10 Things to Fix Before Running Ads for Your Home Service Business

Home service business owners spend thousands of dollars every single month on Facebook ads and Google ads, and little do they know they're flushing it down the toilet. Until you've done the things that I'm talking about in this video, I would not spend one single dollar on paid advertising. No door hangers, no YouTube ads, no Facebook ads, no Google ads, no LSA, no Nextdoor. I don't care what it is, don't spend a dollar on ads until you do the things that we're talking about today. First thing we're going to do, optimize Google Business Profile. While we're at it, let's throw in Facebook because we're going to— I have social media. Google Business Profile is where you can add your hours, your services, your service area, your address, everything about your business in one spot. Google loves data, so give it more data. When someone leaves a review, that's part of optimizing my Google Business Profile, getting as many reviews as possible. It doesn't cost you anything, but when you respond to the review that a customer gives you, Don't just say, thanks, Bob. Respond back with SEO-friendly responses. SEO is search engine optimization, meaning I'm going to take the review from Bob. I'm going to paste that in a ChatGPT or Gemini and I say, can you give me an SEO search engine optimized friendly response to this review on Google? It's going to spit out like a 2 or 3 sentences that you can then copy in as your response on the Google review. This will allow, especially when it comes to AI, when it's looking through sites, it's looking for reputation, it's looking for confidence in your website. And one of the strongest things for that is real customer feedback, a review with a response from you that has keywords that is relevant to the services and the service area that you serve. So optimize the Google Business Profile also You got to add more data than just reviews. You can't just do service areas. I want you to have an actual verified address. Is it a pain in the butt to get a verified address? Yes, but it's worth it because you show up on the map. Your ranking not only on the Google Business Profile, but even on organic is affected by whether or not you have an address verified on the map. Again, think of it from the perspective of Google, ChatGPT, Gemini, all these companies. Ask yourself, what's the whole purpose of them ranking websites? Is to give the user what they ask for. And so the whole goal or business model of Google or any other search engine is to make sure that the results they show their customers are accurate and the best option for them. Your job is to make sure you convey to the search engine that you are the best option. And that is going to be through having the address verified on Google. It's going to be having reviews that you respond to thoughtfully with an SEO-friendly response. It's going to be adding pictures and video and posts consistently to your Google Business Profile. So it's not like you just throw your logo up and you just like look at it once every few months. At least once or twice a week, you want to post a picture, a video, something to your Google Business Profile because Google loves the data. And it shows that you're open and it will promote you for free inside of Google Maps and inside of Google Search. Just give it more data. And that comes first in the form of reviews and then everything else we've talked about. Now on Facebook, I'm gonna be making sure that those same posts that I put on Google, 'cause I gotta make some content for Google, I'm gonna just go ahead and post those on Facebook as well. Ideally, in the perfect world, those Facebook pictures pictures or video are going to show my local business, my local area, my team, behind the scenes, before and after. Don't think that people are waking up every morning just super excited to see your next promotion for core aeration. They're not. They're waking up, looking at their Facebook feed, thinking about the kitten or some grandbaby of theirs. That's what they're going to social media for. And you're interrupting them if you are asking, $10 off today for your core aeration. If you do that over and over and over again, the algorithm, Facebook, will simply stop showing your posts. Why? 