However, spring season is on its way, along with a breeze of calls coming in hot and heavy again to ring up professionals that can help them with their bed bug infestations––just n time for consumers to make a good investment with their incoming tax return money. Thus, business is foreseen to yet again spike up soon enough. The remaining question is, are you ready?
If you have a few minutes to spare, there are a few things you can do to transform your web properties into an ultimate marketing machine, ready to engage when peak season gets here. Get comfy as I walk you through the steps:
Step 1 – Tune up your Google My Business listing
Do you know that the results page if you look up a given business name or service on Google is a great source of new business? Google My Business (GMB) is a free tool that provides business owners more control of their online presence with quality––from the beginning of the search results page, up until you lock-up a deal with any interested consumer over the phone.
A GMB listing allows business owners to publish and edit information that will show up in a Google search, such as opening hours, addresses, phone numbers, photos, and reviews.
GMB’s algorithm helps you become accessible and relevant online through time––especially in this Digital Age today. The most important is your listing’s Name, Address, and Phone Number (NAP) has to be precise and consistent to keep Google happy:
- Business Name – list the real business names on GMB that will also be listed exactly the same on all other locations on the web.
- Address – make sure your address is listed accurately. As bed bug pros, you may not have clients coming to your location. Google knows where you are located and the searchers for a bed bug professional are close by.
Proximity is still the #1 factor in local search ranking.
- Phone Number – the contacts you list on GMB needs to be the exact same number listed on your website. It can be a tracking number but you need to make sure they match.
NAP is a, top 3, major contributing factor for Google My Business local rankings. Your NAP list on GMB should be exactly the same on all other locations on the web.
Additional items to list on GMB would be:
- To make sure your website URL is accurate. If this has changed recently then you should update it. You want potential customers to be able to visit your website and be confident you are in fact a real business they can trust. Google spiders will also crawl your website to see if they think you are real.
- List your hours of operation on your GMB profile. This is to coincide with your availability to answer the phone and talk to potential clients about bed bugs. People with bed bugs are understandably itching for some relief, thus it is imperative that you answer the phone as much as possible.
- You provide an impressive service so let your past customers yield Google reviews for your future customers. Google reviews are the single most important you can get. With Google hailed as the king of search, it is not hard to see that GMB reviews are going to be very important when determining local ranking. Consumers make buying decisions based on reviews. You do it along with almost everyone else in the world.
Step 2 – Maintain a Legitimate and Up-to-date Website
Living in the New Media Age, it has turned into a commodity for businesses to setup a website. The vast majority of potential clients will not take a business seriously if your website neither look modern nor does it load quickly. It should be easily used from a mobile device as well. You can check your website’s load time on website speed test tools. Faster load times under 3 seconds are acceptable for most users but anything over 5 seconds needs options that can speed things up. You can use Google’s mobile-friendly test tool to know if Google is pleased with the mobile version of your website.
To add, well-designed websites are more responsive to different screen sizes and can load faster on mobile devices, which can ultimately promote good activity on your site. In turn, it will help you rank better on search engine results. Mobile content marketing is an essential part of the content marketing and Search Engine Optimization strategies of businesses in today’s world composed of media-savvy consumers.
Step 3 – Be Ready to Run Paid Ads on Google
Google Adwords, presently known as Google Ads or ‘pay per click’ (PPC) has been around for a long time and IS STILL hailed as the best option for a large volume of clients to call you as proven through time.
While we wish all the clicks were free, the upside on paying for each one is that we have a much higher degree of control. With clicks ranging from $6 to $16 you need to have all your ducks in a row to provide a smooth and easy path from a click on an ad and then boom, to a phone call that you can put your A+ call closing skills to lock up the deal and generate revenue.
Easy? Easy.
These are the PPC ducks you need to line up for you to spend your marketing budget wisely:
- Keywords – you will want to target keywords that give you the highest probability in finding a home owner that is actually willing to pay you to get rid of their bed bugs. We know you can get a lot of cheap clicks on ‘do it yourself bed bug extermination,’ but those clicks are not likely to turn into a call or revenue.
- Ads – you will want to be running ads that people want to click on and eventually turn into phone calls. The ads people want to click on have the highest click through rate click through rate (CTR). The ads that ultimately produce phone calls have the highest conversion rate. You want to make sure you are running ads with the best combination of each.
- Landing page – this is where clicks actually turn into phone calls. You will want a landing page that quickly tells the viewer that your company can indeed get rid of bed bugs in a quicker and safer way. Make it easy for them to call you, so make sure your number is listed in multiple locations, and that it is clickable from a mobile devices.
- Track your calls – if you don’t, there is no way to know how many calls you recieved plus where they come from; what marketing budget/channel is producing the best return of investment (ROI) ; or what keywords in your Google account actually produce calls? If you don’t track calls there is no way to know your demographic.
Bonus Idea for Bed Bug leads
Google Local Service (GLS) ads is Google’s version of a pay per lead service. Counterparts such as Home Advisor or Angie’s List are comparable. GLS is Google’s entry into the cost per lead business model. It is only available in select markets for pest control companies now but is expanding fast.
With 92.74% market share as of October 2018, handling more than 3.5 billion searches each day and flagged as most used search engine on the World Wide Web across all platforms––did you know that established Local Service Ads actually show up above Google’s Adwords (Pay-Per-Click), Maps & Organic Listings?
GLS ads are only available for pest control companies in some demographic. You can find out if it is available in your market by going to your Google search engine and by looking up, “bed bug pest control.”
If this is what you see then it is an option. If not, and you are located in a major metro area then, keep checking:
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If you want to learn more about Google Local service ads, check out this previous article: https://bestbedbugleads.com/google-disrupts-how-pest-control-companies-make-the-phone-ring-with-local-service-ads/