Home repair businesses are attracting a lot more customers than usual in the COVID-19 affected world. It would seem that increased stress on personal finances would drive customers away from seeking to do renovations and repairs but that simply isn’t the case. Why? For one, more people are spending time at home due to the pandemic, which is causing them to become hyper sensitive to previously unattended repairs and maintenance, and creating a need to both beautify and increase the comfort of their living and work from home situations. Also, families are saving a lot more money from decreased expenses related to work commuting and canceled spring and summer vacations. In some cases this creates a surplus to spend on home improvements. According to Houzz, as of June, there's been a 58% annual increase in home improvement project leads. With so many people seeking home repair services, businesses in this industry are likely to see a lot more competition that makes it harder to stand out.
With the right home repair ads and digital marketing strategies, you can rise above competitors and maintain visibility among consumers. Here are some tips to help you connect with your audiences and maximize ROI with a comprehensive campaign.
1. Utilize Digital Targeting
The most important part of capturing some of the new, discretionary spending in the home repair market is reaching the right people at the right time. How will you let in-market customers know
that you can fill their needs at a great price? How will you know when they are in-market and ready to buy? Using digital ads, you can target segmented audiences to help ensure your campaigns hit their mark. You can start by designing your campaign to target audiences based on certain demographics, behaviors, and buying habits. From there, you can look to deploy your digital tactics in specific geographic areas (e.g. within 3 miles of local
hardware stores and showrooms), based on online behaviors (e.g. users’ internet searches related to your area of expertise), or how often a person visits specific physical locations (e.g. hardware stores). Audience segmentation is more important than ever considering the empowerment that today's consumers have. For example, 80% of consumers choose to do business with brands that personalize their marketing strategies.
In addition to attracting more high-quality leads, customer segmentation can also help you save money on acquiring patrons. A Harvard Business School case study uncovered MetLife’s use of segmentation to save money.. Abandoning the standard practice of age targeting, MetLife developed buyer personas based on certain consumer behaviors to identify individuals who would be less likely to become their customers. Armed with this information, they focused their efforts on the audience that presented a better financial opportunity. This innovative strategy increased efficiency in their sales process and empowered them to set a new savings goal of $800 million annually.
If you want to target audiences more specifically with digital ads to improve efficiency, an experienced media partner can help you hyper-target your campaigns. You'll be able to segment audiences to identify the best opportunities and customize ads based on what those audiences want.
2. Connect with Social Media
When it comes to marketing, like with many other things, showing what you are doing is always more effective than telling. This also applies to social media. If you can use social media to effectively show how you can help your audiences, you'll be able to use it to drive more sales. As a home repair business, you can highlight how your services have helped past customers and illustrate the value you can provide.
For instance, you could post transformations that show a particular project from start to finish. Either through videos or images, or a combination of the two, your posts can wow audiences and encourage them to use your services. You can also post both text and video testimonials from past customers that further support your offerings and claims. In addition to showing how you've helped previous customers, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry by sharing helpful tips and tricks for DIY projects.
You can also respond to questions or concerns and essentially use social media as a branch of customer support.
With the help of social media, you'll have the ability to connect with some of the largest audiences. As of 2020, 3.5 billion people use social media, making this one of the most important channels if you want to maximize your reach.
3. Send Email Blasts
Email marketing is still one of the best ways to target consumers and keep them engaged. Whether nurturing leads to employ your services or encouraging existing customers to come back to you, you can succeed with well-developed email campaigns.
Sending email blasts on a regular basis can keep leads interested and connect with current customers. The key to successful email blasts is an enticing call-to-action (CTA). Each CTA should be personalized based on your audiences, from free brochure downloads for additional information to requesting recipients to contact the company for a free quote. You should know what your audience is expecting and when with appropriately timed and personalized emails. The best time to send email blasts is between 9-11 a.m., regardless of industry or audience. Segmenting your campaigns is integral to a successful email push—marketers who employed segmentation reported up to a 760% increase in total revenue.
4. Create Targeted OTT Ads
As stated before, reaching the right person at the right time with your message is key, and there’s no better way to do that with video than with Over-the-top (OTT) ads.
While traditional TV ads are still effective, more and more people are adopting streaming services. Combining TV with a targeted OTT ad buy can create a powerhouse campaign with vastly expanded reach and frequency. You can showcase services, talk about who you are, and promote current offers directly to potential customers who meet your marketing targets.
Having the ability to hyper-target OTT ad campaigns allows your ads to reach audiences who are most likely to be interested in your offerings. You can launch campaigns on specific networks and at specific times based on your audience's preferences. The OTT market is projected to be worth $332.52 billion by 2025, making it one of the best markets to get into at this time.
Using each of these strategies can help you develop an unstoppable digital marketing campaign for your home improvement business. However, you could get lost in the mix without the help of experienced professionals to supercharge your strategies. To get the most from your marketing efforts, consider working with a media partner with plenty of knowledge and expertise. A dependable partner could make sure you stand apart from competitors and attract more high-quality leads and customers.
