Back in the day, pest control was a somewhat closed market. You had to know someone who had tried a particular company’s services and was satisfied with the results. And though word-of-mouth marketing is sufficient in maintaining a nice customer flow, it has its limits. One day things changed, and it is now simply not enough to just do a good job and have happy clients. Why did this happen?
Today people have practically unlimited access to the Internet. It allows users to find any pest control company they want, read the reviews, and compare the prices and services. This is why a marketing plan for pest control companies has become a must-have. Finding new customers, rewarding your loyal clients, and raising brand awareness is the new reality for pest control online marketing. The Lasting Trend digital marketing agency specializes in these areas. In this article, we will share some of our expertise with you.
Best Offer Ever: Who Is Your Client and How Your Service Can Help Him
There are a lot of pest control marketing ideas. However, one can say that the basic idea is to know your clientele. Actually, it applies to literally any kind of business marketing, not only pest control. If you are selling a product or your services, it is vital to have answers to the following questions:
- Who your customer is?
- How old is your customer?
- Which gender is most prominent among customers?
- What do they want from you?
- How will a customer know he needs pest control?
- What price is he ready to pay?
- Where is he located?
- Why should he choose you over your competitors?
- What does he know about pest control, and what should he know?
Each and every question from this list should have an answer. When developing your pest control marketing strategy, base it on your client’s image, interests, location, and needs. Let’s say, you have conducted marketing research about your clientele. The results show, that 85% of your customers are wealthy men in their 30s with a wife and kids, who live within 30 miles from you.
In this case, your marketing strategy should address them. For example, your pest control ad should say, that your methods of dealing with bugs are fast and there are no consequences that may hurt your kid’s health. Your target audience will see this ad, apply it to their situation, and decide that you are the safest bet (especially, if your price is just right) and will choose you over your competitors.
Brand Your Pest Control Business
What is one of the most important aspects of the marketing plan for a pest control company? The brand. Your business is to protect your customers’ homes from bugs and pests; people are relying on you. Their safety depends on you. It is natural, that they want to be confident in the company they chose, they are placing their trust in you.
This is where the pest control brand enters the game. The brand is the company’s face. Your logo, your business cards, your slogan, your name, your website, and your emails – it all counts. The client’s trust is built from a number of small things that create the image of the company together.
Everything that a customer sees about your business should be polished and professional, every process should run smoothly. If you manage to achieve this, then your satisfied clients, whose homes you have successfully saved from pests, will contact you again, if necessary, or will tell their friends and colleagues about you. Never overlook the importance of word-of-mouth if you work with the public.
If you do not have a logo or a website or haven’t yet established your brand – Lasting Trend will gladly help you with that! Our specialists will provide you with anything you might need.
Pest Control Company Website
Pest control marketing would be impossible without an online presence. But what will make it not just any other page, but the best pest control website? Relevant content and usability. Imagine that you are your client. You need a pest control company because your house is suddenly full of bugs.
The first thing you do – you Google a company that can handle your situation. And basically, Google results will determine your choice. The first pages you see (let’s not consider paid ads) are the most relevant to your search query. Later, we will discuss SEO and Search Engine Results Page (SERP); our current goal is to understand and define the things that make potential customers choose you based on your website.
Remember, how we talked about pest control marketing strategy and how you should address your target audience? Your website has to represent the fact that your company is the right company for the request. How can you achieve this?
Pest control marketing for a website is all about creating a clear and logical structure. It should be easy to figure out how to find all relevant information on your site. The main page should have either a link to the most common requests, such as an emergency call for pest services, calculator, price lists, etc., or there should be tools to complete these actions, directly on the main page.
Remember, people usually contact pest control companies when they have a problem. Having discovered that there are pests in the home, they will want to get rid of them as soon as possible. This is why your clients don’t want to spend a lot of time browsing your site in search of the information needed.
Once again – the logical, clear, and understandable layout of your site, especially the main page, is key to proper pest control marketing. If you have difficulty creating a site on your own, contact Lasting Trend professionals. We will make everything according to your requirements and the current trends in pest control marketing.
