Does your pest control company need a digital transformation?
The landscape for promoting and marketing your pest control company has changed drastically over the years. If you’ve owned your business long enough, you may remember a time when most of your advertising budget went toward a display ad in the yellow pages. Perhaps you were ahead of the curve in the early 2000’s, got your website up and running, and even tried some clickable web-ad banners on high traffic sites. Fast forward to the present, and the majority of individuals consume most of their digital media on mobile devices. With technology changing at such a rapid pace, it can be a challenge to keep up with where you should invest your time and money when it comes to marketing your pest control business.
What is digital marketing and why should you do it?
Digital marketing is the promotion of your pest control company to potential customers using the internet and other forms of digital communication. These other forms include not only email, social media, and web-based advertising but also text and multimedia messages as well.
The benefit of digital marketing is it helps you take the guesswork out of who your customers are, so you can refine your target audience and personalize your communications. Think back to those old yellow page ads. You had one message going out to the masses that you couldn’t modify for an entire year! Digital marketing gives you so much creative flexibility and allows you to build a relationship with your customers. You become much more than a pest control company; you become a trusted partner.
Will digital marketing work for your pest control company?
The short answer is YES! Digital marketing will absolutely work for your pest control company. At its core, digital marketing involves building out buyer personas to identify your audience’s needs, so you can create valuable online content that resonates with them. However, it’s still important to develop a unique strategy for your business, so you can define your goals and measure your results
Whether your pest control company would like to increase its commercial or residential business, your digital marketing efforts will likely be centered around online lead generation, with the end goal for someone to speak to a salesperson. Digital marketing allows you to customize your messaging to each customer group you’re trying to target. From there, your marketing strategy is to attract and convert the highest quality leads for your salespeople via your website and supporting digital channels.
What type of digital content should you create for your pest control company?
That all depends on your audience’s needs through the various stages of the buyer’s journey. To get started, you first need to create individual buyer personas for each of the specific audiences you want to reach with your content. Outline their needs, interests, likes, dislikes and challenges and then think about that in relation to your business. Ultimately, you’re creating content that helps them meet their goals or overcome a problem.
Then you need to consider how this content will appeal to your buyer persona at each stage of the buyer’s journey. The buyer’s journey consists of three stages: the awareness stage, the consideration stage, and the decision stage. At the awareness stage, the buyer realizes he has a problem; at the consideration stage, the buyer defines his problem and begins to research options to solve it; and at the decision stage, the buyer decides on a solution. You want to create content that convinces a potential buyer your pest control services are the solution throughout each stage.
Let’s take a look at how you could apply this using an example of Homeowner Joe with an ant problem:
Awareness Stage: Homeowner Joe knows he has an ant problem so he googles “Why do I have ants in my kitchen?” It takes him to a blog with that title tied back to your website.
Consideration Stage: Homeowner Joe knows he needs to take action to eliminate the ants, so he googles, “What is the best solution to get rid of an ant infestation?” This blog article explains the benefits of hiring a professional and also links back to your site.
Decision Stage: Homeowner Joe has seen several of your blog articles by now and is familiar with your website. When he googles, “Who should I hire for ant control?” and your company appears at the top of the search results, he feels comfortable contacting your business because you’ve established yourself as an expert on solving his problem.
You’re ready to start your digital marketing campaign, so what’s next?
Here’s a quick checklist to help get you started on creating your digital marketing campaign:
1. Define your goal.
2. Identify your target audience.
3. Establish a budget.
4. Find a balance between paid and free digital tactics.
5. Create engaging content.
6. Optimize your digital assets for mobile.
7. Conduct keyword research.
8. Launch your campaign.
9. Measure the results.
10. Repeat or modify based on the data you measure.
