Without a doubt, COVID-19 left a major impact on home service contractors. Whether customers are dealing with financial issues or are just worried about keeping their family safe, they are more cautious than ever when it comes to hiring a contractor. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t grow your home service business during a crisis. From communicating with customers to adjusting your marketing strategy, we look at five ways to generate high-quality leads and grow your home service business during a crisis.

5 Ways to Grow Your Home Service Business During a Pandemic

1. Communicate How You Are Handling the Crisis

One of the best ways to grow your home service business is to communicate to your customers that you are taking the crisis seriously and how you are handling it. For example, add an alert to your website and update your ads to reflect the current situation. It’s important that your messaging feels authentic, without being tone deaf or alienating.

While messaging like “in these uncertain times” was appropriate at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it quickly became outdated. Instead of making customers feel safe, it can leave them feeling out of touch with their concerns. Be aware of how your customers and prospective customers are feeling during the crisis at hand and adjust your messaging accordingly.

It’s important to be clear and transparent about the situation. Acknowledge the changes you’ve made and explain how you’ve adapted your business to fit the needs of your customers and prospects. Whether they are worried about the crisis or not, it’s much better to provide them with options and let them choose what’s best for them. Let customers know in advance that your employees will adhere to any new policies the company has put in place in order to keep them safe.

For example, during COVID-19, make it known that your team will wear protective gear and take any necessary precautions. Find out what your customers’ comfort levels and preferences are beyond what’s mandatory before arriving on site. You should also consider offering both in-person and virtual appointments to meet the needs of all of your customers.

2. Review and Adjust Your Marketing Strategy

Take a look at your current marketing strategy and see how it’s performing. Start by turning off campaigns that aren’t generating leads to minimize your spend and look for ways to optimize campaigns that are performing well. From adjusting your budget to improving your ad targeting, see if you can make them even more profitable.

After you’ve optimized your best lead generation campaigns, go back to the ones you turned off. Look at the data and try to figure out why they didn’t perform. Make adjustments to the copy and targeting and test them to see if they perform better.

Make sure to spend more time on your social media channels. This not only includes posting more, but also listening and engaging with your customers as well. This can generate leads now, as well as build your customer base for the future.

3. Follow up With Current Customers and Upsell Other Services

Another way to grow your home service business is to follow up with your current customers. Start by creating an offer to upsell existing customers. Think about promoting a new service or preventative maintenance.

Offers are great at getting customers to respond, but don’t over discount your services. In addition to promoting your office or service, you should include a quick summary of your crisis response as well.

Review your files and look for opportunities to upsell specific customers on your services. If you recently completed a job and quoted additional services, now is the time to remind them you’re available. Call these customers directly and see if they still need your services. If possible, add a discount or some other offer to your original quote to make the deal more attractive to them.

4. Look for New Opportunities

Now is the time to look for new opportunities to generate leads. While not every home service company can add new products or services, it’s worth considering. If you already offer water restoration, you might be able to add fire or mold services for a very small investment. If you do kitchen remodeling, consider adding bathroom remodeling as well.

Another option for generating more opportunities is to increase your service area. Adding surrounding counties is a great way to increase the number of high-quality leads you get. You can always scale back your service area when the pandemic ends or any time you have enough leads to keep your team busy.

Whether you’re adding new services or just expanding your service area, the easiest way to start is by changing your ads. If you’re running paid search ads, you can update your copy or expand your audience targeting. The same goes for social media ads as well.

While you should consider updating your website or print marketing, be careful when adding temporary services or service areas. Unless you plan on making these changes permanent, it’s easier (and less expensive) to only update your ads. However, you can always add additional trucks or teams as needed when things return to normal.

5. Find a Lead Generation Partner

Grow your home service business by partnering with a lead generation company. Although this may seem like an unconventional option, it’s actually a great way to generate leads. As long as you’re paying a flat rate on exclusive leads, lead generation will help keep you busy during a crisis.

Since lead generation companies only do the marketing, they’ve already adjusted their campaigns to deal with the crisis. Most are constantly reviewing their marketing strategies and optimizing their campaigns to make sure they’re generating the highest quality leads possible.

Get Fair, Flexible Leads from 33 Mile Radius

Looking for a lead generation partner to help your business grow and generate quality leads? 33 Mile Radius offers fair and flexible leads to keep you busy throughout any crisis.

Every lead is sent exclusively to one contractor, giving you the best opportunity to land the job. You pay a low flat rate for our high-quality leads, making it easy to grow your home service business on a budget.

Plus, we’ve added new lead categories for bath remodeling, windows, roofing and siding leads. If you are looking to expand your services, now is the time to get started.

Apply now to start getting more high-quality, flat-rate home services leads today.