Get 20/20 Vision into Your Pest Control Company’s 2020 Web Marketing Strategy

If the New Year isn’t enough to spark interest in setting lofty goals for the months ahead, a change in the decade surely will. As we welcome 2020 and all of the potential opportunities that lie before us, it’s important to understand what the objectives for your business are and how you plan to achieve them.

When it comes to staying relevant online (where potential customers are looking for your service), there are a few key Web Marketing tactics that every business should follow in 2020. To help you reach greater success this year — and this decade, be sure to implement these 4 tactics:

SEO

We used to say that running a Search Engine Optimization campaign for your pest control business was a great way to get a step ahead of your competition. After hearing that more than 55% of small businesses invested in SEO in 2018 (which is only expected to increase in 2020), it’s clear this is the new standard for getting noticed online.

The main goal of an SEO campaign is to build relevance for your company online in the area you serve. This style of marketing gets your pest control Website on page one of Google, which gets your phone ringing and your operation moving. A good SEO campaign will help your company keep up with the competition; but a great SEO campaign — which should combine onsite optimization with offsite tactics — will give your company a major upper hand.

A Review Generation Strategy

When your potential customers are in need of a treatment or consultation, they tend to begin their search on Google. Once they find your company and its competitors, they’ll need to choose one provider. Sometimes, the deciding factor that tips the scales is online reviews. Next time you search for your company online, take a look at your Google star rating. Is it close to 5? Do you have more than 10 reviews? In 2020, you want to be able to answer ‘yes’ to both questions.

If you don’t currently have a strategy in place to drum up positive reviews, this is the year to get it going. A good place to start is by putting links to the most popular review platforms (Google, Facebook, etc.) on your website. You can take it a step further by having review generation be a part of your client’s experience, whether that’s your technicians reaching out after an appointment or a link to your Google listing from your company’s external emails.

Mobile Load Speed

Google doesn’t always make it clear what they’re looking for when they rank websites in search results, but they did make one thing clear back in 2018: page one websites need to load quickly on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. A search engine’s main goal is to give users the best experience possible when responding to a query; providing a website that takes forever to load, meaning, 5 seconds or more, is not delivering on that goal. Considering the fact that 75% of searches are done on mobile devices, you can’t afford to ignore this trend. In 2020, it’s essential that your site be optimized for the mobile experience.

Focus on Customer Experience

It’s often said that it costs 5 times more to attract a new customer than it does to keep a current one. With this in mind, make sure that your company is doing what it can to keep your customers happy and coming back for more. One strategy we always recommend is posting educational content about your service to your website. An FAQs page, a blog, or detailed services pages are all opportunities to give potential customers the information they’re looking for while also establishing your company as a reputable business. Customers will begin to look at your company as a resource, which ends up paying for itself.

When you build trust between your customers and your business, customers start to talk. Whether it’s with their friends or in online reviews, happy customers become “influencers” that bring additional prospects to you at no extra cost. While high Google rankings or online ads can do a good job at getting your name out there, nothing compares to good-old-fashioned word-of-mouth advertising. To put this into numbers, Forbes reports that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. Whether you’re offering client discounts, referral perks, or educational content, do your best to make your customer feel taken care of.

There are times where a “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality applies to a situation, but marketing your pest control business is not one of them. In a changing marketplace where more people are taking to the Web to find services that they need, you owe it to your company’s success to keep your Web Marketing strategies current and up-to-date with the latest best practices.

 Alain Parcan, Director of Marketing for Market Hardware, Inc., contributed this article. Alain brings nearly 10 years of experience in educating businesses so they can market themselves more effectively. Market Hardware helps small businesses compete on the web and offers special discounts for PCOC members. You can reach Alain’s team at 888-381-6925.