Successful Lead Magnet Ideas for Home Service Businesses

This article about lead magnets for home service businesses is by Ash Salleh, Director of SEO at Campaign Monitor.

From ordering last-minute meals online to using Uber to get to meetings, today’s customers are all about convenience. Successful lead magnet ideas, well-implemented, can bring those customers straight to your business.

As a home service business, you are in the perfect position to profit from this quest for an easier life. If you’re wondering how to make the most out of it, look at your lead magnets and see if they’re getting any attention. How many subscribers did you get yesterday? Is anyone reading your whitepaper now?

What is a Lead Magnet?

A lead magnet is something you offer to your website visitors in exchange for signing up to your marketing list. I could be an ebook, a whitepaper, a one-time discount, or even a physical thing you offer to potential customers.

With the proper lead magnets, you can transform website visitors into email subscribers and eventually, long-term customers. And if you’re doing things right, these customers can bring in referrals too.

Successful Lead Magnet Ideas to Implement Today

In this article, we’ll show you the lead magnets that work specifically for home service businesses, so you don’t have to test all lead magnet ideas in the market. Get ready to expand your mailing list.

1. Establish Your Niche With a Webinar

What better way to show off your service expertise than a full-blown webinar? 

Through a live online video, your customers get to see you and observe your work in real-time. Do not make it all about your product, or your viewers will drop out of the webinar early.  Focus on knowledge-sharing and your customers will stick to the end. This might not work for services like house cleaning but for larger services like window installations, moving or even junk removal, it could help educate customers about how to do business with you or prepare for their booking.

Q&A sessions are a standard part of webinars, but make sure you’re ready in case you get asked about the really technical details of your business.

Here’s an example of a lead magnet directed at business owners, offering not just a single webinar, but a free webinar series. Water Group also included other perks of signing up, such as free promotional items and possibly, a free water air conditioning system.

2. Offer Free Estimates for Potential Customers

When customers visit your website, they’re not only looking for the services you offer. More often, they’re wondering how much your services cost. They need to know if you offer better prices than your competitors or if you are within their budget.

Give them a free instant quote that you can send to their inbox for future references, like the example below. Make this lead magnet even more effective by offering a limited-time discount on the price you quoted and encourage them to book online right away.

Make It More Convenient With (Mobile) Online Booking

You know the drill — mobile traffic continues to grow and customers who book home service businesses are more likely to be on-the-go. They usually don’t have all the time to go on their desktop computers, open their browsers, and look for the booking page on your website.

Fit your business to their lifestyle by offering a mobile-optimized website with online booking.

3. Resource Kits Are a Useful Giveaway

As much as you would like to answer all of your customers’ questions, you don’t really have the time. Collect all the FAQs and publish them in a downloadable resource kit, along with a couple of other ideas or hacks.

This is a tried and true method of cementing your place in the home service industry. Whether it’s a collection of infographics or a set of learning guides, you know what type of material best features your business. For example, a guide to packing and moving your home, or how to organize your closets.

In another example, Maxable, a company that specializes in “granny flats,” suites in homes for in-laws or elderly relatives, offers a complete granny flat kit. To make it more interesting, they listed what’s included in the kit. Take note—it’s not all books. Maxable includes a free cost estimator and video interviews, too

4. It’s Hard to Say No to a Discount

Coupons are some of the most effective lead magnets in existence. Customers typically ignore advertisements, but their attention is caught if the ad contains a significant discount or offers a freebie along with a purchase. Instead of waiting for a customer to buy full price, discounts can help you snag those dollars in less time.

When you offer a discount for a customer’s first booking with you, you have to pay special attention to the numbers. Either you want to ensure that you still make some profit margin on their booking, or you know that it’s worth discounting their first visit in order to acquire the customer for the long term.

Meal planning service Blue Apron offers $50 off a customer’s first two orders. That’s a good enough deal for a service that’s priced $40 per order, on average.

Try These Lead Magnet Ideas for Home Service Businesses

If your home service business is looking to grow your mailing list, try one of the above lead magnet ideas to see what works best for your type of service. 

Your lead magnet may be a checklist, a spreadsheet, a tutorial, or a webinar— think of something that can hook your business’s audience at first glance. For example, webinars can take a lot of time, so if your customers are always rushing, it might not be the best lead magnet for you. If they are motivated by price-consciousness or convenience, consider a discount.

Take note of these essential points when choosing successful lead magnets.

• Your lead magnet must be immediately available
• Addresses a specific consumer want/need
• Must be quick/easy to digest 
• Demonstrates your expertise

You will generate more leads if you know your customers well — what they’re looking for, what puts them off, and the problems they encounter every day as they go through their tasks. Your lead magnets will be more successful this way.

Do you want to learn more about how to turn your website visitors into bookings for your home services business? Book a free, private demo of Vonigo.