Google Local Service Ads: The “New Kid” On The Appliance Repair Lead Generation Block

 

WHAT’S INSIDE?

 

What Is Google Local Service Ads And How It Works?

 

What Cities Are Google Local Service Ads Available In?

 

Benefits to Google’s Local Service Ads

 

The Google Guarantee – Gain Trust For Your Appliance Repair Company

 

Why You Need To Show Off Your Positive Ratings & Reviews?

 

Paid Search Ads – Expand Your Reach With LSA

 

Why Your Appliance Repair Company Needs To Be Included In Voice Searches?

 

No Keywords or Ads To Manage – Stop The Madness!

 

How To Get Started With Google’s Local Service Ads?

 

How To Manage Your Appliance Repair Leads?

 

How Is Ad Rank Calculated For Local Service Ads?

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Conclusion

 

Let’s Get Started – Google Local Service Ads And How It Works?

 

Google is the #1 search engine and for a few years now, they have put priority on delivering local results for their end users.  End user or consumer experience is very important to them, that is why when they realized that more consumers are using their smart phones or mobile devices to search online, they developed voice search and in 2018 they moved from a desktop index to a mobile first index.

 

Google pays close attention to consumer wants and needs, after all, consumers are responsible for turning them into a Multi-Billion Dollar Empire! 

 

They also understand that when a consumer searches online for an appliance repair company, there are some concerns that consumers have and at the top of the consumers list is, when they hire an appliance repair technician to fix their appliances, who exactly are they letting into their home?

 

You can do a search on YouTube for “appliance repair scams” and you will find a few videos, from news channels across the U.S., where consumers were taken advantage of by an appliance repairman.

 

To help solve this problem, Google has now introduced Google Local Service Ads (LSA) for the appliance repair industry. Now to be fair I don’t think Google did this only for the consumers, I think they also saw how much revenue lead generation companies like HomeAdvisor (another Billion Dollar company) is making and saw it as an opportunity to compete in the lead generation space.

 

That doesn’t mean their Local Service Ads program works like HomeAdvisors’, but they do have a qualification process that is similar to HomeAdvisor where they do require licenses, insurance and a background check.

 

When a consumer now searches in a city where LSA is available, they will see a few trusted professionals and these LSA ads show up above the regular Google Ads section and these LSA ads include reviews, ratings, hours and contact number.

 

 

Google wants to make sure they are connecting consumers to the right appliance service advertiser, so LSA ads go one step further than traditional Google Ads. So when the consumer clicks on the appliance repair company listing, they are then prompted to confirm the type of appliance repair job that they are looking for and their location. If your appliance repair company does service the appliance that the consumer needs fixed and your company services the location of the consumer, then you will be matched to the consumers and from there the consumer can check out your reviews, ratings and qualifications before calling your business.

 

If your business is NOT a good fit for a particular appliance service job or if it’s outside your service area, then Google will not charge you for that appliance repair job lead and instead they will connect the consumer with a better option by showing them more Local Service Ads to better match their search criteria.

 

LSA will display on mobile, tablet and desktop searches, but the reach will be greater than with regular Google Ads. LSA is now part of Google Assistant’s responses for relevant voice searches, in which the Google Assistant will ask the consumer their location and what appliance repair service they are looking for, to better match them to the right appliance repair company.

 

 

When we do our appliance repair keyword research, it’s not uncommon for us to find new keywords that include “ok google” if you have the Google Home device, an android smart phone or tablet then you are probably already familiar with seeing “ok google”, but just in case you don’t have any of those or have just never heard of “ok google,” that phrase is used to activate the Google Assistant feature.  In our keyword research we will see things like “ok google find me an appliance repair company near me.”

 

What Cities Are Google Local Service Ads Available In?

 

As of December 2018, Google Local Service ads are available for appliance repair companies in the following markets:

 

 

•        Atlanta

•        Dallas

•        Houston

•        Los Angeles

•        Minneapolis-St. Paul

•        Orlando

•        Philadelphia

•        Phoenix

•        San Diego

•        Tampa

•        Washington, DC

 

Benefits to Google’s Local Service Ads

 

Probably the most important one for appliance repair companies is that they Pay per Lead – not Click!

If you currently use or have used Google Ads in the past, then I don’t have to tell you what a pain it is, for clicks when the consumer doesn’t call or if it’s a bad lead like a warranty or parts call, when you don’t do warranty work or sell parts.

 

LSA will help appliance service business owners to connect with the right appliance repair service leads, which will help with the problem of getting low quality appliance repair leads that typically happen with regular Google Ads, as consumers can sometimes use very broad search terms, such as “appliance repair” when they are really just looking to buy a specific appliance part. 

 

 

Or another example would be when consumer calls from their mobile phone and they work and live in 2 different cities, Google will show them an Ad that is based on their mobile phone GPS location, which could be location you service but because they live in a complete different city which is where they want the appliance fixed, then it could be too far outside your service area.

 

With LSA, you will only pay for valid leads and depending on your service area and job type, you will pay around $26 per appliance repair job lead.  If you do get a lead that you think is not valid such as one of your competitors calling you, poor match, such as being outside your service area or a telemarketing lead, you can start a dispute to get a credit.

