Do you own a Contracting business? That’s great!
Are you afraid for its growth during the lockdown? Ugh! Most of us are!
But is it really the end of the world?
“Currently known as one of the largest video streaming platforms of the world, Netflix wasn’t always as popular as today.
It started off as a DVD-by-mail service in the year 2000. And then, the recession hit. Almost all of its competitors struggled to survive, while Netflix’s subscribers count skyrocketed, and its share price went up by 57%.”
And Netflix isn’t the only one on the list of businesses that touched the moon in tough times.
From Amazon to Domino’s and Groupon to Lego, all these companies rose to fame when the world of commerce was going all down.
Sure, we have a message to take and lessons to learn, and today, we are here for that.
So, grab a pen and paper and feel free to take screenshots.
Here’s how you can make sure that your home inspection business keeps growing constantly even in these tough times of quarantine..
1. Keep In Touch With Your Network
It’s true that the current situations are keeping us away from our network. And due to this, a sense of distance may arise with our customers/prospects.
Don’t let that happen. In fact, make use of this pandemic to add empathy to your transactional relationships.
Different people are responding differently to the crisis and by keeping ourselves steady, we can help calm and comfort our clients – in turn, benefiting businesses, both ours and theirs.
This will make sure that opportunities remain active after the situations normalize (which will be soon!)
So, stall no more.
Here are a few tips to help you stay connected to your network during the lockdown.
1.1 Be an Initiator
Yes, we know that our clients may not really feel the need for having us around.Primarily because the business world is on a hiatus, and they may not have many reasons for reaching out to a home inspection service.
Well, let’s break the ice then. And how?
A phone call can be a good way to start. If your customers haven’t heard much from you in a long time, a warm phone call focusing on feedback can be a good idea.
Speaking of how to approach it, you can use the following tips for coming up with an effective calling script.
- Keep the Ball In your Court: You are going to call your customer to rekindle the connection with them. This means that they may or may not have a current need for your service.
This is why it’s crucial for you to take control and ride and drive the conversation.
So, create a script that ensures this control. - Observe. Adapt. Improvise: Another important thing that you must do is improvise.
This is the art of refining your script so it keeps getting better every day, after every call.
So, keep the script nearby and be ready to make improvements with words, phrases and everything that isn’t working well for the call. - Ask If You Can Help Them: Now that you have called your client, make sure you ask them if there’s anything that you can help them with.
Even though most things are locked down, there can be issues that you may help them with.
And there’s only one simple way to find out – ask them.
1.2 Engage On Social Media
As all your customers and prospects have a lot more time, this is when you can engage with them using interesting challenges and fun activities on social media.
This can place your brand’s name out so your prospects can find out about you.
So, take time out and give your creativity a free reign.
These challenges can be about anything related to home care that can help your customers know more about their property and how they can ensure its healthy maintenance.
And if you are struggling with ideas, here are two that you can start with.
Idea #1: 21 Day Challenge – As many of us are locked down, it’s a good time to encourage your customers to be more active towards their properties.
So, start with a simple 21 day home cleaning routine. Ask them to clean up their properties and share photos with your brand’s hashtag.
For reference, here are a few hashtags related to home inspection that you can use for ideas.
Idea #2: Discount Coupons – Now comes the second great igniter for engagement.
Indeed, many of your customers would like the idea of earning discount coupons. So, make use of this opportunity.
Offer discount coupons and vouchers to your prospects and customers so they may have the option to come to your business when they feel the need.
1.3 Create Shareable Visuals
Over 32% of marketers prioritize visuals for marketing over all other content forms.
Using relevant data/humor or positive quotes in images can be a great way to boost brand awareness.
Creating infographics and videos that can help your prospects and customers tackle home inspection challenges can also be a great resource, one that will be relevant forever.
The idea is to be useful to your audience so they have a reason to engage with your content.
Coming to the mode of communication, you can write emails. Myriads of businesses are doing this. Maintaining contact with their customers and prospects and turning them into brand advocates.
This is a great time for you too to consider this.
How Digital Rafter Can Help?
Ever came across a Facebook notification saying “Your followers haven’t heard from you in a while.”?
