How to Generate More Home Services Leads: 6 Strategies to Grow Your Customer Base and Your Business

The home services market is expected to grow an incredible 36.22% by 2026—and top $1 trillion by the end of the decade. All that growth translates to incredible opportunity for today's home services businesses. But it also means that competition and the cost of leads will be higher than ever.

As global vendors move into regional and local markets, home service businesses big and small need to be at the top of their marketing and sales game—or risk falling behind.

A key ingredient to your success is a steady stream of quality home services leads, something a whopping 61% of marketers rank as their number-one challenge. That's why we've compiled essential home services lead generation strategies below to help you overcome this challenge—and overtake your competition in the months and years ahead.

On-demand home services are a crucial driver of growth in the industry. It’s easier than ever for consumers to head online, then quickly and easily find the type of services they need. To get those leads, your business needs to be just as easy to find as any other. That means building a presence on a number of the top lead-generating sites, including:

• Amazon Home Services: Free to join, Amazon's home services lead generation platform operates on a revenue share model, taking a cut (up to 20%, depending on the cost of services) of work secured through the platform. This platform can be a powerful tool to businesses serving areas where it's available, however, a highly selective and intensive application process can be a stumbling block for some.

• Angi (Formerly Angie’s List): This stalwart of the home services lead generation game has helped more than 150 million people secure the home services they need. The service is easy for businesses to join and, beyond standard business listings, offers simple pay-per-click ad options to get more home services leads.

• Yelp: A staple of local marketing, home services businesses who optimize and advertise their presence on Yelp can effectively target the warmest leads available—one estimate states that 4 out 5 Yelp users are ready to buy when they visit a page on the site.

• Thumbtack: Thumbtack has burst onto the scene over the past few years and grown into one of the most plentiful sources of home services leads.

• Bark: Although Bark's reach extends to prospects searching for creative services like photographers and more, its user base of more than 20 million also includes a great many potential home services leads. Using Bark, home services brands can filter leads to find the best prospects—and they'll only pay for those leads they choose to contact.

• HomeAdvisor: Even since a 2017 merger with Angie's List, HomeAdvisor continues to be a source of quality home services leads. Although HomeAdvisor comes with a higher price tag than other home services lead generation platforms—requiring an annual fee in addition to its cost-per-lead model—it offers high traffic and increased options for budget control and profile customization that other platforms may lack.

• Houzz: Houzz offers home services businesses both free and premium options for driving more home services leads, giving brands particularly strong access to higher-income households exploring home renovation and remodeling projects.

• Porch: According to Porch's own estimate, their fast-growing platform is involved with 2 in 3 US homebuyers every month. The expansive reach of the home services lead generation platform offers businesses a powerful, if highly competitive, tool to drive more leads.

While millions of people resort to using sites like those above to find the home services they need, many more will discover relevant businesses in their area with a simple Google search. Indeed, 87% of consumers use Google to evaluate local businesses. That’s why making the most of your Google Business Profile (formerly known as Google My Business) is one of the most important strategies for home services lead generation.

One study found that 96% of local businesses are viewed at least 25 times per month in Google search results—and 49% receive more than 1,000 views. Of these searches, 84% of them are so-called “discovery searches,” meaning they are upper-funnel queries for a business category, rather than a specific business’s name.

Optimizing your business’s profile and maximizing the number of views and clicks your business receives ultimately comes down to a number of factors. However, Google offers a guide to improving your local ranking, which includes best practices such as:

• Ensuring listings are complete with accurate information, including address, phone number, category, attributes, and more

• Verify business location and hours, including special hours for holidays

• Manage and respond to customer reviews

• Add photos that showcase your goods and services

Just like with organic search, a robust social media presence is absolutely essential to finding and engaging leads (not to mention existing customers).

It’s a pretty simple numbers game: with more than 5 billion users currently active on social media, your business needs to be there, too. Plus, data suggests that along with this abundance of users, there’s also an abundance of quality leads. According to an eMarketer survey, social media marketing was overwhelmingly ranked the most effective tactic for improving lead gen quality—better than all the alternatives, including email, content marketing, events, and paid search.

If your business is new to social media, start with a Facebook Business Page. Just like your Google My Business profile, this will give you a simple base to build on, offering customers important information like hours, location, and contact info. In time, however, your Facebook Business Page can become a crucial place for marketing and customer engagement, and offer a rich source of high-quality home services leads.

Maintaining a presence across these online venues doesn’t just help potential customers find out your home services business exists. It also helps them understand how well you work—and helps them decide whether you’re the right business for their job.

There may be no better way to signal to potential customers you’re the best option than maintaining healthy reviews. More consumers are reading online reviews than ever before, and they’re not just checking to see how customers have rated businesses’ services, they’re also seeing whether businesses are responding to those ratings. BrightLocal data suggests that 89% of consumers are highly or fairly likely to use a business that responds to all of its online reviews.

This customer emphasis on reviews puts the onus on businesses to manage and engage with customer feedback. Meanwhile, it increases the need for businesses to solicit feedback in the first place. To drive as many reviews as possible—and generate even more leads through referrals—consider offering incentives to customers in the form of future discounts or other rewards.

As a home services provider, you possess something special, something beyond the services you have for sale that can fuel your lead generation efforts. It’s called know-how. Whether you specialize in remodeling, plumbing, or pest control—or you’re a regular jack-of-all-trades—your practical expertise could be the key to expanding your customer base.

Because let’s face it, not every customer issue or concern requires sending somebody out into the field to fix it. In fact, many (or even most) customers will want to take care of things themselves. And thanks to the internet, they can find the information they need to do so.

That’s where your expertise comes in—in the form of compelling content. Whether through SEO-optimized articles and guides, well-timed emails, or well-crafted videos, you can effectively generate leads by being the expert that potential customers turn to for help first. What’s more, you can create content that showcases the work you’ve already done, illustrates the value your business delivers, and inspires consumers to enlist your help on their own projects.

As you build your online presence elsewhere, you’ll ultimately drive more and more traffic to your business’s website, too. Take special care to ensure visitors can easily register their interest in your services with prominent, streamlined contact forms (that also support TCPA compliance).

Generating a steady flow of quality leads is no simple task. It requires your business to effectively market itself in a range of locations and across a variety of channels, and to stand out from the (increasingly packed) crowd of competition.

At the end of the day though, generating those leads is just half the battle. You still need to get customers on the phone and their signatures on the dotted line.

Equip your organization with leading-edge technology that’s designed to make the most out of every home services lead. Learn more about how Convoso’s home services dialing solution can help you maximize contacts, conversions, and compliance by scheduling a free demo today.