Pest Control SEO and Local SEO
No pest control marketing strategy would be sufficient without pest control SEO (Search Engine Organization). We have mentioned it before, now it is time to take a closer look at this important marketing tool. To put it simply, imagine that you need the services of a pest control company. Most likely you will Google this. So you type something like “urgent pest control” or “pest control *your location*”. Then the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) show the links. But what are those links?
Organic Search
These are the websites that didn’t pay any money to appear on your SERP, they are there because the search engine decided that its content is relevant to your search query.
Google Ads
These are paid advertisements. You can see the label “Ads” or “Sponsored” near them. It means that the owners of these sites have paid money to have their links shown first. Using only paid ads is not very efficient, as many users just skip them, thinking that it is a scam. However, combining organic results and paid results will increase the effectiveness of your SEO.
Links
There are three kinds of links that you can use on your website in terms of SEO: internal, external, and backlinks. Internal links transfer users to another page on your site, external links take users to other are sites, and backlinks have a connection between two sites. All these links increase your ability to help your customers gather more information, while also making your page a more reputable site for search engines.
Google My Business
If you see an additional window, under the search box, which shows you all of the contact information, location on maps, and links to the website of a company; know that this business has a lot of new customers coming in simply because they have set Google My Business. This a service that allows people to see extended information about your company directly on the SERP. And what is best – you won’t spend a dime on it, it is absolutely free.
Now, you know what links you’re looking at. But how can you make your website appear in the SERP and have a high ranking? Keywords. The content of your site should have particular words or word combinations which are basically the common words people type in the search box.
The search engine analyzes them and decides whether or not the content of your Internet page is relevant to the query or not. If you update your site regularly, post new articles on relevant topics, cooperate with reputable sites – Google ranks your “reputation” higher.
Another beneficial tool in pest control marketing is local SEO. The name speaks for itself: your keywords are locally oriented, like “pest control within 10 miles”, “pest control *district*” and so on. This helps you gather clients who aren’t that far away from you. And, most importantly, to whom YOU can get to really fast in the case of an emergency.
It is also important to mention the meta description. When you type your request in the search query and look at the SERP, you can see that every link has a short description underneath it. This is called a meta description. Apart from the obvious fact that it helps the user understand what the page is all about, it also helps the search engine to decide whether or not it should show your site to the user.
SMM: Show Your Cases and Real People Reviews
Social media is now a vital part of our lives. It’s hard to imagine a person who doesn’t have a Facebook, Instagram, or other major social media account. Nevertheless, many businesses still fail to understand that pest control online marketing can bring thousands of new customers to your site from social media platforms.
Of course, it’s not enough just to create an account and pay for a large number of subscribers. This will not raise your brand awareness or get new leads. Your posts should be thoughtful and interesting. Think about what would be interesting to you if you started following a pest control company on social media? As a customer, you would like to, for example, find out the process of how the company works. Or find out about different ways to eliminate bugs by yourself.
Provide your clients and subscribers with information they can actually use and share with their friends, then your pest control online marketing will be at its best.
Also, one should not forget about the so-called social influencer. These are people who have a lot of followers on their personal accounts. There are different ways to interact with them, for example, a barter. Offer your services for free to someone with tons of subscribers and in return, they will mention you in their post.
A lot of people will find out about your company. Some of them may use your services right away, some will remember you when they discover a pest problem. Either way, you have a broad-reaching advertisement for no cost! Moreover, when people see that you are represented by a man or a woman they respect, your credibility will increase. And customer trust is an essential part of pest control online marketing.
Pest Control Blog and Useful Content
If you want your SEO to work properly, you have to give it some “food”. In this case, that would be pest control content that you will share on your online blog. You must educate your audience on the specifics of your business, and not think that posting only entertainment articles all the time will be enough.
All the information that people can find on your website should be somehow useful to them. The blog should answer their frequently asked questions. Once you gather enough content, you might want to create a separate FAQ section. Customer questions may solely provide topics for your blog, that is why it is important to maintain a dialog with your clients.
Let’s think about some customer questions and transform them into potential blog articles.
Why Should I Choose Your Company?
This is a normal question any client asks himself before eventually choosing a company. The market today is very competitive and the choice is huge. Use this opportunity to write an article about your company. Present yourself, tell how long you have been operating in this sphere, what tools and methods you use, what your loyalty programs and special offers include, how fast you can answer an urgent call, and much, much more. This is an opportunity to start a conversation with a client. The more your customer knows about you and your operations, the more trust you will have.
