Everyone in the pest control industry needs leads. They are the life blood of any business and pest control is no different. If the phone is ringing, then the business is great right? What a lot of business owners get wrong is that not all leads are considered equal. There are varying levels of interest from each category of customer which is essential to understand. Imagine you had $1,000 to spend on advertising this month. Would you rather spend that $1,000 on some super-hot leads opposed to some rather warm leads where the customer isn’t completely sold on your service? Of course not.
Lets identify where to best spend your advertising dollars for your pest control business.
Hot Leads
These are the kind of leads that every company wants. We are desperate for these leads. The customer calls and needs you to come out today or tomorrow. They have their credit card handy to pay for your services and aren’t shopping around for a better price. They want their pest issue taken care of immediately. These types of customers come from organic search engine traffic or pay per click traffic. They are actively searching for pest control help. You aren’t reaching out to them coldly and trying to sell them on your services, they already are sold and just need things taken care of quickly. There is a big difference between hot leads and the following warm leads.
Warm Leads
These are the kind of leads that come from Facebook advertising, Instagram, Twitter, billboards, TV and radio, or people that you are contacting via some sort of cold calling campaign. These are the kind of customers that don’t have as high of a close ratio as hot lead customers do. They are people that weren’t looking for you today. You were looking for them and they saw your ad and got interested and now you must sell them to complete the deal. They might call or they might email. An email almost always immediately shows that they aren’t 100 percent interested in your service. We know this because the hot leads pick up their phones and call. In general, if a customer is emailing, this is a warm lead, although there are exceptions to this rule.
Cold leads
These are kind of calls that you dread getting. They take up all your time and result in nothing added to the pocketbook. These are shoppers, people fishing for DIY info, people with no money and potentially your competition. Shoppers are those that are going from company to company, looking for the best deal. They hardly ever book your services and if they do, they talked you down so much that there isn’t much profit in the deal anyway. Then there are the “do it yourself” folks who call to find out how to fix their pest issue. They don’t want to pay you, they want information on how to save money and do it themselves.
These kinds of customers can bring you down. They can trick you at first as they are disguised as real customers. Once you know they are only looking for your expert information, it’s best to get them off the phone. People with no money are a problem for any business. They will call and act desperate in the hopes of getting some sort of incredible deal on their services. They are similar to shoppers in that they never book services.
Then there are your competitors. There are always other pest control companies that see your ad or website and call you to find out where you come in at with pricing. You sometimes won’t even know if they are not customers. They are looking for information on how your pricing is compared to theirs.
Why is all this important?
So, the secret to all of this is to figure out where your advertising money is best spent. It’s always better spent on hot leads. Yes, absolutely Facebook advertising works, but does it work better than putting yourself out there where people are actively searching for you today? This opposed to going after customers that could potentially decide they are interested in your services today.
Advertising dollars are expensive and it’s very important to put your pest control advertising money toward the absolute best route to get leads. Be creative about it and get yourself in front of the people already looking for you. Once you are doing well and have an extra budget, then it could be wise to invest in warm lead sources. They won’t convert as well as the hot lead sources, but they do result in deals. It just takes more effort and time. Time is valuable.
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