'Cause again, the whole objective of Facebook is to keep people on the platform so they can feed them more ads. And if people leave the platform because they're constantly seeing your posts that are just selling them stuff, that's a bad experience for Facebook 'cause they need people to stay on their device so they can consume more ads. So again, what are we gonna do? We're gonna try to create content on Facebook that is engaging for the audience, that people comment on, they like it, they share it. And these are usually gonna be faces, they're gonna be local, they're gonna be your team. Before and afters work great, but don't think that, oh, I post every single day, and every single time I look at it, it's like, call now, $50 off, get this service today, get this service today. Do that 1 out of 5 times max on social media. We want to make sure that social media is there to socialize, not to sell. All right, the second thing I need you to do before you spend a single dollar on ads is website conversion rate optimization, or CRO. It is amazing to me how many times at Home Service Web Design, we have built over 1,000 home service websites, is amazing to me the conversion rate that we see people come in with. We saw one the other day, 1 out of 400 people, 1 out of 400 people coming to their website, converted into a lead. And they were getting about 1 lead every 2 to 3 weeks. After we built their site, within 3 months, their conversion rate went to 1 out of 50. You're like, well, what does that mean? Same amount of people coming to their website. We didn't run ads, nothing. We just changed the design of the website and optimized it for conversion rate. And they got, for the same amount of traffic, 8x leads. Why? 'Cause their conversion rate went from 1 out of 400 to 1 out of 50. And everyone's out here trying to drive more traffic into a broken funnel. And so you're like, well, what's the fastest? See, this is the big question everyone asks. How do I double my business? Oh, you gotta go to ads. Let's go get more clicks into the top of this. When in reality, you could take the same number of clicks and 8x the number of leads that you're getting by just increasing the conversion of the website. You go, how do you increase the conversion of the website? You make sure that when people get to your site, it loads fast. That when they pull it up on a mobile device where 80% of your traffic is coming from, that it actually looks good. They're not having to pinch way in, zoom way over, and then scroll way down. Your page is super long, they can't find where your phone number is. They can't even figure out whether or not you service their area 'cause you don't put it anywhere. Or you have like weird sentences and pictures that make it very confusing as to what do you do? The two things that customers are wanting when they come to a website, first off, will this service solve my problem? And number two, can I get a quote? So if your headline's not simply saying what services you do and what service area you're willing to serve, customers are confused. I need to be able to know as a customer do you solve my problem? And to know, do you solve my problem, I need to know, do you do my service and do it in my service area? That's gotta be clear. And if behind that headline and that text, it's confusing me 'cause I don't know what you do, I won't scroll, I won't click to another page. And so I wanna make it painfully obvious what I do and then I'll solve the problem for the customer. And then I wanna make sure that they actually submit an estimate request form. If you put the Contact Us page as a button and they've got to leave the homepage to submit an estimate request form, conversion rate drops off a cliff. Okay, so in the edit here, I realized that I didn't really tell you how you could fix your own website. So I built a tool, homeserviceaudit.com. It's completely free. You don't have to put your email address in. There's no cost whatsoever. You can go put your URL, your web address directly into the form and using AI and everything I know about websites, it'll tell you exactly what to do to get more leads from your website. Go check it out today. So I want to have my website form, the form that I'm getting questions from the customer answered, the contact form, I am going to have that above the fold, at the top of the page, ideally on the homepage. I don't want them to have to leave the site. I don't want them to have to click into another button that goes to a different page or goes to a scheduling service, I don't want that. This leads into form optimization. If when they get to your form, you're asking for everything besides their Social Security number and their shoe size, you're going to reduce conversion rate. If I ask someone 20 different things versus 3 different things of contact information, type of services they want, their zip code, their city, their name, their last name, do you have pets, do you have a gate, can I just please give you money? There are some of your best customers that'll fall off during the form 'cause they value their time and they don't wanna spend 10 minutes filling out your form. And you're like, "Oh, I'm trying to qualify the customer." Your best customers are leaving 'cause they value their time. If you go into most services that are big companies and you look at Apple, you look at Google, they don't ask for 20 different things to get set up for their service. It's like, "We need your name and your email address, thank you very much." So what is the minimum amount of information that I need to be able to know that I can provide the service to the customer? That's what I'm pushing for. I'm not going to show them a big, massive form. I'm going to