Experimenting with Local Services - What I learned & My Plans

[Dockid]

Around three months ago, I conducted research on various search terms for local services using Ahrefs. The purpose of this search was to generate ideas for services I could potentially offer. During my research, I discovered a couple of local services that I believed I could rank for relatively easily, as they had a fairly high search volume of up to 600 per month.

As a result, I created three websites, all of which were designed with a mobile-first approach and filled with the keywords I wanted to rank highly for. One of these websites, dedicated to furniture removal, rubbish removal, and house moving services, managed to land on the first page of Google for the main keyword I targeted within five weeks. It currently holds a position between 3rd and 4th in the Google search rankings and generates approximately five organic leads per month. Since its launch, I haven't put any more effort into the website or made any further updates. The competition is so weak that it will likely continue to rank higher for several keywords.

However, despite offering the service on my website, I didn't personally possess a van to provide the service. Therefore, for the first 6-7 leads, I simply gave them away for free to a guy who offered these services. After the 6-7th lead, I messaged him on Facebook to inquire if he had managed to secure any jobs from the leads I had sent his way. He responded hours later, indicating that he hadn't been successful but would "try harder." This response led me to believe that he might have been lazy, neglecting to follow up with leads for days or possibly giving up if he didn't receive an answer on the initial call.

I wanted to see how hard it was to close these leads myself, so I ran an experiment with Google Ads. I created a bunch of landing pages for my different services and ran Ads to those landing pages. My average cost per lead came out to €2.50 and I would get about 3 per day. My website only had an option to send an enquiry, no calls. I work an office job so I couldn’t take any calls. I would reach out to leads within 1-2 hours of receiving an inquiry (Pretty slow). I would send an email with a quote also asking them to confirm a date and time and about 40% of them would be happy to proceed. These jobs would often be a 15 minute pickup and dropoff that paid €60-80. I even made them pay on the website first. I tried offering these closed leads to some guys offering van services near that area but they were impossible to get in contact with and often did not respond for days at a time. I called a couple of them and honestly they were just impossible to do business with, they would be flakey and had awful communication skills, it was a real headache.

It was no wonder I found it so easy to rank the website, run ads and close leads myself… I actually communicated with people.

The Ad campaign was a massive success, but I shut it down. I didn’t want to work with these guys because I would be making so little per job and it was simply not worth dealing with them for the money I would be making. If I offered the service myself I could probably earn a couple of grand/mo seeing as I could bring in around 90 leads per a month using Google Ads just for my local area, but it’s not something I’m interested in.

I’m seeing results with the other websites too, the results are a lot slower and would require more effort from me to reach a high ranking. I’m not going to work on these websites however, because I’m not interested in providing services that are very hard to scale.

This experiment was an eye opener that showed me how easy it is to crush regular local businesses. Most of them have horrible websites and don't even respond to leads! I’m thinking of following this same process for higher ticket local jobs such as landscaping & construction services. Ideally I would offer simpler jobs such as garden design and building patios for people, these jobs pay in the thousands and they have a high Google search volume with slightly better but still very poor competition. The one issue is that I have no experience in construction. I would need to bring someone experienced in and learn on the job.

If anyone has experience running a construction business / other lucrative local service biz, I would greatly appreciate any advice or tips. I'm just a man who wants to leave the cubicle farm

 

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[Parks]

Keep in mind while rare, there are those looking for leads and are willing to pay for them. Maybe think franchises. This first guy you gave your leads doesn't sound like your target customer.

While it could be great for you to get into offering these services yourself I also think scaling with selling leads sounds so much better.

 

[Dockid]

Keep in mind while rare, there are those looking for leads and are willing to pay for them. Maybe think franchises. This first guy you gave your leads doesn't sound like your target customer.

While it could be great for you to get into offering these services yourself I also think scaling with selling leads sounds so much better.

Good point. I'm very confident in my ability to generate leads for local service based businesses. I'd like to reach out to some small business owners and offer my services. Maybe I could take all the risk upfront, including Ad spend ect and provide free leads to show the value of my service at no risk to the business owner. What do you think?

 

[jclean]

Good point. I'm very confident in my ability to generate leads for local service based businesses. I'd like to reach out to some small business owners and offer my services. Maybe I could take all the risk upfront, including Ad spend ect and provide free leads to show the value of my service at no risk to the business owner.

how they usually work is:

method 1: they get the lead through marketing and then sell it to a maximum of three companies selected by them example: we are obliged to pay 30 euros for a roof cleaning lead together with 2 other companies who also each pay 30 euros = 90 euros for the lead generation company

the end customer is happy because he was able to compare between 3 companies.

the lead generation company is happy because they have made 90 euros in turnover.

we as companies remain happy as long as we convert enough leads into paying customers.


method 2 that you can use mostly for smaller jobs like window washing, gutter cleaning:

getting leads through marketing:

all the companies (your customers) will receive an email with a short description and location without customer data:

maximum 4 companies can buy this customer data at ( 8 euro ) and then contact...

no obligation to purchase, so that many uninteresting leads are not sold.

things to consider

method 1:

(higher threshold to find customers for this because of the obligations you impose on them, but higher earnings)

customers are also going to be much more critical and quickly complain if the leads are not of good quality.

you will also have more customer turnover

method 2:

you will find and keep customers faster.
get fewer complaints because they decide for themselves what is interesting to buy and what is not.
but also earn less.

 

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