Any owner of a chimney sweep business would like just 1 core thing for his business i.e. to remain booked with customers. However, as people have plenty of options to select from nowadays, you cannot sit back and hope for the clients to come by. To keep your business trajectory in growth mode despite the rising competition, you will need to apply good marketing strategies. So here we are with a comprehensive article on chimney sweep marketing ideas that will provide you with a regular supply of customers.
1) Keep the Fire on with Your Website
With a great number of people starting their search for chimney sweep services online, having a website just becomes mandatory. However, if you are satisfied with having a website only, you are mistaken. You can increase the benefits from your website for your chimney sweep business if you consider the following things:
a) Let people conveniently book your chimney sweep services directly through your website. You can very easily integrate the plugin to allow direct booking from your website.
b) Give a feel of “end results” on your website with before/after photos as well as through some case studies. This will boost the interest in your business.
c) As loading time and rigid resolution of a website are two well-known things that cause loss of visitors, check the loading time of your chimney sweep website along with the mobile responsiveness. If the site is slow and/or non-dynamic, get this problem rectified immediately.
d) Display as many accreditations, awards, media mentions, and achievements of your chimney sweep business because the more your business feels trustworthy, the more it will get customers.
e) To make a better connection with your site visitors and to improve the conversion rate from your website, stick a professional video on your site’s homepage that will list out all the top features of your services.
2) Make Other Sites Lag Behind You with a Good SEO
If your chimney sweep website fails to appear on the first page of Google when people use search terms like “chimney sweep services in [city/town]”, then a great number of your potential customers are lost to your competitors. To gain access to the first page of Google, all you need to do is to apply the SEO (search engine optimization) factors correctly. As many things need to be handled for a good SEO of your website, we can’t discuss all of them in this post. You will easily find many articles and guides on SEO online. Further, if you would not like to keep tinkering around with new SEO updates every time, a better option to consider is to let it get handled by any online marketing agency/business.
3) Increase Your Traffic Share with More Content
A website with 4-5 basic pages and posts would not be able to get the same level of traffic as a website with a few hundred pages and posts. As you start posting more content on your chimney sweep website, you will surely notice a change in the number of daily visitors to your site. However, to get the most relevant traffic while growing content on your site, you must focus on putting local-level posts like “quick chimney sweep services in [city/town]”, etc. You must also share before/after photos of your cleaning work along with testimonials from happy customers on your website.
4) Make Your Business into the Special 3
The Google Local Pack comprising of 3 local results (on the first page of Google) provides a privileged positioning from where your chimney sweep business can get many leads. However, it will only show those businesses that have created their “Google Business Profile” (GBP) page. So first create a GBP page and then start growing its selection chances with the right optimization methods like reviews, good descriptions, more mentions online, etc. It is easy to find several case studies and optimization guides on Google Local Pack online. Paid options like hiring an agency can also be considered in case you don’t want to manage all these things on your own.
5) Be Different and Reputed with Press Releases
Every business likes to get mentioned in big media publications, however, most people either don’t know how to do it or think that it might be too pricey. With a good press release service, you can make it to big media publications for a few hundred dollars. Whenever and wherever you display that your business can be seen mentioned on big news sites, your business will get instant credibility from people. Apart from the reputation-building factor, it will also help in enriching the rank of your website in Google as just 1 press release can give you a few 100 backlinks.
6) Add More Customers with Ads
If you stick to paid advertising on quality ad networks like Google Ads and Facebook Ads, you can get more orders for chimney sweeping. However, one most important aspects of being successful with paid advertising of your chimney sweep business on these networks is the right knowledge of ad optimization. Learning ad optimization and its associated variables is not a difficult task and you must definitely acquire a basic minimum skill in ad optimization if you don’t want your returns from paid advertising to become negative.
7) Expand Your Reach with Social Media
A majority of people from your region will be on social media. So social media marketing of your chimney sweep business is a good way to expand your reach. On social media platforms, you can freely start promoting your chimney sweep business through various methods. Some of the common methods are joining local groups, sharing city/town specific content, using hashtags related to your city/town or local events, engaging with other local business owners to get your posts shared on their profiles, etc. Please note that results from social media promotion for a business takes a few months of consistent efforts. Just by devoting 1-2 hours a day consistently, you can see at least a few thousand new connections after a few months.
8) Work for Long Term with Email Marketing
Many people might come to your website while searching for chimney sweep services but not 100% of them will utilize your services. This is because people have a varied number of reasons for non-selecting a product/service. In order to maximize the percentage of customers from your website, a simplistic approach is to start acquiring the email addresses of visitors with an opt-in form on your website. To persuade your site visitors to enter their email addresses, you must give something valuable in exchange like an ebook on chimney-related stuff, etc. These email addresses will allow you to get more chances of making people avail of your chimney sweep services. As a bonus advantage, you will be able to promote your chimney sweep discounts and offers during the lean season to get more orders.
