Marketing is a job that's never done. There's always something that can be optimized or introduced or tried for the first time, knowing it might fail. What's important to realize is that in local services particularly, a lot of small operators are playing 10-20 years behind technologically (fax numbers are dead giveaways) so even if you're using just basic best practices in marketing, you're going to do well.
But what about those marketing tactics no one tells you about? Well, I'm going to share four of them that I know work consistently and I know can work well for your local services business too. Let's get to them!
1. Local Facebook Groups
More and more these groups are a go-to not just for basic help, "Does anyone know a good plumber?" but for genuine social interactions. But there's nothing that says you can't stack the deck a bit in those social interactions.
You will definitely have a customer or two that are advocates for you. Ask them if they are willing to join one of these groups and share some photos of a recent job they did for you. MaidThis is in the cleaning business so we love "before" and "after" photos showing a sparkling clean home. But the same could be done for painters or roofers or interior designers.
Once your customer posts those photos you're going to get referrals from the buzz that follows. Because it's been shared by a customer and not by you as the business, people don't have their guard up. They celebrate and like the post, and word gets around, and people who have been looking for your type of business now have a number they can call in the future...or one they call right away. Don't be surprised to see a lot of referrals coming in every time a post like this goes up in one of these groups.
You don't want to overdo it, of course. But make sure at least once a quarter you're getting one of these posts up in each Facebook group to keep in the top of everyone's awareness, and leave the messaging to your customers so they don't all sound the same.
2. Cold Email
This is an underrated and inexpensive form of marketing, particularly when you can dive down into niches. I'll share an example of a niche that exploded for us.
Because we are in LA, we would occasionally get called by production companies who needed to hire cleaners before and after a shoot. Once we started to see a trend, we bought an email list of those companies and sent them a cold email, letting them know we could help.
My cohost from the Remote Local Podcast (shameless plug) Johnny Robinson even has a template for this.
Dear X
I know you've got a lot going on, but here are four things I can remove from your to-do list
(list four services of your biz that apply here)
How can I get on your vendor list?
You're helping to solve a problem and your approach is short and sweet. You'd be surprised at how high the return rate on this outreach is.
3. Instagram Giveaways
Whenever you're launching a new product or service giveaways on Instagram go viral. Make sure that in order to enter the giveaway the potential customer has to tag three friends. Customers have a simple way to enter a contest to get a prize, and you have a number of semi-warm leads to send a soft outreach to.
4. Postcards
Direct mail, like cold email, is overrated and underpriced when it comes to cost per lead.
One of the audiences we target in our campaigns is people who have newly moved to the area. They don't know their neighbors yet, much less a great cleaner in town. So we help nudge them by sending them a simple and targeted direct mail piece.
Needless to say, we get a lot of new customers who then end up becoming recurring clients with us.
Take Action!
Implementing any one of these four tactics is going to help you make an extra $10k this month alone. What could happen if you tried all four? Whatever you try, et me know what happens on Twitter.
Photo by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash
This article was written by Neel from MaidThis Franchise, a remote-local franchise opportunity for people looking to escape the rate race and reach financial freedom. Learn more here.
