By Jimmy Speyer
The first customer support teams were developed in the 1700s following the Industrial Revolution, and businesses around the world have tried to scale by delighting their base ever since.
Home and property service companies are no different.
And, while we should always strive to do the best job we can for our clients, we can’t create promoters out of every single one. The service provider/customer relationship should be a partnership—a two-way street where both parties benefit from the association.
With an increasingly competitive market full of wide-net solutions that may not bring in qualified leads, it’s imperative that home service companies focus their marketing budget on attracting customers who will be a strong fit for the services they offer.
Anyone who has worked in HVAC, plumbing or electrical service marketing knows that their company has an ideal customer. These are customers who need your services, have the income to pay for your services, and want to develop an ongoing partnership with your company so that it’s a mutually-beneficial relationship.
But identifying your avatar customer can be difficult. It costs a lot of money and time to build lists that encompass these ideal customers, and even more to get your name in front of them.
Even before the world was at our fingertips, the homeowner has had the advantage in their relationships with their home service companies. The customer has multiple ways to research, pre-qualify, and rate a home service business, while the business has to worry that turning any customer down could result in a significant loss of revenue.
But companies are beginning to realize that focusing on the right customer can result in a substantial increase to their bottom line and a boost to their reputation. And there are now new and innovative digital tools on the market to help home service companies create lists of their avatar customers using data-driven information pulled from a variety of sources.
Increasing Profitability
In the not-so-recent past, it was common practice for technicians to note the demographics of a neighborhood when they went on house calls. Because most houses in a particular neighborhood are built around the same time, it stands to reason that their HVAC systems would be of similar age and would need replacement around the same time.
If the neighborhood also consists of homeowners with some means, taking some time to knock on doors to introduce your services could result in new customers.
But, these days, it pays to develop a “digital door knocking” campaign that helps you create more prospects from your existing marketing spend.
Unfortunately, most of the advertising campaigns built to target a particular neighborhood result in a declining return on investment. You may spend $1,000 for 20 leads, but only receive another 10 qualified prospects with your next $1,000. That means that increasing your ad spend might drive top-line revenue, but not bottom-line profits.
So, when you have the opportunity to unlock a prospect with little to no additional cost and when these potential customers are located close together, you save money on marketing and save time by packing your clients close to one another. Your next job is next door.
Boosting Good Reviews
In the home services game, good reviews are your company’s lifeblood. Recent research has shown that 92% of homeowners surveyed would seek out and consider online reviews before hiring a local service business, and another 63% said they trust online reviews as much as word-of-mouth recommendations.
Google and other review sites use your company’s overall review average, velocity and quantity to rank you and your competitors. That means that if you have a high volume of good reviews, you’ll be found in search results more often.
The problem, of course, is that your company is at the whim of the homeowner’s mood, and their review isn’t always reflective of the exchange.
For example, in my work with GlassHouse Inc., we discovered one homeowner who only gave one-star reviews. Out of the 91 reviews they gave, not one of them was more than one-star. It only stands to reason that not everyone this customer did business with was that bad and that the homeowner gave one-star reviews as their default.
With new digital tools that pull information from a variety of sources, you cannot only choose your avatar customer based on their income, location and ability to pay for your services, you can also ensure that you pick customers who aren’t known for only giving poor reviews.
Building up Your Sales Funnel
Imagine if you could book customers in or around a certain neighborhood and target those who want, need and can afford to pay for your services, but who also give reasonable reviews.
With the use of data-driven research, you could target your marketing campaigns to customers who meet those criteria, ensuring that you earn a better ROI.
By targeting homeowners in locations where you already have jobs booked, you can get the most out of your marketing spend. If one or two of your booked jobs yields another job, you’ve increased your ROI on advertising money you’ve already spent by 10-20%.
If you can segment your target audience by the factors that most favor your preferred demographics, preferences, behaviors or disposable income, you improve the effectiveness of your sales funnel. This improves your sales team’s conversion rates and engagement. It also helps you build relationships that allow you to retain customers for a much longer period of time.
Creating the Avatar Customer Profile
Think about your best customers. These aren’t always the customers who generate the biggest tickets. They are usually the customers who pay on time, have disposable income and need your services regularly.
When you understand the value of a certain customer type, you can more easily figure out how much you need to spend to go after them as a client. If you have an outbound campaign and don’t know the value of your targets, you can lose money on your campaign.
But if you know that adding a new client will give you four to five times your return on investment over the next two to three years, you will not only make a profit, but you can also set up specific teams for a more personalized approach.
Creating the avatar customer template used to take years to develop. But with today’s digital tools, you can now review income and credit ranges, generate information about a home’s age, size and value, and get information on their Google review history with the touch of a few buttons.
For several decades, the customer has had the upper hand in their relationships with their home service companies. They have had the ability to read and write reviews about the companies they work with, but the home service company has had no insight into potential customers.
But, now, home service companies can make data-driven decisions to prioritize business in ways that allow them to operate at higher margins and avoid risky or expensive engagements. Using available data to help make these choices can help your company uncover the real story about a prospect’s history and know your customers inside and out.
And that is exactly what you need to scale your business.
GlassHouse Inc. co-founder and CEO Jimmy Speyer has worked in software sales, customer service and marketing for more than 14 years, focusing on growing and scaling revenue teams in multiple verticals. He supported the revenue team at Logixboard, a supply chain management firm, to help the company lead the digitization of the freight and customs brokerage industries globally. Speyer is passionate about scaling teams, go-to-market planning and coaching high-growth organizations with data-driven practices.
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