Many people hunt for your pest control service on the Web every day. Are these people finding you? If not, then this introductory post is a fantastic place to start the Net Marketing campaign for your pest control firm.
If you’ve got a site, then you’re off to a great start. All you have to do is to advertise it more effectively, and you’ll acquire more visitors and more clients than you have right now. If you don’t have a site yet, or you think it’s time for a new one, then you have several options. You can build it yourself from nothing, get a good company to make one for you, or use one of the online services that can make it very easy to produce a website: Homestead, Yola.com, Blogger.com or Google Sites are just a few of many alternatives available.
A lot of people make the mistake of not having any tracking or analytics set up for their web site. This is insane, because with no analytics you’ll have no way of knowing how much traffic your website is receiving, where they’re arriving from, and what they’re viewing on your site. It’s like having a blindfold on. There are lots of web stats products to choose from – many are free, and straightforward to use.
The initial step for most people is to send their web site to the best category on the Yahoo Directory. Alas this now costs $299 each year, and since it sends very few visitors nowadays (have you tried locating the Yahoo directory on their web site) it may not be great value for many firms. Thankfully there are also free general directories out there, and it’s always worth submitting your site to those. DMOZ is one of the most popular, but because it’s operated by volunteers it usually takes a very long time to get in. Ensure that you submit your website to the appropriate category for the best chance of being accepted.
As well as general directories, it’s always good practice to post your website to any specialist directories (ie directories that specialise in your market) that you can locate. They usually get much better results in comparison with general directories. Sadly, almost all of them require payment for listings, but it’s occasionally possible to locate zero cost ones. As an example http://www.ClickPestControl.co.uk/ is a great site to post details of your pest control business to, and it’s totally free as well. They do require in depth information and images, but that helps drive more visitors to your website, so it’s worthwhile doing. Try to find some other free sites like that, and publish to those too – it all helps!
Rather than sitting and waiting around for website visitors to turn up at your new site – you might want to advertise to get started bringing them in. Google Adwords is a terrific way to achieve this – it’s a Pay Per Click advertising product that will show your adverts alongside Google’s search results – and as its name suggests, you only pay when somebody visits your website.
Now that customers are coming to your site – don’t forget to request their email address, so you’ll be able to email them information, announcements and special offers – or just remind them to return to your website and see what’s new. Email services like MailChimp make it simple to capture email addresses and send out emails to your customers.
Of course there is far more to advertising your pest control service online than I’ve been able to deal with in this small document – but I trust it’s been a helpful introduction to the subject. The next step is the most crucial one of all: Get Started!