Well, that is an algorithm telling you that you might be making a mistake. And in this section, we tried telling you the same thing.
There’s a number of ways for keeping in touch with your network, and the results can be fruitful. All you need is a smart plan and its air-tight implementation.
This is what we are trying for our clients at Digital Rafter by building campaigns and newsletters to keep their social media channels active and subscribers engaged.
Look at one such example below.
Apart from this, our email marketing services are rich with actionable email messages and attractive templates leading to high converting campaigns that create lasting results.
For a better idea, here’s one that we created for ‘Due North Property Inspection’.
It’s a result of such services combined with our strategic review management that we have been able to help our customers acquire wonderful Google Business ratings as well.
So, don’t let this precious time slip by. Commence your pursuit for a robust digital presence before your competitors take up all the top spots.
2. Be Active Where Your Customers Are
We talked about how old-school phone calls, traditional emails or even social media can help us kindle conversations with our network during the lockdown.
Here we are talking about how social media, in particular, can help our business and its branding goals.
As the outbreak has pushed us all inside our houses, social media channels are in large part keeping all of us entertained.
Many of us are using these platforms to stay in touch with our loved ones. Gossip a new recipe, workouts, memes or just updates regarding the outbreak.
And many of your customers and prospects might also be doing the same.
So, how about doing something similar for your brand? Let’s see how..
2.1 Starting with Facebook
Facebook is the right place for our campaign perhaps, as Instagram is more suited for targeting audiences younger than 30 years old.
For a better understanding, here is an insight into traffic stats for different social media platforms.
So, if you haven’t already, start with creating a Facebook page for your brand and start working on a strategy.
Or you have a page that you haven’t been really active on, change that now.
2.2 Use LinkedIn To Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader
Apart from Facebook, LinkedIn is also an important social channel for a home inspection business.
At this time, many of your competitors may not be prioritising this channel. That’s one reason why you must do that. Low competition clearly means higher chances of success.
So, count this in for creating and sharing useful content to establish yourself as a thought leader.
2.3 Explore Influencer Marketing Options
After Facebook and LinkedIn are in good sync, we can get in touch with property influencers and micro-influencers on Instagram.
Basically, if a person is actively looking forward to buying a new house, Instagram might as well be showing them relevant content in their explore section. The same goes for people who are trying to sell their property (Yes, that’s how the algorithm is programmed)
In both cases, reaching out to influencers and micro-influencers can work like a charm.
For reference, here are some Instagram accounts that we can approach for such partnerships.
- REALESTATE_ACADEMY – 125K followers
- REALESTATELEGEND – 21.9K followers
- FREDRIKEKLUNDNY – 1.2m followers
- REALESTATEAUS – 144K followers
- BONNIERAKHIT – 101K followers
- PROPERTYBROTHERS – 1.4m followers
Our content could be shared across all their social media channels, if thought-provoking or relevant.
That’ll be fantastic exposure for your home inspection services.
2.4 Provide Solutions to Niche Issues
Apart from general branding and campaigns, social media is a great tool for establishing your brand’s authority.
By providing solutions to issues that property owners or buyers generally have to face, you can prove your brand’s expertise and influence in the industry.
For a better understanding, let’s have a look at the following infographic.
Source
The aim is to be helpful and you don’t need to use fancy designs for it. Simple but helpful graphics can be great too.
How Digital Rafter Can Help?
Being visible at places where your audience is active is important for brand awareness and marketing success.
And that’s what we are doing at Digital Rafter. Our engaging social media posts have a pinch of humor and the right message that can grab your prospects’ and customers’ attention.
So, stall no more. You’ve seen all the numbers. People are surely active on media channels and with the right plan, we can find those of interest for your business.
This is the time to step up towards betterment and our Facebook Marketing plans can help you with that. Just get in touch with us and we’ll see what best we can make for your business’ social media presence.
3. Make Search Engines Work For You
And here comes one of the sweetest treats of new-age marketing.
S – E – O.
Well, as the title suggests, the idea is to make the search engines work for you, i.e., place your website up in the search engines so more people can find your business.
Coming to the questions:
How long will this take?
How much time will I have to spend?
