Handyman business advertising refers to different methods of promoting your handyman business to generate more leads and bring in more business.
When you wonder “how to advertise a handyman business?” it’s important to understand that there is no one-size-fits-all approach, and what works for one business may not work for another.
You can explore many different ways to advertise a handyman business. You can:
Advertise on Google
Advertise on Social Media
Advertise with traditional marketing
You can also advertise your handyman services for free by listing your business in free directories, creating organic content, sending promotional newsletters, and through a referral program.
In this article, we’ll dive deep into each of these methods.
How Can You Advertise Handyman Services on Google?
Google is by far the most popular search engine in the world, capturing over 90 percent of the market at the time of writing. Therefore, an ideal place to advertise your services, as it’s very likely your prospective customers will use the search engine to find a handyman.
You can advertise your handyman services on Google using the following:
Google Ads
Local Services Ads
There are some key differences between these two ad types. Let’s take a look:
1. Google Ads
Google Ads are a form of Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.
Handyman businesses can use Google Ads to advertise their services in the places where prospective customers look for them.
There are different types of Google Ads, such as:
Search ads
Display ads
Shopping ads
Video ads
App ads
Discovery ads
Performance Max ads
Smart ads
Local Services Ads (more on this shortly)
Of course, only some of these ad types will be relevant to your business.
Search ads are the original and most common form of Google Ads. They work by targeting specific keywords related to your business and the services you offer. When a prospect enters the search term, your ad will appear at the top of the Google search results page.
ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro tool can help you better track and manage your Google Ads campaigns thanks to the Google Ads integration. You can add trackable phone numbers to your ads to accurately track their return on investment (ROI).
The tool also gives users access to the heat map that shows the areas that bring you the most revenue so you can make informed decisions about where, when, and how to advertise.
2. Local Services Ads
Local Services Ads (LSAs) are a type of Google ad specifically tailored to local businesses and service providers. Handyman businesses can use LSAs to target local customers searching for a handyman.
When someone enters a local search query — “Los Angeles handyman,” for example, or “handyman near me” — in your local service area, your LSA can appear at the top of the search results.
It will include further details about your business and a Google Guaranteed badge that adds credibility. You receive the Google Guaranteed badge once you’ve completed screening.
LSAs are a form of pay-per-click advertising, but unlike traditional PPC, you only pay when a customer calls, messages, or books an appointment.
ServiceTitan’s Local Services Ads integration can help you make the most out of Google’s LSAs. The integration pulls contact details from every LSA booking into your ServiceTitan CRM, so there’s no need to do it manually and risk duplicating or incorrectly inputting the data.
How Can You Advertise Handyman Services with Offline Marketing?
So far, all of the advertising methods we’ve mentioned require your audience to be online. Although digital advertising is vital nowadays, traditional, offline marketing strategies are still highly effective for local businesses.
Some key methods are shown in the graphic below.
Let’s look at each of them.
1. Flyers
Flyers are a type of printed marketing material generally in the form of a single sheet with text on one or both sides. They are distributed by leaving them in public places such as hardware or grocery stores or on public bulletin boards, handing them out to prospects, or mailing them.
A flyer delivers brief but comprehensive information about your business and services in a visually appealing format. To grab attention, you can include details about your services, contact details, and a promotion or discount.
They can come in a few different forms beyond a single sheet, such as folded flyers that contain more detailed information separated into sections, door hangers, or postcards.
Handyman businesses can use flyers to effectively target local residents through door drops or by leaving flyers in public spaces. They provide a physical reminder of your services that interested prospects may keep hold of until they need them.
Furthermore, flyers offer a cost-effective marketing solution as they can be printed and distributed on a low budget. They are also easy to produce and distribute in bulk. However, it’s important to get your design and messaging right or your flyer will likely be discarded.
Top tips:
Use impactful design: Grab attention quickly with bold headlines and high-quality images. Include a clear CTA like “Call us now!” or “Book now!”
Target distribution: If you leave your flyers in public spaces, opt for areas close to large residential neighborhoods. Otherwise, opt for door drops to deliver your flyers directly to the residences.
