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There are several marketing strategies handyman services can use to reach more customers. It is important to find the most affordable, yet effective marketing strategy to be competitive within the industry.
Here is a list of some great marketing strategies handyman services can use to drive more traffic towards their company. Implement these strategies and see your business boom!
In this article, we’re going to discuss some of the best marketing strategies that you can use today to help you stand out from your competition and make more sales.
Why Handyman Services is a Unique Business
Flexible schedule
One of the best parts about having your own business is that you can make your schedule. You decide when and how long to work each day, which means you can set your hours. Working on projects during the early morning hours before others are awake or late in the evening when no one else is around is possible if you’re working for yourself.
Set your price
When you’re running your own business, you get to set your price for each project rather than being at the mercy of an employer who may not value your time fairly (or even at all). If a project doesn’t pay well, it might not be worth doing at all if it’s taking up too much of your time.
Doing something you love
There is no better feeling than doing something that you love and being paid for it. You will spend many hours working on your handyman business, but instead of dreading these hours, they will become some of the most enjoyable ones of your day. This is because these hours will allow you to work on something that you enjoy while also earning extra income on top of your regular job or other business endeavors.
Rewarding
You can offer various services to your customers, ranging from cleaning their homes to repairing their cars. The possibilities are endless. You must pick the right type of service that will be most beneficial for them.
Widespread demand
There are millions of homes in the US alone, so you’ll never run out of work if you set up this type of business. Even better, most homeowners will use a handyman regularly because there is always something that needs doing around the house!
Easy to start
All you need to do is identify the services you are going to offer as a handyman and decide on your location. You can even rent out space in your garage or use your house as the base camp. As your customers will not see any machinery at all, you can conduct the business from home with full privacy.
Low initial investment
It’s almost impossible for you to fail when you run a handyman service business. All these benefits have turned this type of business into one of the most lucrative businesses that you can choose today.
You can tend towards higher levels of success
If you are good at what you do, then you will tend toward high levels of success. Keep improving yourself with new skills or techniques. You may not need any advertising plan as there will be plenty of customers approaching you once they know that they can trust your services.
Main Handyman Services Business Challenges
Running a handyman business can be difficult
There are many challenges that you will face if you want to be successful in your endeavor. First, you have to find work for the business because there is no work without clients. Next, you have to succeed at providing quality handyman services for your clients. Finally, you must establish a financial foundation for the business that makes it possible for it to exist and thrive over the long term.
Staying organized
A lot of people who run handyman companies fail because they are not organized enough. When you are not organized, it means that you won’t be able to charge your customers correctly for the jobs that they get done and therefore this leads to a loss in revenue which in turn makes it difficult for your company to grow.
Working with clients
As the owner of a handyman services business, you’ll need to be able to communicate effectively with clients. You’ll have to do everything from taking down their details at the initial consultation to explaining the costings and invoices when jobs are complete.
Managing cash flow
Cash flow is one of the biggest challenges faced by any small business owner and this is even truer when it comes to running a handyman services business. Cash flow is simply the movement of money into and out of your business. For a handyman services business, cash flow is vital because without it the whole business would grind to a halt. As with most other businesses, cash flow for a handyman services business is achieved through sales and collections from customers along with payments from suppliers for materials used. Running out of money can cause serious problems for your handyman services business so you must always keep enough cash on hand to meet all expenses.
Pros and Cons of Handyman Services Business
Pros
- You can target a specific type of customer.
- Office overhead is low, while profit margins are higher.
- It’s a growing industry.
- You don’t need to make appointments.
- Wear whatever you want to wear as long as it is safe to do so.
- Charge a higher hourly rate than most established contractors because you work solo.
Cons
- You will have days when you don’t make any money.
- You have to work on the hottest days of summer (and the coldest days of winter)
- Illness and Injury in the workplace.
- Need for professional indemnity insurance.
- Loafers who stall their repairs to avoid paying the bill but still ask how soon can you come back.
- The fear of people breaking into your truck and breaking into your toolbox for their nefarious purposes.
Best Handyman Services Marketing Strategies
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is a useful way to market your handyman services. PPC ads are usually displayed on search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. These ads show up when someone searches for information related to your business, in the form of keywords, on the search engine results page.
