To generate the most business, top-performing contractors in the trades know they need to send customers the right message at the right time. But how do you break through all of the online noise to make sure the right customers receive your marketing message?
The first step contractors must take involves eliminating all those marketing inefficiencies that keep them from booking more jobs and growing revenue, says ServiceTitan Strategic Project Manager Heather Donaldson.
Today’s contractors suffer from multiple inefficiencies, Donaldson says, including:
Blasting the same message to every customer
Manually exporting/importing spreadsheets to track progress
Using multiple tools to do one job, with multiple logins and passwords
Spending 7 times more to acquire new customers
Delivering fragmented customer experiences
Measuring metrics that don’t tie to revenue
“These inefficiencies are leading to a loss of booked jobs and loss of revenue in general,” Donaldson says. “How can we remedy that? That’s how we started the conversation with Marketing Pro.”
In a recent webinar hosted by ServiceTitan, Donaldson explains how Marketing Pro works and drills down on the newest additions to the Marketing Pro suite of services—Reputation and Direct Mail—to create an all-in-one marketing automation platform for the trades.
What is ServiceTitan Marketing Pro?
Marketing Pro provides contractors with a data-driven marketing automation platform built within the ServiceTitan field management software system.
“It’s actually one of the only all-in-one marketing tools out there for contractors,” Donaldson says.
Marketing Pro helps contractors:
Target the right customer at the right time
Automate their marketing and accelerate marketing returns
Make better business decisions based on deeper insights
Show customers they care by communicating regularly
For instance, Roto-Rooter Plumbing and Drain Service in Medina, Ohio, jumped aboard the ServiceTitan Marketing Pro train in October 2019, bringing in $25,000 from a one-time email campaign using funny clown videos created by the company’s corporate office. Follow-up videos for Thanksgiving and Christmas kept the phones ringing.
Ilene Hackett, the company’s marketing specialist, says Marketing Pro allowed her to build the right audience and the right message, and properly manage the company’s customer database.
“With Marketing Pro, not having to export and manage the mailing list is mind-blowing,” Hackett says. “I define my marketing by lead generation and branding, and Marketing Pro kind of crosses both of those borders.”
Here’s an example of how Marketing Pro enhances the entire customer journey:
Homeowner searches for “plumber” on Google and considers businesses at top of search results.
Customers trust businesses with multiple 5-star reviews (based on ratings from peers) and call for service. CSRs greet customers by first name (because they already know the customer from data displayed on the dashboard) and offer to help.
Booking confirmations and dispatch notifications are sent to the customer to establish trust.
Tech gets dispatched to home, diagnoses problems, and presents options for solutions.
Technician performs work and completes the job.
Marketing Pro - Reputation sends customers a text requesting a review for the completed job. That text comes from the same number the company uses to communicate with customers, so the relationship loop tightens.
Homeowner pays the bill and responds to the text requesting a review. Homeowners rate the company with 5 stars to boost their presence and reputation.
“This starts the cycle all over again,” Donaldson explains, with customers searching for you on Google, finding 5-star reviews, and trusting your company to book a job.
The Marketing Pro suite of services allows contractors to contact customers with the right message at the right time across multiple channels, including email, direct mail, and phone.
Using one solution across multiple marketing channels, contractors see results, such as:
Email
In 2020, Marketing Pro Email customers earned higher Year-over-Year revenue than non-Marketing Pro customers (+12% vs. +5%)
Direct Mail
Direct mail produces a median ROI of 29% (only slightly less than social media and paid search)
Reputation
A 1-star increase in ratings equals a 5% to 9% increase in revenue, and customers spend 31% more with businesses that get excellent reviews.
“Marketing Pro has a direct impact on your bottom line,” Donaldson says.
Marketing Pro Email and Direct Mail
For the purposes of building a marketing campaign, Marketing Pro Email and Direct Mail follow the same guidelines, but produce different outputs, Donaldson says. Both, however, increase the relevance of your marketing messages.
Marketing Pro Email and Direct Mail allow you to:
Hyper-target your audience by leveraging customer data in ServiceTitan, which often elicits a better response.
Are you following up on unsold estimates, for instance? By hyper-targeting a marketing message to only those customers with unsold estimates, you can increase the potential for booking jobs with new customers. They remember your company’s name from previous emails and appreciate the follow-up, Donaldson says.