Include an incentive: A special offer or discount, such as 10 percent off the first service, can encourage recipients to take action.
Use ServiceTitan’s Direct Mail features: With ServiceTitan, you can automate your direct mail campaigns to send postcards straight to your customers’ and prospects’ doors. Design the postcards in a few minutes using a professional prebuilt template and automatically send them at the right time.
You’ll pay a flat rate for each postcard you send.
ServiceTitan also lets you monitor the results of your direct mail campaigns with deliverability tracking and insight into the campaigns, revealing those that have the best results. This information helps you optimize and improve your future campaigns.
2. Outdoor advertising
Outdoor advertising refers to any promotional material displayed in public places to catch the attention of passersby. This includes posters, billboards, ads on public transport (transit ads), street banners, and more.
Outdoor advertising targets high-traffic areas with large, eye-catching marketing materials to put your business in front of a broad audience.
It can be a beneficial advertising method for handyman businesses thanks to its wide reach, constant and repeated exposure, and increased brand credibility as it creates a perception of professionalism.
Certain types, like transit ads, are also highly mobile and can reach a larger part of your potential audience, although a limited time frame hinders them.
However, outdoor advertising requires a large budget, especially for billboards in prime locations.
Top tips:
Be concise: Ensure your outdoor ads are easily read and understood in a few seconds. Use short copy with bold fonts.
Choose the right location: For handyman services, you should focus on locations in residential areas or around busy community areas in your neighborhood, like parks or high streets.
Use bold visuals: Your ad needs to stand out or it will be ignored. Use bold, eye-catching visuals and branding to ensure passersby remember your business.
Include a CTA: Adding a simple but clear CTA, such as your phone number or website, can encourage interested parties to contact you.
3. Truck wrap advertising
A truck wrap is a form of outdoor advertising that involves covering a vehicle with vinyl or decal graphics showing your company branding, services, and contact information.
The truck wrap covers all or part of a vehicle, like a business truck, van, or car, with custom graphics that serve as a moving advertisement. Other drivers and pedestrians can see your business information while you drive around.
You can opt for a full wrap that covers the full vehicle, a partial wrap covering certain parts like the sides or back, or smaller decals applied to specific areas.
Opting for a full wrap provides the most visibility and brand impact but comes at a much higher cost. While partial wraps and decals are more affordable, they are less visible and impactful.
Truck wraps are effective advertising for handyman businesses as they are cost-effective and long-term, mobile, and can boost credibility and reinforce your branding.
Top tips:
Clear but bold design: Ensure you use high-contrast colors and large, bold fonts so your truck wrap can easily be read from a distance. Include a concise service description and your contact information alongside your company name and logo.
Consider adding your service areas: You can add the towns or cities you serve to your truck wrap messaging to build trust with potential customers and keep things relevant.
Keep your vehicle clean: If you pay out for a beautiful, well-designed truck wrap but let your vehicle get excessively dirty, you’re undoing your hard work. Regularly wash your vehicle(s) and keep them fresh and professional to reinforce your business’s positive image.
4. Sponsorships
A sponsorship is an arrangement where a business supports a team, event, organization, or cause in exchange for brand exposure. For example, a handyman business could sponsor the local Little League team’s uniforms in exchange for their company logo featuring in the design.
Sponsorships align your company with events or organizations that appeal to your audience. In return for your support (financial or in-kind), your business could get signage at the event, mentions and logo placement in promotional materials, and engagement with attendees.
Sponsoring local teams, organizations, or causes helps to promote a positive brand image as it shows you want to help build, grow, and support your community. It also helps engage your community, fosters trust, and provides an opportunity to target specific demographics that may need your services.
Some examples of sponsorships include:
Event sponsorship, such as charity drives, home improvement expos or workshops, or community events and fairs.
Media sponsorship, such as a sponsored show on your local radio station.
Cause-based sponsorship, such as supporting environmental or community improvement projects.
Sports team sponsorships, such as sponsoring the high school football team.
Sponsorships can provide high brand visibility and boost your brand image. However, they can be expensive and it is often difficult to track the ROI.