show them just a few things I need to be able to provide a quote accurately. The more fields that you put inside that form, you are reducing your conversion rate. And that might be fine if you're in profit mode and you only want a certain type of customer. That's fine. Just know if you're trying to grow, having a big old long form, it's like it directly integrates with my CRM. It brings all the information over. So you're gonna save approximately 20 seconds of copying and pasting in exchange for a 20 or 30% reduction in the amount of leads that you're getting. And so I'm gonna optimize my form based upon, am I in profit mode and I'm trying to reduce the number of leads I'm getting, but I wanna increase the quality 'cause I, I want all these questions answered, or I'm in growth mode where I'm gonna have less filters, less fields in my form, but I'm gonna get as many leads as possible. You got to ask yourself the question and only you know where in that continuum you want to be. So make sure the forms that you are giving are relevant to the services that are being requested as well as if you're going to have a longer form, I highly recommend making it where as they fill it out, it opens up. So at first I'm just going to show them the basic contact information that I need, and once they fill it out, then they can select the services that they want. Then unlocks and they're able to see the pricing and then to select the pricing. Then they're able to see the credit card information. I'm putting that on file. Then they will see the terms and conditions. If I just show that all at the beginning, it looked way too intimidating for most people to even start. So you've got to optimize your form based upon the services you offer and whether or not you're trying to optimize for growth or profit and the best customers only getting through. Number 4 is to answer the phone 10+ hours a day. And ideally, you're going to use a human because they'll be able to upsell customers a lot better than AI. But at the very least, have AI. If you need a part-time assistant, a VA, someone, answer the phone at least 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. Immediately, you're gonna go from 40 hours like everyone else of your competition to 60 hours. 10 hours a day times 6 days per week. That's a 50% bump. I can guarantee you will increase your conversion. You increase the number of leads you get because when customers are calling at 6 PM around all the competition and you're the only one that picks up, you'll probably get the job. The next thing I need you to do before you spend a single dollar on ads is have a max lead time of 24 hours. The lead time has got to be less than 24 hours. Meaning that when the customer submits an estimate request form, calls you, emails you, DMs you, or in some way reaches out to you, under 24 hours, I want the lead in their inbox, whether it be email or text, whatever it is. I need them seeing pricing within 24 hours. Now, ideally, I would like to do that instantly or over the phone. That would be the best. But there are certain services you have to do an in-person estimate. But I don't want someone waiting a week to see me. And then another week to get the quote in their inbox. That would be 14 days. I want it to be 24 hours or less. You're like, why? Why does that matter? The Google Bros don't need your money. And we just keep pouring money to those platforms and door hangers and all the rest of it versus just being like, how do we optimize all of these stages? Because if you did this, you'd probably double or triple the amount of leads that you're getting, the amount of jobs that you end up getting accepted. All right. We got lead time. You're like, I got dialed in. We're doing it over the phone. We're doing it within a matter of a couple hours. We go out to the job same day. We meet the customer. Awesome. Once the estimate has been sent, we need to automate SMS, text messages, and email to the customer. We got to follow up on the estimate. Inside of HomeWorks, you can set up automations around text and email and you can be like 1 day after, 2 days after, 3 days after, 5 days after, 7 days after, 10 days after, especially within those first week. I want as many touchpoints as possible, and I'm not just going to keep saying, did you get the quote? Did you get the quote? Did you get the quote? I'm going to use different angles and hooks on the SMS and the email follow-ups to make sure I engage the customer. I'm going to use scarcity and urgency. Scarcity is there's a limited supply. There's only so many of these left. There's only 4 more people in on this route that's available. Then there's urgency, which is time. By March 1st, you got to sign up. This promotion offer ends this time, like You gotta have scarcity and urgency wrapped up inside your SMS or your email, 'cause a lot of people are like, "Oh no, I do follow-ups, I do automations," and then I look at them, it's like, "Here's your quote estimate again." It's like, they saw that the