The home services industry is booming worldwide. Researchers predict the global market will grow by more than 21% every year until 2030, bringing its value from $370.86 million in 2021 to an estimated $1,826.35 million by the end of the decade.
The opportunities are ample — but the competition is fierce. If you're a contractor or business owner in the home services industry, like a plumber or electrician, you need a digital marketing strategy that's both effective and cost-efficient.
With the right online marketing efforts, your home service business can gain advantages like:
This guide explores five home services marketing tips and strategies for 2024, like making social media posts, creating local services ads, responding to customer reviews, and more. It also includes a list of top review sites for home services businesses to monitor, including Angi, Yelp, Facebook, and Google.
There are numerous types of digital marketing strategies that your home services businesses can explore.
To help you get started, here are five of the most popular and effective online marketing strategies for the home services industry:
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the ongoing process of optimizing your website for search engines like Google. This involves a mix of on-site SEO, like using alt text in your images, and off-site SEO, like building quality backlinks (links from other websites back to your website).
While there are several types of SEO, one of the most important for home service professionals is local SEO. As the name suggests, local SEO deals with location-specific searches — for example, searches like "plumber near me," "Hollywood AC repairs," or "best electrician LA."
Improving your local search ranking amplifies your brand's online visibility in geo-specific searches, making it easier for potential customers in your service area to find your home services company.
According to Semrush, "46% of all search users are looking for local businesses," so it's essential to improve your local SEO — for example, by incorporating more local keywords into your content.
We'll talk more about content strategies later, but first, here are a few tips and techniques to improve your home service business' local search ranking on Google:
To learn more about this topic, check out Google's tips for boosting your local search ranking.
There are numerous types of Google Ads your business can leverage. Let's explore two important examples: Local Services and Google pay-per-click (PPC) ads.
As Google explains, Local Services Ads help your business "show up when local customers search for your services, and build confidence with a Google badge."
Let's look at an example.
Clicking "More businesses" opens a new page with Google Local Services ads prominently displayed at the top.
The "GOOGLE GUARANTEED" badge sends a powerful trust signal to potential customers, showing that your business provides reliable, quality service.
There's also another benefit: "With Local Services Ads," Google explains, "you only pay for customers — not clicks."
That's an important distinction from traditional pay-per-click or PPC ads, which are another useful tool for home service companies. With PPC ads, you'll pay whenever someone clicks on the advertisement — but with an average of $2 spent by customers for every $1 spent on PPC, it's still a profitable marketing strategy. You can use PPC ads on Google, social media platforms like Facebook, and other websites.
Learn more about PPC ads and paid search, or get started with Google Local Services ads.
Paid ads aren't the only way to attract potential customers. You can also reach new customers organically by regularly publishing original, high-quality content that's helpful and relevant to your target audience.
This is a type of digital marketing strategy known as content marketing. As Forbes reports, "Content marketing increases lead generation according to 74% of companies" — which might explain why "90% of marketers include content in their marketing strategies."
Depending on the business, most content marketing strategies involve a blend of different formats and media, such as:
For example, you can reach local customers by adding a blog to your website, incorporating geo-targeted keywords into your blog posts, and concluding each article with a call to action that encourages readers to contact your sales team.
According to BrightLocal's latest Local Consumer Review Survey, 45% of people have checked business reviews on Facebook in 2024. Another 34% say they've checked business reviews on Instagram, 23% on TikTok, and 18% on the platform X (formerly known as Twitter).
Consumers also use social media to communicate with businesses, check their hours and addresses, learn what services they offer, and find other information.
The takeaway is that social media has a massive impact on the success of your home services business. Creating social media pages enables you to share content, reply to reviews, answer questions, post updates, promote events, and more.
For example, your business can use social media to build trust with potential customers by sharing helpful, informative content that distinguishes your brand from competitors.
You can also share positive reviews from social media to your website by using a review management platform with social sharing widgets, which is another way to build trust effectively.
Here are a few ways you can use social media platforms to market your home service business online:
Online reviews have a massive impact on consumer perceptions of your brand — and where they decide to spend their money.
According to research by BrightLocal, only 3% of consumers say they "never read online reviews when browsing for local businesses," while the remaining 97% check reviews anywhere from "occasionally" (22%) to "regularly" (42%) to "always" (33%).
Managing your online reviews is an effective way to simultaneously attract more customers and improve your online reputation. So what does a review management strategy typically involve? There are a few important components, which include review monitoring and review responding.
Review monitoring involves tracking review sites and social media platforms for new ratings and reviews. You can do this by setting alerts on individual platforms, or — the simpler strategy — using a review monitoring service that tracks multiple platforms for you.
Responding to reviews is equally essential. 88% of the participants in BrightLocal's survey said they would consider using a business that responded to all reviews, but only 54% were willing to consider businesses that responded exclusively to positive reviews.
Meanwhile, only 47% said they would consider a business that never replied to reviews.
These statistics suggest that home service businesses can attract more customers simply by improving their response rates on review sites like Yelp, Apple Maps, and the Better Business Bureau.
With that in mind, let's look at some of the top review sites for home service businesses.
