10 Ways to Make Your Marketing Better & Get More Clients – By Gannon Mahaffay

By Gannon Mahaffay, Founder and CEO of The Pest Control Coach.

There are many ways to make your pest control marketing better and get more clients. I’ve compiled a short list of some of the most important areas to pay attention to. Just follow these 10 easy tips and watch your marketing and your business take off.

#1 Understand Your Clients

Get to know your clients and understand their needs and wants. This is the most important step in marketing, because if you don’t get this right, your marketing campaigns will fail. The more accurate the information you gather, the more effective your selling is going to be. Just because you’ve always done it that way doesn’t mean it’s what your client wants.

#2 Observe the Marketing Environment

In addition to knowing your client well, watch for any business opportunities that could emerge in the broader market we play in. This requires that you pay attention to more than just the pest control industry.

#3 Design Your Service Around the Client

Once you have designed your marketing plan, you need to ensure your service is what your clients want, right from the packaging of your service, through the initial contact, to the sale and use of your service. Having a marketing plan in place is great, but it will only work if your pest control service offer is something the client wants, so make sure that’s what’s happening.

#4 Make Sure Your Marketing Plan Runs Smoothly

How you carry out your business and market your service is as important as the service itself. How do you handle complaints? What do your service procedures and policies look like? Are your people always courteous to clients? Do you go for the wow effect and over-deliver on your service? Put all of this together along with your marketing plan, tie a big yellow bow around it, and you’ve got your present for your potential client. If it’s done right, they are going to be all over what you have to offer.

#5 Design Your Ads to Target Your Clients and Speak to Them

If you are thinking of placing a few ads and then waiting for the clients to arrive, you are going to be very disappointed. Every day, consumers receive hundreds of ads and marketing messages, and they have become pretty good at blocking them out. If you want to get their attention, you are going to have to stand out.

#6 Find Related Services to Market to Existing Clients

Many service professionals put too much effort into creating brand-new services to sell to their current clients. That takes way too much time and money. One of the most powerful things you can do is take advantage of your company’s existing service channels and find related products to sell to them. This will enable you to quickly boost your marketing and ramp up sales. Doing this will not require any additional help or extra marketing costs, because you are offering it at the time of the sale. Your task is to immediately think of what other related services you can provide to your clients right after they buy from you. Take the time to invest in your clients’ wants and needs, and you will be rewarded with a business that grows.

#7 Go for the wow effect and over-deliver on your services

Providing pest control service like the other guy is the worst thing you can do. You want them to use your company and say, “That was the best service company I’ve ever seen.” If you wow them and over-deliver on your services, they will keep using you and tell their friends and family.

#8 Make sure your pest control business is running efficiently

Your service is important, but so is ensuring that your business is running efficiently: that calls are handled quickly, that staff properly greet and educate clients, that complaints are handled courteously and quickly, that technicians are on time and look presentable, and that your vehicles are fully stocked and clean.

#9 Invest in your staff

A common mistake is to overlook your staff. Your staff are your most important resource, so make sure they are getting the attention they need. Look after them, offer them ongoing training so they can do their job well, motivate them to outperform themselves and their competition, and encourage working together as a team.

#10 Have a price strategy in place

Don’t just set your price based on the cost of your product plus your margin. You need to understand what your LTV, or lifetime value of a client, is, along with your money-back guarantee average costs, equipment maintenance, taxes, insurance, benefits, and so much more. Pricing is a very powerful tool whose importance is overlooked far too often. Decide what your goal is. What are you wanting to achieve? What is the message that you are sending with your price? When you set your price on the higher end of your competitors, it creates an image of a premium product. When you set your price too low, you will be hanging out with the bottom dwellers of your industry. Consider what you want to achieve with your price. And if you raise prices, wait until the customer’s current agreement ends. Don’t apply a price increase in the middle of an agreement.

Want more? Read more straight talk in The Coach's Corner, and get to know Gannon Mahaffay.