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In 2019, total revenue from the pest control market is expected to surpass?$14.4 billion. The market itself is ballooning thanks to warmer weather and the ever-growing urban sprawl. So, the question is: what is your pest control company doing to claim a bigger piece of that pie this year?
It seems like it should be easy to get new customers?especially since every homeowner will most likely need your services at least once in their lifetime.?But, if you?re short on pest control marketing ideas, you aren?t alone. The marketing industry itself has changed drastically in the past few years, and what worked to get you pest control leads in 2015 probably won?t work next year.
To help you out, I?ve detailed 12 foolproof pest control marketing strategies and ideas that will help you claim a bigger piece of your market?s pie, increase pest control leads and sales, and differentiate your brand in the marketplace:
Should you outsource your marketing? I recommend you read our eBook 7 signs you’re ready to outsource your Digital Marketing.
Do your technicians wear uniforms? How about your trucks?are they some junkers you bought at an auction, or are they nice, branded representations of your business?
There?s a reason you do those things?first impressions matter.
Well, not only do first impressions matter on the job, but they also matter online. Your website is often the first interaction people have with your business, and they?will?judge your company based on how your site looks.?In fact,?48 percent of people?cited a website?s design as the number one factor in deciding the credibility of a business, and once your webpage loads,?users form an opinion in .05 seconds.
These are the things your website needs to have in order to be on par with the top pest control companies:
But not only does it have to have those attributes in order to satisfy the pest control target market, it also needs to be:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of increasing a web page?s search rankings in order to increase online visibility. It?s incredibly valuable because?97 percent of consumers?go online to find local services,?93 percent of online experiences?begin with a search engine, and 47 percent of people click on one of the first three listings.
There are more than?200 factors?that go into what makes a page rank high on the search results page, but the ones that matter the most are:
What is local SEO? It?s the type of SEO that makes you show up for local search queries and in Google?s local pack (that group of businesses under the map). For example,
Take a look at the search results for both of those queries:
In order to rank for local searches and get your company into that local pack (the map listings), you need to improve your local SEO. You can do this by:
Have you?claimed your GMB page? Go do that. I?ll wait.
Done? Great!? An optimized Google My Business (GMB) page will allow homeowners and property managers to:
To optimize your GMB, make sure you?ve completely filled out and updated:
Here?s an example of a well-optimized GMB listing for a pest control company:
We discussed your GMB page and how a few different factors come into play in order to get your company into the local pack. One of those factors is your consistency and presence on relevant local directories and listings. One of the easiest, best pest control marketing ideas is to go and claim your local search listings on the following platforms (in order of importance?find the full list here):
The modern consumer is now research-obsessed thanks to how easy it is to get information on pretty much anything. According to Google?s research, ?Consumers use search to optimize their lives. It lets them feel more confident and less anxious.?
You can simultaneously satisfy homeowners? craving for information and turn them into leads (or lifelong customers) with a pest control blog. Not only that, but blogs can also drive SIGNIFICANT traffic to your website.
Here are some great pest control blog ideas:
Which brings us to?..
YouTube is technically the second most popular search engine after Google, and a video is 50 times more likely to rank organically in the search results than text pages. By 2019, videos will account for?85 percent of online traffic in the US.
And if that doesn?t knock your socks off, get this:?in the past 60 seconds, YouTube users have uploaded more than 300 hours of videos.
Holy monopoly.
What?s even more important is that pest control companies that use video in their marketing strategy experience on average a 27 percent higher click-through-rate (CTR) and 34 percent higher web conversion rate than those that don?t.
This means that video can:
Start with these videos for pest control companies:
Your pest control marketing materials should include infographics. They?re all the rage?for a good reason.? They?re perfect for condensing a lot of information while still getting your message across.?Humans are visual creatures by nature: 90 percent of the information transmitted to the brain is visual and is processed?60,000x faster?in the brain than text. That?s why people prefer to watch videos and look at infographics to get information.
Most small businesses invest in one kind of pest control ads: print. It?s usually the same deal: pest control advertising flyers or postcards, either attached to someone?s door or slipped in their mailbox.
Why not try digital with pay per click ads???Pay per click?(PPC) is a form of advertising in which you pay for each click on your ad. The reason you should use them is that PPC ads have a prominent place in search results, and you can use them for?remarketing(where you show ads to people who have already visited your website).
When someone goes to Google and searches for something, the top 3 ? 4 listings are usually advertisements from Google?s AdWords.?It?s a pest control marketing strategy that is also highly scalable and affordable.
We recommend PPC ads recommended because:
If you don?t have a strategy to generate reviews, you?re in trouble?90 percent of consumers read online reviews before visiting a business and 88 percent of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. On top of that, your number of reviews and average rating is factored into Google?s search results.
To get more online reviews, you should start by asking for them.?In my experience, one of the common reasons pest control companies don?t have many reviews on Google or Facebook is because they just plain?don?t ask for them.
Want to take it to the next level?! Invest into video testimonials from your clients!?
MARKETING IDEA 11: TEST EMAIL MARKETING AND MARKETING AUTOMATION
While I wish it were otherwise, not everyone who fills out a contact form on your site bites the bullet and becomes a customer.
But, this doesn?t mean they?re lost forever. You can always get them back by keeping your company on their radar with opt-in email marketing.
Opt-in?email marketing?is a highly effective way to grow your pest control business:
Email marketing allows you to nurture unclosed leads and keep in touch with past customers, and?it can be automated! However, email marketing is not the same thing as marketing automation. Marketing automation is an umbrella term that can include any form of messaging that is triggered automatically. This can include everything from email marketing to automated texts and messenger marketing on Facebook and LinkedIn.
We like the platforms?Campaigner?and?MailChimp?they?re easy to use and provide great analytical insights.
?
?No, social media marketing probably?won?t result in hundreds of leads from Facebook each month?that?s the same for most pest control companies. That doesn?t mean there isn?t a HUGE amount of value in social media marketing, though. We encourage our pest control clients to use social media to:
Hopefully, you have enough pest control marketing ideas to last you through 2019. But, if I could give you one piece of advice?right now, it would be to contact an agency and have a?digital marketing analysis?done. Good ones (like ours) evaluate your web presence to come up with actionable insights on where you need the most improvement and where you stand against your competitors. A good analysis will:
If you don?t get an analysis done, you run the risk of employing marketing strategies that just plain won?t accomplish what you really need to in order to grow your company.
Give us a call or?contact us online.?Our internet marketing experts will help you get your website ranking and help put your company on the right path for maximum growth.
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