target different keywords or change the frequency of your posts. Marketing is a process and requires a little bit of experimentation to see what will work for you.
Don’t forget to keep track of your costs. You can create a marketing budget template on Google Sheets or Excel. These free tools can help you stay organized by inputting data, adding labels, and keeping track of dates. There are formula functions built into these programs, so you can also use them as your marketing budget calculator. That way, you can track the ROI of your marketing efforts.
Wrapping Up
There’s no one-size solution for marketing because each business is unique. Therefore, you’ll need to see what works and adjust where necessary. You’ll be surprised to find how a little bit of planning can yield great results.
Remember, your marketing budget example may change over time. And that’s okay! Marketing and businesses are supposed to evolve. So, get a head start on the new year by creating a sample marketing budget for your business today.
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