What Types Of Pests Are There?
If you work in the pest control industry, you know a lot about pests, what types there are, how they behave, etc. Share your expertise with your customers! This will make you look professional and trustworthy.
How to Deal With the Problem Yourself?
Giving “inside” information increases your credibility in the eyes of your potential clients and it is good for your pest control marketing strategy. Tell them, how to deal with an emergency before you arrive, how to understand that there is an emergency in the first place and what steps to take.
Are Pesticides Dangerous?
No doubt people are interested in this topic because these pesticides will be used in their home, where they are going to live after you’re gone. Their concerns are understandable, as many people believe pesticides contain chemicals that kill everything and are highly dangerous to people. Be thorough in describing your safety protocol, make sure your customers know when they can return home, and how safe or unsafe the type of pesticide you used is.
How to Avoid Pests?
Explain, how to make sure you will never have bugs and pests in your house again (examine your property, repair any structural defects, keep your home clean). Provide the reasons why different types of pests may invade your home and their patterns of infestation.
How Many People Did You Help?
If you have a 100% success rate, show this to your customers, do not be shy! Place positive statistics and reviews of your work on the site. By the way, do not include only positive feedback, as people will not believe you. If you have negative comments, answer them calmly and professionally.
Remember, every word you write or say, every move you make – is all a part of creating your brand image. The better the image, the more clients will trust you. Also, if you have some interesting or challenging cases to share, do it!
Describe your work step by step, tell a bit about a pest you are fighting, tell which pesticide you used and what steps you took to eradicate the problem at the lowest cost possible. Your customers will gladly read this kind of article as it is simultaneously interesting and unusual and also allows them to learn more about pests.
This is not the completed list of all questions you can transform into a blog. Just listen to your clients and communicate with them and more ideas will surely come.
Pest Control Ads
A pest control marketing strategy should be a very flexible, diverse tool as the market is quite conservative and closed. One should use as many ways as possible to attract customers. In order to achieve the best results possible, your pest control ads should be different from other sites.
Think creatively, do not use ordinary and boring templates like “Tired of bugs? Call us!”. There are literally thousands of similar ads, how will your customers be able to tell the difference between you and your competitors? Be unique!
At least make your pest control marketing ads bright and eye-catching. Here is an example of an unusual pop-up: place a cartoon bug that will crawl across the screen. And if the user points at him, a fly swatter appears. Click – the bug is dead and there is a banner – “Was he bugging you? Contact us, we can help”. Or use fun facts about bugs in your ads – nothing attracts attention better than humor, especially in such a gloomy sphere as pest control marketing.
Networking and Referral Program
Pest control marketing covers a lot of things. A good boost for your pest control marketing strategy would be using networking and referral programs. Let’s say, client A has found your pest control ads and called you to save him from bugs. You did your job and got one more satisfied customer, everyone is happy.
You offer this client A a deal: if someone he knows has trouble with pests, client A will give this person your company’s contact information. For doing so, he either receives a discount for the next time he needs pest control or a reward, such as a $50 coupon. As a result, client A will be motivated to tell his friends about your company, and you will get the benefit of new clients.
Also, a good thing to do would be networking with other businesses that are not your competitors. For example, garden shops. Their clients are people who will most definitely, at some point, need pest control. And there you have it, a special discount for the clients of this garden shop. And vice versa, when your pest control company provides marketing for the garden shop.
Such networking among businesses has already proven itself to be beneficial in world practice. Because your operation field is tangentially related but not competitive, you can safely direct and redirect customers to each other, gaining only profits and new loyal customers.
Conclusion
We hope that this article helped you understand how important online marketing is for pest control companies. Though it is not something utterly complex, the promotion of your business takes a lot of time and effort. And every business owner knows that these resources are never at a surplus.
That is why Lasting Trend is here to help. We have a professional crew of marketing specialists that will research all of the current trends in the market, create and implement a strategy that will fit your requirements, bring your SEO game to a totally new level of quality, frequently update your blog (though the quality of the content will remain only the highest) and many other services we will be happy to provide you with.
If you want your business to stand out from the dozens of other pest control companies, contact us, and let’s get started!
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A perfect post! Keep posting such informative content. Thank you.