Protip: The more you spend on PPC ads, the more frequently your ad will appear in the search results. However, you should be aware that if your ad isn’t relevant to what people are searching for or it doesn’t provide value for people clicking on it, chances are you will receive low click-through rates and thus not a lot of leads from your PPC advertising campaign.
The following list highlights some of the most popular options available when setting up a PPC advert:
Keyword: one of the more popular targeting methods, keyword searches allow businesses to target customers who have specifically searched for certain keywords online using search engines such as Google or Bing.
Location: by targeting specific locations, businesses can reach customers who are close by and ready to purchase their products or services. For example, if a handyman business were based in London but wanted to target customers in Manchester and Birmingham, they could choose those locations from their list of available target areas.
Time: If a business wants to target customers at particular times of the day or on a particular day of the week, this is possible with PPC advertising.
Customer referrals
Every business, especially a small business, needs to find new ways to generate leads, acquire new customers and increase customer retention.
Trying to find a balance between acquisition and retention is key because your marketing manager should be able to help you with referrals for more sales.
A referral marketing strategy can be an inexpensive way of acquiring new customers without having to spend too much on advertising.
Here are some tips on how to leverage customer referrals as part of your handyman services marketing strategy:
1. Keeping in touch with your customer base
It is important to keep in touch with your clientele. You should consider sending out newsletters once a month or so. You can also try adding them on social media if you have an account for your business so that you can reach more people and gain more exposure. You should try to interact with them regularly. This will foster a relationship between customer and company and make them feel like they are part of the whole thing.
2. Keep a database of potential clients
If you have identified the type of people or businesses that will be interested in your services, then you should start compiling a list of those potential clients or people who could be interested in what you are offering.
3. Review your existing customer relationships regularly
The best people to ask for referrals are the ones who have worked with you in the past. Each time a customer comes back to you and says they want to hire someone else from your team, it’s an opportunity for further relationship building and strengthening. They’ve already established trust in you – now it’s time for them to know that they can trust other people too.
4. Make it easy for customers to refer you
Create customizable thank-you letters that customers can give out when they refer someone your way. These cards should include information about how the person was referred to your business and include your contact information so that the recipient knows exactly how to reach you, too.
5. Make sure that each customer knows how valuable their referral is
Much like treating a customer well goes a long way towards creating more repeat customers, treating each customer’s referrals as highly as possible will go a long way towards making sure they feel appreciated and respected.
Leverage the power of local SEO
If you’re looking to improve the online presence of your handyman services business, you’ve probably considered the benefits of local SEO. Truly harnessing the power of local SEO requires a unique combination of hard work and strategy. Use these handy tips to build your local SEO as a handyman services marketing strategy.
As a handyman services business, you have the opportunity to dominate local SEO. When done correctly, local SEO can help you become a household name in your service area.
This is because local search results typically appear at or near the top of page one in Google search results, making them highly visible and valuable.
The key to leveraging local SEO for your handyman business is optimizing your website and company information for searches that target your area.
This may seem like an easy task at first, but with more than 300 million small businesses in the United States alone, it can be extremely difficult to stand out from the crowd.
It’s essential to follow these steps to dominate Google’s local listings for keywords related to your business type.
Optimize your website for local searches
When people are looking for help with their home repairs and improvements, they’re going to search online for local options. Your website needs to be optimized for these searches to attract visitors from a local area. You can do this by using geographic keywords in your content and using a local business address. In the case of an online business, hosting your website on a local server will also help to improve your ranking in regional searches.
Set up a blog
Another great way for local businesses to leverage their local SEO with search engine optimization is by setting up a blog on their website. A blog makes it possible for a business to attract customers who are looking for information about products and services that they offer in the area.
Use the right keywords
When it comes to local SEO, the most important thing you can do is make sure you are using relevant keywords. Start by checking out what keywords are already being searched for. Google keyword planner is a great tool to use. Once you’ve found the right keywords, create content on your website that focuses on those topics. If someone visits your site and they don’t find what they were looking for, they will likely leave and go to another website that has the information they want.
Sign up for “Google My Business” and “Yelp Business”
Are you looking for tips on how to get more handyman clients? You’ve probably heard of Yelp and Google My Business but you might not know how they can help.
Signing up for Google My Business and Yelp can be useful to manage your reputation. Here’s a quick guide on how to do it as a handyman service marketing strategy:
Business Name: The name of your business should be the same as your DBA (Doing Business As) or the name you would like to appear when signing up for Google My Business and Yelp.
