I've seen tons of content and videos put out by local service companies.
I've heard these things a hundred times...
"We do door hangers. I have the workers put them up next door when they visit a place"
"We just do word of mouth"
"You can put a wrap on your car and be a free billboard"
"Talk to friends and family"
"Just do a good job and people will find you"
"We send out fliers"
Trash.
You are a lead gen company, for yourself.
Lead gen companies do NOT do that stupid crap.
You need to be doing what lead gen, tech companies, and other "internet savvy" people do.
You can actually be BETTER than them for the simple reason that you are allowed to do things as a real local business that lead gen companies can't do.
There are two ways to acquire customers.
1. Be FOUND when people are already looking. (Catching customers)
2. PITCH to them and convert them when they are not actively looking for your service. (Hunting customers. Not going to call it pitching though, catching and pitching is something entirely different)
That's about it, catching and hunting. They either find you, or you find them.
You must first focus on catching. These are the easiest sales and usually the lowest cost. Then you need to focus on hunting. These people are less interested and it usually costs more, but is typically more scalable if done correctly.
As a local lawn care business, here is where our sales come from, in order.
1. Ranked high, local business page with google. (Google My Business) It looks like this. (catching customers)
This is the "map pack" I believe the nerds call it.
Imagine if you want to find a local service, you are going to google it, 9 times out of 10. Any normal person goes there first.
There's a few ways to 80/20 your results when getting to the top of this.
1. Name your business (actual legal name) with keywords. Google makes a frowny face at this, but if it's your actual legal business name, they can't really complain. If you name yourself "Brand name + HVAC Services + location", you are golden. "AirClean HVAC Services - Tacoma" is an example.
2. Have a website, phone number, filled out business information, a social media account that shares the same name, number, website, etc. It shows google you exist in other places. Submit to directories if you want. Do not ask me how to do this. You can google "how to submit website to directories".
3. Get your buddies to review it. Get like 5+ reviews. Use chatgpt to craft a good review.
4. Wait, let it settle in and soon you should have a top ranked GMB page.
This is free and get's you a ton of results.
It's the BEST because lead gen companies cannot create these accounts, your only competition is other LOCAL companies who suck at marketing and advertising.
We get somewhere like 40% to half of our leads from there.
2. FB ads (hunting customers)
We get tons of leads come spring time from fb ads. Our ad that got us leads for $15-20 was literally just a before and after picture of a crappy lawn with some basic copy. One picture, one description, one title, and a handful of audiences.
When you get enough customers you can upload their data to create a lookalike audience and advertise to people who are similar to your current customers, which is a great idea.
Number one thing to remember....make sure your available audience size is at least over 20,000 or more. I advertise to an audience of a few hundred thousand. Facebook will figure out which people will like your stuff. Watch your impressions and reach and make sure you are not advertising to the same people 20 times since you had a small audience and spent a lot of money.
3. Local Service Ads (catching customers)
Above the free GMB map listings is the local service providers that are google guaranteed. You don't need to wait, you can just pay to be here. So it's highly recommended for newbies. You'll need friends to review your business because you need a few reviews to qualify to be able to make these ads.
You have to go through a verification process and post stuff like licenses, insurance, background check, etc. It's annoying. Washington requires basic lawn care companies to have a full on contractors license for this. I did it, but it will keep most people out and reduce competition.
Calls are super targeted. You are going to get customers. They don't charge much and it's very, very worth it. Again, lead gen companies are not allowed. Absolute gold mine!
3. Adwords (catching customers)
Now you're playing against the lead gen companies, it can get more expensive, but it's still usually worth it. You will need to monitor these and make sure google isn't sending BS searches to your ad and wasting your money. We don't go hard on adwords but this is still valuable and scalable.
4. Sneaky sorta-spamming techniques that work (Optional. Hunting, but with nukes)
*we totally got permission from every person before doing this. absolutely would NEVER send unsolicited voicemails*
I'm a motivated son of a bitch, so I try things that others don't think of.
I got a list of every carrier code that's in our area code. There's like 100.
So for the 253 number, there's 100 carrier codes.
For every area+carrier code, there's 10,000 number combinations. 0000-9999
I used excel to create a list of 10,000 numbers for every area code + carrier code combo.
I went to slybroadcast which lets you send out voicemails to people. They think they got a call and they have a voicemail sitting there for them. It's not a robocall.
I uploaded thousands of numbers and sent out the following message.
"Hey it's Johnathan and I got your number from your neighbor that signed up with us for lawn care. I offered them and you both 15% off if you signed up as well since it would save us the drive time. So I figured I'd call and see if you were interested, if not no worries, just ignore the message. But anyways if you're interested call me back at xxx-xxx-xxxx". Missed calls back got sent an auto reply "hi, did you need a lawn care quote -John"
The number to call back was a forwarding number that sent to our office and the customer service rep was trained for those calls. Her job is to pretend we accidently called the wrong number and apologize by being off by one digit, then asking if they needed a quote.
The cost? $0.04 a message! Only paid for successfully delivered messages. (number in use + voicemail not full + successfully delivered)
Now...we DO get customers from referrals, craigslist posts, and we even send out mailers, but the above are the best returns.
Then, the most important thing to do is NOT WASTE the leads. You need a system for collecting them in a crm automatically, and getting their quote to them as quickly as possible. Do not let them fall through the cracks.
But as you can see, you need to think different if you want different results. It doesn't matter what you do, you are almost always a tech company as well, not a boomer who takes 30 years to build up their crappy business. F*ck that! Do it pro from the get go.
