The Top 4 Reasons You Aren’t Getting More Clients for your Local Service Business
Business is simple, but it isn’t easy. If your business isn’t growing at the rate you think it could, there are 4 primary reasons.
#1: You have an awareness/visibility problem
People find businesses online now. (That includes using mobile apps.)
If you aren't sufficiently visible, you might as well not exist.
Where do you need to be visible?
The most important place to appear depends on where your potential ideal clients will see you.
There are 2 main categories of businesses:
- Need businesses
- Want businesses
‘Need’ Businesses
People know they need it when they need it, and you can’t really persuade them to buy outside of those moments.
Examples:
- Plumbers
- Lawyers
- Chiropractors
- HVAC repair
- Doctors
- Disaster cleanup
- Etc.
You can’t really tempt someone to hire a plumber for fun, for example. But when they have a need, they’ll find a plumber.
The good news is they won't waste a lot of time shopping around. They’ll do a quick Google search, and contact one or two businesses.
These businesses should invest in SEO and paid search so they show up at the right moment.
‘Want’ Businesses
These are products and services people don’t realize they want, but once they see it, they’ll often buy right away.
Examples:
- Travel
- Sporting events
- Technology products
- Clothing, Cosmetics & Accessories
- Restaurants
- Furniture and decor
- Etc.
These prospects generally aren't proactively searching for these products/services so you need to use more disruptive marketing methods to get on their radar (e.g., ads on Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, X, etc).
These businesses should focus most of their time and effort on running paid ads, sponsored content on partner websites, and good old fashioned PR.
#2: You have a differentiation problem
OK, you solved problem #1 and you're showing up where you prospects are. Now the big question is… do you stand out from the crowd?
Is there anything that would compel someone to pick your business over all their other options (including non-consumption)?
If you're a ‘need’ business showing up in Google results, the opportunity to stand out is very limited. Most people will scan the list of businesses looking for the ones with lots of 5-star reviews.
Which one would you choose from the example below?
Business A
4.8
(225 reviews)
Business B
5.0
(3 reviews)
Business C
3.1
(114 reviews)
Most people would choose Business A.
- ‘Business B’ only has 3 reviews (probably all relatives of the owner)
- ‘Business C’ is pretty clearly bad at what they do
(For that reason, Google will likely give ‘Business A’ the best position in search results as well.)
SO in order to stand out, you need as many 5-star reviews as possible.
If you’re a ‘want’ business, standing out from the crowd is a little easier. Because you’re likely running ads, there’s a lot of room for experimentation to see what catches people’s attention.
Headlines
Images
Video
Offers
Calls to action
Buttons
The secret to success for ‘want’ businesses is a lot of experimentation and testing.
(The downside is once you find something that works well, many other brands will follow suit and over time, your ads become less and less effective.)
#3: Your website is too busy
Alright so you’ve successfully conquered the challenges of visibility and differentiation and gotten someone to click through to your website.
Screech!!!
Suddenly 95% of your visitors look around for a few moments and leave without taking any action.
Why?
Because people are busy and distracted and you threw a bunch of friction in their face.
Your website has 55 links and buttons and calls-to-action. The navigation bar alone expands into 30 different places for them to click.
If you want to have any chance at converting that visitor into a lead, you have to ruthlessly simplify.
Make sure every page has ONE specific intended outcome and get rid of anything that gets in the way of it.
Hide your navigation bar.
Hide the other products/services.
Get rid of the list of interesting blog posts.
Overly busy and distracting website with no focus.
That visitor is there for one reason and one reason only. Make sure they get what they came for. Formalize the relationship. Convert them into a lead or customer. THEN you can show them all the other shiny things to look at.
(This approach is often called a ‘marketing funnel’ or ‘sales funnel’. You don’t take visitors to your main cluttered website. You take them to a stripped down, simplified version of the site with nowhere to go but forward.)
#4: You aren’t answering your phone
Finally, after 99% of your potential clients fell by the wayside, you’re left with your very best prospects.
They decide to grit their teeth and make that awkward phone call.
And…
You’re at lunch.
Or helping another client.
Or it’s Sunday.
Or it’s 11:34pm.
Or it’s Labor Day.
Or your receptionist is on the phone.
According to a study by MIT, 62% of calls to small businesses go unanswered.
(And you’re probably not the exception.)
And who do they call when you don’t answer?
The next business with good reviews!
Stop missing calls and your business could easily double!!
The Great News...
The silver lining in all this is that you’ve been operating your business on this trickle of traffic!! Enough people make it past all 4 hurdles each day to keep you generating revenue!
YAY!
But imagine what would happen if your site was 20% more visible.Or 30% more people clicked your link.
Or your site was 50% less confusing.
Or you stopped missing 62% of your phone calls?
Think about that for a second.
You could double your revenue just by going from 1% of prospective clients finding/contacting you to 2%!
That’s totally doable!
This article has gotten pretty long already, but if you’ll drop your email address here, we’ll send you to solutions to all these problems.