Finding the Right Marketing Mix Key to Sustaining Home-Service Business Growth
Creating and maintaining the right mix to market and advertise your home-service business is critical to finding new customers and keeping your existing base of clients. Tommy Mello has refined his company’s marketing to a fine science – and he’s not done mixing it up yet.
Mello, owner, and CEO of Phoenix-based A1 Garage Door Service, uses several marketing tools to keep his company top of mind with consumers. Mello founded A1 Garage in 2007 in Phoenix and has since expanded his operation to include 19 markets around the U.S.
It’s not easy to miss A1’s marketing and that’s the point. Mello uses several marketing tools to help sustain his company’s growth. Of course, you’ll see traditional print advertisements of A1 in community newspapers, but it is the behind-the-scenes activity that is more intriguing.
Mello invests heavily in SEO so if people search for something like, “garage door repair” A1 is consistently on top of the list of non-paid providers in each market the company serves. Location-specific keywords, services provided, and other key terms help search users quickly and easily find what they are looking for. SEO is also a powerful tool that helps link searches to existing content on the internet and the company’s website.
Another strategic tool Mello embraces with his marketing is the use of videos. Messages can be delivered quickly and effectively with video while showcasing your home-service expertise. All the while, it provides a great opportunity to connect with clients, prospective clients, and the public as a whole. By doing so in a manner that makes you come across as unique and relatable, you can thereby humanize your brand, making it more transparent to audiences and building strong relationships with them based in trust. Some estimates indicate that adding a video to your marketing could increase clickthrough rates by more than 200 percent.
Tommy Mello has taken great pride in the fact that his company has a bank of positive online reviews. From Google to Yelp, having others say great things about your service is marketing gold. As such, it’s imperative to encourage thorough and honest reviews. On the surface, these reviews provide potential clients with the peace of mind they need to enlist your company instead of any other. Though, there’s more to it. On a deeper level, reviews are vital for getting the feedback and even criticism you need to pinpoint issues with your operations, allowing you to direct your time and resources towards the most effective business decisions online shop.
A1 also excels in direct mail marketing. Though it may be an old-school tactic, hitting consumers where they live, so to speak, has proven to be a more down-to-earth method, and thus incredibly useful for enhancing A1 Garage’s marketing on a more personal level.
Of course, there’s more, since Mello prefers to have all of his marketing bases covered. His other tactics include referrals, a user-friendly website, strong PR content, and creative branding on his trucks and materials. All of which continue to keep A1 in a state of perpetual growth, and more importantly, at the forefront of marketing innovation.