 

The Google Guaranteed – Gain Trust For Your Appliance Repair Company

 

There is no question that consumers trust Google, this is exactly why Search Engine Optimization and Google Ads has been the best ways for appliance repair businesses to get new appliance job leads for the past few years. If your appliance service company shows up on the first page of Google, then in a consumers mind, they assume you must be a good company. 

 

Google has leveraged this consumer trust with LSA and now consumers will not only see your appliance service business on the first page, but they will see you at the very top and the Ad will have a green check mark along with “Google Guaranteed.”

 

 

Not only will the Google Guaranteed help you to grab the attention of more consumers in an already busy Search Engine Results Page, but your appliance repair company will get an additional benefit of having a very powerful endorsement from Google. This endorsement is much more than just Google backing your company by reputation, but also the Google Guaranteed is in place to protect customers who may have not been happy with the completed job, with a lifetime cap coverage of $2000.

 

Show Off Your Positive Ratings & Reviews

 

For regular Google Ads, you can no longer add review extensions, but with LSA you can include existing customer reviews to help you gain more trust from potential prospects and this is one way to ensure that your past customer reviews show up in the Google Search Engine Results Page.

 

Paid Search Ads – Expand Your Reach With LSA

 

LSA show up at the very top of the search, above the Paid Ads section, Map results and the organic listings. LSA wasn’t designed to replace any of these sections, this is because in addition to creating another revenue stream for Google, they know that some consumers will want to still take a look at your website, before making a final decision on whether you are the best appliance repair business in town.  However, we know that being at the top of Google is prime online real estate and with LSA being in this prime location and with the help of good customer reviews, these factors will help to convert more prospects into customers once they get a chance to check out your appliance repair website.

 

Why Your Appliance Repair Company Needs To Be Included In Voice Searches?

 

Isn’t it a lot easier to just talk into your phone to send a text message, instead of typing it in? 

I know I don’t have to tell appliance repair technicians this, as they are probably all doing it already, one hand working on the appliance, the other one using their mobile phone, it’s how appliance service technicians get things done and efficiently. Google Assistant powers over 400 million devices, as Google has caught on to the trend that customers prefer to simply talk into their phone than to open a browser and type a search query into the search engines.  Voice search is now responsible for about 20% of online searches and with LSA, you can guarantee that your appliance repair company will be included in Voice Searches for local appliance repair companies.

 

No Keywords or Ads To Manage – Stop The Madness!

 

Ok so you can probably tell I am a big fan of Shark Tank, which is where I got that “Stop The Madness” line, thanks to Kevin “Mr. Wonderful” O’Leary.

 

One of the challenges with traditional Google Ads, is that it requires a lot of maintenance and testing different ads to find the best converting ones and finding new keyword ideas, seem to be an ever-ending task. And if you weren’t managing your ads and keywords then it may have been one of the reasons you didn’t see success with Google Ads in the past. 

 

I have some good news for you!

 

With LSA there are no ads or keywords to manage, instead LSA will automatically get trigged when a consumer types in any appliance repair related keyword, and there are thousands of appliance repair related search terms, so no matter if its as broad as “Appliance Repair” or as narrow as “my fridge is not cooling,” Google will use the information in your business profile to determine if they should show your LSA ads.

 

How To Get Started With Google’s Local Service Ads?

 

Find Out If You Are Eligible

 

LSA is not currently available in all cities, at least as of January 2019, so depending on when you are reading this it may or may not be available in your city, however, you can find out by going here:

 

https://adwords.google.com/localservices/signup/eligibility

 

If after filling out the information at that link and you find out that LSA has not rolled out to your city yet, don’t worry, it will be soon, as Google is expanding LSA into new cities at a very fast pace, and you have the option to sign up so you can get notified as soon as it becomes available in your city.

 

If on the other hand you are eligible, then you will be guided through the steps to get your account set up so you can start and manage your Local Service Ads. Currently LSA is managed in a completely separate account from what you may be using for Google Ads Express or traditional Google Ads (AdWords), so you will need to set up a new account to give LSA a try.

 

Set Up Your Business Profile

It’s important that you set up your business profile accurately and completely, because your profile is going to determine the types of appliance repair jobs that your appliance company gets matched to. So let’s say you don’t want microwave repair jobs from LSA, then don’t list it in your profile, just because you can fix microwaves doesn’t mean you have to list it, since you are paying for appliance repair leads from LSA, then you may want to just focus on the jobs where you have more profit margins like high end appliance repair or refrigerator repairs. The same would apply to your service area, if it includes low income areas, then you may want to leave those out and just add the mid to higher income areas that are within your service area.

 

Here are a few things you can edit within your business profile:

·        Business hours

·        Weekly budget

·        Job types

·        Service areas

 

There is also an option for you to add things that will highlight your profile, don’t skip this step as it’s an important one, these highlights will improve the conversion rate of your LSA ads, as they show on both your business detail page as well as along side your LSA.

 

Here are some ideas of things you will want to highlight in your Appliance Repair Local Service Ads:

·        Locally Owned and Operated

·        Military Discounts

·        24 Hour Service

·        Same Day Service

 

These highlights are optional, however, it’s also important because it will help consumers to choose your appliance repair business over your competition. 

 

Include Your License & Insurance Information

 

You will need to prove that you are insured and licensed to be able to run LSA and to earn your Google Guarantee badge. So, make sure your documents are up to date before submitting your professional licenses and your general liability insurance paperwork.

