STOP Paying for New Customers

First way to get customers is completely free, and that is using your Google business listing. This is what it looks like when you go and search on Google. These all the top are from Google listings. All of this down here is search engine optimization. That's what really comes into play down here. If you've got a lot of clicks, if you have great web design things like that, you can see here. This is our location locally. I see in three places and I haven't paid for any of these. I see it right here as the number one spot for Google listings. I also see on the map because I'm a physical address and I also rank well on native search. So when I look at Google listings, there's a few things I want to focus on. Number one, look at how many reviews we got. 492 Google reviews. Now that's been over the course of 10 years. If you're just getting started, you've got to get above 30 as quickly as possible. I literally don't care if you need to do services for free just to get reviews. Get at least 30 and you'll likely usually get on like the first page or two of Google just by getting 30 Google reviews. It's completely, completely free. It's not going to cost you anything, but we have 500. That's why we're at the top. Another thing you can do to make sure you rank well on here is have an actual address that's verified by Google. That's a physical address inside of your service area. So even though we're called Augusta Lawn care of Whatcom County, I have a Bellingham address that has a real mailbox and I'm able to get mail there. Now it's a pain in the butt to get verified on Google listings when it comes to addresses. Back in the day, we could literally get away with just getting a post office box or or a UPS store box. Now they're requiring video evidence being submitted to Google to get an address verified. However, it is worth going through the trouble of getting this verified because you can notice here I probably have 80 to 100 competitors in my market. I'm one of just a few that are actually on the map for Google. Google listings and Google Maps are now the same thing and they're integrating them a lot. So having an address that's verified on Google, very important to ranking well, not only here, but it will be taken into account when it comes to native search. But if I can be the number one go to on this map, huge win in terms of being able to get more leads for exactly zero cost. And when it comes to optimizing your Google listing, you're going to want to do several things. First off, make sure you have a bunch of pictures. For example, let's go and open up the actual location here for Augusta Lawn Care. And you can see here if I go to all the images, every single day, we're posting images of all the different work sites that we have. And we're showing our trucks, our trailers, our employees, our uniforms, our branding is being showed inside the images. And we usually do this at least three times a week across all of our locations. This is going to be giving more information and data to Google. And guess what? They love, they love more data. So, so give them pictures. Give them also information about your business. So when you're editing your Google listing, there's gonna be all sorts of information about your services, your reviews, any updates you might have, photos you might have, and an overview. This overview is gonna include, like, what areas of the county do you service, what cities, what services do you offer? If you don't keep this updated, it's going to be really bad because what can happen is customers can actually recommend what, what services you offer, recommend what service areas you're actually being able to do services in. And you don't want those going to Google. You want to stay on top of this, at least on a monthly basis to make sure that all of your relevant information in terms of services, service areas, your contact information, all of that is updated and relevant. I've seen times where people leave this alone for 6 or 12 months. All of a sudden this will get banned simply because someone changed their address or their phone number doesn't line up correctly. Making sure their hours are actually correct and getting banned on Google listings is a pain in the butt. To get it reactivated, it can sometimes take a month or two and many, many attempts to Google to try to get it reactivated. So check on it every single month to make sure everything's updated. And you can continue to print these free leads because this cost you, again, absolutely nothing. All right, so we've already talked a little bit about having a Google listing. But even above that, when you're searching on Google is what we call the Google Guaranteed, also known as the Google Local Services program. Google Local Services, if you qualify for the program, you're going to show up right here at the top and have this Google Guarantee. Now, this little checkmark that says Google Guaranteed is telling customers and telling people that use Google, hey, if you use these providers that we Vetted, made sure they're insured. We've done a background check on them. If you actually use them and they don't turn out to be good, there's like $100,000 that they can go after and go after Google for. And so this is very. A lot of awareness goes to this right now. And Google's push this a lot. They slowly roll it out over the course of a couple years in different markets. And I see them going to push this more and more and more. They start to add images, they started to push it a lot more often because ultimately, if they just get a click. So down here, this is Google Ads, and we'll talk more about that later. Down here, they might get $1, $2, $3 per click. Here, they might get 15, 20, 25, $30 cost per lead. But here's the thing. The difference between Google Ads down here, which we'll talk about later, and what we're talking about now, which is Google Local Services, is if someone clicks on my ad down here, I pay for a click, but here I pay for a lead. And I would much rather pay for a qualified lead than just a whole bunch of clicks, because clicks don't pay the bills. But if I can get a bunch of leads and then convert them into paying customers, we're off to the races. And so Google's obviously trying to make more money. That's fine. I need to get inside this program. In order to get into the Google Local Services program, you're going to have to do several things. First off, you're going to have to have a background check. You're going to have to have