Marketing a home inspection business: One of the advantages of being a home inspector that a lot of people find to be the most enticing is the possibility of working for yourself. The freedom that comes with running your own inspection business comes in the form of the ability to choose the customers you work for, the hours that you keep, and the fees that you demand.
However, in addition to this, you are responsible for all of the other responsibilities that come along with operating a business, like marketing. If you’re like most home inspectors, you know more about houses and how they’re built than anyone else you know, despite the fact that you probably do not have a degree in marketing from an accredited university.
The good news is that you now have more opportunities than ever before to successfully market your home inspection business on your own thanks to the widespread availability of the internet. What is the other side? It is not always easy to determine where to begin or which marketing strategies would provide the most return on investment for the money spent.
So let’s demystify current marketing. In order to get a firm grasp on the fundamentals and target the appropriate demographic with your inspection services, here is what you need to know.
Marketing a home inspection business: The basics
Before we go any further, let’s get one thing straight: The failure of more than half of all new home inspection businesses during their first couple of years is primarily attributable to a lack of promotion that spreads the word to prospective customers. Therefore, having good marketing is essentially necessary if you want your firm to develop.
However, what exactly is marketing? A few essential definitions are as follows:
- Promotion: Promotion, often known as marketing, is the process of actively alerting others about your company. Marketing can be carried out in a variety of different ways, such as through commercials broadcasted on radio, television, and the internet; websites; social media; blogs; postings; mailers; billboards; and other mediums. Building relationships with customers and encouraging them to leave positive reviews are two examples of the more subtle marketing methods.
- Branding: If marketing is focused on communicating with your target audience, then branding is focused on you. Your company’s brand, which includes things like its colors, logos, and fonts, defines your company. The language that you use in advertisements and on your website is also a component of branding, as are any slogans or taglines that you come up with to assist people in remembering who you are and what your enterprise is all about.
- Advertising: Advertising is merely one component of marketing; more precisely, it refers to the advertisements that you purchase on various mediums like television, radio, local magazines, the internet, and so on. These can be helpful, but advertising on its alone won’t perform the job of putting your company in front of the customers who have the greatest requirement for the services you provide. In point of fact, it’s possible that adverts aren’t the best fit for your company at all.
Developing your marketing plan
Once upon a time, all a home inspector needed to do to market their services was place an ad in the local paper once a week and shell out a few dollars for a prominent listing in the phone book. People in this day and age rely on the internet for all they require. So how exactly can you make it easier for folks to locate you?
You need to have a plan for marketing.
No matter what kind of company you run, the first steps in the process of designing your marketing plan are always the same:
Establish your reputation by making a decision regarding the mission of your company and how you want to communicate that mission to your clientele. To accomplish this, you will need to dive deeper than simply saying “I’m a home inspector.” What do you consider to be important? What can your company do for its clients that no one else does? What sets you apart from others? These are not simple questions to answer; however, InterNACHI provides a fantastic introduction to branding for home inspectors that includes helpful exercises to get you started on developing your brand.
- Get a website developed for you: Because it is the first place that people will seek to learn more about your home inspection service, your website is an incredibly essential component of your branding and marketing plan. The most effective websites include unambiguous information about the services they provide, the qualifications of their staff, a method of contact, rates, and, ideally, glowing testimonials from satisfied customers. Websites from HomeGauge are created expressly for the purpose of assisting home inspectors in establishing an online presence and streamlining the appointment scheduling and report downloading processes for their clients.
- Consider your target demographic: Home inspectors often cater primarily to two groups of people: prospective homeowners and real estate professionals. Even though these two groups want quite different things and have very distinct shopping routines, they both want your services for the same objective, which is to check a house before the sale is finalized. You need to decide who you’re talking to for each marketing aspect in order to employ language and pictures that will impress the specific group you’ve chosen to target.
- Target your audience: Once you have a better understanding of the people you are trying to sell to, you will be better able to select where to focus your efforts. An advertisement in a newspaper may or may not be seen, depending on the people who purchase newspapers on a given day; however, placing an advertisement in a professional journal that is geared toward real estate agents will ensure that a much larger number of people in your target audience are exposed to your message. In a similar vein, targeting local periodicals that highlight homes for sale may be an excellent method to ensure that genuine home buyers see your advertisement. Consider the locations that your target demographic frequents most often when it comes to house inspection marketing.