Automate your campaigns to follow-up on every opportunity, such as unsold estimates or expiring memberships.
Contractors spend a lot of time chasing down customers to get jobs booked. With Marketing Pro Email and Direct Mail, you can set it and forget it.
“It’s basically a crockpot for marketing!” Donaldson says. “You can set your campaign, it does all the work in the background, you don’t have to give it a lunch break, and it’s really a very efficient tool for taking back some time in your day.”
Know exactly how your email and direct mail campaigns perform by tying campaign performance to revenue attribution.
Marketing Pro accomplishes this in two ways by tracking: 1) Attributed revenue (any opened email used to coax the customer into calling you), and 2) Direct revenue tied to jobs booked through that campaign.
On the Marketing Pro analytics dashboard, contractors can track email and direct mail campaigns through key performance indicators such as: Revenue, Booked Jobs, Sold Jobs, and Calls. The marketing platform also breaks down results for other campaigns outside of Marketing Pro, such as branding or local store marketing, gift certificates sold, and other referrals, for comparison.
Companies can build and use the same audience for email and direct mail marketing campaigns with built-in cross functionality, Donaldson says. The new features also offer easy, customizable templates that companies can use to personalize their own messages to customers.
“We can now see how many customers we reach through email, how many we reach through direct mailing a postcard, and how many we reach through phone numbers for outbound or outreach services,” she says.
ServiceTitan works with a national vendor to print direct mail campaigns within 48 hours of receiving an order, and promises delivery to customers within five to seven business days.
Marketing Pro — Reputation
A company’s online reputation matters, and Marketing Pro Reputation helps contractors increase visibility and trust by securing more 5-star reviews, Donaldson explains.
“That is the ultimate dream—to have all 5-star reviews, right?” she says.
Marketing Pro — Reputation allows contractors to:
1. Generate more 5-star reviews with automated SMS or email requests after the job is complete.
As soon as techs click “complete” on any job, customers receive a text asking for reviews.
2. Improve discoverability in online searches by ensuring accurate listings in addition to a large volume of high-quality reviews.
Marketing Pro - Reputation manages a company’s listings across the internet on a single dashboard, allowing contractors to edit company names, locations, and phone numbers in one place, then sync them across all digital listings.
3. Deliver a better customer experience by responding quickly to reviews, and tracking reviews for specific jobs and technicians.
Information streamlined in Reputation helps customers easily find your company, hire you, and give a good review. Then, you can attribute reviews to specific jobs and techs for future customers to see.
Donaldson says she learned how well Marketing Pro — Reputation performs ... the hard way.
“Marketing Pro — Reputation is so good, that if you were to create a fake business with it, you now have a business,” Donaldson says, referring to a colleague who did just that. “It will list you everywhere a business would be listed.”
Some of the features Marketing Pro — Reputation offers include:
Monitoring: Create and send a request for reviews, then monitor the status (click rate, rating average, number of reviews), as well as see all reviews in the system by date, time, and platform.
Review Generation: Create surveys to generate those reviews via text or email, then segment them by business unit, event trigger, customer tags, and sold threshold range.
Reviews: Personalize requests with the customer's name and the technician who performed the work, and direct customers with a link to specific review sites, such as Facebook or Google. You can also filter reviews and send alerts to get a jump on any bad reviews.
Locations: Manage business listings from one dashboard and watch them go live in real time. Tie directly to your listings on Facebook and Google My Business to pull in reviews from those platforms.
Alerts: More coming soon, such as alerts for specific content included in reviews.
With the monitoring feature, Donaldson says contractors can see overall review performance across all sites.
“You get an average rating for all sites, which sites are soliciting the most reviews and best ratings, and also see how well you are communicating with your customers,” she says. “You not only see how many reviews you’re getting, but also how many you haven’t responded to.”
Special offer for new Marketing Pro customers
As a special introductory offer for new customers, ServiceTitan is offering the full ServiceTitan Marketing Pro suite FREE until the end of 2020. Simply sign up by requesting a demo at www.servicetitan.com/marketingpro.
Based on rave reviews from beta customers, the new release of Marketing Pro Reputation and Direct Mail in October will help drive sales and delight your customers.
“Since setting up Marketing Pro-Reputation’s follow-up survey text … our reviews are going through the roof.”
— Brandon Day, Owner, Daycool Air
