How to Generate Online Leads During These Unprecedented Times

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By Sonny Ahuja

A highly optimized lead generation system can help your cleaning and restoration company drive sales and stay competitive even in a market where customers have multiple choices to pick and choose from. In addition, you also face two major challenges:

  • Your customer journey is continually evolving. They are very aware and self-educating, so they already know what they want and from whom they want it.
  • Customers today actively seek brand experiences that meet their expectations. In fact, 73% of customers are of the opinion that good customer experience can influence their decision to be loyal to a brand.

An effective lead-generation strategy, however, can help you overcome these challenges while also delivering fantastic gains in the form of increased conversions and sales to drive business revenue. If you are looking for strategies to turbo-charge your lead generation, then consider the following.

Google My Business

Setting up your Google My Business account can effectively give you access to a massive pool full of potential leads. In the digital space, Google My Business is similar to the yellow pages in the old days—it can connect you to customers who are looking for your services.

The best way to generate leads for your cleaning and restoration business is to ensure that your brand is in front of potential customers in their exact moment of need. And Google My Business can do just this. Consider the following:

  • Target customers based on location: Most customers use search engines such as Google to search for products and services, and most customers focus on proximity when making a buying decision.

Using Google My Business will ensure your business shows up in search engine results pages (SERPs) and in Google Maps so that customers can quickly and easily find and locate your services.

  • Highlight the right kind of information for customers to connect with you: By optimizing important information such as your hours of operation, address, contact details, and reviews, you make it incredibly easy for customers to find and connect with your brand—regardless of the device they use to find you.
  • Leverage the power of reviews: Reviews matter to your customers. So, when a prospect searches for nearby services, Google will display your business listing – with those power packed star ratings!
  • Win customers, even if you are not the first choice: Even if you don’t rank at #1, you can still win customers. Why? Well, consider this—if a prospect doesn’t find what they are looking for with their first or even second choice, and your brand is listed among the top searches, they will come to you. Once they show interest, you can use your brand/service differentiators to win them over.

Google search ads

Search ads can put you in front of customers who are actively looking for your cleaning and restoration service. And nothing delivers ad dividends like Google search ads.

If you want to generate quality leads for your cleaning and restoration business, then Google ads should be your first choice. There are, of course, multiple other platforms such as Bing that can help you generate leads. However, if you are looking to generate high-quality leads, then Google ads is a clear winner.

For a majority of your customers, Google is the platform of choice when searching for information on services near them. This means the leads generated on Google are pre-qualified because they already have a need they want addressed. In a lot of cases, their need could be urgent.

So, if you can run customized ads, packed with highly relevant keywords that offer solutions and answers to customer queries and problems, it can help bring in customers who not only want to engage with your brand, but there is every chance that these customers will be more than ready to convert.

Google Display Ads
(re-marketing and in-market)

The Google Display Network (GDN) has been designed to deliver visual-based ads to customers across websites, videos, and apps. More importantly, GDN offers targeting capabilities that you can use to generate leads. Consider the following:

  • Run re-marketing campaigns: Target and attract customers who have previously engaged with your brand or shown interest in your business to bring them back.
  • Actively engage with in-market audiences: Boost incremental conversions. The search giant uses history and browsing trends of users who are looking for products and services that match or mirror what you are offering when selecting potential prospects for your offers.
  • Use managed placement targeting: Control the placement of your ads. You can specify the sites where you want your ads to show. This kind of targeting can further narrow your audience selection, thus, boosting your lead generation.
  • Select the “similar audiences” targeting option: Expand your re-marketing campaign reach and push new users who have similar browsing habits to those looking into your business.

Facebook

Did you know that 74% of Facebook users visit the site on a daily basis? Tapping into that pool of potential customers using a robust lead-generating strategy should be your major area of focus. Here are six strategies for generating leads using Facebook.