I've heard these things a hundred times...
"We do door hangers. I have the workers put them up next door when they visit a place"
"We just do word of mouth"
"You can put a wrap on your car and be a free billboard"
"Talk to friends and family"
"Just do a good job and people will find you"
"We send out fliers"
Trash.
You are a lead gen company, for yourself.
Lead gen companies do NOT do that stupid crap.
You need to be doing what lead gen, tech companies, and other "internet savvy" people do.
You can actually be BETTER than them for the simple reason that you are allowed to do things as a real local business that lead gen companies can't do.
There are two ways to acquire customers.
1. Be FOUND when people are already looking. (Catching customers)
2. PITCH to them and convert them when they are not actively looking for your service. (Hunting customers. Not going to call it pitching though, catching and pitching is something entirely different)
That's about it, catching and hunting. They either find you, or you find them.
You must first focus on catching. These are the easiest sales and usually the lowest cost. Then you need to focus on hunting. These people are less interested and it usually costs more, but is typically more scalable if done correctly.
As a local lawn care business, here is where our sales come from, in order.
1. Ranked high, local business page with google. (Google My Business) It looks like this. (catching customers)
This is the "map pack" I believe the nerds call it.
Imagine if you want to find a local service, you are going to google it, 9 times out of 10. Any normal person goes there first.
There's a few ways to 80/20 your results when getting to the top of this.
1. Name your business (actual legal name) with keywords. Google makes a frowny face at this, but if it's your actual legal business name, they can't really complain. If you name yourself "Brand name + HVAC Services + location", you are golden. "AirClean HVAC Services - Tacoma" is an example.
2. Have a website, phone number, filled out business information, a social media account that shares the same name, number, website, etc. It shows google you exist in other places. Submit to directories if you want. Do not ask me how to do this. You can google "how to submit website to directories".
3. Get your buddies to review it. Get like 5+ reviews. Use chatgpt to craft a good review.
4. Wait, let it settle in and soon you should have a top ranked GMB page.
This is free and get's you a ton of results.
It's the BEST because lead gen companies cannot create these accounts, your only competition is other LOCAL companies who suck at marketing and advertising.
We get somewhere like 40% to half of our leads from there.
2. FB ads (hunting customers)
We get tons of leads come spring time from fb ads. Our ad that got us leads for $15-20 was literally just a before and after picture of a crappy lawn with some basic copy. One picture, one description, one title, and a handful of audiences.
When you get enough customers you can upload their data to create a lookalike audience and advertise to people who are similar to your current customers, which is a great idea.
Number one thing to remember....make sure your available audience size is at least over 20,000 or more. I advertise to an audience of a few hundred thousand. Facebook will figure out which people will like your stuff. Watch your impressions and reach and make sure you are not advertising to the same people 20 times since you had a small audience and spent a lot of money.
3. Local Service Ads (catching customers)
Above the free GMB map listings is the local service providers that are google guaranteed. You don't need to wait, you can just pay to be here. So it's highly recommended for newbies. You'll need friends to review your business because you need a few reviews to qualify to be able to make these ads.
You have to go through a verification process and post stuff like licenses, insurance, background check, etc. It's annoying. Washington requires basic lawn care companies to have a full on contractors license for this. I did it, but it will keep most people out and reduce competition.
Calls are super targeted. You are going to get customers. They don't charge much and it's very, very worth it. Again, lead gen companies are not allowed. Absolute gold mine!
3. Adwords (catching customers)
Now you're playing against the lead gen companies, it can get more expensive, but it's still usually worth it. You will need to monitor these and make sure google isn't sending BS searches to your ad and wasting your money. We don't go hard on adwords but this is still valuable and scalable.
4. Sneaky sorta-spamming techniques that work (Optional. Hunting, but with nukes)
*we totally got permission from every person before doing this. absolutely would NEVER send unsolicited voicemails*
I'm a motivated son of a bitch, so I try things that others don't think of.
I got a list of every carrier code that's in our area code. There's like 100.
So for the 253 number, there's 100 carrier codes.
For every area+carrier code, there's 10,000 number combinations. 0000-9999
I used excel to create a list of 10,000 numbers for every area code + carrier code combo.
I went to slybroadcast which lets you send out voicemails to people. They think they got a call and they have a voicemail sitting there for them. It's not a robocall.
I uploaded thousands of numbers and sent out the following message.
"Hey it's Johnathan and I got your number from your neighbor that signed up with us for lawn care. I offered them and you both 15% off if you signed up as well since it would save us the drive time. So I figured I'd call and see if you were interested, if not no worries, just ignore the message. But anyways if you're interested call me back at xxx-xxx-xxxx". Missed calls back got sent an auto reply "hi, did you need a lawn care quote -John"
The number to call back was a forwarding number that sent to our office and the customer service rep was trained for those calls. Her job is to pretend we accidently called the wrong number and apologize by being off by one digit, then asking if they needed a quote.
The cost? $0.04 a message! Only paid for successfully delivered messages. (number in use + voicemail not full + successfully delivered)
Now...we DO get customers from referrals, craigslist posts, and we even send out mailers, but the above are the best returns.
Then, the most important thing to do is NOT WASTE the leads. You need a system for collecting them in a crm automatically, and getting their quote to them as quickly as possible. Do not let them fall through the cracks.
But as you can see, you need to think different if you want different results. It doesn't matter what you do, you are almost always a tech company as well, not a boomer who takes 30 years to build up their crappy business. F*ck that! Do it pro from the get go.
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