And how long will it last?
Well, the answer is, SEO is no rocket science. In fact, it’s one of the simplest and most straightforward marketing techniques.
There’s a large number of home inspection keywords that your prospects are searching the web with.
And this is just a small example.
To start with SEO, we need to find out those keywords (yes, the way we found one above) and optimize your target pages for those keywords. And then we move to link-building and other off-page practices.
For a better understanding, you can have a look at the following infographic.
Usually SEO may take three to six months to show good results.
However, as it’s locked down, SEO will certainly be quicker with results as at this time your competitors may be too busy surviving the lockdown instead of looking after their website’s SEO.
How Digital Rafter Can Help?
What we have noticed with recent events that impact the market like this is, most of your competitors will go into a defensive mode out of fear and panic, pulling back their positioning.
This makes the process way easier making results come quicker than ever.
It’s for this reason that this is one of those golden opportunities that don’t strike up again-and-again.
And at Digital Rafter we are trying to help our clients make the most of it.
This is the list of buyer-intent keywords that are important to allin1inspections.com and while working with us, they could rank in the SERPs for those.
And it only gets better. Your competitors may not be thinking this much. That’s one reason why you must.
4. Jump At The Opportunities
This quarantine season has undoubtedly created a lot of disturbance. But is everything only going down?
A large number of small-medium businesses used to shy away from the idea of investing in paid ads for the lack of funds.
And why not?
Even though Facebook and Google ads are known to reap wonderful benefits, if not optimized correctly they can also consume stacks of cash.
But we can’t ignore the fact that they perform and thus, if there’s any good time to invest in them, it’s right now.
Yes, we say this because Facebook ad campaigns are costing nearly 75% less than what they normally used to cost and Google Adwords campaigns are costing nearly half their usual price.
And what’s the need to go for paid ads?
4.1 Facebook Ads Help Find Needle in the Haystack
While creating a Facebook page may seem like a good idea to start digital marketing for your home inspection business, the truth is that alone can’t connect you with your prospects.
Source
As mentioned in the second section, Facebook is a populated place with over 2.4 billion users.
Facebook ads help your business filter this crowd based on its specific audience’ characteristics.
So, whether you are just trying to get your prospects to like your Facebook page or running a lead generation campaign, by optimizing the targeting settings you can zoom in on people who are interested in home inspection services like yours.
4.2 Google Ads Help Your Prospects Find You
In most cases, SEO doesn’t show results on day one. However, Google Adwords can show (nearly) the same results from the day you start optimizing your campaign.
Like Facebook, Google Adwords also offers specific targeting features that can help you be found when a prospect is looking for a home inspector near them (depending on the target keyword).
So, now we know how paid ads can be useful for our business?
It’s understandable that we may not have to go gaga over both these platforms. Depending on our needs and convenience, we can choose one over the other. So, if you are looking forward to building an audience for your Facebook page, Google Adwords can’t help you with that.
Similarly, if we are looking for qualified leads that are searching the web with relevant keywords, Facebook ads will not be of use.
However, as our competitors might be resting, it’s clearly a good time to start considering paid ads for marketing.
How Digital Rafter Can Help?
When optimized smartly, paid advertising on the web can reward our business with desired results. At Digital Rafter, we are doing the same.
With our creative ad designs and actionable ad copies, we also ensure 100% transparency for every single campaign that we run.
This keeps our clients satisfied with their results and our services.
So, if you wish to take a step further for stepping up your brand’s marketing processes but don’t know much of paid advertising, get in touch with us.
Apart from that, if you have general questions regarding the same, we’d be happy to help you.
5. Follow Up With Leads That Didn’t Convert Earlier
Next entry on this quarantine ‘to-do list’ – Following up with leads that didn’t convert earlier.
Give it a thought. People who once gave you their contact information or contacted you for availing your service but didn’t convert at that time may still need your home inspection help.
So, whether you found those prospects through real estate agents that are connected with your business, or through other references.
This is the best time to get in touch with them. They are also locked inside and might as well have time to reconsider your offer or just have a regular chat.
So, start off now.