9) Increase Your Professional Value with LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a professional network and having your profile on this platform will not only display the professionalism of your chimney sweep business but will also allow you to connect with high-net-worth customers. Using this platform, you can easily team up with other home services provider and can expand your business and clientele.
10) Utilize Merchandise
Though the value of low-cost items in terms of money is not great, they do create memory and connection. This is why you must get some low-cost merchandise printed with the name of your chimney sweep business for the purpose of handing them over to your clients. These small items can be diaries, mugs, etc. This seemingly small step can help you get many repeat orders as you will establish an emotional connection with your customers.
11) Video Marketing Can Open a New Source of Customers
YouTube is among the top 10 most visited sites in the world. The magnanimous traffic levels of YouTube is also contributed by the fact that many YouTube videos rank and show well on Google searches. With this point in consideration, you can start posting videos on YouTube to start getting more views for your business videos which will, as a side benefit, give you more customers. If even 10% of these videos start showing up on Google searches, the traffic benefits and consequently customer benefits for your business will be great.
12) Start the Process of Acquiring Referrals
At the end of your work at customers’ premises, make sure to ask them to refer your business to their friends/relatives or to share the photo of their cleaned chimney on their social networks along with tagging your business. This will increase your customer reach. You can also provide some referral coupons or discounts which your present customers can give to their known ones. Such incentives can add a more powerful reason for your business to get referred by your customers.
13) Take the Benefits from Local Influencers
You can popularize your chimney sweep services by getting promoted through local influencers on their social media profiles. The rates of influencers typically start from a few dollars to thousands. You can start working with low-cost influencers and can easily get your business recognized and known by a few thousand people locally through them.
14) Take the Benefits from Traffic of Bigger Sites
Yelp, Nextdoor, and Crunchbase are a few examples of mega sites that rank fairly on Google for a large number of searches for local businesses and services. So once you know the potential of these sites, you can start taking advantage of their traffic share by listing your chimney sweep business on these sites. To come across more of such sites, you can try various keywords related to chimney sweep on Google followed by noting down the names of such sites that appear on its first page.
15) Do Follow Traditional Advertising Too
While you will find a great number of chimney sweep marketing ideas presented here are focused on online marketing, the traditional offline promotional methods still hold ground and must be, therefore, used for promotion. For this method of promotion, you can place ads for your chimney sweep business in local newspapers, you can rent billboard ads and banner spaces across residential areas, can hire a person for an in-person visit to homes with chimneys, etc.
16) Keep a Clean Image of Your Business Online
Plenty of research materials are available online which suggests the growing importance of online reviews. Even you might have checked for reviews online before buying products/services. So maintain a positive impression of your chimney sweep business online and always be attentive to resolve any negative reviews as soon as possible. You must make it a tendency to ask your served customers to place feedback on your service online. For this, you can also compensate them with a reduced price next time.
17) Promote with Your Vehicles
With advertisements of your chimney sweeping service over your vehicles, your vehicles can become moving billboards for the promotion of your chimney sweep service. This idea of marketing can be scaled to even bigger levels by making deals with other vehicle owners to promote your service.
18) Make the Best Use of Your Business with Subscriptions
A subscription-based model for offering your chimney sweep service can help you to maximize the returns from your customer. With a subscription offer, your customers can save a certain percentage of the amount for the next service from you while your business will benefit by confirming the booking of future orders.
19) Adopt SMS Marketing for Double Benefits
By using SMS marketing for your chimney sweep service, you can enjoy two sets of benefits. Firstly, you can send reminders to your customers for the next chimney sweep after certain intervals like 6 months, 1 year, etc. Secondly, getting connected with text messaging will open a continuous line of communication with customers which is essential to get repeat orders.
20) Get More Customers by Displaying Certification and Association
Safety is a big concern for chimneys and by displaying the certifications and accreditations across your marketing materials, you can better position your service against the rest. “National Chimney Sweep Guild” and various state and regional associations are some institutions from where you can show your accreditation and can enlarge your trustworthiness.
21) Start Making More with Add-On Services
By adding related services like chimney repair, the dollar value earned per customer will increase which will increase the overall revenue for your business. You can associate with such service providers in order to offer such add-on services.
22) Chimney Top Marketing
You can give discounted or free service to a few households in exchange for getting their chimney top painted with your business advertising. This way many other people can notice your brand and can contact you for their chimney sweeping needs.
The chimney sweep marketing ideas thus listed above can help in getting steady growth of your business. We welcome your feedback and queries and you can do share your thoughts below.
