Planning your marketing budget and strategy for 2025? Now’s the time to line up all of your tools and resources to execute the most impactful marketing initiatives in the new year.
To help you create the best revenue-driving campaigns, ServiceTitan's Sarah Ghirardo, Senior Manager of Productized Content, and Scorpion's Andrew Adams, Director of Integrated Marketing, break down the essential elements of a successful marketing campaign across all major channels in a recent webinar.
Discover how to:
Use the best channels and tactics to reach new customers and drive conversions
Re-engage your customer base with smart, creative campaigns during slow seasons
Get the tools and resources you need to execute impactful marketing initiatives
6 steps to campaign planning
Successful marketing strategies always start with a plan, but they’re not just about what you deliver, Ghirardo says. They're about knowing who you're reaching, why it matters to them, and how you can meet them where they are.
“So, plan with a purpose, execute with clarity, and optimize for growth,” Ghirardo says.
Campaign planning requires six specific steps:
Define the objective and KPIs
Craft a personalized audience
Create a unique value proposition
Choose your marketing channels
Create the content
Measure success and optimize
“These steer you in the right direction, help set the tone, and help you execute really great campaigns that impact your business,” Adams says.
1. Define the objective and KPIs
What is your campaign goal? What are you trying to accomplish? You need to know what you’re trying to achieve, and how to track and measure whether you reach the goal.
“It's hard to gauge success if you didn't define what it was going to be beforehand,” Adams says.
2. Craft a personalized audience
Who is the right target audience to help you meet those objectives and KPIs?
“If you're looking to get new customers into your business, reaching out to existing customers about upsells or other opportunities isn't the right audience for that,” Adams says.
3. Create a unique value proposition
Does your campaign offer customers something different that inspires or prompts them to take action, such as a seasonal discount at just the right time?
“So, think through that,” Adams suggests. “What are you really trying to push? And timing your campaign around that, especially if it's seasonal.”
4. Choose your marketing channels
Which channels make the most sense for your marketing campaign? Is it email, SMS, direct mail, social media, or even a webinar?
“There are so many different opportunities when it comes to marketing and connecting with your prospects and current customers,” Adams says. “What kinds of things should you be doing, and in what channels, to really reach that goal and those KPIs?”
5. Create the content
When creating the content, make sure it aligns with the previous four steps. Is your content appropriate for the marketing channels you chose? Does the content provide a unique value proposition to the customer? Is the content right for your target audience? Does the content help you achieve your KPI goals?
6. Measure success and optimize
Once you’ve completed the first five steps in the planning phase and launched your campaign, you need tools to track and measure whether you’ve achieved those objectives and KPIs, then adjust for future campaigns to better align with your customers.
“I know you can use AI to help define all of these, which is going to make the marketer role completely change, especially in 2025,” Ghirardo says. “If you're not using AI in content creation or in planning, it's not that you're not going to be doing things right, it's that you're going to be behind innovation. We're innovating the role as we speak.”
Example goals to set in 2025
What goal can you set for your marketing strategy in 2025? You can start with a simple one, such as “I need to create a campaign” or “I need to plan a strategy,” then use the steps above to set specific goals.
To take your marketing strategy to the next level, you can focus on the following three areas to set goals for smart, creative campaigns:
Awareness and engagement
Lead nurturing and consideration
Conversion and engagement
Awareness and engagement
Driving awareness and engagement means constantly telling your company’s story, creating brand awareness, and building trust within your community.
It’s really about telling your ideal customers exactly what you do, Adams says.
“The thing about marketing that I love is building trust and really showing people who your business is, what you're all about, the services you provide, but also what they can expect from you on a day-to-day basis, your values, your mission,” he says. “All of those things are bundled up in awareness and engagement.”
One example from a Scorpion client involves creating thought leadership content that explains common electrical problems that occur in older homes and what steps to take if the power goes out. The client provides this content to existing customers but also uses it on social media ads to build trust and awareness with new customers. You can also create DIY video content with the same goals in mind.
“Awareness and engagement are really those initial touchpoints or beginning times where they learn about your business, start to understand your brand, and know who you are,” Adams says. “Then, when they’re ready to purchase or when they’re looking for a service, they think of you first.”