 

 

Submit Your Background Check

 

Before Google will start to send appliance repair technicians into consumers’ homes, they are going to want to make sure the consumers are safe and that they can rely on LSA appliance repair advertisers who are covered by the Google Guarantee.This is why appliance repair companies and their technicians will be required to pass a background check.

 

Pinkerton is the company that Google has partnered with to do this and there is no cost to complete the background checks.

 

How To Manage Your Appliance Repair Leads?

 

Once you set up your appliance repair business profile and it’s complete, you will be able to start running your Local Service Ads to get new appliance service leads in your local service area. You can manage and view your new appliance repair jobs leads here:

 

google.com/HomeServices/inbox

 

Once you are in your dashboard, look for the “Leads” tab in the drop-down menu in the upper right corner of your screen. There is also an LSA app for IOS and Android phones, so you can manage your inbound leads on your mobile device.

 

 

It’s important to note that all leads are not booked jobs, and that is why you want to make sure that all inbound leads get followed up on and in a timely manner. You can click on an individual lead within your dashboard to view all the details for that lead, such as location, job type and listen to the call recording.

 

After reviewing the details of the leads, you will see 3 different options for you to use, to follow up on these hot prospects:

·        Call the lead on the phone number they provided.

·        Reply to the lead by text or email.

·        Decline the lead. When you decline a job, the customer will be notified of this and it will be removed from your dashboard, you also have the option to recover declined jobs if you declined it in error.

 

You also have the option to label your leads as booked, to help better keep track of your return on investment and you can use this feature to also do the following:

·        Collect customer reviews

·        Send confirmation emails

·        Schedule jobs

 

 

Budget Management

 

You will have the ability to adjust your LSA budget from within your business profile. You have full control of your budget and how much you want to spend, so you can lower or raise your average weekly budget.  However, when it comes to budget, LSA and regular Google Ads have some thing in common and that is even though you set your weekly budget at a specific amount, Google can spend more or less than that amount on a weekly basis, but it won’t exceed your total monthly budget.

 

Keep in mind that since you are paying per lead with LSA and not per click, when you decrease or increase your budget, you will see a direct impact on the amount or appliance service job leads that you receive.

 

When you set up your account, you will see an option to choose the amount of leads you want to receive, if you are wondering what a good amount of leads to start out with would be, I would recommend 20 leads per week and that will give you a good indication of how things work and what type of ROI you can expect to see with LSA.

 

 

And since your LSA budget is separate from your AdWords budget, then if you are running ads on both platforms, then you will want to specify a budget for both since you will now have combined costs of both platforms.

 

How Is Ad Rank Calculated For Local Service Ads?

 

There was already limited space on the search engine results page even before the introduction of LSA and currently the set up is that 3 local service ads will show up on a desktop computer, 2 on a mobile device and 1 for Google Assistant. And just like with regular AdWords if you want your ads to show up first, you will want to ensure that your ad has an ad rank that is high.

 

You will NOT have to worry about these ranking factors however, with LSA:

·        Landing page

·        Ad relevance

·        Click through rates

 

Instead, this is how the Ad Rank for your Local Service Ads are calculated:

 

·        How close your appliance repair business to the consumers location

·        The number of reviews you have and the total review score.

·        How responsive you are to inbound lead requests and inquires

·        Hours of operation

·        Complaints – whether you receive complaints, the seriousness of the complaint and if you get repeated complaints.

 

Don’t Forget Reviews

 

I have been saying for years now, how important reviews are becoming for appliance service companies and why it should part of your every day business plan. That’s why it is no surprise to me, that reviews are an important ranking factor for LSA, so make sure you ask all satisfied customers to leave you a review to help with improving your LSA rankings, but to also improve the overall online reputation of your company. The good news is that Google has make it very easy to use the LSA platform to contact customers that scheduled their appointment through the LSA platform to ask them for their review.

 

 

Once you are logged into your LSA dashboard, go to the “Reviews” tab, where you will see a list of jobs you completed and from there you can directly ask the customer for a review. If you want to increase the likelihood of customers that leave reviews, then try personalizing the message to them.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

 

What Is A Valid Lead With LSA?

 

Valid leads can occur when local consumers find your Appliance Repair Local Services ad on Google and one of the following occurs:

 

• You receive an email or text message from the lead.

 

• You receive a voicemail message from the lead.

 

• You speak to the lead on the phone.

 

• When there is a missed call (even if the lead doesn’t leave a voicemail), and if you respond to the missed call or voicemail with a call, email or a text message, where you either leave a voicemail or speak directly with the customer.

 

If you don’t get charged for the lead, you’ll see the following message in your dashboard:

 

 

 

What types of leads are considered INVALID?

 

If you were charged for a bad lead, you can dispute the charge in your account.

 

Here is a list “bad leads” that are eligible for a credit:

 

•  Appliance repair job requested is not listed on your company profile.

 

•  Lead’s location is outside your service area.

 

•  Not a consumer (for example: solicitations, telemarketing or wrong number).

 

•  Not a human (automated telemarketing calls).

 

• If you got billed for the same lead within a 15 day period.

 

•  You received a lead with invalid contact information, so you had no way of following up.

 

 

If you got charged for a lead that you think is bad, but it doesn’t fall into the categories listed above, then you can always contact LSA support and explain the situation at 866-2-GOOGLE.