Here are nine essential review platforms to monitor — and promote your business on — in 2024:
When someone performs a search using Google or Google Maps, the platform displays a list of relevant local businesses. By clicking or tapping on a listing, users can see an overview of the business and read its reviews.
Creating a free Google Business Profile enables customers to rate and review your business on Google Maps, and you can:
Learn more about responding to Google reviews, or explore some of the best Google review response examples of 2024.
44% of consumers said they checked Yelp reviews in 2024, according to BrightLocal. That makes Yelp the third most popular review platform behind Google and, as we'll explore later, Facebook.
A wide variety of business listings are featured on Yelp, including electricians, plumbers, painters, gardeners, landscapers, home repair experts, and more.
But Yelp is more than just a review platform — it's one of your most powerful home services marketing tools.
As a home services provider, you can use Yelp to share your pricing and availability; offer free virtual estimates; and showcase the amenities, services, and other highlights your business provides, such as "family-owned and operated," "offers payment plans," and "accepts credit cards."
Yelp allows users to review and rate businesses anywhere from 1 to 5 stars. Learn more about best practices for responding to negative Yelp reviews.
Angi is a review site for the home service industry, featuring reviews of roofers, landscapers, electricians, plumbers, and more. Users can rate businesses 1 to 5 stars, and businesses are scored on individual categories like "quality," "value," and "responsiveness."
Angi also lets users request quotes and, like Yelp, allows businesses to share various highlights and amenities (such as "free estimates" or "emergency services offered").
Combined with its impressive database of over 10 million reviews, that makes Angi another powerful marketing tool for home service professionals.
Thumbtack is an online business directory and review site where users can "find local pros, compare prices and book home services in a few simple steps." Users can also post ratings and reviews, making Thumbtack important to monitor.
Thumbtack has over 10 million users and, according to 6Sense, "has [a] market share of 3.18% in [the] customer-self-service market."
Houzz is a website where users can find home service professionals, share and read reviews, and shop for products like lighting and furniture.
Not only is Houzz a review site, it also doubles as a useful marketing tool for home service businesses. With Houzz Pro — which describes itself as an "all-in-one tool for marketing, CRM and project management" — your business can create targeted advertisements, generate and send invoices, manage projects, and more.
HomeAdvisor, part of Angi, is a website where visitors can find "the right local pro for any home project," from moving, window installation, and pest control to remodeling, roofing, and lawn care.
Users can rate home service professionals anywhere from 1 to 5 stars, resulting in a numeric overall rating (such as 4.7 in the example above). All reviews on HomeAdvisor are verified to ensure they come from actual customers.
In 2024, 20% of consumers used the Better Business Bureau (BBB), a website where customers can rate and review home service businesses. Consumers can also file a BBB complaint, which is a separate process from leaving a BBB review.
The BBB assigns businesses a letter grade from "F" through "A+" depending on factors like how quickly and how frequently they respond to customers, making it crucial to monitor your BBB reviews carefully.
Apple Maps is a navigation app similar to Google Maps in features and layout. The major difference is that Apple Maps pulls in reviews from Yelp and other third-party websites, while Google displays reviews and ratings directly from Google users.
According to BrightLocal, 16% of consumers used Apple Maps to check reviews in 2024, an increase from 15% in 2023 and 13% in 2022. With the app steadily growing in popularity, Apple Maps is a key review platform that home service businesses need to be tracking.
With more than 3 billion active users, Facebook continues to dominate as the largest social media platform in the world.
It also doubles as one of the largest review platforms, second only to Google in popularity. 45% of consumers used Facebook to check business reviews in 2024, surpassing Yelp, the BBB, Apple Maps, Yellow Pages, and Angi.
Instead of allowing them to rate businesses 1 to 5 stars, Facebook employs a simple "yes" or "no" model by asking whether users would recommend the business. Once the business acquires enough reviews, it also receives a rating.
Learn more about managing and responding to Facebook reviews of your home service business.
When your business is listed on dozens of directories and review sites, managing and tracking each account is inefficient.
Fortunately, there's a less stressful and more streamlined approach. ResponseScribe aggregates all your reviews into a single, centralized platform, enabling you to manage all customer feedback from just one dashboard.
ResponseScribe pulls reviews from over 50 review sites and apps, including Google, Yelp, Angi, Apple Maps, and the BBB. Our platform also provides automatic alerts and notifications, ensuring you never miss a new rating or customer comment.
In addition to tracking reviews across 50+ platforms, ResponseScribe makes it effortless to communicate with customers.
We provide your reviewers with personalized, on-brand, keyword-rich responses created by AI or our experienced team of writers, depending on your preferred content strategy.
That lets your business save time on responding while increasing brand loyalty, improving customer satisfaction, and boosting your online visibility.
Learn more about how ResponseScribe works, or explore affordable month-to-month pricing.
Help your target audience find you, connect with potential customers, and drive more traffic to your business — all from one convenient platform.
With AI-powered review responding, automated social sharing, and detailed business insights and reporting, ResponseScribe is your all-in-one reputation management solution.
Discover how fast you can grow your home service business using ResponseScribe. Get started today with a free trial of our platform.
Done-for-you review response service for local businesses.
Part of the Shout About Us family.