While video content will likely appeal to those DIY-ers, be sure to include a soft call-to-action to invite viewers to learn more about your business or schedule a service when they fail to complete the job themselves, Ghirardo says.
“Time is money, even for the normal consumer,” she adds.
When using ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro Ads Optimizer, you receive multipoint conversion signals to connect the entire customer journey back to Google Ads, which helps you input good data to better leverage your marketing campaigns.
“Ads Optimizer helps Google really understand what's going on behind the campaign to help make iterations and optimize your campaigns to be stronger for a higher return on ad spend,” Ghirardo says.
Also with awareness and engagement, Adams says, you can use the same content on different campaigns to attract new customers as well as existing ones.
“The opportunity to use one piece of content or one effort to really create multiple opportunities is always a big focus for me, and something that makes every marketer's life easier,” he explains.
Ghirardo suggests layering the content for different purposes.
“We know the consumer conversion is taking more impressions to convert, and so really the more you can layer what's going on in your marketing channels, the more opportunity the consumer has to choose you,” she says.
Lead nurturing and consideration
Lead nurturing is not about pushing for an immediate sale, Ghirardo explains.
“It's about consistently providing value so when your customers are ready, your brand is the clear and trusted choice,” she says.
Where awareness and engagement is all about making sure the right customers find you and your business finds the right jobs, lead nurturing and consideration is about making sure those potential or existing customers actually choose to work with your company, Adams says.
“It's really about understanding where they are, what services they’re interested in, how they've used your business before, and how to get new business from them,” he says. “Really creating email campaigns, SMS campaigns, and content that speaks to where they're at.”
Lead nurturing and consideration also presents opportunities for cross-selling services to customers who rely on your business. They may have hired you for HVAC repair service, for instance, then discover they need your plumbing expertise as well.
“Finding those unique abilities to tie in and using resources like ServiceTitan and Scorpion to really help you home in on the audience, the content, and the unique value proposition,” Adams says.
Marketing Pro users can use AutoPilot to kickstart campaigns, such as following up on unsold estimates and re-engaging with customers to capture revenue left on the table.
“With AutoPilot, we set up some basic campaigns, with audiences behind it, and templates that work, so with a click of a button you can assign a phone number and get these campaigns started right out the door once you have Marketing Pro,” Ghirardo says. “We partnered with Scorpion so they can help you build a strategy and take on this work for you.”
One of Scorpion’s examples of lead nurturing involves setting up a home-care education campaign to help educate customers about their home maintenance needs.
“A campaign like this would really focus on educational content that provides value, practical home maintenance tips, how to lower your energy bills, or maybe how to check for plumbing leaks,” Adams says. “Just positioning you as a trusted home care expert.”
And you can run this type of campaign on multiple channels, such as posting videos on social media or emailing newsletters to new homeowners.
“Things like that to really keep nurturing them and building trust, so they're always thinking of you,” Adams says.
Local hero programs work well, too, especially when businesses cross-promote each other, Ghirardo says. One ServiceTitan customer is partnering with Wal-Mart on a “push-the-cart” campaign to give three lucky families a $500 shopping spree, and another is hosting a food drive to help feed the hungry.
“It's always great around the holidays when you can plan food drives or participate in local charities, holiday parades, and community events. It's really just being there for your community and seeing what you can do to build your brand without even having to say your brand name,” Ghirardo adds.
Conversion and engagement
“Winning a customer once is just the beginning,” Ghirardo says. “True success lies in converting the relationship into long-term loyalty through convenience, trust, and consistent engagement.”
To increase conversions and engagement, it’s important to view marketing campaigns through the customer lens, make the decision-making process as simple as possible, and help them achieve that immediate gratification.
“I always think in terms of clicks. If I have more than three clicks, I'm always thinking, ‘Well, how can I get it down to one?’ So, using tools like Scheduling Pro, AI chatbots, or any online booking assistant tool will help you immensely,” Ghirardo says. “Creating efficiency and automation throughout your processes also creates business efficiency.”