Here are a few techniques that you can use:
5.1 Email Marketing
Recent marketing studies have reported that every single dollar spent on email marketing can give back upto $42 in ROI.
And then, as you have earlier been in touch with these people, you may as well have their email addresses. Make use of that data. And if for some reasons you don’t have their email contacts, you can use the following options.
- Tie up with realtors in your area and run a revenue share campaign
- Dig up resources online
- Yellow pages
All you need to do is craft a smart email marketing campaign and manage it optimally to give your old leads a reason to re-evaluate their decision.
Here’s an example email template for reference.
5.2 Offer Discount Coupons and Vouchers
Who doesn’t like to save big?
If a person once approached you to learn more about your home inspection service but didn’t convert, the reason could be the price.
And guess what, with a sweet discount you can change that.
By offering discount coupons and vouchers you can turn lost leads into qualified customers that may stay connected to your organization for a long time.
5.3 Create a Website
The website establishes your business’ online presence. And in the times when the world is locked down and using the web, your home inspection business must get online too.
But there comes the trouble.
Even though modern content management systems have made website development look like a walk in the park, professional quality is still expensive. And perhaps more than ever.
Undoubtedly, all businesses aren’t well with these expenses and that’s where the pursuit for cheaper alternatives starts.
Thankfully, templates solve the purpose here. They cost less, are easy to incorporate and to maintain as well.
Here are some of the top benefits of building a website for your home inspection business:
- It meets your prospects’ and customers’ expectations: In this silicon generation, a website is something that all customers expect.
Not having one will mean that you are failing their expectations. That can’t be a good sign. - Boosts credibility: Here’s another benefit. Having a website means that your home inspection business has an online home or office or whatever we prefer to call it.
The point is, it’s your property and is connected directly to your business.
This boosts credibility towards your company.
- More campaign opportunities: When we don’t have a website but need to run a campaign, the need for creating independent landing pages on unreliable servers can crop up.
Having a website will eradicate these possibilities, keeping your business and its information more secure.
- You can create independent blogs: Although, one doesn’t particularly need to buy a domain name for creating a blog, but when they do, the blog gets the entitlement to have a page rank and authority of its own.
You can’t get this benefit with free blogging services.
Indeed, creating a website will help you acquire more leads and customers for your home inspection business.
5.4 Publish Case Studies
When the time for conversion arrives, nothing works as good as social proof.
Case studies play a vital role in this.
These detailed reports can make your prospects aware of the quality of your service based on the results that you’ve mentioned in the case study.
How Digital Rafter Can Help?
Following up with your long lost leads during the lockdown can be a productive way of dealing with this business break. By offering coupons and vouchers, you can encourage your prospects to reconsider their previous decision regarding your services.
And in the process, our newsletter marketing and website development services can help you.
With a large variety of affordable website templates to choose from, you can ensure that you get a home inspection website of your choice at a reasonable price.
6. Come Up With Unique Offers
As mentioned above, this is a good time for using attractive offers to lure prospects for your home inspection business.
This is the time when these offers will cost the least and reap the most.
So, think it through. Sit with your team or get in touch with us at Digital Rafter so we can work on great offer ideas that actually boost your prospects’ response towards your brand even at the time of lockdown.
Some attractive offers that you can present are:
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- Easy Down Payments: Allowing customers to make easy down payment for a home inspection service that they may use later
- Hike For Agents: Hike up the share per sale revenue for real estate agents that get you customers
- Flash Sales: These will encourage more prospects to buy-in for the low prices of your service
- Limited Time Offers: Such offers will also kindle a sense of urgency and a ‘fear of missing out’ in the minds of our prospects
- Discount Coupons and Vouchers: This will help us ensure that our prospects and customers come back to us to redeem these coupons
- Mystery Flash Sales: Customers and prospects play a game and get rewards based on their performance
The idea of presenting such offers is to encourage your customers and prospects to opt-in and get connected with you even during these tough times.
This will surely encourage them to take their partnership with them more seriously.
How Digital Rafter Can Help?
Presenting attractive offers to your customers and prospects is always a great way of rekindling even the long lost engagements.
However, real problems arise when your offers aren’t able to reach your prospects.
Digital Rafter’s paid ads service can help you with that.
