Social media is a critical element for any business looking to build a comprehensive digital marketing strategy. Not only is social media extremely inexpensive to implement and maintain, it has a significant reach across most user bases. In the United States, approximately 90% of the total population regularly uses one or more social media platforms. For pest control companies, social media is a great option to attract attention, connect with your target audience, and build brand awareness.
Like any other business, pest control has specific and unique challenges when it comes to building a social media presence. It’s important for pest control companies to understand the right strategies to get the most value out of their social media efforts and stand out from a wide range of local competitors.
1. Selecting the Right Platform
There are dozens of different social media platforms available across the globe. Each one has its own unique characteristics and is tailored toward specific types of users. For businesses, maintaining these social media profiles can be time consuming, so selecting the right platform is critical. Too many businesses feel pressured to be on as many social media platforms as possible fearing they will miss out on the opportunity to reach everyone in their target audience.
Today, Facebook has the largest audience at nearly 3 billion people worldwide. It’s highly likely that most people in your geographic area use Facebook regularly, especially homeowners. If you want to share photos, videos, and DIY solutions, Instagram might be the best option. Pest control companies that specialize in servicing businesses such as restaurants and hotels may be more successful connecting on a professional social network like LinkedIn. Ultimately, your target audience and the type of content you want to share will determine which social media platform is right for your business.
2. Build a Content Creation Strategy
Most people spend time on social media for social interactions with friends and family, entertainment, or to find useful information. This is the biggest hurdle for pest control companies looking to build a social media presence and following. Let’s be honest, pest control isn’t the most exciting topic for most social media users. For this reason, it’s important for pest control companies to have a content creation strategy that attracts the followers that are most likely to purchase your services.
Creating content that brings value to your target audience is key. Pest control companies should focus on developing educational content such as prevention tips, pest identification guides, and DIY options. This content can come in a wide range of formats including blog posts and articles, photos, and videos. Pest control companies can also post “behind-the-scenes” content to showcase their team and explain the pest control process. This can help your viewers feel more comfortable with your company as a polished operation and humanize your brand.
Another critical element to building a successful content strategy is cadence. Publishing the right content is only half the battle. It’s important to make sure you are posting content on a regular basis. Most social media experts recommend posting one to two times a day as you build your following. This will require a good amount of work in the beginning as you build your library of content. However, over time, this will require less work as you will be able to periodically refresh or recycle evergreen content. For example, if spring is peak termite season in your area, you can get away with posting the same termite inspection checklist each year.
You can also mix in some promotional content, but it’s important to not flood your social media feed with sales pitches. Pushing for sales aggressively could drive people to unfollow or unsubscribe from your feed. By focusing on bringing value first, the sales will follow naturally.
3. Focus on Visual Elements
On average, social media users spend approximately 20 hours each month scrolling through social media feeds viewing thousands of posts. Most posts only get a few seconds to make a good impression and convince them to continue reading or interact with the content. For this reason, it’s critical to make your social media posts as visual as possible. Visual content such as photos and videos are a great way to capture your audiences’ attention. Simply adding high-quality photos can increase engagement by 37% on average.
4. Encourage User-Generated Content
Not every piece of content on your social media feed needs to come from you or your team. Your customers and followers can be a great source of high-quality and engaging content. For example, pest control companies can encourage their satisfied customers to post testimonials and reviews online that can be reposted or used in social media posts. In addition to testimonials, users can post stories about their experience or before-and-after photos of your work. This increases the credibility of your company and demonstrates to potential customers that you are the right partner for their pest control issues.
5. Interact with Your Audience
Social media is intended to be an interactive medium where businesses and customers can share information and interact with one another. By actively engaging your audience, you demonstrate that you care about their feedback, opinions, and thoughts. It’s important to respond promptly to as many comments and questions as possible that are posted on your feed. This interactive approach helps establish your company as a knowledgeable and trustworthy resource, spark conversations, and increase brand visibility.
Other forms of interaction include hosting live Q&A sessions, running contests and giveaways, and posting interactive polls and quizzes. For example, you could run a contest where your followers compete to see who has the most horrendous pest encounters. Or, you could encourage followers to post photos of unknown animals or insects to your feed that you can help them identify.
6. Establish Strategic Partnerships
Collaborating with local influencers, bloggers, or companies who have an interest in home improvement, gardening, or pest control is a great way to leverage other people’s following to build your social media presence. For example, you could agree to repost and share content from a local landscaping company in your area that can reciprocate the interaction. This can benefit both companies by expanding visibility across both of your networks and enhancing the quality and variety of the content that your followers see.
7. Targeted Advertising Campaigns
Some social media sites allow companies to pay for advertising that is targeted at specific groups or demographics on the platform. For example, pest control companies can run an advertisement on Facebook that shows up in the feeds of local users who fall into the age demographic of the typical homeowner. While this approach does come with a cost, the ability to select your target audience can increase the quality of viewers that are more likely to follow your social media profile or purchase from your company.
Building the Right Social Media Strategy for Pest Control
Whether you are brand new to building a social media presence or are struggling to attract more followers to your existing channels, having the right strategy in place is key to effective social media marketing. At Rhino Pest Control Marketing, our team of experienced social media experts is here to help. We’ll work with you to evaluate your strategy, provide feedback and recommendation, and boost your follower engagement. Contact us today to take your social media marketing to the next level!