Top tips:
Stay relevant: Make sure you choose a sponsorship that aligns with your target audience. This could include home improvement or DIY workshops, or a clean-up initiative.
Cross-promote: You can maximize your brand’s exposure by mentioning the sponsorship on multiple platforms like social media, the internet, and in other marketing materials.
Actively engage: Passive sponsoring is fine, but you can make the most of the opportunity by setting up a booth, holding a giveaway competition, or offering free consultations to really engage with the community.
5. Radio ads
A radio ad is a commercial that is broadcast on a radio station to promote a product, brand, or service. Advertising your handyman business on your local radio station is a great way to reach local audiences and get the word out about your services, offers, and business details.
Radio ads are usually short, attention-grabbing messages that include music, sound effects, and a call-to-action (like “Call this number!” or “Visit this website!”). Many also include catchy jingles.
There are three main types of radio ads:
Live reads, where the radio host reads your ad during their program. This type of ad is more personal and adds credibility to your business.
Produced ads or pre-recorded ads that feature professional voiceovers and music.
Sponsorships where your brand name is mentioned at the beginning and end of a show. A DIY or home improvement show or segment would be ideal to sponsor as it directly relates to your business.
Radio ads are beneficial thanks to the repeated brand mentions and the opportunity to create a catchy, memorable message. However, they can be expensive to produce and run.
How Can You Advertise Handyman Services for Free?
Most digital and traditional marketing and advertising strategies cost money, but that doesn’t mean promoting your business is off-limits when you have no budget. There are several ways you can advertise your business and generate leads for free, such as:
Free directories and listings
Organic content
Promotional newsletters
Referral programs
We’ll walk you through each of them below.
1. Create accounts in directories and listings
Although not exactly an advertising channel, business directories, and listings are a fantastic way of putting your business out there, and there are many free options such as Houzz, Pro Referral, Handy, and Nextdoor. Ensure you claim your business profiles on Google, Bing, and Yelp as well.
Remember that some of these directories and lead generation websites charge you for leads, even if it’s free to list your business.
Many directories and listings let customers leave reviews, so you can quickly build a healthy online reputation. However, when your company is listed in multiple places, it can quickly become difficult to manage.
That’s where ServiceTitan’s Reputation features come in.
With Reputation, you can update all your business listings at once, ensuring every listing contains up-to-date information about your services and contact details.
ServiceTitan also lets users manage and respond to reviews from multiple sources all in one place, so there’s no need to switch between multiple platforms.
Plus, to keep the good reviews rolling in, you can automate the review request process to automatically send clients a review request form soon after a job is completed.
2. Create organic content
Organic content is the posts you share on your blog or social media platforms. It is a great way of keeping your followers engaged and up-to-date about your business.
When done well, you create organic content that is relevant, engaging, informative, and impactful. Your audience is likelier to share this content and remember your business the next time they need your services.
3. Send promotional newsletters
A promotional newsletter is a type of email marketing campaign that is sent to your email subscribers with the aim of driving sales and engagement. It usually contains information about your services and can feature photos of completed projects.
It’s also a great tool for promoting special offers and discounts or reminding customers about seasonal maintenance.
Email marketing offers an incredibly high ROI, with companies receiving on average $36 for every dollar spent. It’s also very low-cost, and if you opt for a business management tool with email marketing capabilities, like ServiceTitan, you can create email marketing campaigns at no extra cost.
ServiceTitan’s Email features let you create hyper-targeted audiences so you can send exactly the right content to the right audience, whether that’s existing customers or prospects.
Plus, you can save time and money when creating your email designs by using ServiceTitan’s professional-looking, prebuilt templates and the drag-and-drop editor that lets you design and send your email campaigns in a few minutes without any design experience.
4. Create a referral program
Word of mouth is an excellent way to promote your business for free because prospects are much more likely to trust your business when recommended by a friend or family member.
You can easily create a referral program that offers incentives like discounts or other perks to customers who refer your handyman company to others. However, customers will only refer your business if you provide an excellent customer experience from start to finish.
ServiceTitan’s Customer Experience software helps improve customer satisfaction with:
Delivery of appointment reminders and technician bios by SMS so customers know who to expect and when.