  • Tell your brand product/services story via highly relevant blog posts to generate quality leads. And make sure you provide readers with a signup and inquiry form.
  • Engage with quality content because your target audience base will be more inclined to interact if your content is creative, relevant to their needs, and highly engaging. So, make sure your profile, groups, and pages are populated with quality content.
  • Use Facebook lead ads to generate leads quickly and effectively. So how do lead ads work? Simple: You display your ads to users, and if they are interested, all they need to do is to click the call to action (CTA). This will pull up their information (shared via Facebook), which they can review/edit before submitting. You can use these forms to understand your audience better, which, in turn, will help you customize your lead generation. If you need more information, then Facebook allows you to customize your leads ads form further.
  • Create landing pages that are optimized for converting leads. Make sure you have a strategy in place and focus on the design elements. These are critical if you want to attract users.
  • Leverage interactive videos that are designed to capture user attention and keep them coming back for more or even to convert.
  • Contests and events are again a great interactive medium for engaging users, provided they are used strategically.

Yelp

As one of the largest review platforms, Yelp can help you generate quality leads for two specific reasons: 1) It attracts a large number of visitors. 2) It can supplement your SERP ranking.

Furthermore, the site offers free registration for businesses! To generate leads via Yelp, do the following:

  • Claim your listing and optimize your business information: Claim your listing and ensure you populate it with all the necessary business information. More importantly, make sure your information is updated and accurate.
  • Manage your yelp reviews: If your listing features positive feedback and reviews, it can help you rank high in SERPs. Here are a few tips for this:
    • Respond to positive reviews. It shows you value customer feedback. Don’t ever forget to thank a user for leaving a positive review.
    • Don’t ignore negative reviews. You can use private messaging to address a complaint or bad experience.
    • If misinformation is being spread or you feel some information is not accurate, then don’t shy away from publicly responding to the post to clear up the misunderstanding.
  • Add photos and videos to your profile: Visual content is actively consumed by customers. In addition to attracting customer attention, photos and videos can help establish brand legitimacy and trust—so use them wisely and strategically.
  • Announce upcoming offers: Offers and discounts are a great way of attracting quality leads for your restoration business using Yelp.

Optimized mobile landing pages

What your mobile landing page offers by way of content and user experience will have an impact on lead generation. Here are a few things to consider when optimizing your mobile landing pages:

  • Build a responsive site for multiple device types: A responsive website is critical if you want your landing pages to display in a consistent manner across multiple device types.
  • Focus on design aesthetics: Everything from your color, fonts, and schemes, among other things, matter on mobile. Design aesthetics can either deliver a clean efficient look, or it can mess up your design completely.
  • Create user-friendly navigation: Intuitive navigation is integral to mobile optimizing of your landing page(s). You want users to quickly and easily find what they are looking for or to take a desired action, and the best way to do this is by offering fewer navigation options. Too many options and steps will only serve to increase your bounce rate since it expands the distance between the user and their intended goal/action.
  • Strategize content placement, length, and graphics: Space is a luxury on mobile screens. You obviously want everything optimized for viewing on mobile screens. Consider replacing chunks of text content with graphics that serve the same purpose, as well as, displaying important content above-the-fold (in the immediately visible area) and using appropriate sizing so users can get to what they want without having to scroll endlessly.
  • Better page load speed: Google can be punishing if your site suffers from slow page load speeds. And users even more so—They won’t hesitate to move away if your site takes time to load, so don’t ignore page speed. A common culprit here is images. Make sure they are appropriately scaled for mobile.
  • Use clear and effective CTAS: Concise layout, limited navigation options, and compelling graphics can enhance and optimize your mobile landing page CTAs. By ensuring your desired action is highlighted, you make it easy for users to follow through.

The fluid nature of customer behavior and expectations and an evolving market space can make lead generation challenging for cleaning and restoration companies. However, these strategies can help you drive generation of quality leads and expand your brand presence in front of your target audiences.


Sonny Ahuja, a certified Google Partner, is an online lead-generation expert who specializes in high-conversion responsive websites, optimized mobile sites, Google Ads, and SEO. He mainly helps remodeling, disaster restoration, and cleaning companies get more leads by developing their online lead-generation systems. Visit www.killitonline.com for more from Ahuja.

Cleanfax Staff

Cleanfax provides cleaning and restoration professionals with information designed to help them manage and grow their businesses.

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