 

Although you have up to 60 days to dispute a lead, you also have the option to immediately dispute the charges within your dashboard. Before Google issues a credit, they will have a support agent to listen to the call recordings to verify that one of the above and approved reasons apply.

 

Examples of valid appliance repair leads that you shouldn’t expect to get a credit for:

 

•  Lead came in after your normal business hours.

 

• Lead wanted advice over the phone to troubleshoot their appliance.

 

•  Lead called back to cancel after scheduling the service call.

 

•  Lead was only researching prices for service call or to fix the appliance.

 

•  Lead didn’t return your message or call.

 

•  You have refrigerator repair service listed on your profile, but you don’t service all types or brands of refrigerators.

 

Do both owners and appliance service technicians have to do a background and drug test?

 

 

No, drug tests are not part of the on boarding process but a background check is.

 

 

How are the top 3 appliance repair advertisers chosen?

 

Proximity to the consumer who is searching for appliance repair or related search is the biggest factor and the 2nd biggest is reviews. However, it is important to note, that if you are not logged into your dashboard and following up with leads, in what Google would consider to be within a timely manner, your ads will not show as often in the top 3. Also, if you are turning down a lot of leads, Google will start to assume that you can’t handle the current volume of leads and display your ad less.

 

Do all technicians have to do the background check?

 

If you are running appliance repair ads and have 5 techs, all 5 techs will need to be verified with a background check.

 

Why isn’t the Google Guaranteed badge not showing on my Ad?

 

Once you go through the verification process (i.e. all background checks for all techs, professional license & general liability insurance submitted and approved), the Google Guaranteed badge should show whenever your ads are running. However, if you turn off your ads then it will not show while the ads are off. Yes, that means Google still shows your ad even when you turn them off, but you won’t be charged for any customer requests while the Google Guarantee badge is not showing.

 

If LSA is not available in some zip codes within my service area, can I still sign up for the zip codes that LSA is available in?

Yes.

 

 

 

Conclusion:

 

Like all sources of advertising, whether online or offline, it’s worth testing to see if it will work for your appliance repair company and since Local Service Ads already have the tracking features in place, you will be able to decide if it’s right for you. If you have tried Google AdWords in the past and it didn’t work for you, it doesn’t mean LSA is also not a good fit and if you compare both LSA and Google AdWords simply because they are Google products, you are not comparing apples to apples.

 

This also doesn’t mean you should replace AdWords with LSA. If you are having success with AdWords, I would recommend you figure out how many clicks it’s taking you to get a phone call or a good lead, once you know that number, you can then try LSA and see how they compare. For some appliance repair companies, they will find LSA provides a better ROI, while some may see that AdWords will work out better and others will like both.

 

We highly recommend that if you want a consistent flow of incoming leads to your appliance repair business, then you have to use multiple sources of advertising or lead generation, like shown in the image below.

 

We just wanted to review some of details about Google’s Local Service Ads, as it may be one of the tools you want to include in your appliance repair marketing toolbox.

 

 

 

 

If you would like to set up a FREE online marketing strategy session to review your current marketing or if you would like to learn more about our exclusive appliance repair lead generation program that can help to take your business to the next level, give us a call at 866-561-5627 or visit the link below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can listen to the audio version or podcast below:

The post Google Local Service Ads: The “New Kid” On The Appliance Repair Lead Generation Block appeared first on Appliance Repair Leads.

2019 Appliance Repair Online Marketing Plan

Today we are going to discuss some of the strategies and sources of leads that you will want to focus on in 2019 to keep you and your appliance repair technicians busy.

 

Topics covered in today’s article include:

• Your goals for 2019 – primarily how many appliance repair leads do you want to get to hit your revenue targets at the end of the year? The beginning of the year is a great time to figure this out, so you can develop some type of roadmap to get you from where you are to where you want to be.

 

• 3 fundamentals of appliance repair marketing success – message, market and media that appliance repair companies should be using.

 

• How to optimize your website for conversion in 2019 and beyond – you spent a lot of money or time on your appliance repair website, but if it’s not set up for conversion then you could be losing customers and not even know it.

 

• The “BIG” picture of all the online marketing channels – you should be tapping into these channels if you want to maximize your appliance repair lead flow online.

 

• The latest appliance repair marketing trends – we will discuss which trends you should focus on in 2019.

 

• How to develop a custom action plan – based on where you are right now and what you need to do to take your appliance service business to the next level.

Watch the webinar replay below:

 

 

 

Download 2019 Online Marketing Workbook Here

 

What are your goals for 2019?

How much money do you want to make by the end of the year?

What is your revenue target? How much is that on a monthly basis?

 

To answer these questions, you decide how much you want to make by the end of the year, then break that down on a monthly basis. From there we need to figure out the amount of appliance repair leads that you are going to need per month to reach that target.

 

Now you will need to figure out what your average completed appliance repair job is worth. This number will be specific to your appliance service company, however, most appliance repair business owners that I ask this question, usually say somewhere between $150 and $250.

 

The next thing you want to figure out is what the lifetime value of your customers is. And what I mean by that is, appliance repair customers should not just be a one-time customer? Instead each customer should become a repeat customer, because they were so happy with the appliance repair service you provided, that not only will they call you again when another one of their appliances break down, but they will also be more than happy to refer your appliance repair business to all their friends and family.

