We're breaking down some of the top things to consider when looking at your leads and diving into some new ways to think about beating the competition.
Considerations: What to look for in a ‘quality’ lead.
Intent: When you are paying for leads from places like www.Angi.com or other project aggregation systems, what you are mostly paying for is ‘intent’. Someone has taken time to raise their hand to effectively say “I’m a potential buyer”. While higher intent opportunities can present a more likely buyer, they don’t do much to signify the price sensitivity of the buyer, or how they are viewing the expectations of the job vs the cost. High intent is not a bad thing, but its not the same as having the ‘right intentions’.
Customer Fit: Knowing the likelihood of someone to be a good first for your product or service is important in how you prioritize inbound business and also how and where you spend money to market to future or potential customers. We strongly recommend that you take the time to document what your ideal customer profile (ICP) looks like. This exercise will help you to set processes for how you will handle future opportunity management, where you want to advertise and what types of customers are potentially not a good fit. Without a defined ICP, you’re saying that EVERYONE is a potential customer (making service management decisions incredibly difficult).
Cost per lead: How much are you spending per generated lead? This would include all sales/marketing efforts in a given time frame. You can start out by just calculating this figure overall for your business but as you add more and more lead channels you may want to look at this by source. How does door knocking compare to cold outbound calls? What is the value of a trade show vs a mailing campaign? This type of measurement is usually best done on a monthly or quarterly basis since not all lead channels create returns immediately.
Customer Acquisition and LTV: LTV (Life time value) reflects how much the average customer spends with your business over their average life time as a customer of yours. This is a TOUGH number to consider when you are just starting out. But as you have repeat customers or sell more recurring subscription services, you can start to see trends in how long it takes for someone to spend more or cancel with you.
Improve your LTV and Lower the Upfront cost by:
Find ways to upsell existing customers to increase LTV
Lower the up front cost of adding a new customer so that you can recoup that expense faster
Extend the life time of a customer with loyalty rewards and proactive outreach
Target buyers who are in your ICP so they have a higher chance to stay longer
Lead Sources: (Google, Angi, Thumbtack, Radio, Print, Mailers, Cold Calls, Door Knocking, Email, Feemium, Referrals)
There are a TON of home service lead sources but very few of them present any ‘strategic advantage’. Everyone is paying for the same Angi leads or setting up a blog to drive search engine results. Most home service businesses are trying to boost their reviews and testing google ads.
So what can set you apart? Top 3 things we see that are just a little different.
Offer a freemium product. This is like a trial or a free give away that lets you get in front of buyers. When you understand your acquisition costs and LTV, you can see what you’d be able to spend to gain a customer.
PRO TIP: This really only works if you can target the RIGHT buyers. Check out how GlassHouse is helping service businesses find their ideal targets to dial in this type of campaign.
Examples of freemium products are things like ‘free inspections’, Offering a free pest or lawn care treatment if you are already in the area, pick a neighborhood and offer to do a home energy audit to as many people as will sign up. This will vary depending on your specific service focus. What can you afford to give to buyers that you want, in return for an initial conversation about your services?
Referrals: Happy customers are your VERY BEST advertising tool. But how do you capitalize on this.
Ask for an introduction. Your customers are probably not sitting around thinking about you. You need to make sure to ask for the intro. One of the very best times to ask for an introduction is at the end of service. If you just did a great job, ask for an introduction to another person - just to let you make a new contact.
Offer a reward for the referral. Everyone loves a discount, offer a discount in exchange for 3+ introductions.
Make it easy for them to give you the referral. Send them a referral link to your website and don’t be afraid to incentivize both parties to make the connection happen - AGAIN, if you know the LTV of a customer, you can dial in how much you would spend for a warm introduction.
Targeted Outbound: SO much of the ad spend in home services is ‘spray and pray’ marketing to things like Google or print/mailing. You can always measure the overall blended ‘return on advertising’ or ROAS - but understanding what specific campaign or activity drives the best customers is difficult. This leads to continued fear of reducing the overall activity and spend.
We are seeing businesses spend time to look at what firmographic and demographic aspects make up their most valuable customer, and then going after more of the same. This takes some investment in data and review of your ICP but if you can reduce your overall ad-spend by 20% and actually see an increase in overall revenue…. WORTH IT!
Pro Tip: Ask us here at www.GlassHouse.Biz how we can help with better targeted outbound.
Home service is a big space and there are a lot of variable from business to business and even from job to job. The best thing you can do is take the time to create a defined process and measure what matters. That way you can work to improve your business by focusing on the metrics that drive your business.