Shine a spotlight on services

Get the most out of your services with targeted advertising.
services spotlight

When you own a business, it’s very tempting to want to cram every single product or service you offer into your advertising efforts. Ads are expensive, and you want to get the most bang for your buck, right?

Yet if you do that, if you list every product, every service and every good thing about your company into one tiny little ad space, I promise you, the only result you’ll get is a very congested and probably ugly ad with a lousy response rate. If you want to sell more of a certain product or service, you’ve got to shine a spotlight on that part of your business.

Case in point: I have a client in the Carolinas whose landscaping firm also performs building maintenance and irrigation repair. He came to me to promote his residential and commercial painting service to get the phone ringing and keep his painting crews busy. We decided to do a Facebook ad campaign. We created an ad design that showed a cracked wall and a paint brush. The messaging focused on the painting service. When I showed him the ad design, he loved it. Then he asked, can’t we mention landscaping and irrigation repair, too? My answer was no. Here’s why.

When you craft marketing messages, you have to spotlight information or services that the customer needs to know to make a buying decision. Even though the temptation is to mention every service you provide, someone who is looking to have their house painted is only interested in finding a house painter. The fact that you offer landscaping and irrigation repair is actually a detriment to the customer’s ability to make a buying decision. It confuses the issue. You have to tell the customer what they need to know to say yes, and nothing more.

The spotlight approach is better because it allows you to do several things:

  • Target the customer who wants to buy your product or service now.
  • Be specific about the benefits of your product or expertise in what the customer is looking to buy.
  • Promote certain service segments at the right time of year, such as installing holiday lights in the winter and aeration services in the fall.

The spotlight approach applies to your website, but in a strategically different way. When you hire a professional firm to build a website for your company, of course you need to mention every product or service you sell. On your home page, you certainly want to make mention of the different segments of your business. Each of those segments should then link to another interior page of your website to spotlight that particular segment.

For example, let’s say you, like my client in the Carolinas, offer landscaping services, building maintenance and irrigation repair. On your website home page, you could have photos of each of these segments that, when clicked on, go to a page dedicated to either landscaping, building maintenance or irrigation. On the landscaping page, you discuss mowing, tree trimming and fertilization. You do not mention building maintenance. The landscaping page spotlights landscaping only. The same is true for all of the other services. They get their own page. This works to your advantage in that customers interested in the spotlighted service can find the info they need to make a purchase. It also helps Google to guide web searchers to your website because the information on your website is presented in a logical manner.

If you’re ready to take your marketing to center stage, remember to shine a spotlight on each of your individual services.

For more information like this, follow me on Facebook and Twitter @whatsyouravocad or email me at stacie@whatsyouravocado.com.

This column originally appeared in Irrigation & Green Industry magazine.
Stacie Zinn Roberts is an award-winning writer, marketing expert and founder of What’s Your Avocado? Marketing and Public Relations, Mount Vernon, Washington, which specializes in green industry marketing. She can be reached at stacie@whatsyouravocado.com.

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