- It is time to become precise about exactly how you will get your name out there now that you’ve completed the groundwork for your overall marketing plan and are ready to go on to the next step. There are numerous different ways to assist people in finding you, and you may direct the majority of your marketing efforts toward those locations.
Practical ideas for home inspection are inexpensive or even free.
1. Optimize your website
You have put in a lot of time and effort to create a wonderful website, but none of that work will be worthwhile if no one visits your website. When prospective homeowners go to Google to look for a home inspector in their area, Google displays results based on the terms it discovers on your website. These results are presented to the homeowner. Does the information that visitors want to find on your website actually exist there? Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a procedure that, among other things, ensures that the most significant terms are brought to the forefront, allowing search engines to recognize your presence on the web and provide prospective customers with information that is pertinent to their needs. The HomeGauge SEO Builder takes care of the technical aspects by optimizing your website and establishing your internet presence with relevant blog pieces to publish. This eliminates the need for you to worry about these tasks.
2. Get active on social media
Utilizing various social media platforms can be of assistance to you as you work to expand your online presence. The most prominent social media platforms are Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram; additionally, it is free to create an account for your company on any of these platforms. When you do, you’ll want to make it a habit to routinely share content that provides potential customers with something of value and answer any questions they might have. You can accomplish this by linking to articles that are pertinent to the topic at hand, by providing advice and suggestions, or even just by sharing some fantastic photographs. Be sure to include hashtags that are relevant to your post in order to attract the appropriate audience: Check out this list of hashtags that can attract both buyers and agents. #realestate is a wonderful place to start, but also take a look at this other list.
3. Cultivate positive reviews
One of the most essential ways that potential customers learn about your company is through the reviews that they read on social media platforms like Yelp, Facebook, and Google. These are completely free and have the potential to be an effective tool to create trust and name recognition in your community; but, they do not appear out of thin air. Always remember to ask your customers for an online review after each inspection, and make it as simple as possible for them by giving links. As part of your efforts to maintain your internet reputation, you should also make it a point to reply appropriately to any bad reviews.
4. Build your personal network
The business of home inspection is highly individualistic. You interact directly with your customers, and they put their faith in you to give them competent advice regarding a substantial financial commitment. In addition to this, it is highly local employment because the only place you will need to establish a name is in your own city, county, or region. Because of this, referrals are quite important. Consider becoming a member of your community’s organizations, such as the Chamber of Commerce and other groups where you are likely to meet prospective customers, in order to maintain a positive flow of word-of-mouth regarding your home inspection company. These in-person relationships serve as a wonderful complement to the connections you’ve made through online social media.
5. Offer some free advice
You must have a lot of knowledge about homes and be able to provide recommendations that might fill an entire book, right? By providing others with helpful advice, you can not only increase the number of people who follow you on social media but also enhance your reputation as an expert and move up in the search results on Google. You might want to think about including a blog on your website to provide guidance on various real estate and house inspection concerns. The next step is to publish the link on your social media platforms or make your contacts aware of the blog article through an email newsletter. You will demonstrate your level of competence and keep customers thinking about the inspection services you provide.
6. Target real estate agents
It is common practice for homebuyers to follow the recommendation of their real estate agent when it comes to selecting a house inspector; therefore, you should make the most of any suggestions that are provided to you. Connecting with local real estate agents through direct mailers, email marketing, or personal networking is a great way to make the most of a constrained marketing budget, whether that budget is limited in terms of time or resources. To grab their interest, you may even think about providing a discount or special rate in exchange for an initial reference.
7. Try Google Ads
Have you ever taken the time to notice that the very first search result that appears on your screen on Google is frequently an advertisement? Google Ads are simple to create and give you the ability to directly target people who are searching for a home inspector in your region. Because you don’t have to pay anything unless someone actually clicks on the ad, it’s often a pretty inexpensive approach to test the waters of digital advertising. Learn the ins and outs of how it operates, then test your skills with a pilot project.
Marketing for the future
Whether you start with free digital marketing like social media or prefer to spend your time networking and creating human contacts, the optimal marketing plan will explicitly target your chosen demographic. Marketing isn’t a one-and-done thing, but a habit you build throughout the life of your firm. To find out what works best for you, choose one strategy to start and try it for a month or two, then review your outcomes. You can then alter your strategy or add another method to your arsenal. The most essential thing is to keep at it for the long run.
