Ready to take control of marketing for your pest control business? Here are 10 pest control marketing ideas, tips and strategies that will generate hot leads and build your client base for long-term success.

#1: Design a killer pest control website

Even with all the other marketing channels we’ll discuss here, it remains true that your website is the most important piece of marketing collateral you’ll own.

Your pest control website is:

• An introduction to your business
• One of your main salespeople
• A publishing tool to educate potential customers
• An appointment setter
• A tool for capturing leads’ contact information
• A review/testimonials platform
• A place to note your experience, certifications and awards
• A place to present images and videos that relate to your work

Your website must be mobile responsive so people can view it on their phones. It needs to create a professional, trustworthy image of your business.

It needs to look a lot like this:

Website template designs like this one are not expensive, nor are they difficult to customize for your pest control business. So there is no excuse for having a weak, outdated website for your pest control business.

Make sure your website has a strong call to action that explicitly states that people should call or fill out a contact form. For pest control, one of the main things you want from your site is to get the lead and capture contact info.

#2: Create a company video

Make sure visitors understand the value of your services by creating a concise video commercial.

Video is really effective with today’s rushed consumers, many of whom respond better to visual content.

This type of video should convey your value proposition, explain your main services and have a strong call to action. Here is a good example:

You can embed this on your homepage, optimize it for search on YouTube and run it as a social media ad. That’s a lot of bang for the buck, considering you can use it for years and on multiple marketing channels.

#3: Use infographics

Another visual enhancement to your website content is the infographic. These are image-based content pieces that you can use on your website or share on social media. They look good on phones and are great at breaking down ideas so people can get the point quickly.

#4: Develop a strong value proposition

What services do you offer that really appeal to your target audience? How do you make the extermination process as painless as possible for your clients? Why should they choose you instead of your competition?

The answers to these questions are the foundation of your value proposition. This is content that gives leads a clear reason to choose you.

For example:

This statement shows how they solve the client’s problem by using long-lasting pest control methods. They also imply a competitive advantage by stating how they don’t require contracts.

Your value proposition is the central content on your website and will be the main idea behind your video. It is the “elevator pitch” you use when selling your services to leads on the phone.

You need a clear value offering to anchor your marketing and advertising content on. Leads won’t find answers to these questions themselves — you must provide them with clarity.

#5: Advertise on Facebook

Most pest control services still scoff at the idea of marketing or advertising on Facebook, but that’s because they’re unaware of what a powerful tool this social media platform is today.

As a direct-response advertising platform, Facebook is the most precise when it comes to targeting your audience.

You can target demographics, like age, location, income and family status. But you can also target life events, such as likely to move, or buying behavior, like a history of buying DIY home products.

For example, you could target an affluent area of a city with older homes that tend to have infestation issues. From there, target people who have purchased DIY extermination products, are planning to move or may be having kids. Run a Facebook Lead Ads campaign to capture their contact info and get them into your sales funnel.

Your potential clients are on Facebook. Test these tools to see how you can reach them.

#6: Master search marketing

There once was a marketing service printed on yellow paper and left at people’s doorsteps. Now its main job is being used as a doorstop.

Today, when people want to look up a service, like pest control, they do it on Google. It’s essential to have your business appear at the top of search results.

You do this in three ways.

The first is to use pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. You use the auction system (Google Adwords) to bid on keywords and gain placement at the top of the page. The top four results on any search page are all PPC.

The second is the Google My Business listing. This is a free listing that ties into local search and Google Maps. It’s important to optimize your description and service listing with the keywords, particularly for the area of pest control you specialize in. As a pest control service, this listing will tie into your physical location. To get search results in other areas you service, you’ll need to run PPC ads. Also, more positive reviews will help your ranking.

The third is the organic listing of your website. This is driven by your search engine optimization (SEO) work. Optimize your site for target keywords, get some backlinks into your site and blog on a regular basis to get high rankings.

Note that you can use your blog to optimize content for a variety of searches, including common questions people have about pest control and extermination. This is a great way to introduce your brand to leads doing research and get them into your marketing funnel.

When you do all these search tactics well, you can actually get three places on page one:

For most pest control services, paid and organic search are the most important lead generation channels, second only to direct referrals in quality. It matches well with the active need, direct-response structure that converts leads effectively. Be sure to invest properly to compete in these channels.

7: Create local partnerships

Pest control is a great business to partner up with other local businesses, like contractors, and share leads.

For example, a local handyman, carpet cleaner or painter may discover infestation problems during one of their jobs. And likewise, you may discover work that needs to be done from them during one of your jobs. Referrals from each other turn into very high-quality leads.

The key move here is to develop relationships with other local, non-competing businesses that have solid reputations. Make some calls and attend local networking events. Keep the relationship reciprocal, and do what you can to steer leads in your partner’s direction.

#8: Use retargeting

Today, it’s a rarity for consumers to make an immediate decision on hiring a service, like pest control. The river of information we must wade through online means we’re always going to research our options.

This is why retargeting ads are so effective. They track people who’ve already visited your website or interacted with your Facebook to deliver ads.

These ads are powerful brand builders and remind people to follow up and finish what they started. The only thing that’s more effective at spurring action is the sudden appearance of a roach scurrying across the floor.

#9: Build your reputation

While all of the content we’re talking about in this article — content you develop — is important, there is another type of content that’s equally important. But, it’s not something you directly create.

It’s created by your clients in the form of online reviews. Reviews are sought out by most of your leads. They want to know what other people think of your work. In fact, they fully expect to be able to read reviews about you. If you have none, it’s a serious gap in your marketing material.

Just consider how dominant review content is on the Google Business listings:

Thirty-plus reviews with almost an almost five-star rating, versus three reviews with a two-star rating…well, who are you going to choose?

It’s imperative that you develop a strong review profile for your pest control business. In fact, it’s so important that you must be proactive about getting positive reviews.

It all starts with the quality of your service. Keep in mind that every time you go above and beyond to satisfy a client, you’re helping your pest control marketing. Every time you cut corners, you pay with potential damage to your reputation.

Ask happy clients to leave comments right as the job is done. Follow up by email and phone call to make sure the extermination was sound, and ask for reviews then.

If you get negative reviews, respond to them with a professional tone, prepared to rectify the issue. Sometimes, the best review content is where you show how you go above and beyond to handle problems.

Monitor what’s said about you on Yelp, Facebook, Top Rated Local®, Home Advisor and Angie’s List. Watch industry-specific sites with pest control reviews. Get your best clients to give you testimonial comments that you can add to your website content.

Don’t ignore reviews. A strong review profile is vital to your marketing. A weak one will come back to bite you.

#10: Use marketing software and automation

You’re not crazy for thinking all this digital marketing sounds like a lot. The sheer number of tactics — not to mention the pace of change — is overwhelming.

You won’t be able to manually manage everything in these marketing channels — at least not if you still want time to run your business and ever see your family.

You need to put marketing software to work for you that organizes all these channels, tracks data and informs you about your ROI. You need to automate tasks like email marketing and touchpoints with leads so you can maintain regular contact without having to personally send/track every message.

As digital marketing gets more complex, it will be more important than ever to leverage software and automation. Your approach should be to let the tools do as much of the labor as possible so you can concentrate on developing campaigns, analyzing results and improving your efforts based on what you learn.

That’s the heart of what marketing is, and it’s the core of Marketing 360®’s approach. Learn more about our marketing software and services.

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Using these tactics, you can generate enough leads to keep your pest control business healthy and growing. Put in the investment, out-hustle your competition and the payoff will happen. Get started and see our plans and pricing.

Originally published on 8/9/17