Digital Marketing for Home Services Through Rapid Experimentation

It’s 2022. Digital marketing is a no-brainer. But how quickly is your business learning what works and doesn’t work across your marketing channels? Many home service businesses don’t have giant war chests of advertising dollars to blow through at will, so squeezing the most ROI out of every marketing effort is an absolute must. And what’s the fastest way to get there? Rapid experimentation.

As a core framework to growth marketing, rapid experimentation involves setting up short tests across all your marketing channels in order to glean insights about your target audience as quickly as possible. No matter if it’s your website or social media or paid ads or email or in-person events—you can use testing to figure out what potential customers want to know about your services and how they prefer to discover and learn that information.

Here are 6 areas ways you can use rapid experimentation to improve digital marketing for your home services business.

1. Create a strong online presence

A website is an essential part of any digital strategy for a home services business. It’s the first place potential customers will go to learn more about the services you offer, so it’s important to make a good impression. Your website should be professional, well-designed, and easy to navigate.

Ask yourself—how easily can potential clients

find a complete listing of your services on your website?
figure out next steps when contacting you about a particular service?
request a particular service or a quote for that service?

The only way to answer the three questions above is to have Google Analytics installed on your website. Then you’ll be able to track how many people view your Service Pages and Contact Pages, as well as how many people request service via a contact form, phone call, or appointment scheduler.

Having Analytics in place is also fundamental to running optimization experiments to see which page layouts and content combinations create the easiest paths for a potential customer to contact your business.

Expert growth tip:

Experiment – A/B Split test your main headline CTA on the homepage of your website using
Duration – 30 days
KPI – Clicks on CTA button

2. Optimize your website for search engines (SEO)

Unless you’re running ads or consistently posting on social media—nobody is going to find your website without a solid SEO strategy in place. Your main pages and overall site content need to be optimized for the keywords potential customers will use to find your business. This will help your site rank higher in search results, and thus increase the likelihood people will find your site.

Some examples of rudimentary SEO techniques include:

adding keywords to your title tags and meta descriptions
creating keyword-focused blog posts about home services topics
optimizing your images

Expert growth tip:

Experiment – Write a unique page title, description, and Heading 1 for each of your main pages using keywords that are relevant
Duration – 30-60 days
KPIs – # of organic pageviews of each page

Word of mouth is still king for home services businesses. The only difference is that word of mouth has gone digital, and branding efforts that used to take years to take hold can now go viral in a matter of seconds via social media. While home services work may not seem a typical type of Instagram or Tik Tok content, it’s easier than you think to capture your daily work in a compelling photo or video. And keep in mind that a large portion of your demographic spends hours each day on Facebook.

Ask yourself—

how quickly are you expanding your reach on social throughout your service region?
are you posting content at least once or twice per week to stay top of mind in your network?
do you have a monthly content calendar in place? (Even if it’s just general placeholders for types of content)

Even if your social strategy is light, it’s still important to keep tabs on post engagement, the number of followers your Business Account has, and how much traffic your social accounts are driving to your website. By maintaining a posting frequency, it’ll allow you test different types of content while tracking their efficacy so that you can optimize your ongoing strategy.

Expert growth tip:

Experiment – Post at least 3 times per week for 2 weeks; vary post content with images, videos, blogs, DIY tips, etc
Duration – 14 days
KPIs – # of reactions & comments on each post

4. Connect with customers on popular review sites

A vital extension of your SEO and social media branding strategy resides in online review sites like Google My Business and Yelp. These accounts not only help you rank higher in search engine results—they also expand your brand through customer feedback and general word-of-mouth.

SEO

Provide accurate and up-to-date information regarding your business address and methods of contacting your business (address, hours of operation, phone number, website, appointment scheduling)
Increase the total number of reviews while maintaining their quality

Social Media Branding

Respond to all customer reviews (good and bad) in a timely manner; if the review is subpar, then genuinely offer a means for addressing the customer’s concerns
Make sure your profile looks professional, with a quality logo and cover photo (if applicable), while also updating your account regularly with new photos and content

With review sites, consistency is key—quick and genuine responses to customers while also maintaining the same company branding you exhibit elsewhere digitally.

Expert growth tip:

Experiment – Ensure your business address and information (name, address, phone number) are all identical across your website and social platforms
Duration – 30-60 days
KPIs – Phone call clicks & website clicks from Google My Business profile

5. Advertise your services on Google (Google Ads)

Even if your SEO game is strong—the top organic results still show BELOW Search Ads on Google’s search results page. This is where, if you have the budget, advertising on one of Google’s Ad platforms is a must. Depending on the platform, you can target potential customers based on their location, interests, and even the type of device they’re using.

Local Services Ads

First things first, however. Every home services business should start with Local Services Ads—Google’s recently released platform that allows you to market your business at the VERY TOP of the search results page, EVEN above Search Ads.

Local Services Ads

are specifically geared toward local audiences and overlap with your Google My Business profile information
are easy to operate as they rely on automated targeting—you choose preset services from your industry that are then matched with all the varieties of searches your target audience will make
allow you to certify your business through Google’s documentation process (giving your account a green check that will inspire more clicks from potential customers)

One caveat—your industry has to exist in Google’s preset list in order to be able to advertise.

Search Ads

Even if your industry isn’t yet served by Local Services Ads, you can still attract a lot of business via Search Ads. Here’s where your SEO and ad strategy overlap.

Look at the main keywords you’ve already optimized your site for, then begin by targeting them via your ads
You can also target searches that are tangential to your offered services, but might still lead to a potential customer (i.e., someone looking for generator prices might still need a service that installs them at their home).

Unlike Local Services Ads, Search Ads offer vast customizability. This can both be a blessing and a curse if you don’t have enough time to give your Search campaign the attention it needs. Check our tip below for a solution!

Expert growth tip:

Experiment – Test using Google Ads’ “Smart Campaign” to see if you can drive quality traffic to your website
Duration – 14 days
KPIs – # of website conversions attributed to Google Ads (form submissions/ appointments scheduled/phone calls)

6. Reach out to existing and potential customers through email marketing

Email marketing is a great way to nurture existing customers and inspire potential customers to move further down the sales funnel.

By sending email newsletters, you can keep your existing customers up-to-date on the latest news and offers from your business. This keeps your brand top of mind for when they’re ready to restart the sales cycle.

For potential customers, you may have enticed them to sign up for your newsletter by offering DIY tips or recurring blog content. Not only does this help build your relationships with potential customers toward their converting into a paying customer—it also allows you to track what blog topics or sales offers potential clients engage with the most.

There are a number of areas where you can run experiments with your email marketing efforts:

Subject lines
Content length and layout
CTA language and links
Segmenting your email lists to micro-target messaging
Personalize your subject lines and content via merge fields

Expert growth tip:

Experiment – Split test personalizing the subject line with a merge field vs not personalizing the subject line
Duration – 30 days (send at least 4 emails)
KPIs – Open rates & click rates

Start Experimenting Now

While it may seem like a bag of tricks only used for giant corporate companies, rapid experimentation is just as vital to digital marketing for home services. And it’s not as difficult as you might think. Most importantly, it enables your home services company to get quick wins by learning a lot about your target audience’s digital behaviors within short timeframes.

And don’t hesitate to start incorporating experimentation into your everyday marketing. The next time you think about content on your website or socials or in ads you may be running, think about how you can turn your efforts into a test that will help you learn something about your customers.