Lead Generation for Home Services Businesses

• Google Guaranteed Results (LSAs)
• Google Pay Per Click Ads
• Google Local Map Pack

It hasn’t always been this way, but Google has learned over the years that organic search results simply don’t pay the bills! For businesses this means that if organic search is what you’ve relied on in the past, you need to start changing your marketing strategy yesterday or else leads will begin to dry up!

At Cut Throat Marketing we take a different approach to digital marketing. We are not an SEO company, nor are we an ad company. Instead, we take a blended approach to dominate the search results and get your brand in front of your customers.
Is it easy to do it this way? No. It requires expertise across multiple fronts and it takes time and energy to get right. But, it gets results!

Here’s a breakdown of how we do it:

Step 1: Pay Per Click Advertising

The process begins with paid search ads – as this is a way to get leads coming in fast. Typically, “call only” ads will begin to start generating calls within a few days of their start, and thus will have an immediate impact on your bottom line.

The benefits don’t stop there, as PPC ads provide us with a goldmine of information which will help us build subsequent campaigns around the keywords which bring in the highest quality leads at the lowest cost.

Step 2: Local Service Ads

Local service ads (LSAs) are another type of paid search ads. LSAs differ from the traditional search ads in that they are “pay per call” rather than pay per click. When a lead interacts with these ads, they aren’t given the option to go to your website, and instead are encouraged to call you directly through the ad, book an appointment or call through your CRM, or message you through Google Business Profile.

Google lists the ads as “Google Guaranteed,” and services provided via these ads come with certain benefits to the customers:

“Google Guaranteed businesses pass certain checks. Their services come with a money-back guarantee up to $2,000, a lifetime cap, if you request reimbursement within 30 days. Restrictions apply.”

In order to serve these ads, you must submit additional verification information to Google, including any licenses required in your area, proof of insurance, and the owner must pass a background check.

While this may seem like a lot of hoops to jump through just for some ads, the Google Guaranteed advertisements are a compelling offer to potential customers. It’s almost like getting “Google’s Blessing” that your business will provide them with a good experience.

Step 3: Google Business Profile

Step 4: Conversion Optimized Website Design

While we’re building ads and updating your GBP, we also start working on building a website that is designed to convert visitors into warm leads. This practice, known as conversion rate optimization (CRO), is multifaceted and includes psychological considerations, website load times, and effective use of images.

A welcome side-effect of a high conversion rate is an improved SERP ranking since Google uses search termination as a ranking factor. We’ve found that pages which convert well will ultimately rank well.

How We Help Your Business Succeed With CRO:

Make it easy for your customers to say yes: All key pages (service pages, location pages, about us, and landing pages) are built with the psychology of decision making in mind. Ultimately, the decision to work with your company is a combination of many small decisions, which we refer to as the 8-micro yesses.

The pages are built around your business’s value propositions, which uniquely position your company as the best solution to your visitor’s problem. This design ethos has helped us produce amazing conversion rates which pays dividends for both SEO and pay per click advertising.

Design for both desktop and mobile visitors: Your website needs to be easy to read, navigate, and interact with on both mobile and desktop. Losing customers due to awkward design or difficult to use contact forms is an all-too-common tragedy in small business marketing.

Build fast and stable sites: All of our sites are built according to Google Core Web Vitals best practices. This is “a set of metrics that measure real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability of the page,” and serves both as a ranking factor as well as ensuring a good user experience. A website which loads slowly bleeds visitors – moving from a load time of 2 seconds to 5 seconds can triple your bounce rate!

Leverage high quality images of your team in action: Images of past work completed, or pictures of your team in action inspire confidence in your site visitors that helps lead to higher conversion rates.

Step 5: Traditional SEO

While traditional search engine optimization (SEO) is not the silver bullet it once was, it is still a huge lead generator. However, it is important to be realistic as outranking national competitors and aggregator sites is more difficult than ever.

How We Help Your Business Succeed With SEO:

Weekly technical SEO audits: Weekly audits confirm that Google’s Bot can crawl the site and that it meets Google’s Core Web Vitals Guidelines. Routine audits are essential as website updates can silently cause issues which would otherwise go undetected for weeks or months.

Conversion rate optimized pages: As mentioned above, CRO isn’t just good for getting leads! We build highly converting landing pages which are designed to terminate a user’s search around your high value keywords. Google uses search termination as a ranking factor and gives these pages preferential treatment in the search results.

Targeting featured snippets: Featured snippets is another one of Google’s search modules that may take up real estate on a SERP. By addressing common FAQs related to your industry we increase the likelihood of your website being the highlight of a snippet – and thus getting additional search visibility.

And much more: Fully exploring what all we do to make your website rank organically is its own article – which you can read here.

Step 6: Local Link Building

Link building is an important component of SEO and when done well also carries weight with your customers.

Local link building involves getting links to your website from other local websites. These links act as a signal to Google that your site is a credible and relevant source of information within your local area. This process is crucial for improving local search engine rankings and visibility.

How We Help Your Business Succeed With Link Building:

Prioritize high-quality links: Our link building strategy revolves around finding relevant local business organizations to join and getting recognition in different “best of” lists that local publications produce.

Becoming a fixture of the local community: Lots of local sports organizations, nonprofit organizations, and local chambers offer sponsorship links.

When employing this strategy properly, it signals to Google that you are an active participant in your local community, and can help you rank higher in the search engine results page. Not only does Google like to see this sort of involvement, but people prefer to work with businesses which are actively involved in their communities.

Step 7: Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to stay engaged with your current customers. This boosts customer retention and builds customer loyalty.

They provide an opportunity to send potentially valuable DIY tips to your customers that can save you from having to perform low value service calls. You can keep customers updated on current specials as well as keep your customers aware of how you’re giving back to the community.

Step 8: Automations

One of the biggest challenges of scaling a home services business is maintaining excellent communication with your customers through all stages of the customer journey. Any hiccup that results in a lead not getting a timely follow-up can easily result in a lost sale.

Our automation tools help bring all of your client interactions across different channels into one piece of software. It also allows you to set up automated messaging rules to help streamline your onboarding process.

Step 9: Branding Advertising

The last piece of the lead generation puzzle is branding. The idea behind branding is that people become familiar with your company before they need your services. When they need your services, they will be more likely to click on your ad or organic result because they already know your name and see that you’ve also got a good reputation online.

It can be a powerful lead driver, but it’s most effective when used to complement the other methods we’ve discussed previously.

How We Help Your Business Succeed With Branding:

Social Media: In digital marketing terms, social media is known as a demand generation platform, rather than a lead generation platform. That’s because people don’t use social media to find services online. When someone types “landscaper near me” they are looking specifically for a landscaper. That’s just not how people use social media!
In order to be effective on social, you need a large audience to even begin getting noticed by Facebook/Instagram’s algorithms, and you have to be able to consistently drive engagement from your posts. While it does occasionally generate leads on its own, it’s a time consuming endeavor which delivers inconsistent results.

Radio: Return to office has people back in their cars on a regular basis. Radio generally provides a healthy reach at a reasonable price. Again, while you may pick up some leads directly from radio – it will go further as a way to boost the performance of your search results listings.

TV / OTT: TV commercials and over-the-top advertising (ads shown within streaming video content) are other tools which your business can use for branding. For smaller businesses, the higher ad production costs generally mean these are not the best solution – but as your business grows this can be a powerful way to increase brand awareness.