The Gist
- Because COVID-19 kept so many people home this year, home services businesses saw an increase in leads and customers.
- This unexpected influx in demand made lead management more essential than ever.
- Using technology to maximize marketing functions and outline better processes will improve home services marketing in 2022 and beyond.
The past year was full of surprises for home service pros. Stuck at home through the pandemic, people could no longer ignore the maintenance, renovation, and repair projects they’d been putting off. This created a good problem for pros: figuring out how to manage the unexpected influx of new and returning customers.
With the benefit of hindsight and a dose of industry experience, we present our wrap-up of some of the key marketing developments in home services in 2021, as well as a look ahead at what home services businesses can expect in the years to come.
What’s new for marketers in the home services industry?
The home services space went through many changes in 2021. Here are the primary themes we noticed:
Boost in demand across the home services sector
Big-budget remodels, long-delayed basic maintenance, renovations to accommodate more people at home, and much-needed repairs led to a massive increase in demand for home services companies.
In fact, according to one study, 76% of homeowners have completed a major home improvement project since the start of the pandemic, ranging from increased outdoor space to improved home offices.
With Americans spending more time at home, home services providers like these have been particularly affected:
- Remodeling and renovation companies
- Plumbing and HVAC providers
- Cleaning services
- General repair and maintenance companies
- Moving and storage companies
- Exterior enhancement providers (e.g., roofing, siding, windows)
All of this new demand meant home services marketers had to manage a rapid increase in inbound requests and determine those that could lead to actual work to make the best use of their time.
More work, fewer hands
Unfortunately, another trend coincided with this boost in home service demand: a labor shortage in home services talent and support staff. This, of course, meant less time to spend on:
- Back-office tasks that keep a business operating smoothly
- Training, despite the numerous long-term benefits
Home services businesses have since struck a balance between completing essential tasks and training new and existing staff to handle the massive influx of customer-focused activities.
This need to “wear multiple hats” meant home services marketers had less time to spend on shaping branding and advertising for specific segments. In turn, this has led to the implementation of more efficient processes and tools to support their workloads.
More focus on customer relationships and lead management
In 2021, marketing professionals supporting home services businesses came face-to-face with a unique challenge. They needed to improve processes and tools to effectively cultivate and maintain a larger pool of leads, despite the inability of their businesses to support them. This, of course, had to be done to prevent jeopardizing potential relationships.
In other words, as customer demand increased, the basic tools that may have previously served their purpose in the marketing lifecycle and customer relationship process began to break down.
In addition to avoiding inconsistent customer experiences, marketing professionals had to find new ways to manage leads to prevent losing out on future business.
What can we expect in 2022 and beyond?
Fortunately, as we focus on the year ahead, there are new tools and methods that marketers in the home services business can use to overcome these challenges and turn them into competitive advantages.
More specifically, we foresee marketers in the home services space:
- Increasing their use of technology and automation to collect, manage, and organize contacts, leads, and customer relationships.
- Analyzing data from these tools — as well as their integrations with other enterprise systems — to make data-driven decisions about marketing strategies and investments to maximize resources and labor.
- Spending more time working outside of their traditional marketing roles — especially when it comes to direct customer service — due to the ongoing labor shortage.
However, as the economy and labor market begin to stabilize later in the year and into 2023, the investments home services marketers make in these areas will reap even more rewards as they transition back to their usual roles, allowing them to work more efficiently and effectively.
What marketing tools do you need to maintain your competitive advantage?
These trends may continue to disrupt business processes and responsibilities in the short term, but there are well-established tools that can simplify and enhance marketing functions and provide the intuitive features needed to drive impact.
In particular, marketing professionals can benefit from marketing tools that:
- Perform as a lead communications platform and are easy to deploy, manage, and utilize to centralize calls, texts, and chats.
- Make consolidating, routing, and tracking potential customers easier and more efficient.
- Combine Form Tracking with Call Tracking for comprehensive lead capture, increased response time, and an improved customer experience, all without additional staff.
- Provide additional opportunities for advanced training through tools like call recording, therefore freeing up experienced staff, expediting training, and reducing the risk of mistakes that come with “on-the-job” training.
Industry-leading platforms like CallRail offer all these features, allowing your marketing team to take advantage of artificial intelligence and automation to capture the most essential details.
Future-proof your marketing team.
Despite a tight labor market, customers' expectations for quality, responsiveness, and cost-effectiveness continue to increase. Home services businesses that use technology to maximize their marketing functions and refine their lead management will come out ahead in the long run.
With CallRail, marketing professionals in the home services space can immediately tap into the actionable data they need to optimize their marketing dollars, capture key customer insights, and leverage advanced analytics, all in one seamless platform.
Ready to get started?
The team at CallRail welcomes the opportunity to get to know your business and show you firsthand how our platform can future-proof your marketing for home services for years to come. Contact us here for a 14-day free trial.
