When Should You Fire Your SEO Agency?
We all want our websites to rank better, and to show up on maps. Once you have the budget, it CAN be a good idea to get a marketing agency to handle SEO for you. I made this move 7 months ago and just fired mine and I'll tell you why. First and foremost, I don't claim to be an SEO wizard. The Jobber podcast has had some amazing episodes on this over the last year, people giving hints on how to improve your rankings etc. I followed all their advice and was experiencing a steady level of traffic but I was ready to super charge my efforts. I hired a company that had a great reputation in another coaching group, and they seemed pretty legit. The promise - $1500/ month for 3 service pages, 5 back links, and meetings every month to go over progress. I thought it'd especially be important because we had just rebranded and I wanted to make sure our traffic stayed up. This was the result: From what I can tell, you have to give companies as least a few months to do their magic. Also, google took away the Call button which attributed to less phone calls. But although it made me feel secure to have someone "handling" our SEO, the results spoke for themselves. Much less traffic. From what I can tell, our high review traffic was doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Claude would analyze their work and the impact of the back links didn't seem to be there and we can make our own service pages with actual pictures vs the stock ones they were using. So we made the decision to move on and do the work ourselves with Claude. What have your experiences been with SEO companies? Have you had success with any? What were they doing?
Short videos for getting more leads – what is working for you?
Curious how other home service businesses are using short videos for marketing. Before/after clips, quick walkthroughs of a finished job, or a 15-second "meet the crew" video seem to work well on Facebook, Instagram and Google Business Profile, but making them consistently takes time. Some owners are starting to use AI video tools to turn job-site photos and a short script into a video, for example Nereo. I think that can help with volume, but real footage of your own team probably still builds more trust with homeowners. What has worked for you: phone videos, hiring someone, or AI tools? And which platform actually brings in quote requests?
Tips for collecting onsite social media content from my crew?
Does anybody have any tips to motivate/energize my crew to take photos, record videos, etc onsite that we can then use to create content for our social media pages? I haven't started asking them to do it yet, but I want to see if anyone has any success stories from their fields.Financing Options for Service Industry?
Anyone out there offer financing options for their services. We are a house cleaning service and through our training center (we teach cleaning) we thought we would reach out to Affirm and sell our classes with financing option. When I spoke to Affirm they asked why not our cleaning services? Well, yes why not? Anyone has tried this? If you have what are some to dos and do nots have you learned?Is your business showing up in AI search? 🔍✨
Have you ever asked AI something like “Who’s the best plumber in [your city]?” or “Find me a landscaper near me” just to see if your business pops up? If you appeared, what are you doing to make sure you maintain visibility? If not, PhilRisher has a few website tips that could help. 👇 In this Masters of Home Service episode, he covers website best practices that can help your business stay visible as search changes, from answering real customer questions to sharing pricing and local information and putting more work into your ‘knowledge base’. 👉 Want to put these tips into action? Download our free website optimization playbook for this episode. Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Should you pause ads when you’re short-staffed?
I don’t think the answer is always to shut everything off. But running ads like normal when your team is already stretched can create a mess fast. More leads don’t help much if response times slow down, quality slips, routes get overloaded, or the owner has to jump back into the field to save the schedule. When we’re tight on capacity, I’d rather adjust the ads than pretend nothing changed. That could mean lowering the budget, keeping branded search on, focusing only on dense route areas, pushing new jobs further out, or temporarily stopping low-margin one-time work. Marketing should match capacity. If the ads are bringing in work the team can’t serve well, the campaign might look good on paper while the customer experience gets worse. But the other side is maybe this is the perfect time to hire and be over capacity instead of scrambling. When you’re short-staffed, do you pause ads, reduce spend, or keep leads flowing?Are You Selling Your Service… or Selling the Experience?
Customers have more choices than ever. Sometimes the difference isn’t just the service you provide, but how you make people feel from the first interaction to the final follow-up. What are some ways your business creates an experience that keeps customers coming back?Any tips for making YouTube videos that actually bring in customers?
If you're creating videos for your business (or thinking about it), what's one thing you've learned that makes a difference? In this Masters of Home Service episode, Jacob Palmer (Palmer Electrical) talks about how simple YouTube videos became one of his biggest lead generators. He shares practical advice on filming real jobs, building trust before the first phone call, and using video content to win more local customers without relying on paid ads. Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on YouTube, Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