first day, second day, and the third day that you sent that. You've gotta use different angles on those texts and those emails, otherwise they are irrelevant and they will not move the needle if every single of your follow-ups that are automated They look exactly the same as the one before, but we're not done yet. Because before you spend a single dollar on advertising, I also want you to do follow-up phone calls. This is the one everyone tries to get away from 'cause they're like, "I can do automations, no problem. Text, email, let's go." But phone calls take some serious kahunas to call people and ask them, "Hey, you got the quote? What questions do you have?" and hear their objections and then overcome the objections. "Well, I've got to wait for 3 more quotes." "I've got to talk to my spouse." "My father always told me not to accept the first estimate I get." All the random objections you're going to get. It is difficult because it's live and you have to address them on the phone. So a lot of times people will shirk away from this. One very easy way to double your conversion rate is to just start doing follow-up phone calls. We ran a test of across thousands of estimates at Augusta Lawn Care, and it went from about 34% to 67% close rate if they just followed up with the customer a minimum of 3 times on the phone. You got to have phone calls. You're like, how do I automate that? Inside the automation sequence in HomeWorks, just have the text or email come back to you or your office person that says, hey, this customer needs a follow-up phone call. Here's a link to their estimate. Here's their name, here's their address, and here is their phone number. And then you just tap on the phone number and you're calling. And then I tap while I'm calling, I tap on the estimate, I'm looking at the estimate, okay, there's all the information, fantastic. All right, when I get the customer on the phone, I'm not just asking, do you have any questions? I'm not asking, did you get the quote? Those are weak. Those are entry-level. Those are better than nothing. I'm thankful that you're doing follow-up phone calls. Thank you very much. But if you want to go to the next level, we're going to use scarcity and urgency. We're going to tell them, hey, we'd love to get pictures of this for our social media of this specific service. We'd love to get you on the quote, on the schedule, because we have 4 to 5 weeks of schedule being booked out and we got one spot available next Thursday. I'm going to call and I tell them, hey, we have a one-day promotion today only on the service that you requested. We're also offering this other service for free. I'm always coming with bullets in the chamber. I'm coming with ammunition. Because if they say no to next Thursday, no worries, Mr. Jones, I can always call them tomorrow. I can still text them. I can still email them without harassing them. Because the last thing you wanna hear when you say, do you have any questions? No, we don't have any questions. We'll let you know whenever we make a decision. You are at a dead end. Any sort of communication that you do after that is looked at as pushy, as salesy. As intrusive versus, "Hey, Mr. Jones, I just want to give you a quick call. I just noticed that next week we only have one spot available, and I know that was important for you to get the property cleanup done. And so I was going to give you a call and see if we can get that on the schedule, because after that, we got 3 or 4 weeks' worth of work that's booked up." And if they say no to that, that's fine. "I got to talk to my spouse." "No worries, Mr. Jones. I know you got to talk to your spouse. I would do the same thing. I'm going to go ahead and reserve that spot for next Thursday on the schedule because I know it's important to get that done, and I don't want you to have to wait 4 weeks." So I'm going to reserve it. You talk to your spouse. I'll give you a call back tomorrow. Again, back on me. Don't have them— I'm not waiting on them calling me. I'll call you back again tomorrow and confirm the appointment. You've got to stay in control and you can do that using follow-up phone calls. Number 8: I want no pending estimates that I have not followed up on. It is amazing to me when I go out on turnarounds or I look through people's software and I see they have sent 40 quotes, a couple of them are accepted, All of them have been opened and all of them, their status is still pending. This is low-hanging fruit for follow-up phone calls. The fact that you have not followed up with any quote that says pending and inside HomeWorks, you can see if they opened it up so you can literally know, okay, I sent it 10:14. Okay, 10:31, they opened up the link. Fantastic. I know they have seen the quote. I'm not calling them to ask if they got the quote. I'm asking them, what problems do we have to overcome to be able to solve this problem for you? But no pending estimates don't have a pending Estimates stacking up. This is customers ghosting you. These are