Pest control specialists know all about ridding clients' houses of creepy crawlers, but how much do they know about search engine crawlers? The ability to market pest control services digitally, whether using Google or one of the major social media platforms, is essential for growing your business. Without this crucial skill, your business may never rise far enough above the sea of virtual noise to help your customers.
That’s why developing a flexible growth strategy is so necessary. It’s a way of forecasting the expected financial progress of your business and adapting to new market trends. Growth strategies can even become like a roadmap toward a more profitable business by giving you a precise goal to shoot for.
But what exactly are pest control company growth strategies, and what factors do you need to consider? Here’s what you need to know.
What Does a Growth Strategy for Pest Control Companies Look Like?
Long-term growth strategies for pest control companies mean increasing market penetration and expanding the current customer base. In an industry as competitive as pest control and with so many companies entering and leaving the market daily, you can’t afford complacency. With market developments taking place all the time, such as innovative AI-based pest identification technologies, your customers expect you to keep pace.
This doesn’t mean offering them a new product or service altogether. You can keep offering the same services but with upgraded messaging. The strength of your marketing decides what product-led growth looks like, not the actual product development itself. This means that:
- Reaching new audiences is key to your growth strategy
- Effective marketing is the key to reaching new audiences
- Expanding your digital presence is the key to effective marketing
You don't need to come up with some wild new pest control ideas to grow your company. In fact, whenever Scorpion works with a client, we reinforce their existing strengths to bring out their growth potential. These strengths are different for everybody, but the way to use them for digital marketing remains the same.
For example, your pest control company probably has a specific geographic service area. You don’t serve customers beyond those borders — they’re not your audience, so spending advertising dollars to get their attention isn’t a good use of your budget. Instead, use local SEO to market your qualities as a pest control service that people in your neighborhood can rely on.
This principle applies broadly to all aspects of organic growth. Pest control companies need to find their market share, whether in terms of target audience, pests they specialize in, or other factors. Before identifying your business goals, identify your business strengths first. Let the strengths inform the goals — not the other way around.
Creating a Competitive Advantage
Highlighting your unique qualities is the way to set yourself apart in a crowded market. Don’t advertise yourself as only a “pest control company,” but as an:
- “Experienced pest control specialist in Laredo, Texas.”
- “Bed bug and termite extermination expert in Buffalo, New York.”
- “Trusted rodent control expert in St. Louis, Missouri.”
This form of marketing effectively communicates your pest control company's competitive edge. There could be other pest control companies in your area, but do they share your qualities? Find what makes your services or products unique and leverage them in your digital marketing if you want to succeed.
Conducting a Pest Control Market Analysis
Market development analysis is also necessary for your growth strategy. This involves collecting detailed information about your service area, including data about:
- The kinds of customers you plan to service
- The different pest control companies that are already active in or around the area
- The regulatory climate in the area
- Emerging trends shaping the pest control industry, such as a recent insect migration
Each of these is vital for developing a complete picture of the landscape. And without knowing your customers, you won’t know what services they’re interested in. You need to know some basic facts about them, such as their average age, income, and homeownership status, to effectively reach them with your messaging. For instance, Scorpion helps clients identify customer pain points (“What’s bothering them right now?”) before starting a new marketing campaign.
Similarly, find out what you can about customer interactions with your competitors. Browse your competition’s business pages on Facebook or Yelp and see what people say about them. Look for direct interactions online, especially in Twitter or Instagram comments. Monitoring this can help you find opportunities your competition hasn’t exploited.
What to Include in Your Pest Control Growth Strategy
Deciding what to include in your pest control growth strategy largely depends on your goals as a business. Do you want to expand into a new market, improve your customer retention, or attract a new target audience to your company? These will demand a unique set of tactics from you.
Your growth strategy will need key performance indicators (KPIs) to inform its progress. These can be anything you deem appropriate, but many pest control companies base their KPIs on return on investment (ROI), customer acquisition rate (CAR), average customer lifetime value (CLV), and other important metrics. Decide in advance how you’ll track your business growth and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Expanding Your Online Marketing and Digital Reach
Your internet presence as a pest control company decides how many people see your brand and what they think when they do. There are countless benefits to expanding your online presence across many social media platforms, such as:
- Raising visibility and awareness of your company with your target audience
- Sourcing more leads as more people see your content and visit your website
- Generating more accurate data about your potential customers to further improve your digital marketing strategies and see market growth
The most significant place for you to begin this process is your website. Consider it the central hub of all the work you do online.
Optimizing Your Pest Control Website
Your website’s job is to convert visitors into customers. That’s it. It doesn’t make a difference that your website is beautiful or easy to navigate if no one actually contracts your services. The customer’s willingness to schedule a service call with you will make or break your business growth strategy. Persuading them is your website’s role.
The message is the most important factor here. Other marketing professionals might stress the advantages of having colorful themes and eye-catching videos, and those do have their place — but only when they serve the website’s overall message. When customers visit your site, your messaging will lead them from one point to another until they arrive at the call-to-action button. To achieve that, put yourself in your customer’s shoes and see the website from their eyes.
- Do your headers communicate value?
- Does your website copy address the customer’s problem?
- Is your messaging consistent on every page?
Your market research will tell you what customers expect and why. It can even show you the precise keywords customers are most likely to use on a search engine. Those keywords determine how search engine algorithms rank pest control pages like yours. If you place the right keywords strategically across your website, you can bring more qualified leads to your virtual front door.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Social Media Marketing
Search engine optimization is concerned with the way search engines like Google rank your website on their search results page. Without the correct optimization and updated information on your Google business profile, your website will rank lower on the page (and maybe even on the second page) than your competitors. This makes it less likely for customers to find you over your competitors and other major market players.
Email marketing is another effective strategy to include in your pest control marketing plan. This strategy allows you to segment your customer base and send messages to specific groups. You don't need to be a small business to target specific geographical areas – franchises can do this through email marketing as well. You can also use these campaigns to provide useful information about the pest control industry, pest control products, pest populations that tend to congregate in specific areas, and more. Use your email marketing in combination with your social media marketing plans to create cohesive campaign messaging and announcements across your pest management business.
Enhancing your business presence on social media is a powerful way to execute a market development strategy and improve your SEO at the same time. Building a strong social media presence on Facebook, Instagram, or other prominent platforms will increase engagement with your company. It will get more people talking about you and visiting your website to see what you’re about. They will interact more with your content, which will slowly boost the authority and reputation of your brand, raising your rankings in the search results.
Consider it like a cheat sheet for your company's growth. Social media makes it easier than ever to interact directly with your customers and receive their feedback. Based on the organic conversations you have on these platforms, both with current and emerging markets, you can adjust your future marketing strategies to more accurately target customers based on their interests.
Using Growth Strategies to Uncover Your Potential
Businesses without growth strategies are like pest control without traps — you won’t be able to catch new opportunities as they come by. The growth strategy can inform your business actions months or even years down the line. It’s crucial to develop one early in your business’s growth lifecycle to give yourself the best chance of increased revenue and success.
Forming strategic partnerships with a professional pest control marketing outfit like Scorpion could be the game-changer you’ve been looking for. With our wide-ranging experience in digital marketing for pest control companies, we can assist you in making a personalized growth strategy that aligns with your business roadmap and high-level goals.
If you’re ready to see your pest control company thrive with a comprehensive growth strategy, send us a message today.