Address: Make sure that your physical address is listed correctly. It should be the address of your business, not your residence if you operate from home. If there are multiple locations, make sure that each address is listed correctly.
Website URL: This should be the exact URL for your website, including the http:// part. This will be linked directly to your page on Google My Business and Yelp.
Phone Number: Your phone number should be listed with area code, but without any space or punctuation in between the numbers (i.e., 123-456-7890). If you have multiple locations, make sure that each phone number is listed correctly.
Focus on experience
If you are a handyman or a handywoman, you may have already considered that your services might be in great demand. And you would be right. With the amount of work that needs to be done around the home, many people could benefit from your services.
However, when it comes to marketing your handyman services, you need to make sure that you do things correctly so that you attract the kind of customers that will keep coming back for more.
Here are some tips on how to focus on experience as a handyman services marketing strategy:
– Make sure that everything is clean before starting work. Your customer will like this aspect because it makes them feel safer about doing business with you.
– Be punctual for any appointments, especially when handling emergencies. People appreciate when a business is serious about its work and arrival time is something that your client greatly values.
Use Facebook ads
Facebook ads are a great way to connect with potential customers. When you’re marketing your handyman services, trying to reach out to local people who need your services is one of the most effective ways of doing so.
Facebook ads can help you reach people that you would not have otherwise been able to reach.
Here are some tips on how to use Facebook ads as a handyman services marketing strategy;
Tailor your ad to the right audience. You want to be able to show your ad only to the people who would be interested in your business, so you want to get as much information about them as possible. This starts with tailoring the ad itself so that it seems like something they would be interested in seeing. It also means paying attention to how you target your ad so that you get it into their newsfeeds when they will be most likely to pay attention.
Keep track of what works and what doesn’t work. Because Facebook allows you to test ads, you can try several different versions of an ad before deciding which one works best. Pay attention not just to how many clicks each one gets but also to how many people take the action that you want them to take after they click on your ad.
Set up your campaigns properly. The first thing you need to do is set up a campaign that targets an audience based on location and interests (you can do this by clicking “Create Ad” in the top right corner). Make sure to include any keywords that describe what it is that you do as part of the campaign, too.
Use call-to-action buttons for greater engagement. Try including call-to-action buttons in your ad copy that encourages people to interact with it in some way.
Advertise in local newspapers
In this article, we are going to go over some of the best ways to advertise in newspapers as a handyman services marketing strategy. This is one of the most effective ways to bring in new customers for your business.
The first thing you will want to do is make sure that your newspaper has a lot of contact information on it. It should have a physical address and phone number, as well as an email address.
If you want to go above and beyond, you can also include a website address. This will allow people to get in contact with you quickly and easily if they want additional information about your services.
Next, make sure that your newspaper advertisement is visible and easy to read. You don’t want it to be so small that people can barely read it when they are driving by or walking past your business location.
You also need to pay attention to how you word your ad so that it will be appealing. Think about what wording will grab people’s attention and draw them in closer so that they can get all of the details about the services you offer.
Then, consider including any special deals or coupons with your newspaper ad. People love getting coupons, especially when they can save money! In addition, you may want to include some sort of coupon code.
Fostering relationships
Developing a network can be beneficial to the growth of your handyman services business. You may have several options to choose from when selecting which network you want to participate in.
This section will provide you with tips on how to develop networks as a handyman services marketing strategy.
We asked the following questions of three handymen:
What is your experience with developing your network?
How do you develop your network?
What advice would you give someone who is just starting with developing their network?
Our findings show that the more people you know and the stronger those relationships are, the more likely it is that you will gain new clients in your business. Developing your network and participating in online groups, forums, and social media groups can help you find new customers.
Some things can be done to improve your chances of finding new customers through networking:
Develop a reputation – When people start to see what kind of work you do and how much value you add to their businesses, they will be more likely to reach out to you if they need a contractor for a job.
Share your portfolio – When people see what kind of work you do, they will usually want to read more about it or know more about it.
Final Thoughts
When it comes to marketing for small businesses, competition can be fierce, especially when you have a very specific niche that is being crowded by many other businesses.
That is why it is necessary to come up with marketing strategies that will improve your online presence and help you get more customers.