PPC & SEO for Restoration Companies

It’s July 4, 2013 and I’ve got restoration on my mind (maybe because I’m thinking off all the fire damage jobs bound to be generated by drunk people shooting illegal fireworks from their tinder box houses). Do you own a restoration company? Are you looking to get more leads and sales from the Web? Did you see the most recent episode of Game of Thrones? (That last question isn’t as important as the other two, but we’re considering adding it to the questions we use to screen our potential clients.)

At Blue Corona, we offer search engine marketing (SEM) services to clients of all sizes and from a variety of industries, but our bread and butter client (I think “bread and Nutella” would be a way cooler expression) is typically a need-based, service contractor—HVAC, plumbing, roofers, etc. Falling squarely within our target market are restoration companies.

We’ve also had tremendous success helping commercial and residential restoration companies get more leads and sales from the Web.

There are several reasons why search engine marketing is SO effective for restoration companies (and we have results from our existing restoration clients to back it up):

Content Marketing for Restoration Companies

We know from experience working with several restoration clients that the industry is highly competitive, ruthlessly seasonal (weather driven), and subject to lower search demand than some other home services categories. However, we also know that restoration jobs can be so huge that it often only takes one lead to provide a significant return on investment for content marketing and other SEM services.

Traditional forms of advertising like TV commercials, print advertisements, and Web ads interrupt what your audience is doing (watching a TV show, reading a magazine, surfing the Web, etc.). With content marketing, your audience is already actively seeking information or services through a Web search. Rather than interrupting them, you are giving them exactly what they want, when they want it—and with restoration services, which usually are necessary after a natural disaster or some other catastrophe, they want it immediately.

There is no question as to whether your target audience is searching for your restoration services online. They are. The question is whether they’ll find you or your competitors. Since 90 percent of search engines users never even surf past the first page of search results, ranking for a large number of keywords related to the services you offer (fire damage restoration, water damage repair, mold removal, etc.) is critical for getting organic search traffic to your website.

So how do you rank higher? One way is to create more relavent website content and promote the hell out of it.

One of our clients—a restoration company serving the Gulf Coast region—is a great example of this. The client came to us in August 2011 with a brand new web design, but very little content on their site. They were interested in competing in the search engine rankings with the larger restoration companies in Houston, and we provided them with a game plan for how to do it.

With Blue Corona’s content marketing services, they’ve seen a 280 percent increase in non-branded organic traffic from August 2012 through May 2013.

Pay Per Click Advertising for Restoration Companies

Despite all of the advantages that content marketing has to offer, it can take a while for you to see an improvement in your rankings, and consequently, your traffic, leads, and sales. If you’re looking for more immediate results for your restoration company, pay per click (PPC) advertising is a great solution.

In addition, combining content marketing with PPC advertising allows you to do what we call “maximizing your online real estate.” The more positions your restoration company occupies on the first page, the fewer positions your competitors are able to occupy. This increases the likelihood that you’ll win the click, and ultimately, the sale.

If you want to maximize your ROI, proper account set-up for your PPC campaign is critical. You must have proper tracking tools in place – things like Google Analytics and call tracking. There’s just no way to properly manage a paid search campaign without these two tools. For example, our restoration client in the Gulf Coast was able to attribute two huge commercial jobs (valued at over $70,000) to its Hurricane Isaac PPC campaign with Blue Corona’s call tracking services. We figured it out to be over a 10,000 percent ROI for our friends in the Gulf Coast.

How to Learn More

If you’d like to learn more about how content marketing, PPC, and website optimization can help you generate more leads and sales to grow your restoration company, contact us today and walk you through what we’ve done for our other clients. If you mention how much you like Game of Thrones, my boss might even give you a special discount.

Of course if you happen to be in the area and want to learn more about SEM marketing, sign up for one of our SEO workshops. See you there; I’ll be the one with noticable traces of Nutella on my face.