Based on the number of appliances, friends and family the average person has, the lifetime value of an appliance repair company should be somewhere around $1000.

 

Now, you may be saying to yourself, most of the customers that call me to fix their appliances are one off customers and they never call back in the future…

 

So how can an appliance repair business improve the lifetime value of their customers and get more repeat business?

 

Staying top of mind is key!

 

If you service their appliance in January, and they have a friend that needs an appliance fixed in August of this year, they may or may not remember you, right?

 

Regularly following up with the customers and staying in touch with them, is a great way to remind them that you are the best choice for appliance repairs. 

 

But what can you do to stay in front of your customers?

 

Appliance magnets are one great thing that you can start giving out to your new and existing customers. For existing customers I would recommend mailing them one, and for new customers going forward you can put the magnet on their refrigerator or any of their appliances and that way your appliance repair business will continuously be in front of them.

Calendars are another great thing that consumers love to get at the end or beginning of the year, that they can put up on the wall or on the fridge.

 

A lot of real estate agents do this strategy with making use of calendars and magnets. It’s a great offline marketing strategy to adopt into your appliance service business and it’s a low investment that is well worth it.

 

These are just 2 examples of things you can implement this year to start to improve your life time customer value and repeat business.

 

How many technicians will you need to hit your goal?

 

If you are a one-man operation, it’s not unusual for a company that size, to earn $100,000 in revenue per year. Now, that’s assuming a one-man operation can get the appliance repair leads that he needs, which is typically the challenge. But with doing 4 to 5 jobs a day, a one-man shop can easily make $100,000 a year.

 

Let’s assume you are not a one man show and your goal is higher, maybe you want to earn $300,000, $500,000 or more this year, then you’re going to need some help, if you don’t already have additional appliance service techs in place.

 

Let’s take a look at an actual example

 

I’m going to assume that you want to hit $100,000 by the end of the year. 

Breaking that down on a monthly basis, that’s about $8,300 per month.

 

The average appliance repair job value that I’m going to use for this example is $150.

 

How many calls will that require to hit $8,300 per month?

It’s 56 phone calls per month.

How did I come up with the amount of calls needed?

I divided the monthly revenue target of $8,300 by the average transaction value of $150.

 

And then how many technicians are you going to need?

 

That depends on a lot of factors, so I am not going to include that here, but you can easily figure that part out.

 

How many appliance repair leads will you need?

 

We all know that not every consumer that calls are going to turn into a scheduled appliance service job, so now we need to estimate how many calls or leads do we need to get, to end up with enough scheduled jobs to stay on track.

 

In the example above, we need to get 56 scheduled per month, and we know in order to get 56 completed jobs we are going to need more than 56 leads per month. So, to figure this out, we now need to figure out what is the average conversion rate from phone call to booked job.

Some of you reading this, may already have an idea what your phone conversion rate is, maybe 50%?

Ideally,the phone conversion rate that you should be aiming for is 80% to 90%. And there’s several variables that will affect this, such as your availability or how proficient is the person answering the phone.

 

From the statistics that we acquire from our pay per call appliance repair lead generation program, some of the appliance repair companies we work with start out with a 50% phone conversion rate, but with the help of call tracking platform and providing them with feedback on how to improve their conversion rate, we can normally get them up to a 80-90% conversion rate in just a few weeks.

 

Once you figure out your phone conversion rate, you will now want to multiply that number by the call target. And I’m going with an average conversion rate here of 55%, so that’s 55% of all the calls or leads that come in will actually turn into a booked job.

 

I’m going to take the 56 calls multiplied by 100% and divided by our conversion rate of 55%, equals 101.81, but that’s going to tell me that I need at least 102 appliance repair leads per month to hit that target.

So, 102 phone calls or leads per month are all what we’re going to need to get 56 book jobs per month. All right, so hopefully you have those calculations down, if not take a few minutes now to figure out these numbers before continuing.

 

What are your goals for 2019?

 

 

Let’s take a step back now and we want to take a look at some of the appliance repair marketing fundamentals:

• Message – This is what you are communicating to consumers about your appliance repair company in your advertising.

 

• Market – This is the consumers in your local service area that are in need of appliance repairs.

 

• Media – Is the sources of advertising that you use to get your message out to your target market.

 

 

Who is your ideal customer?

 

If you were to take a look at all the customers that you fixed their appliances in 2018 and if you were to find all the similarities amongst all of them, you would start to notice that there are certain commonalities that stand out.

 

You may or may not be aware of it, but there are certain characteristics that stand out from your existing customers. For some appliance repair companies, they may get more female than male or vice versa. For others they may get more single parents versus married couples or vice versa.

 

There are certain things that will stand out about your existing customers. If you really look into, and if you can identify these common things among your customers, you can then create a better advertising message to better communicate with them and to better attract more customers just like them.  This is the exercise that will help you to identify who your ideal customer is.

 

Here are a few things that will help you to better understand and identify your ideal customer:

 

What are their demographics:

• Homeowners
• Age range
• Male or female
• Married, Divorced, Single, etc.
• Do they have Kids
• Head of household
• Average income

 

Some examples of Pains and Frustrations when hiring an appliance repair company:

 

• Can’t get the appliance repair company on the phone or to return that phone call.

 

• Need to get their appliance fixed today, not tomorrow, not next week.

