Join us for Part 2 of HLM's Erin Longest providing insights from her 7+ years of experience helping Home Service businesses get the most out of their digital marketing investment.
Check out the previous Part One post here.
Be sure to view the entire interview video on our YouTube Channel!
Tell us about the long-term industry impacts of the 2021 Freeze and the Pandemic.
Honestly, I think that freeze in 2021 really changed the landscape for home services in a way that nobody could have imagined. It really was a perfect storm of things during those couple of years.
Not only did not create a ton of work in the region that otherwise wouldn't have been in such high demand, but there's also a lot of home services & manufacturing companies based in that area - some of the biggest water heater manufacturers are located in Texas. When those manufacturers weren't able to operate due to the freeze, and when their supplies and capabilities were used up due to sudden high demand, it affected availability for equipment all across the country.
I don't think that's something that a lot of people realized had impact on pricing and availability, even on parts of the country that weren't affected by the freeze at all.
The other weird thing that happened during that time was COVID, of course. And so during that time when you would think that a lot of companies would be super slow, home service companies were busier than ever.
They were a protected industry, so they were still allowed to enter people's homes and perform repairs and installations. And there was a lot of disposable income during that time because homeowners had stipends from the government and other things. So a lot of people then also being stuck at home took on home improvement projects.
So the lifecycle for a lot of replacements and upgrades and home improvement projects really moved up.
Now we're in a time where people don't have as much disposable income to spend and a lot of people have had their equipment replaced either through COVID or through the freeze that affected the Midwest.
It's really affected what opportunities are out there for home service companies because a lot of people have new equipment or recently replaced equipment.
So homeowners don't need as many change outs. They don't need as many tune ups, they don't need as many repairs.
Couple that with how expensive it is to hire someone right now and maintain employees... it's really been a tough few years for home service companies, getting hit with all of these things and struggling to be able to maintain quality technicians.
I think that having relationships and partnerships with marketing agencies and other home service companies that you can learn from is especially important nowadays.
Tell us about one of your favorite Home Services clients you've enjoyed working with and have learned from.
I was lucky enough to start my career in digital marketing for Home Services with Hunter Heating & Air, which was owned by Chris Hunter at the time. So if you know Chris Hunter, you know he's one of the sweetest people on the planet, just a very great person to learn from and have some grace with the learning curve that comes with digital marketing.
And I was fortunate enough also to live in the same town as Hunter Heating & Air. So I really was able to understand the market and the needs of the company and that was such a great learning experience to be able to take that and move forward.
Chris has of course moved on to ServiceTitan now, where he's able to just influence and help out so many more home service companies.
So it's just a real honor to get initiated with Hunter Heating & Air.
It's hard to pick just one - are there any other significant clients that you'd like to mention?
They're another client that I've had the privilege of working with for many years is Joe Strittmatter and his wife Tonya, and their operations manager, Cassie Sprayberry. That's probably not her title, but that's really what she does. She does a little bit of everything.
I think the biggest thing that I have learned from Joe is that how you treat your customers is really almost all that matters. Of course, you have to have leads. You have to have good technicians, you have to have a good intake process. You have to follow up with your customers and all of those things.
But you need to lead with a people-first approach and really make sure that you're taking care of your customers.
You need to realize that even though you're just their plumber or just their air conditioner guy, you're letting them into your home.
A technician might be coming into your home when your wife is home alone, or you're home with your sick kid, or you've just had a really bad week and some guy is coming into your house and telling you that you need to spend $10,000 to get your system fixed.
You need to realize that, for that technician, this is just the 10th job of the day, but for that homeowner, it's really a very intimate relationship in some ways because you're coming into their home, and they're probably in a place where they're having some fear and anxiety about what is about to happen or what they're about to be told.
So just really leading with a genuine care for your customers - that changes everything. You can have not the best leads, or not the right quantity of leads, but when you lead with that people-first mindset, it really changes everything. And I think that that's the most important thing that Joe taught me.
