Getting a service business in front of somebody costs wildly different amounts depending on when you catch them.
You can put yourself in front of a person who is looking for your trade right now. Or you can put yourself in front of a person who is not, and hope some of them remember you later.
Both work. Only one of them produces a call this week.
The difference, in practice
Already looking
- Searching your trade and your town
- Reading the map results and the reviews on them
- Asking an assistant who is good in the area
- Checking you out after a neighbor gave them your name
Not looking yet
- Scrolling a feed between jobs
- Watching a video about something else
- Reading the news
- Being shown your ad because of where they live
The person on the left has a problem, has decided to act, and is choosing between whoever is visible. The person on the right has no problem you can solve today, and every impression you buy is a bet that they will have one later and remember you when they do.
Why the second one is expensive for a service business
It is not that interruption does not work. It is that it works slowly, and a service business needs the phone to ring before it needs to be famous.
The thing to hold on to
Demand you capture is cheaper than demand you create, because somebody else already did the expensive part: convincing the customer they need the work done.
A homeowner with a leak does not need persuading. They need a name, a number, and a reason to trust it. Everything you spend reaching them goes on being findable and being credible, not on making the case for the job.
Where the looking actually happens
Not in one place, which is the part that catches people out.
- A search for the trade and the town. The obvious one, and still the biggest.
- The map, and the reviews on it. Most of these searches never reach a website. The decision gets made on the listing.
- Local Services Ads, at the very top. Paid, but paid per lead and shown only to people searching, which is captured demand you are buying rather than attention you are renting.
- An assistant answering the question. People increasingly ask rather than search, and get back a name instead of a list.
- Your own name, typed in. A referral checking you out before they call. This one is invisible in most reporting and it decides whether the referral converts.
What to do about it, in order
- Find out which kind of demand you are already paying for. If nobody can tell you, that is the problem, not the budget.
- Fix the places the looking lands. The listing first, because most of these searches end there, then the site it points at.
- Only then buy more. Spending to be found by people who are looking is the cheapest thing you can do, and it is worth doing properly before you spend on anything else.
The honest limit
This only works while somebody is looking. In a small market, or a trade people do not know to ask for, captured demand runs out before the calendar fills, and then you do need to create some.
That is a real situation and it is worth knowing which one you are in before you spend, rather than after. If it turns out you are in the second one, the answer is a different mix, not a bigger version of the same one.