 

• They worry that the longer the appliance takes to get fixed the worst the problem will get, and the repairs may get more expensive.

 

• They are afraid of being ripped off or overcharged.

 

• Having to wait around all day for the tech, who never showed up or even called to say he couldn’t make it anymore.

 

• The repair cost is higher than they can afford.

 

Being aware of the concerns of consumers is huge! 

 

Just understanding these concerns will help you to communicate and craft a better advertising message.

 

The reason you want to figure out the fears, frustrations and demographics for the consumer is if you can get into the consumers head and understand how they think, then you can better sell them on your appliance repair services.

 

How to craft your advertising message

 

What is your existing advertising message?

 

Why should a consumer choose your appliance repair company over your competition?

 

Can you list 3 reasons why they should choose your company?

 

You don’t want to be a commodity type of business. And what I mean by that is if you were to go into a supermarket and you wanted to buy milk, how do you choose which bottle of milk to buy?

 

For most consumers, we pretty much just go and grab a gallon of milk. Not a whole lot of research or planning goes into buying a gallon of milk. Maybe you look at the expiry date, right? But you don’t go too much further than that. And let’s assume all of the milk bottles have the same expiration date, then how do you choose? We would just pick the closest one in reach.

 

Milk is a great example of a commodity product and as an appliance repair business you don’t want to be commoditized by consumers, but unfortunately most appliance repair companies are a commodity, because all they do is copy what their competition is doing, so everything looks the same to consumers. Their website looks the same, advertising message looks the same, etc.

 

There needs to be something that stands out about your appliance repair company for consumers to choose your business, instead of your competitors.

 

Here is some example of marketing messages, that work really well for the appliance service industry:

 

• Same day service – we’re going into a marketplace now where consumers want ONLY same day service.

 

• Emergency or 24 hour service

 

• On time guarantee – this is huge! We talked about one of the frustrations for consumers, having to sit around all day and to take time off work with an on-time service guarantee. You will not only address this concern, but you will definitely stand out from your competition.

 

• Upfront pricing

 

• Guarantees – Consumers want to know that you’re going to stand behind your work and if the problem wasn’t fixed the first time, you will send the technician to fix it, without any additional charges.

 

• Experienced Technicians – they want an appliance service technician that knows what he is doing and has fixed similar appliance repair problems before.

 

• Coupons – Everybody loves to save money. Some business owners think that coupons cost them money, because they make less on the job, but with the right coupon strategy, coupons can actually do the opposite and make your appliance service business more money!

 

 

Now let’s take a look at Media

 

Media is how you are going to get your marketing message out to consumers in your local market about your appliance service company.

 

We are going to start with discussing your website, since a lot of your advertising sources will send the consumer back to your appliance repair website, to find out more information about your company.

 

Your website is a hub.

 

This is why your appliance service website needs to have important conversion elements.

 

Is your appliance repair website set up to convert consumers into callers?

 

One of the best conversion elements you could have on your website is your phone number in the upper right-hand corner of your website, because that’s what consumers are looking for. There are many studies on this, that found out that when consumers look at website pages, their eyes gravitate to the upper right corner.

 

< ultimate appliance repair website conversion machine>

 

Check out the image below for other conversion elements that can boost your website conversion rate and turn more of the consumers that visit your website into callers and leads.

 

Why You Need A Mobile Friendly Website?

 

Mobile searches have now exceeded desktop searches online in 2018 and it’s just going to continue this year. More and more people are just using their phones for everything nowadays, instead of their laptop or desktop computers.

 

Google changed their search engine index in 2018 from a desktop index to a mobile index. What that means is they used to focus more on desktop computers, since that’s what most people used until recent years, and they optimized their search engine based on desktop computers.

 

In 2018 they made the shift because they saw how mobile searches are becoming more popular and now their index on their search engine is optimized for Mobile.

 

Without a mobile friendly website, you’re losing customers!

 

If you started to see less customers in 2018 from your appliance repair marketing and you weren’t sure why, it could be because your website is not mobile friendly.

 

If you are not sure whether or not your appliance repair website is mobile friendly, there are 2 ways that you can check.

 

You can manually do it by going to your website on your phone and it’s a good idea to look at your website on both an iPhone as well as on an android phone. The different phone operating systems can cause it to display differently. Make sure that your website is easy to use on both types of phones.

 

The 2^nd option is to see what Google itself thinks about your website and you can do a free Google mobile friendly test. Once you are at the mobile test website, all you have to do is enter your website address. In a few seconds, they’ll tell you whether or not your website is mobile friendly and any suggestion they have that could improve your website. Even if you know that your website is mobile friendly, it’s still a good idea to see what Google thinks. It’s free and only takes a few seconds.

 

 

Are you tracking your advertising?

 

How do you know if your advertising is working or not?

One of the best ways to do this is to put a tracking in place. Call tracking is a great and inexpensive way to figure out if your advertising sources are working or just eating up your adverting budget.

 

If you have several different sources of advertising that are bringing you leads, it’s important to know where your leads are coming from, which source of leads are actually turning into booked jobs, as some advertising sources you could just be paying for clicks or impressions which never result into appliance repair leads.

 

 Call tracking can help you to figure out these:

 

• Average cost per lead
• Return on investment
• If you are even getting calls from a particular source

 

Setting up simple dashboards to measure your key performance indicators is a great way to figure out if you’re on track.