Plus, if you get in touch with us, our in-house content team will come up with more unique offers ideas that can be effective for your home inspection business.
So, think it through and get back when you are ready.
7. Go Big On Content
Creating a database of evergreen content can take up a fair amount of time. And honestly, you may never have enough of it while delivering your services on normal days.
This lockdown can be turned into a blessing in disguise.
With so much time at hand, you can create a lot of content that’s useful to your prospects and is shareable at the same time.
Just pick up a piece of paper or create a new google doc and start penning down all the experiences and priceless wisdom that you have earned over all your business years.
After that, a good content team will make sure that it’s easy to read, easy to comprehend, and fun to go through at the same time.
By creating shareable content pieces and publishing them across journals and online magazines in the home inspection niche, your brand’s chances of coming to popularity will go up.
This is the best time to write about this as more slots are open and fewer businesses are going for it.
Here are a few content formats that can work great for your home inspection business:
- Videos
- Blog posts
- Infographics
- Case Studies
How Digital Rafter Can Help?
Content is the king and will always be.
But what’s the point if it’s not conveyed correctly, with the right flow and language, and to the right audience?
At Digital Rafter we keep it simple, aesthetic and actionable. Take the following infographic for example.
And our artists and content strategists keep creating more and more stunning content for all our clients. We know what amuses home inspection clients the best.
8. Step Up Your Newsletter Game
If you have subscribed to any mailing lists, you would know how active they are at this time. And it makes sense. Even in the sections above, we talked about why it’s an excellent time to reach out to your prospects.
Moving further, email newsletter marketing is a great way to achieve your marketing goals amid the lockdown.
And what makes emails that good?
- Emails help strengthen customer relationships by allowing companies to get in direct touch with their network.
- Email marketing is a good tool for boosting website and blog traffic.
- It helps boost brand awareness
- Building an email list equals to building a sustainable audience base which your home inspection business can rely on
So, take newsletter marketing seriously. Here are some quick tips to make sure that your email campaigns convert.
How Digital Rafter Can Help?
Crafting an effective email marketing strategy is crucial for ensuring that your campaigns achieve the desired goals. However, handling all these campaigns without a team can be a challenge.
At Digital Rafter we try to do the same. Actionable emails copies and attractive design define our quality.
For reference, here are two newsletter samples.
As already said, from content to design, and from delivery to tracking, we are here to take care of the entire newsletter campaign.
So, if you want to make good use of this time at hand and set up a strong base for your email marketing channel, contact us today.
9. Find and Fix Loopholes
Even when things are going great, we often come across risks in our business that could do with some corrections.
And, if these issues are resolved, the overall performance of your home inspection or any other business can significantly improve.
So, when locked down inside the home:
- Lubricate your business’ processes that work on the backfoot
- Find and fix backend problems that are disturbing the frontend of your business
- Work on plans and ideas that always came off as boring
- Explore technologies that can help you with this.
This will boost overall productivity and the ultimate quality of your home inspection service once the situation settles and the shutters are up.
For example, integrating a CRM could be a great idea. Some great ones for the home inspection industry are Onpipeline, NetSuite CRM or kvCORE.
A good CRM can help minimize potential issues related to contact management, sales team management, reporting and tracking, email client integrations and workflow approvals etc.
All these features and several others can help you easily find the right customers, build more sustainable relationships, reduce the cost of sales and also enable you to offer qualified customer service.
Conclusion
Even though the times seem tough for business, there are three ways your home inspection company can look at it.
Are you Type 1 or Type 3? Will you spend this lockdown steeped in worry or equipping yourself for better times.
It’s time to choose. And if you aren’t equipped with the knowledge and resources to lift up your brand’s marketing game, we are here for that.
So, whether it’s website development or SEO, email copywriting or newsletter design, infographics or paid ads, you can trust our dedicated team for successful results
Plus, our 14 day no-obligation trial, free consultation calls, seamless customer service and the following range of services make us one of the best digital marketing companies for your home inspection business.
So, stall no more. Grab this opportunity when you have it. Click on any of the following plans to know more about them.
And if you have any questions or concerns, we’d be happy to welcome them.