How are you building your local contractor lists?
I’ve been looking into how home service companies and marketing teams find new opportunities. A lot of people are using Google Maps to research local markets, but the challenge is usually: Finding the right businesses in a specific area Keeping contact information organized Identifying companies with growth opportunities For example: “HVAC companies in Texas” You can quickly build a list with: Business name Website Phone number Email Address Reviews & ratings Business category This can be useful for: Local SEO research Market analysis Competitor research Sales outreach I’m testing different ways to collect and structure local business data and would love to hear how others in the home service space are doing this. Curious: How do you currently find and research local contractors in your market?What's one small change that helped you book more jobs?
Have you made a change that's helped you book more jobs? Maybe it was responding faster, offering text messaging, or changing how you send estimates. What's worked well for you? In this Masters of Home Service episode, Brandon Downer of Pink's Windows breaks down the systems behind a frictionless sales process, from simplifying online quote requests and speeding up follow-up to making estimates easier for customers to accept. Want to put these tips into action? Download our free frictionless selling playbook for this episode. Never miss an episode of Masters of Home Service. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Marketing Question: What’s One Purchase That Changed Your Business?
Hello jobber community, Every business has that one investment that made operations easier. For those in moving, cleaning, landscaping, HVAC, plumbing, or other home services: What piece of equipment, software, or tool has had the biggest impact on your business? Was it worth the investment? As MoveTime 4U continues to grow, I’m always looking for ways to improve efficiency and customer experience.Dial In Your SEO without an Agency
Hey team! i wanted to share a really good episode of the Waste No Day podcast. I just listened to it today and it had some really good tips on what things are important, things you can do, etc to organically strengthen your google business profile. One thing I learned that's it's ok to have an agency but you want to approach them after you already have the basics covered. If you try to completely hand off your marketing, you are asking for disappointment. When you take responsibility for this part of your business, you will understand how to measure success with an agency, and the value they provide will be like putting gas on the fire instead of trying to start the fire. Check this episode out, it's definitely worth the hour. Waste No Day Podcast - Lorne SederoffFor those who offer monthly services, do you ever start with a trial period?
I have recently been pushing my monthly exterior rodent control services to my customers and wonder if trying to get them set up for a whole year right away is a good tactic. I created a Checklist in Jobber for the service so I can document and show the client the amount of feeding in each station monthly. Rather than getting pushback right away when I propose the service, I have had success in telling a customer I will leave the stations today, then check the activity next month. Then they can see the feeding level and get an idea of how many rodents are actually around their home. I feel like this has worked really well for me and wonder if anyone else has tried this approach at selling ongoing services?Sweat equity
Building a pressure washing business with sweat equity. I've been leaving flyers and tear aways at local businesses. About to post some on local Facebook groups, is there any additional advice for adding customers but keeping it local and personal. I am hoping to build a locally recognized company... patriot Pressure Washing, PPW!Who Here Has Had Success with Yard Signs?
I'm a part of Home Service Accelerator and one of the main things they recommend is to use unbranded yard signs and put them in high value areas to get leads. It's a volume play. Basically you put out 100 signs but if you book one job (in my industry) it pays for the $400 in yard signs you spent (plus your time). Now I should mention I haven't been super consistent with this which I believe could be my issue. I also don't know who would hit up a yard sign for a kitchen remodel BUT you never know. My process to find where to put them is to go on the USPS website and find the mail routes with the highest average income then determine which streets to put it on from there. Is anyone else using this strategy? I'd love some pointers if you are having some success with it.Branding - Seem Bigger Than You Are
f you're a small home services company trying to figure out how to look more legit, maybe some of what I've learned will save you some time and money. When I first started out, I had a logo I thought was really cool. It had a ton of graphic elements in it, looked great up close, and I slapped it on everything. Shirts, trucks, you name it. I was proud of it. The problem was, nobody could actually read it from a distance. And in this business, your truck is one of your biggest marketing tools. If someone can't read your name driving past you at 40 miles an hour, that's a missed opportunity you'll never get back. The turning point for me was attending a conference where Dan Antonelli was speaking. Dan wrote the book Branded Not Blended, and he's one of the sharpest minds in contractor branding out there. He took one look at my logo and broke down everything that wasn't working. It stung a little, honestly. But everything he said made sense, and it pushed me to rebuild my brand from the ground up. Here's the big stuff I took away. Your logo has to be legible from a distance. This sounds obvious, but most people get it wrong, including me. If someone's driving past your truck or glancing at your yard sign, they've got maybe two or three seconds to register who you are and what you do. A complicated logo with a bunch of overlapping elements and thin fonts fails that test every time. Think about a plumbing company with a bold, clean logo that has a simple wrench icon and their name in big block letters. You know exactly what they do before you even finish reading the name. That's what you're going for. Your name needs to be the star. With my original logo, the word "Handyman" was actually bigger than the company name itself. So people knew it was a handyman company, but they had no idea who we were. Your company name is your identity. It's what people remember, what they search for, and what they recommend to a neighbor. Make sure it's the thing your logo leads with. Color matters more than you think. Everybody in home services gravitates toward red, white, and blue. And look, it works fine, but it also means you look like everyone else. One thing that stuck with me was watching a company called Entice work an event I was at. Every single one of their guys was in a purple shirt. All their equipment, their vehicles, everything was purple. You always knew when Entice showed up. That kind of instant recognition is worth a lot. I made a deliberate choice with my colors to stand out from the sea of red and blue, and it's made a difference. When people see our trucks around town, they know it's us. Truck wraps and signage need to be bold, not busy. One thing I've always admired about the wraps Dan Antonelli designs is that they're confident. Big lettering. Strong colors. Sometimes a fun character or illustration that gives the brand some personality. They're eye-catching without being cluttered. Your wrap should make someone do a double-take, not squint trying to figure out what's going on. Think hard about your company name before you commit to it. This is something I don't hear talked about enough. A lot of contractors go with their own name, like Joe's Plumbing or Smith's Electric, and I get the instinct. It feels personal. But there are some real downsides worth thinking through. For one, if you ever sell the business, a name tied to a specific person creates confusion. Customers built a relationship with Joe, and now someone else owns it. That disconnect can hurt the value of what you've built. It also just makes the business harder to sell in the first place. On top of that, people have a harder time remembering a person's name than a word or phrase. They might remember they used a handyman company, but forget whether it was Mike's or Matt's or Mark's. A more distinct name tends to stick better. I'm not saying my name is perfect by any means, but thinking through these things before you settle on something is really important. Rebranding is expensive and disruptive. I went from Huge Handyman to Huge Home Pros, and even what felt like a relatively small change ended up costing thousands of dollars once you factor in the website, the truck wraps, the shirts, the signage, and everything else. It adds up fast. So put in the thought upfront, before you've got marketing materials everywhere, because undoing it later is a lot harder than getting it right the first time. The payoff from all of this has been real. Since cleaning up our branding, something interesting started happening. People assume Huge Home Pros is a bigger operation than we are. And because of that, we get taken more seriously. We get better opportunities. Customers come in with a different level of trust right from the start. A polished, professional brand signals that you're established, that you care about the details, and that you're going to show up and do good work. It's your first impression before you ever knock on a door. If I could go back and tell myself one thing early on, it'd be this: don't wait until you feel successful to invest in your brand. A strong brand is part of what makes you successful. Get it right early, and let it do some of the selling for you.
