How Have You Used Sites Such as Angie's List, Handy, Thumbtack and YP to Get More Home Services Customers?
When someone needs help on a home services project - whether it's cleaning, painting, utilities, or a full renovation - they'll look to online marketplaces such as Angie's List, Handy, Yellow Pages, and Thumbtack to find local professionals.
But how have these sites worked for you, the business owners? Have you had success getting new customers? Why or why not?
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Answers (1-10)
We do emergency service work as well as General contracting. Our experience is that people in need of emergency services do not use these sites.
On the contracting side, people who use these sites tend to be primarily price shoppers and we don't compete against contractors who are vying to be the cheapest and don't offer job site supervision like we do.
I've used Thumbtack to sell my services and success has been very mixed...
I sometime wondered if the posts were real? I also wonder if the clients are aware that we, pros, pay to submit a quote...
I haven't been able to figure out why sometimes I got the job and why many more times I didn't. If someone craqued the nut, please share!
We haven't had too much luck with these services. They are costly and they usually give the customer 3 or 4 additional contractors for the job and sometimes the customer doesn't even want anything and we have to pay for the lead. Social media, local events, word of mouth are always good ways to obtain a customer base. We also give referral incentives.
I find that while these sights try to entice you with "leads" the customer is generally looking for some kind of a deal. If they need to do a large project they will hopefully be calling you directly based on your reviews. I feel our advertising $ are better spent other places. Don't get me wrong, we are on all of them but just don't pay to advertise or for the leads.
As an owner of an IT company we’ve tried Homeadvisor and Thumbtack and found to be a waste of money because they are all shopping for the best price. The end users don’t fill out any details on what the issues are to accurately propose a services price. We use word of mouth and recommendation referral discounts. This seems to work the best
We currently work with Hireahelper, Movingstaffers, Angieslist, Thumbtack, Homeadviser, Amazon, and we find that the companies that doesn't charge anything until you actually get the job are the best. We are constantly bombarded by Angieslist, HomeAdvisor, Yelp, to name a few. They want you to pay to have traffic directed your way. I refuse to pay for the chance of picking up some work, Thumbtack is the same way. I only work with companies that take their cut afterm the money is collected from the customer.
I have been on homeadvisor, you have to pay a fee to join and they charge u a fee per call and they bill u at the end of the month. I did not want to pay their fees so I opted out.
I have used Angie's List, Thumbtack, and Home Advisor for my Window Cleaning Business. Although I saw results, I found both Angie's List and Home Advisor non-cost effective for the long term and discontinued service. YP and Yelp were also very expensive, even more so than HA or AL. I however still use Thumbtack.
Thumbtack has been the least expensive (although lately they have slowly crept-up with their prices), but are a bit too-clandestine and stand-offish with Service providers in their approach. They tend to over-protect potential buyers by not revealing critical data such as address, phone# and e-mail address to me the SP. I can type a note to them, can post photos and testimonials on my profile page, but naturally cannot give an accurate estimate until they invite you to take the next steps. I can say that over the past four or so years I have gotten some good business from them, however because of these issues my success rate of just getting to the customer is relatively low. An "aha moment" came when an inquiring client had also contacted me directly, and said that they had tried Thumbtack without realizing that they were using a service.
We decided we were better off working our own social marketing
Hi! We tried Thumbtack as a few other YGM Franchisees' found it to be effective. The next day our inbox was FULL of Thumbtack leads, we got excited, started to respond but NEVER got anywhere with it. Tried different approaches but still didn't get any response. They ask you to give a quote which in this industry is almost impossible to guess as every home is different. We have stopped replying now, still don't know if it was something we were not doing or if it is just not good for leads/ROI.