Digital Marketing Tips for Snow Removal Business Owners

One of the major issues that a lot of smaller businesses face lies within getting the word out about their products and services. For those who have snow removal businesses, marketing becomes a bit trickier because the snow season is not constant, and it is time sensitive. While lawn care and landscaping is something that can be an eye sore and generate large projects, snow removal can be the difference between your customer slipping and injuring themselves or getting to work safely and on time. When you combine this with the fact that all major cities have snow removal, finding your audience and growing can be daunting. To help you be successful, we want you to look towards digital mediums to display your advertising, and to do it right, we have X effective tips for you to follow.

Jump into Email Marketing – Yes, It Works with Every Kind of Business Type.

• Despite what numerous sources want you to believe, email marketing is one of the most engaging ways to reach and funnel in customers to your business. It is inexpensive to set up, can be integrated into your website, and when you start sending targeted emails, the response rate is pretty high. In order to make email marketing work for you, keep the following tips in mind.
• Define who your audience is. Are they your current customers that receive landscaping, gardening, and lawn services from you? Maybe you live around a lot of elderly individuals who cannot remove the snow themselves, or near large families who do not have the time? Decide on who you want to cater too.
• Once your audience is defined, target them with an offer. This applies to your leads, your customers, and your former customers. Give them a deal, a coupon, or an offer that they cannot resist. When you make this offer, make sure it has real-world impact. Maybe it’s to add in free deicing solutions to remove hard ice/black ice, or a discounted price for the first month.
• Your emails must always have a call to action button in them. Either get those interested to call you or fill out your estimate form.
• When you engage with your audience, use genuine, authoritative, and concise language. Get to the point, solve their problem, but be kind and authentic.
• Always send your emails either on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays anytime between mid-morning and mid-afternoon. Send them before the start of the season, before a big snow event, and absolutely after a big snow event.

Video is Convincing & Very Effective for Marketing Your Business.

• While having someone capture a video of your crew removing massive snow dunes and de-icing those walkways, can be time consuming, it is also extremely effective at showing people what you offer and what you can do for them. Plus, social media platforms eat videos up like they are going out of style, so Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are going to be prime places for promoting your business via video content.
• When your videos are filmed, make sure you show your potential clients the range of what your company offers to help make their lives easier. So, if you do de-icing, snow removal, plowing, sidewalk maintenance, and decks (weird one, but viable) – showcase these off!
• Consider doing company videos that introduces your team, your brand, and your story to your customers. If you do this, people will feel more connected to you, and are therefore, more likely to buy from you.
• Create educational videos to help them understand how your services work. Maybe explain the range of de-icers that you have and why each one works under different circumstances or show them the difference between your plowing and shoveling services.
• If you have happy clients, ask them to create a testimonial video or ask to film them doing one up. Ask them to explain how you’ve helped them/the impact you’ve had on them. Place these on your website and social media pages.

Use Facebook Marketplace Ads! A Unique Way to Get Discovered.

• The Facebook Marketplace allows anyone to openly buy and sell products and services to others. You do not need a separate account to sell, as any business or personal account will work. Because Facebook Marketplace is a peer-to-peer and one-on-one platform, all purchases are done through Facebook Messenger. Tips for selling on here include the following.
• Always include a category, price, location, description, images, and what you are selling.
• Place your products/services in the category that appeals to your target audience. So for snow removal services, this would be under Home & Garden or perhaps Classifieds.
• Make sure to look at the “best sellers” to see what is selling well in the marketplace and use this information to create ads that feature these types of products. Track popular services and products by looking at top-performing items on individual business shops/pages.

Use Online Classifieds Like Kijiji Ads to Market Your Business.

• Online classifieds are a great way to hone in on your local area to find customers, as they require buyers to select the region, they want to look in during the category selection. Individuals who are looking for snow removal, television repair, and so on are always going to look in their local area first. Here are tips for setting up Kijiji Ads.
• Always use an attention-grabbing title and an apt description that uses appropriate and targeted keywords. How effective your ad is going to be will be determined by your ability to create an effective ad.
• Make people laugh by adding in a dash of humor. Not only do funny ads go viral, they are going to set you apart from everyone else placing ads on the site.
  Always add in high-quality photographs. With snow removal, you could add in “before” and “after” pictures of the areas you’ve serviced or show how your de-icer works in action. By having high-quality photos, you peak buyer interest and it doesn’t cost anything to add a photograph to your ad.
• Always categorize your ad correctly and in the right city.
• Start with free advertising and see how you do. Maybe an ad is getting a lot of hits, but you aren’t getting a lot of responses, consider boosting it (paid) to increase the exposure.
• Don’t create identical ads and always make sure your pricing is in line with the market.

How Can A Mobile App Help You?

• Not everyone is going to want to use your website to book you, hop into the classifieds to find you, or send you a message on social media just to book an appointment. Consider having a mobile application built to help you queue up jobs from new or existing customers. This will work best if you already have a local audience that wants to have a steady way of booking you that is beyond an in-person consultation.
• Customers will be able to request a snow removal job, either one-time or for a period of time.
• Job requests can be placed in a queue and notifications delivered to you/your crew.
• Choose to approve a job when you are able to do it which then relays the ETA back to the customer.
• Once the snow is removed, the driver takes a picture, uploads it to the specific job within the application and sends it off to the customer.
• Customer pays through the application and leaves feedback.
• This is a great way to scale your business up by automating the job queue.

Use Content Marketing While Your Advertising Budget is Small.

• If you are a smaller business and do not have the means to place a lot of your budget towards paid advertising, look to content marketing.
• Get a blog up and running on your website. Make your blogs entertaining, packed full with relevant information, and helpful tips. Share these blogs across your social media pages to bring traffic in from those platforms.
• Have a copywriter maintain your blog and an SEO specialist to ensure your blogs are consistent with your targeted keywords.
• All content must be created from interesting topics that you can be authoritative in and must be well-researched. This will help provide value to your customers, show them that you are knowledgeable, and encourage them to purchase from you.
• Publish content at least two times a week, as consistency is key for maintaining an audience. Make sure to always publish your best material.
  Make sure your content reflects your brand’s voice, your company’s values, and messaging.
• Repurpose your content across mediums. Maybe one of your blog posts went viral and it would do well as a podcast, or maybe you can create a dynamic video, or infographic. When you repurpose your content in this way and share it across other platforms, you increase your outreach potential.

While all of these digital marketing tips are effective, it is important to create a digital marketing strategy that outlines how you are going to utilize these tips and when. SEO Consultant or Digital Marketing agency can help you with new ideas and techniques which are always going to be popping up.Make sure to leave room for innovation in your content, videos, and social media posts.