people that are like, hey, I want to go out, and they call you up and you spend time, energy going to their property, doing a property walkthrough, yacking about whatever they want to talk about, getting the quote, preparing the quote, doing a design, doing a drawing, coming up with all the numbers, and then they just sit you on read, pending status. They're ghosting you, and I won't have it. We will follow up with every single quote until they say no. And if you got to push on phone calls, "Hey, Mr. Jones, I don't mean to be pushy. I know you said I'm pushy. You're tired of me calling. I just need a yes or no so I can go ahead and mark this account complete. I just need to know so I don't have a pending estimate." And if they need to say no, that's fine, but I'm not going to have pending estimates. All right, number 9, another thing I'm going to do before I spend a single dollar on advertising is a monthly email blast to all of my customers? Why in the world would I spend a single dollar on advertising before emailing all my existing customers and saying, hey, would you like to buy more stuff from me? You already know, like, and trust me. I have your card on file. We've done service for you in the past, or we're still doing service for you now. Would you like to buy more stuff? What's the likelihood of people that have already done work for you, done work with you, paid you money, met you in person, built trust and rapport with you, saw your crew, was happy with the service. What's the likelihood of them accepting an estimate versus Joe Schmo seeing a Google ad? And how much more effort am I going to have to convince Joe Schmo versus the person in my contact database that I've already done work for in the past and I have their credit card information on file? Send an email to all your existing customers. And yes, inside HomeWorks, in the email template builder, you can make really fancy emails with GIFs and videos and pictures and all sorts of cool fancy doodads. And I have yet to see those outperform very basic 2 or 3 3 sentences that comes across as a very personalized email text only with my name at the end to the customer. The same thing is true for number 10, and that is an SMS blast, because guess what? Only about 30 to 40% of these emails are going to get opened. Like, Mike, I do an email blast every single month. Fantastic. 60 to 70% of your customers aren't even seeing it. SMS text, on the other hand, 98 to 99% of people will see the text messages that you send them, and as long as they're not spammy, you're not going to get blocked. So again, don't be like, "99% off today, get $350 back on your $200 purchase." Like, don't go spammy with it. You will get blocked. Carriers will block you. What you can do, though, is be conversational. "Mr. Jones, spring has sprung. We like to prioritize our loyal customers." and get you on the schedule before we get booked out. If you'd like a property cleanup, hit me back up and tomorrow I'll get you an estimate for free. That will get you more responses. That will not get you blocked and you'll get opened up 98 to 99% of the time. And you'll also stay top of mind for people that when they do need a property cleanup, guess who they're going to contact? The person in their database, the person in their text message inbox that they already know, like, and trust. And so if you're not sending out emails and texts to your existing contact database and you're like, oh no, no, we're not going to spend any money. Okay, email, gonna cost you a couple hundred bucks a month from something like Mailchimp. SMS blast might cost you another couple hundred bucks from something like Mailchimp, or there's a whole bunch of other providers. There's real cost to this, but why would I shirk away from spending, let's just call it $500, to send out emails to thousands of my customers, text to thousands of my customers, why would I shirk away from spending $500, and yet I'm still willing to go spend thousands of dollars a month on advertising, when this is the lowest hanging fruit? I do all 10 of the things we've talked about today before I spend a single dollar on ads. And so inside of HomeWorks, if you're watching this, up until July of 2026, all the text messages are free, 100% unlimited, meaning you can be sending out hundreds of text messages that you usually have to buy as credits completely free all of the spring rush. And it's because I know this just crushes. People are opening it up. The people that already know, like, and trust you, you have a card on file. They have a customer portal already. You've done work for them. They've at least asked you for an estimate in the past. You know, they're a qualified candidate. So do these 10 things, stop spending money on Facebook or Google, and if you're like, well, I do most of those, but if there's 1 or 2 you're not doing, stop your ads, do all 10 of these, and then turn your ads on and watch how much more efficient and lower your cost per lead is when all of these things are in place.