 

What we’ve covered so far:

 

• Define clear goals and targets to go after in 2019
• Get clear on who is your ideal customer
• Get clear on the messages that you’re going to use to communicate to the customers and why they should choose your company.
• Get clear on what media or source of advertising you’re going to use.
• Make sure your website is mobile friendly and optimized for conversion.
• And you want to set up simple key performance indicator tracking so you can see what your return on investment is, so you can see what your true cost per lead is from the different advertising sources. Then you can decide what is really working.

 

 

The online dominance blueprint is an outline of what we believe you will need if you want to dominate your local service area. Most of the sections are self explanatory but there are a few that we want to focus on because we either see it done wrong all the time or we just want to share our opinions. The more things that you can implement in your business from this blueprint, the better position you will be in and dominate your local service area.

 

 

Email marketing and social media.

 

Being active on social media is a great way to stay in front of your existing customers so that you get more repeat business and referrals from them.  When you do your daily posts, it shouldn’t be all salesy. That’s one of the biggest mistakes I see with appliance repair companies, where every post is a sales type ad, same day service, 50% off, etc. Instead, you want to make your sales post every now and then, so if you do 5 posts in a day only one should be about sales, the rest should be either inspirational quotes, fun factors, educational posts about maintaining appliances etc.   Social media is not like Google where consumers come to find a solution to their problem. Instead social media is more like advertising on a billboard.

 

Consumers go on social media to hang out with their friends and family and see what the latest updates are in regard to their friends and family, not to buy things. So, if most of your messages are salesy with your social media marketing, you’re not going to get a whole lot of interaction there. Let’s use Facebook as an example, if your customers don’t interact with your posts then Facebook will stop showing your posts on their timeline. That’s why fun facts, inspirational quotes and educational posts are great, because it will encourage them to like or share your posts, which communicates to Facebook that your customers want to see every post that you make.

 

What’s The “Skinny” On Appliance Repair Lead Generation Companies

 

Appliance repair job leads providers should supplement your existing advertising and marketing, what do I mean by that?

 

Just like we are supposed to get majority of our vitamins and minerals from the foods we eat, that is not always case, because of our busy lifestyles and the food nowadays just don’t have the number of vitamins and minerals as they used to. That’s why we need a multi-vitamin or individual vitamin supplements to fill the gap.

 

Appliance repair lead generation services are like those vitamins. While not necessary they can be an important component to an appliance repair business to help provide consistent appliance repair leads month after month.

 

Now, if you’re a one-man operation, then appliance repair lead generation is more important to you, because you either don’t have a customer base yet or it’s rather small. Working with a lead generation company that can provide you with quality appliance repair leads can help you fast track your business goals, especially if you focus on pay per call leads from a company that works exclusively with you. They can provide you with as much leads as you can handle and you can grow with them. So as you hire technicians, they can provide you with more leads to keep those techs busy.

 

Why You Should Have A Referral Program In Place

 

Some consumers will love to refer their friends and family to you, as it brings them a sense of personal satisfaction to be able to help their family and friends out, but then there are other consumers that need to be motivated and unfortunately most consumers fall into this category.

 

That means you should incentivize your existing customers to refer to friends and family. If you just leave it up to them, you probably won’t get any or will only get very few referrals. I know what some of you are thinking, great I now have to spend more money. I will be the first to tell you it’s a worthwhile investment and remember you only pay if the person they refer schedules the job and you can get a referral in exchange for a $5 gift card.

 

If I told you I would sell you appliance repair leads for $5, you would probably buy them all day long, even if they didn’t schedule.

 

Something else you should consider for your existing customer base is a rewards program, where you give them some type of discount if they call back for another appliance.

 

Now let’s talk about what most of you have been waiting for…

 

The Key Appliance Repair Marketing Trends For 2019.

 

Google Local Service Ads

 

One of the things that picked up steam in the middle of 2018 was Google Local Service Ads. Some of you may or may not have heard of it and some of you may have already started using it and testing it. Google is rapidly expanding this appliance repair lead generation program into new cities, so use of this service by appliance repair companies is going to pick up a lot more for 2019.

 

If you’re not familiar with Google Local Service Ads, it’s Google’s Pay Per Lead Advertising Program.

 

You may be familiar with Google AdWords, their Pay Per Click program.  With Google Local services, you’re paying per lead instead of per click like with AdWords.

 

Call Extensions

You definitely want to make use of call extensions with AdWords and Bing Ads. This will help you to convert more of those clicks into phone calls. After all, isn’t it that you want these consumers to call you?  Why send consumers to your website if they don’t necessarily want to see your website? Some consumers that click on your ad are only going to your website to find the number, as they don’t have any other option. With the call extension, you eliminate that extra step for them and it’s a win win situation for you and consumers.

 

Call Only Ads

 

Call only ads are part of the regular AdWords platform. With the large increase of mobile searches, Google developed a certain type of ad that only shows up on Mobile devices, which is known as call only ads. These actually have been around for a couple of years now, but it’s not that popular yet. But with the use of mobile phones we expect them to dominate in 2019. It’s definitely worth mentioning and if you’re not currently using call only ads, it’s one of those things that I highly recommend testing.

 

 

Google Maps

 

Google Maps has shifted from a centroid focused algorithm to proximity focused.

 

What do I mean by that?