Two-way texting features to keep them (and you) in the loop.
Technician tracking so there’s no need for customers to wait at home all day.
These features help create a smooth, streamlined booking and scheduling process that will impress your customers from the outset. Then, it’s just up to you and your techs to do a good job on-site.
Now It’s Your Turn
Advertising is a great way to put your handyman business in front of prospective customers.
There are many different ways to do this, and it’s important you keep track of your spend and returns so you can continuously improve your strategies.
Using ServiceTitan to launch and monitor your campaigns can help you closely monitor each campaign's ROI while streamlining your advertising processes and maintaining your online reputation.
ServiceTitan is an all-in-one home services software solution that helps handyman businesses manage their marketing and advertising efforts. It is trusted by over 100,000 contractors and home services providers nationwide.
ServiceTitan Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and substantially elevate the trajectory of their business. Our comprehensive, cloud-based platform is used by thousands of electrical, HVAC, plumbing, garage door, and chimney sweep shops across the country—and has increased their revenue by an average of 25% in just their first year with us.
How Can You Advertise Handyman Services on Social Media?
Social media platforms have millions of worldwide users and offer unique targeting capabilities that can help get your ads in front of the right people.
You can advertise your handyman services on the following social media platforms:
Facebook
Instagram
LinkedIn
Let’s take a look at each of them.
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How to advertise handyman services on Facebook
Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform, with over three billion active users as of April 2024. Since a large proportion of your target audience likely has a Facebook account, it’s worthwhile advertising your services there.
You can start running PPC ads once you’ve created a Facebook business account.
While social media advertising lets you target specific niches of your audience, Facebook lets you create micro-targeted audiences, as the platform has a massive wealth of data. You can narrow down your audience based on many factors to target exactly the audience you want.
However, remember that the narrower your net, the smaller your chances of your ads being seen. Make sure to switch it up and experiment.
Top tips:
Research your audience: To maximize Facebook’s targeting features, you need to understand your ideal audience demographics.
Experiment with ad types: Facebook offers many ad types, including photos, videos, stories, carousels, and slideshow. Try out different types and see what resonates most with your customers. You can always switch off ads that don’t work.
Start with a small budget: Facebook’s platforms are free to use, so the only cost involved is the cost of running ads. You can set the budget for each ad, so set a small budget while you experiment, to avoid overspending.
Choose the advertising objective that fits your goals: Facebook offers different types of ads for different goals, such as lead generation, conversions, page promotion, website referrals, and call-to-action (CTA) promotions. Pick one that fits your goals.
Share photos or videos of your work: Promote your good work by showing footage of completed jobs and a CTA to your website.
How to advertise handyman services on Instagram
Instagram is an ideal social media platform to advertise on if you want to attract a Millennial or Gen-Z audience.
The platform offers most of the same ad types as Facebook, with the addition of Reels. You can also combine your advertising efforts on the two platforms to save time.
Top tips:
Use compelling visuals: As Instagram is a visual platform by nature, you will need to work hard to stand out. If you use poor-quality or boring visuals, you’ll likely not receive many clicks. Use high-quality images and videos that are well-lit to maximize your chances.
Experiment with broad targeting: This is ideal if you’re not sure who to target. It lets Instagram do much of the hard work of choosing who to show your ad to. Once you’ve got data on the demographics that responded well, you can retarget your campaign.
A/B test: Try out different combinations of visuals, text, ad types, and CTAs to see what resonates best.
Add captions: If you’re running video or reel ads, make sure you include captions to improve accessibility.
How to advertise handyman services on LinkedIn
LinkedIn may not be an ideal advertising platform for reaching residential customers, but it can be especially useful for targeting commercial prospects.
It’s also important to note that LinkedIn is more expensive than other social media platforms, so consider this when figuring out your advertising budget.
Top tips:
Use images: Images tend to bring in better results on LinkedIn, so make sure you use them whenever possible. Ensure they are high quality and well-lit.
Keep videos short: Video ads under 30 seconds see a 200 percent uplift in viewing-completion rates. Make sure you open with a good hook to keep viewers engaged right to the end.