Adams offered a few interesting takeaways from a recent Scorpion survey of a few thousand home services customers:
54% of consumers decide to hire a home services provider in less than four hours
“That just shows you how quickly someone's looking to find a solution. And if they can't find that information or schedule with you in those four hours, they're likely moving on to someone else,” he says.
70% of consumers favor companies that provide multiple ways to contact them
“It’s not that you just have a phone number, but you have an online chat tool, or scheduling, or texting,” Adams says. “Big things, as consumers’ expectations change.”
Utilizing direct mail also helps to increase conversions and engagement. ServiceTitan and Scorpion give you the tools to track engagement and know exactly when campaigns resonate.
“It seems like people are paying a little bit more attention to their mail these days,” Adams says. “With the right messaging and the right call to action, people are really paying attention and it's a great way to get in front of new customers and to retain customers as well.”
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The most important takeaway, Ghirardo says, is to understand conversions are not about you or how you rank in online search results. You simply need to show up where your customers are so they can convert more quickly.
“Giving them more options and different ways to convert through multiple channels, that will really help give you a data analysis of where you can optimize, where you can lean more into your marketing strategy, or where you may need to edit and [repeat processes],” she says. “That’s a great way to think about marketing in general for 2025.
“‘Yep, I'm going to create a plan. I'm going to run the play, and if I see an opportunity, then I'm going to iterate as fast as I can and pivot,’” she adds.
Finally, utilizing tools to measure and track your marketing campaigns is one of the most important things you can do to succeed at marketing.
“To be able to pivot quickly and change things around if they're not working so they can be more effective, the only way to do that is to make sure you have the right tracking tools in place,” Adams says.
What every campaign needs
Adams says every campaign requires the four following factors:
Audience targeting, to make sure you’re speaking to the right audience
Compelling offer, to incentivize the customer at the right time
Strong call-to-action, to give customers a specific and direct way to contact you
Tracking and measuring tool, to know if your campaigns are working
With audience targeting, Ghirardo says, you can data mine your ServiceTitan account to find missed opportunities to leverage. To send compelling offers, marketers must create something of value for the customer. Strong calls-to-action should create a sense of urgency, but not fear. And ServiceTitan tools like Marketing Pro give you better data insights to build success.
Invest in the resources to execute
Marketers do much more than simply create ad campaigns. The marketer’s job is to provide content for the entire customer journey and experience, Ghirardo says.
For instance, a marketer might send a direct mail piece to customers, create a call script for CSRs, provide a guide for technicians on customer-relationship building, create leadership content for the sales team, or show installers how to spot opportunities to upsell services.
“Marketers are everywhere inside of the customer journey,” Ghirardo says. “But there are still customer pain points or parts of the journey missing, which is why we developed Sales Pro.”
Missed opportunities in the field often occur when techs don’t know how to overcome customer objections and they need more content.
“A ‘no’ means they simply do not ‘k-n-o-w.’ So, that's where the content comes in, and that's what Sales Pro is going to do to help aid those conversion opportunities,” Ghirardo says. “It's just an extra boost to not only protect your company with the recordings that happen automatically, but to help your conversions, train your team, and really tighten the ship.”
ServiceTitan's upcoming Contact Center Pro will enhance and replace the current Phones Pro system with AI-powered features, helping your customer service representatives deliver more personalized experiences and convert more leads.
Besides Marketing Pro and Sales Pro, ServiceTitan also offers a variety of Pro Products with proven results.
The integration between ServiceTitan and Scorpion, ServiceTitan’s preferred digital marketing provider, provides better data insights and ties your marketing efforts to the revenue it creates so you can understand your return on ad spend and the overall ROI of your efforts, Adams says.
Scorpion’s direct marketing services help Marketing Pro users maximize the full potential of the tool, especially when focused on marketing strategy and audience segmentation.
Key takeaways
Focus on targeted campaigns for awareness, nurturing, and retention.
Be customer-centric at every stage, leveraging automation and AI tools.
Utilize ServiceTitan tools to enhance performance and increase ROI
>>Ready to work with Scorpion? Schedule your direct managed services consultation here.
>>Interested in getting started with ServiceTitan’s suite of Pro Products? Request a demo here.