 

Google Maps Optimization in the past, would require that you have an address in the main city of your service area or the main city of the county. And if you get this verified address ranking number one for the main city, then that same Google map listing or Google My Business Listing would have shown across the entire county as long as that’s within your service area.

 

But fast forwarding into the mobile marketplace, Google realized that wasn’t the best way to show consumers the appliance repair company that was closest to them. So they modified their algorithm to now display results based on proximity to the consumer’s location. And they’re basically using the GPS location data to determine the consumer’s location.

 

You may have seen a drop in your appliance repair leads if you used to get a lot of leads from Google maps in the past. And you started to see a drop last year, due to the proximity algorithm, even if your listing’s rankings haven’t changed, because Google is not showing it as much as they used to in the past.

 

Shift from phone conversion to message conversion.

 

There are a lot of consumers who are now using messaging to contact an appliance repair company instead of actually calling. If you look at your Google My Business listing, you will notice it has section that allows the customer to send a message. You can enable this messaging feature in your Google My Business dashboard, but even if you haven’t enabled it, the consumer still has the option to message, which will come to you in an email. Google again is trying to stay ahead of the mobile marketplace trend and they know that especially millennial’s prefer to use a message feature instead of calling. This is also why it’s a good idea to have a web form on your website, so consumers can have an option to submit a message instead of calling.

 

Live Chat

Having a live chat feature on your website, will also help to convert more consumers that come to your website, because for some consumers doing a live chat or sending a message is a lot more convenient to them. If you have the staff in place to be able to handle live chat, I highly recommend you give it test.

 

Use Multiple Marketing Channels

 

Using multiple sources of advertising is a sure-fire way to guarantee that you have a consistent flow of incoming appliance repair leads, so that you can hit your monthly and yearly revenue goals. If you are only using one source, now it may be the time that you start exploring different sources such as:

• Search Engine Optimization – SEO is more of a long-term strategy and it takes few months to get going, but once those leads start coming in, it’s not uncommon for SEO to be the preferred source of leads for appliance repair business owners.

 

• Pay Per Click Advertising – whether you may be doing PPC with Google, but not Bing Ads, now maybe the time to start testing that.

 

• Lead Generation – If you haven’t worked with any appliance repair lead generation companies, you may also want to start exploring that. Even if you have had a bad experience with lead generation companies in the past, such as HomeAdvisor or Appliance Appointment. All lead generation companies are not created equal, look for one that ONLY works with one appliance repair company in your service area, which means your service area will be an exclusive territory for you. While these appliance repair leads may cost more, they will provide you with a higher return on investment.

 

• Social Media – we all like referrals or word of mouth business. Social media is the new word of month marketing and it’s a great way to stay in front of your existing customers to remind them that you are the best appliance repair business in town.

 

 

 

Start thinking about working with multiple marketing channels as we go into 2019 and beyond.

 

 

The image above is a preview of what Google Local Service Ads look like, just in case you haven’t seen them before. It’s currently not available in all markets as of right now, but it will be. The Local Service Ads are the top 3 ads. Notice that they show up above the regular Google AdWords ads.

 

You are going to pay more for these ads or leads, than with AdWords, because they are in a prime real estate location. But if these leads work out for you, they could give you a higher return on investment than AdWords.

 

With appliance repair leads, you get what you pay for. The less you spend to buy your appliance repair leads, you typically will get a lower quality lead. If you’re looking to pay more, you will get a higher quality lead.

 

To sign up for Google Local Service Ads or to see if it’s currently available in your area, click here. Here are a few things you should know before signing up:

• While you pay per lead, you will still pay for leads that do not schedule.
• They require a background check.
• They have tracking in place, so you can see what your Return on investment is.
• You do need to update your platform on a regular basis if you decide to give it a try, as not doing this could affect the rankings of your ads.
• Use it as long as you’re getting a good return on investment.Give it a fair try, get at least 20 leads before deciding whether or not it’s a good fit.

 

 

Near Me Keywords

 

This is the “NEXT BIG THING” with SEO for 2019 and beyond, again all thanks to consumers using their mobile phone as their preferred way to access the internet.

 

In 2018 Near Me Keywords started to pick up a lot of steam. Now, if you’re not familiar with what I mean by near me keywords, it’s basically your typical appliance repair keyword with the word “near me” on the end. For Example:

• Appliance repair near me
• Refrigerator repair near me
• Dishwasher repair near me
• Washer repair near me

 

By the end of 2018 “appliance repair near me” has become the second most popular search term for most cities in the U.S. All right, and there’s basically a near me word for all the different repair types.

 

If your competition don’t know about these near me keywords yet, which most of them don’t, you can take advantage of your new-found knowledge and start targeting these near me keywords to get more appliance repair leads.

 

Resources:

Google Mobile Friendly Test

Website Conversion Webinar

Google Local Service Ads

Updated list of appliance repair keywords for 2019

 

If you would like to have our team take a look at your current online marketing Strategy and let you know where may be room for improvement and discuss the possibility of working together to make 2019 your best year ever in the appliance service industry and finally get your appliance repair lead generation right. Then schedule your FREE online marketing evaluation now.

Click here to schedule your strategy session now

 

Listen to the podcast version of the webinar below:

The post 2019 Appliance Repair Online Marketing Plan appeared first on Appliance Repair Leads.