Pat's pest control company had been established for many years and had a good reputation in the local area. He usually got most of his business from word of mouth but wasn't doing anything to proactively encourage this and was seeing his stream of customers starting to slow down. Pat decided that he needed to get his business online and start using the Internet to get word of mouth up and running again and attract new customers. Most of his competitors had cheap, outdated websites so to ensure he stood out from the rest as the professional in his area, Pat asked Bloomtools to build his online solution.
Pest Control Web Design Case Study
Learn how this pest control company took their business to the next level with a Bloomtools online solution.
Stage 1 - Website presence
The Bloomtools team created a streamlined, attractive website design for Pat's company using his logo and colours. The clean lines and white space in the design immediately show that Pat's business is a professional company and helps him stand out from the tacky brightly-coloured sites of his competitors. The flash header of the site displays images of happy families and houses to draw in his target market and the company's service guarantee appears over the top of the images.
The primary purpose of Pat's site is to get potential customers to send through an enquiry form, so there needs to be lots of persuasive content on the site to show why Pat's company is so good. To achieve this, the site has the following features:
- Testimonials - Quotes from happy customers about the great experience they had working with Pat. To reinforce his points of difference, the testimonials all mention a few of the same key messages such as 'courteous', 'showed up on time' and 'experienced'. Pat collected testimonials from all his clients so he could continually build this part of website.
- Tips and quotes - To show that he is the expert about pest control, Pat's site has random tips and quotes running of every page. A box built into the design displays a different piece of information on each page, from facts about different pests to health problems they can create to calls to action. This educates the potential customers and creates a sense or urgency to get them to take the next step.
- Articles - To make his site more informative and share his knowledge with his customers, Pat created an article library on his website. He regularly wrote and added new articles to his site about the different pests his company protected against, health issues, industry news etc. This also assisted his search engine ranking by updating his content and repeating keywords.
Stage 2 - Driving traffic to the site
The pest control market is very competitive online so Pat decided to focus his search engine optimisation activities on a niche market - commercial pest control. He created a landing page on his website specifically for this market and concentrated on getting this page to the top of the rankings with keyword-rich content and back links. He also optimised the rest of his site for more general keywords to make sure his business had a strong presence in the search engines, and listed his business in multiple online directories to ensure a steady stream of traffic to his site.
Pat gets most of business from word of mouth referrals and was hoping to use his website to boost this lead generation strategy - by getting potential referrals to check out his site and be persuaded to buy from there. He began dropping one page flyers in the letterboxes around his current job with a special offer for neighbours, instructing them to ask their neighbour (his client) about his service then go to his website to find out more. He aligned this with a promotional box that appeared throughout the site with more information about the offer and an inquiry form. By giving referred customers a direct and simple way to contact him, Pat doubled his word of mouth customers.
Stage 3 - Regular communication
Pat had established his reputation in the local market through building relationships with his clients and great service. He was very excited by the prospect of being able to automate all of these strategies with email marketing to save himself lots of time and money while staying true to his ethos.
Pat used the following strategies to stay in touch with his clients and show them he valued their business:
- Monthly newsletters - every month, Pat sent his clients an email newsletter with one of the articles from his site, some 'did you know' tips and a special offer. He also sent a similar newsletter to his prospects but with a different offer. It only took him about an hour to set up these emails and he always had a few people taking up his offers each month.
- Welcome letters - Pet developed a series of welcome letters to send to clients when they signed up and automated these to go out when he added the client to his database. One the day they booked an appointment, they would get a thank you email with information about his business and confirmation of the appointment time. The day before the appointment they got an email outlining the process and what they needed to do to prepare for the pest spraying. Then the day after the appointment they would get another thankyou email, instructions on what to do next and an offer to book their next spray in 6 months for a discount. The clients really appreciated this simple system because it educated them about the process and gave them peace of mind they were dealing with a reliable, professional company.
- Reminders - clients that didn't book their next appointment straight after their first one were sent a reminder email just before it was due and given a special offer. This email helped Pat increase his repeat business by almost 50% - it kept his brand top of mind and encouraged his customers to purchase again.
Tools used
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