BY IRA THOMSON – SEPTEMBER 30, 2022
What Types of Paid Marketing Campaigns Does Home Services Marketing Use?
Over the last few years of working with home services companies, we have zeroed in on the highest-performing paid marketing platforms that most efficiently deliver results and discarded the poor performers.
We’ve assembled a team of experts with a depth of knowledge in these specific paid marketing platforms and methods. Our home services clients work directly with our team to develop a paid marketing strategy using evidence-based approaches.
In the ultra-competitive world of online advertising, this is what’s required to get results – deeply understanding our clients’ business and service offerings and using only the precision tools that will be most effective – rather than a more shallow scattergun approach of advertising to everyone, everywhere, on every platform and as a consequence blowing through the ad budget.
We also have finely tuned breadth and variety in our toolkit to allow us to target different audiences for different services and adjust quickly and efficiently for seasonality.
A few of the most effective types of paid advertising campaigns we run and will go over in more detail in this blog are:
- Paid Search Ads
- Retargeting
- Email List Targeting
- Display Marketing
- Paid Video Ads
What Are Paid Campaigns?
Paid advertising campaigns are any type of marketing that you directly pay for.
This is opposed to “unpaid” marketing campaigns that don’t incur a direct cost. Notice I say “direct” cost. This is because “unpaid” marketing campaigns still cost you, but it’s just that this cost is not directly measurable (or harder to measure). For example, joining a local BNI networking group to win referral business may only seem like it costs you the small $ amount of the membership dues, but there is the much larger hidden opportunity cost of your time (or alternatively your employees’ time in terms of salary cost).
Similarly, activities such as improving your website’s search presence and organic ranking to drive “free” leads don’t have a precise “cost-per-lead” metric, but rather an indirect expense paid through your own time, a marketing coordinator’s salary, or a marketing agency’s fees.
Paid advertising campaigns can also come in the form of both online and offline (traditional or print) marketing. For the sake of this guide, we’ll be focusing primarily on online paid advertising campaigns, but we also help home services businesses strategize and plan their offline, traditional and print marketing efforts!
What are some examples of paid marketing campaigns for home services?
Offline, or “traditional” paid advertising campaigns might include campaigns such as direct mail (for example, sending “before & after” home photo mailouts targeting your local service area postal code regions), ad space in a magazine or newspaper, radio advertising, or even banner/bus bench/billboard ads.
Online advertising takes form in a vast arena of options. You can run paid social media advertising on dozens of social media channels, deploy paid ads on hundreds of relevant home improvement websites, pay for premium profiles on business directories, target commercial projects through LinkedIn ads, and much much more.
Google Search Campaigns For Home Services Companies
Google Search works great for home services companies for new business acquisitions. Full stop. And it’s only getting better. With the introduction of Local Service Ads (This form of advertising has been a windfall for home services companies and we seek to be at the cutting edge of this for our clients).
Here are a few reasons why your home services company needs to be running Google Search campaigns with Google Ads:
Google dominates the search engine market in Canada (over 90%). If someone is searching for a home service online it’s almost certainly on Google. For this reason, we have dedicated a substantial amount of time and resources and hired a team of Google Ads experts.
GOOGLE ADS ARE PRECISE
You can reach your exact target audience, in your service location, at precisely the time they are seeking your specific service. What other advertising medium allows you to target your digital advertising to a homeowner in Port Moody right when they’re searching for the “best electrician near me?”
NO FLUFF
When managed correctly, you can eliminate all the fluff advertising that reaches an uninterested audience. Even with the most targeted print advertising or social media ads you’re likely only going to reach a tiny fraction of people who need your service at that exact time.
VERY FLEXIBLE
Google Ads is incredibly flexible. Seeing a favourable ROI? Raise your budget in minutes. Have a last-minute fall cleanup promotion? Build a promotion extension and start advertising immediately. Need to shift the ad budget to a different service or location? No problem!
Google Search Ads are also great for their granularity of data and insights, ability to target market segments, ability to calculate ROI and much more. All of this data is conveniently available to sync with Google Analytics, making it accessible to measure and manage.
Retargeting Paid Advertising Campaigns For Home Services
Another valuable paid online advertising campaign we run for home services is retargeting ads.
What are retargeting ads?
Retargeting ads are essentially defining an audience that has already interacted with your business and then showing specifically targeted ads to only that segment of people. For example, show your winter heat pump promotions to only those people that have visited your heat pump page on your website.
This is not only very effective in getting the right messaging across to only the people who care about it, but it’s more affordable compared to other paid advertising methods!
There are a few caveats to retargeting ads. They tend to work more effectively when you have an excellent search engine marketing strategy in place to drive organic traffic to your distinct landing pages, a high-performing and converting website, a pre-built audience segment in Google Analytics, and great advertising images and copy that will resonate with your target audience.
