In this lean season I’ve decided to clean house of those marketing anchors that fail to produce.
Mr. Pipeline
I will no longer be working with Mr. Pipeline. Regarding SEO they were never able to deliver what was expected and I never felt like they worked very hard to make the changes necessary to get me higher rankings. Next month, charging me $100 per month to host my website and place periodic posts with Google My Business will end.
ANGIE’S LIST
I’m dumping Angie’s List because my cost per contact is over $50 per, and almost all of them have been losers outside my area (the straw that broke the camel’s back was a contact that wanted paint removed from a 5X10 utility building 45 minutes away.
HOMEADVISOR
HomeAdvisor was GREAT for exposure and busy-ness, but a march to the bottom once the craft was well honed. This is the place where you get to learn, but not the place to prosper. If you as a Pro try to CHARGE WHAT YOU’RE WORTH THERE’S ALWAYS ANOTHER “PRO” WHO IS WILLING TO UNDERCUT YOU.
ALSO, I was contacted by HA to do a job they were paying me for. Three months later, and after sending out the invoice at least 10 times I’ve yet to be paid. There4 are other reasons why I would never go.
Dropped pipeline a while back. About to drop HomeAdvisor. Hate to lose all the reviews on it, but I just paid $40 for a residential lead I didn’t win. $40 in Facebook ads gets me a couple hundred in work. HA use to be $10-15 for a residential pressure washing lead, but it has tripled in the past 6 months.
I guess I averaged about $30 per lead and lately about $100 per sale.
Does anyone know of a CRM that will give you contact info on your customers based on a geographic radius from a map. ie, I get a job and wish to fill that day in that geographic area and I want to call/mail/email existing customers within a mile. Does the Customer Factor have that function? I am eager to find that as a function in my next (and hopefully last CRM)
They are the company that fosters my strongest love/hate relationship. With the help of my mentors here and the activity and experience I needed I became a true professional. True professionals in our industry will starve if they depend on HA.
My advice to the newcomer? Consider the knowledge gained here as your college classes, and your HA experience as your labwork and internship. IMHO, BOTH are necessary to become a professional. Whether acheived with the help of HA, or even PWRA is completely up to you.
I don’t think so. I find myself having to go through too many hoops to prepare my contacts/estimates/workorders/employee notifications. Yesterday, I was locked out of my account until they returned to start their day, 11am my time. That was enough to send me through the roof. I HAD NO ACCESS TO MY ACCOUNT IMMEDIATELY AFTER MY CARD (REPORTED LOST) DECLINED THEIR CHARGE. No notice, not even 1 day. TO THEIR CREDIT they gave me a free week to move my data and conclude my business with them after I talked with one of the owners and told him why I was leaving.
I’ve been happy with Zeke Domowski with Creativity Innovative for Google AdWords. I know he does SEO but have not used that service. Ryan with 180 sites just did my website. I was with NiceJob but their one page sites don’t rank well but they do convert if you don’t care about SEO. I will say the NiceJob has a nice review service that I will continue to use. Housecall Pro has worked well for CRMs.
Advice on HomeAdvisor- Dump it and join your local BNI. I joined in November and made my dues back in the first 2 weeks.
Not surprised tbh they’ve been catching a bad wrap lately. Pretty sure I’m just going to go with the customer factor this year. Last year was my first year doing this full time and I went without a CRM. I use the square app for cc payments/invoices so I was able to save all of my customers information but no options within for follow up emails or reminders. I’m guessing the customer factor has those options…? If anyone could chime in and let me know and tell me the ups and downs of the customer factor I’d appreciate it!
Up front cost a bit prohibitive for most newbies, and one should consider honing one’s craft BEFORE joining a lead exchange like BNI. NONETHELESS, @squidskc certainly advocates for BNI, and as one of my primary mentors his word is gospel with me.
Try this with HA. Drop resi work from your jobs with them and just list for commercial. They don’t have squat for commercial leads, so it’d be rare if you got charged, but it’ll keep your reviews active.
Could you please elaborate on that? What would I be able to learn from rolling with Home Advisor? What other benefits, aside from potential leads, does it offer?
Might try it. I did just turn off commercial a couple months ago, cause they kept sending “commercial” leads that were really home based businesses or offices, and charging through the nose for them. Wonder if turning residential down to one zip code would help?
I’ve been really happy with Customer Factor. I know the platform is a bit dated, but it works great for me and I don’t need all of the options that a lot of guys on here require. Also, you can run your Square account through the platform and save a bit on transaction fees. (I’m sure all the other CRM providers do this too)
My only complaint with TCF is that sometimes Steve is a bit slow to get back to me when I need some help (which is very rare…like once or twice per year)…When I need help I need it right now, but many times I don’t get a return call for a couple of hours. Otherwise, TCF has been great and I’m a happy customer for the foreseeable future.
HA reviews are a double-edged sword. If I send someone over to HA to look at my reviews they may decide to get a couple of estimates while there. If I don’t and I’m not spending $$ nobody will ever see them unless they search for me specifically, which bringsd me back to my first point. NAH, @Racer, you and I have discussed this before and I now surmise that the faster I get those blood-suckers out of my life the better.
It’s sort of like beiong in school where they set you up as an intern at a business: you ain’t makin’ diddly, but that’s not the point. As an intern you get lots of experience (the labwork) and you can return to class PWR to get answers to problems (things sometimes go wrong, just look b ack on my posts several years ago) and between the two you will be able to do what most cannot-solve those difficult problems that come with the jobs that aren’t quite cookie-cutter.
Good luck! Knowing what I know today, I’d use HomeAdvisor to get me the labwork, that is unless I could get the curmudgeon @Innocentbystander, the hustler @squidskc, or the swami of softwash, @Racer, or any of my many other mentors here to take me under their wing. There is no teacher like educated experience.
