You do a good job for all of your home inspection customers, but you still don’t have the work volume that you’d like. What’s the problem?
Maybe you’re ignoring your business brand. Branding happens whether you want it to or not. Fortunately, you can take control and develop any brand that you want.
Here are a few tips to get you started.
Decide What Your Brand Should Say
Before you can pull together a branding strategy, you have to decide on a message. What should your brand say about your business? Think about a list of qualities that you admire and want the public to think about when they see your logo.
Here are just a few:
- Trustworthy
- Knowledgeable
- Versatile
- Friendly
- Helpful
- Approachable
- Affordable
Your brand identity should support the qualities that matter most. Business Knowhow says it’s more important to focus on what’s relevant than what’s different. Being different matters, but it doesn’t help your branding efforts if the thing that makes you different doesn’t really matter to your target audience.
Determine Your Target Audience
The most obvious people you’ll target are homebuyers. But that’s really just a jumping off point. Your audience should be anyone who can help you meet the goal of driving more business, including real estate agents, home builders, and the general public. Everyone knows someone who will eventually buy a house.
Within different categories, you might also have sub-categories. For example, marketing to senior home buyers might be very different from the way you market to Millennials buying their first house. For every category, there’s an opportunity to craft a targeted message.
Choose a Company Slogan or Motto
While it’s not imperative, a motto helps summarize who you are, what you do, and why your business is the best. Big Brand System calls it your “brand promise.” When a home buyer hires you, what do you promise to give in return? Trim it down to a sentence or phrase and you’ve got a promise to use on business cards, your website, and all of your promotional materials.
Marketing opportunities are all around you, from email and social media to text messaging and blog posts.
Encourage Customers to Become Brand Ambassadors
You know what they say about word-of-mouth advertising. A referral from a friend or family member can carry a lot more influential power than an online ad. But what you might not realize is that people who shop online for service professionals put a lot of stock in what total strangers say.
According to BrightLocal, 88 percent of people trust online testimonials and reviews as much as a referral from someone they know. Encourage customers to leave honest reviews on Angie’s List and on your social media business pages. They’ll help you build your brand in ways that no marketing on your part ever could.
There’s ample free help online that can help you get the hang of building your business brand. Hubspot has a free, downloadable marketing guide with advice, templates, and instructions, and there are plenty of others if you look around.
Whether or not you take an active role in building your business brand, you will eventually have one. It happens organically as you work and customers talk. But when you get involved, you can steer your brand in the direction you want it to go.
Your home inspection report is one more way to build your business brand. An app lets you work more quickly than a pen and paper, and it generates a professional-looking report that you can send in minutes instead of days. That’s why Report Form Pro exists. We help you do a better job so you can get more business in return. Download the app for Android or get it for your iPhone today.