Email List Targeting
Email list targeting can be a great way to reach new customers and reactivate former ones. By targeting your audience based on their email address, you can make sure that your message is relevant and engaging. Additionally, by targeting people who have already shown an interest in your product or service, you can increase the chances of making a sale. Email list targeting can be a great way to reach new customers and boost your sales numbers.
What is a targeted email list?
A targeted email list is a list of email addresses that have been gathered to send targeted messages to the people on the list. The email addresses on the list may be collected through various means, such as sign-ups on a website, opt-ins for a newsletter, or contest entries.
The main benefit of having a targeted email list is that you can send messages to people who have already shown an interest in what you have to offer. By definition, they are more likely to be receptive to your message and, as a result, more likely to make a purchase.
How to build an email list for audience targeting
Building a targeted email list can be done in several ways. One of the most common is to use a sign-up form on your website. This allows people who are interested in what you have to offer to opt-in to receive emails from you.
Another way to build a targeted email list is to run a contest or offer a freebie in exchange for an email address. This is a great way to grow your list quickly, as people are often willing to provide their contact information if they have a chance to win something.
Finally, you can also purchase email lists from third-party providers. These lists can be expensive, but they can also be very effective if you find a reputable source.
What home services should keep in mind with email list targeting
There are a few things to keep in mind when targeting your email list. First, make sure that your list is segregated by interests. This will ensure that people on your list who are interested in one thing will receive content that is relevant to them. Second, use an email service provider that allows you to segment your lists. This way, you can send different content to different groups on your list. Finally, make sure that your content is engaging and relevant. People are more likely to respond positively to an email that is interesting and useful.
We meet with our clients once a month for a strategic session that includes guidance on how to be more purposeful with your email marketing campaigns.
Our audience targeting campaigns utilize a “made for home services” marketing automation system with email marketing software to create automated drip campaigns (to save you time and money!), auto-responders, and follow best “anti-spam” and “opt-out” practices.
We also take care to segment these lists and add value in the best possible way. Different audiences will be more receptive and responsive to different service offerings and even the seasonality of the campaigns (no one is going to respond to a last-minute offer for fall cleanup in the middle of winter).
Finally, we take special care to analyze and report on results and ROI from these audience-targeting campaigns. Depending on the size of your organization, your current CRM and client list, as well as prospecting that’s taken place, email marketing could be highly lucrative for your company.
Google Display Network Ads
Display and video campaigns can be your best friend or your worst nightmare. These ads run on the Google Display Network. Let’s have a look at what these are, and how to use them in your favour.
What is the Google Display Network:
The Google Display Network is a large collection of websites and apps where advertisers can place display ads. The network includes millions of websites and reaches 90% of internet users worldwide. Advertisers can target their ads to specific audiences on the Google Display Network, and they can use various ad formats, including images, videos, and text ads.
What are Display Ads:
Display ads are graphical or video ads that appear on websites, apps, and social media platforms. They are typically used to promote a brand or product and can be targeted to a specific audience. Display ads can be effective in driving awareness and even sales, but they need to be well-designed and relevant to the audience you’re targeting.
What are Video Ads:
Paid video ads are short videos that promote a brand or product. They can be effective in driving awareness and even sales, but they need to be well-designed and relevant to the audience you’re targeting. Paid video ads typically appear on social media platforms, websites, and apps.
How to run successful display ads:
If you’re using generic messaging, poorly produced videos, bad stock images, and advertising on broad display and video networks you’re going to waste your money and get bad results.
However, if you are using precision targeting (targeting only the display marketing websites and video channels that are highly relevant to your audience, or even better, combining with retargeting), high-production quality videos, compelling images and marketing collateral, and impactful messaging then video and display ads can be a real weapon for your business.
Google Local Service Ads
We recently introduced Local Service Ads (LSAs) to all our home services clients providing they are offered in Canada (see list here). This form of Google Search advertising (also known as “Google Guaranteed”) has just been approved for Canada and we want to be on the cutting edge. Local Service Ads appear ahead of Google Search Ads and way ahead of organic search results.
LSAs have been great for some home services companies in Canada such as electricians and plumbers (type in, “plumber near me” into Google and you’ll see what these look like – we can almost guarantee they’ll be the first results no matter where you live). They have also worked very well for our landscaping business friends in the United States – who have been early adopters of LSAs for landscapers.
Start Growing Your Home Services Company Now!
Reach out today for a no strings attached consultation with Andy, our CEO and Founder, and learn how we help home services companies grow.
Learn how we helped a landscaping company grow to 1 million in revenue per month from online sources alone.
See how we helped a permeable hardscapes company become an online juggernaut.
Or check out how we helped a landscape company reach the coveted 10M a year mark.
Whatever you do, don’t forget to leverage the power of Google My Business when developing your company’s online presence. With it, you can boost organic visibility and local search rankings with relative ease. So make sure to include this powerful tool in your overall digital marketing strategy. Good luck!