insurance, and you're going to have to prove that you have general liability insurance. You're also, in most states, going to need some sort of certification beyond just a business license, like a contractor's license or a pesticide license, depending on your industry, it will require a different type of certification. And although it's a pain in the butt to qualify for, it also keeps a lot of competitors away from even being able to be in the program because they're not insured. Their background check, it would exist, but it wouldn't be good. And so ultimately, you might only have three or four competitors that are actually qualified for this program, and it will allow you to be able to get leads for very cheap. Ultimately, when it comes to the budget on Google Local Services, I would be willing to spend as much as possible because I can get leads for like 15 or 20 bucks, which is extremely cheap. However, if you have A lot of competitors in your area that also are trying to be inside the program, Google's got to distribute those leads to other people. Honestly, the worst part about Google Local Services is the fact that I can't pour more gas on the fire, which means if it's working well and I'm getting leads, I can't just put more money and get more leads. There's a finite number of leads, and Google has to distribute those between all the people that qualify for the program. And so if I want to double my amount of leads, I can't just double my budget to Google Local Services. Usually they don't even come close to the budget parameters I set out. And I like this one the most though, because when you click on this, and if I was to actually click get phone number or call, now, what's going to happen is I'm going to get a recorded phone call of this customer talking to my office. And so whether it be command center and Max AI talking and getting the lead information or your personal offices, and that's calling and picking up the phone. I'm going to get a recorded phone call of a customer getting service. Now, inside of the program, you're able to actually dispute leads that come in that are not inside your service area or for services that you don't offer. So you're like, well, I do mowing. And then someone called clicked on here and they want concrete installation. Like, I don't do concrete. You can dispute it and get your money back. So really, you're only paying Google Local Services 15, 20 bucks, whatever it might be, it kind of ranges based upon your industry. But like, let's just say it's 20 or $25. Like if you're spending that for a very qualified recorded phone call, a lead, that's awesome. You're usually going to close like 50, 60, 70% of those once you meet them in person, versus just having someone click on an ad where you might convert them, they might ask for an estimate. Google Local Services, very good. All right, so we've talked about Google listings where you're going to be put up your profile for free. Then we moved on to Google Local Services, which is at the very top of the search. Below that is Google Ads, where you're going to be able to run ads to customers that search certain keywords and that's going to drive them to your website. So you're not getting a lead, but you are getting a click. Now, the best thing about Google Ads is the fact that you're actually going to have ads customers that have intent to buy, which means they are looking for lawn care, mowing, landscaping, painting, fence building. Whatever service you offer. You have certain keywords which means you're only going to show up if they use a certain service name that you know you're going to be relevant for. So this is what it looks like on the front end. We've talked about Google listing Google local services and Google Ads. Three completely different channels from Google. But then let's look on the back end what this is going to look like on the back end. This is a real live up to date account from Google Ads and this is what's currently being run from a location at Augusta Lawn Care. And you can see here the amount of impressions. 3,000 people have actually seen this advertisement. Okay. In the same one month we had a 5% click through rate which means that 5% of the people that saw the ad, it was impression it was on their page, clicked on it, 21 people converted. Now you're not going to get conversions unless you have a Google tracking code. And what we've done recently at Augusta is make sure everyone has what we call done for you ads where they have the exact instructions to use Google Analytics to be able to make sure you actually know not just when someone clicks but when they actually have submitted an estimate request form. And I'm going to show you that in a moment. But we have 21 conversions. Let's do the quick math on this and find out what are we paying per lead because that's really what I'm trying to focus on. So I'm going to take. $899 was my spend for Google Ads this month. I'm going to divide it by the 21 confirmed estimates that I received and I'm going to show you how that was done in a second. So that's $42.80 approximately per lead that I am getting from Google Ads. Now if I can convert half of those leads into paying customers, I would have about an $80 customer acquisition cost. Let's break down the math on customer acquisition costs in just a moment. Let's look at the actual website because we're where we're tracking those conversions is very, very important. Once I put my information in, I actually get an instant price and I actually submit for an actual price from the website. It's only after I click submit on this page that it's actually going to track this as a conversion. Which means I'm actually basically getting a customer if they do these instant price forms from our site. But what's cool is when you are doing a tracking code on Google, I want to actually take them to a different URL. So when I click that submit button, and I'm not going to do it because it's a live website, but if I click submit, it's going to go to a different URL, like make a thank you page, for example, saying just something like thank you for submitting your information. Our office will get back to you within 24 hours. Something like that is fine. You're going to put your Google tracking code on that page. That way, anytime a user hits that page, we know they've submitted an estimate request form. Do you struggle to get more leads and more customers to your home service business? Watch this video right here, where I give a complete masterclass of exactly how to do it.