How To Generate Your Own Water Damage Leads

When water damage strikes a home, apartment, or business, residents and/or owners do not have time to research the best water restoration companies in the area. Their entire world is on hold and they need someone to help them NOW!

And since water restoration isn’t an everyday service (like a dentist or spa), its not very likely that your prospective customers already know about you.

Instead, they’re Googling a water restoration firm near them and choosing one of the first options that show in the search results.

How can you make sure your company is at the top of the search results when prospective customers are searching? By focusing on your website and water restoration marketing strategy.

Below we’ll show you how you can generate water damage leads through your website and various digital marketing tactics.

Your Website is a Lead Generation Tool

Your website is more than just a place for people to learn about your company and services. It’s a powerful, lead generating, and money-making online property. Here are a few ways to turn your website into a water restoration lead machine.

Make Your Content Easy to Read and Find

When a prospective customer is in immediate need of your services, they don’t have time to search your website for important information. They need to know what you can do for them and how to contact you.

You can help visitors get what they need by:

• Clearly stating your hours of operation– If a prospect comes to your website needing help at 3 AM, can you help them? If so, tell them and make it very evident you’re available now.
• Making sure your phone number is available on each page of your site– Your prospects aren’t going to fill out a contact form when they have water affecting their livelihood. They’re going to call – and won’t waste time searching all over your website for a phone number. Make your phone prominent on each page of your website. You can also make your phone number a clickable link so they just have to click to call you.
• Showcasing testimonials from happy customers – Not only do prospects want to know how you can help them, they also want to know that you’ve successfully helped others restore their property after water damage has occurred. Strategically place your testimonials on pages that website visitors visit the most, including your landing pages, so that they’ll see them as soon as they reach your site.

Don’t be afraid to test the placement of your hours, phone number, or testimonials either. You might test different colors, font sizes, or actual locations on the page to see what converts more visitors into leads.

Make Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

In an emergency, the easiest way for prospects to get information (or find a water restoration company) is by phone. It’s very unlikely that your prospects are going to be sitting at their desktop computer or laptop in their home office searching for your company.

They’re probably using their phone to search for help, pacing back and forth, as they find someone who can come to their aid.

This means that your website needs to be mobile-friendly, and this includes tablets.

Not only does your website need to respond to the correct device, but your website layout and content needs to be optimized for mobile viewers. If someone is visiting your website from a mobile device, finding your phone number, services, testimonials, and other pertinent info, needs to be readily available.

Marketing Tactics to Generate Water Damage Leads

Once your website’s content and mobile-friendliness is ready, it’s time to start running marketing campaigns to get prospects to your site. You can do this through local search engine optimization, traditional search engine optimization, and inbound marketing.

Get Noticed In Your Area with Local Search Engine Optimization

Local search engine optimization (Local SEO) is how you can promote your restoration services to local customers when they are searching for you. Local SEO addresses keyword searches like “water restoration companies near me”, “water restoration company alexandria va”, or “water damage restoration 22302”.

The Coveted Google “3-Pack” For Local Search Results

One of the best ways to get your company noticed locally is to be in the ‘3-pack’, or the three map listings that show when you perform a local search.

To get listed here, you need to have a Google My Business listing. Google My Business Listings are free to create and maintain. When completed, they give prospective customers a good overview of your services, location (both your company’s physical address and service area),  hours of operation, reviews, and phone number.

When shown in the map, prospective customers can see exactly where you’re located and how far away from them you are. Your proximity to their address could be a major factor in how they choose to call you or someone else.

When shown on mobile devices, searchers can click to call straight from your Google My Business listing.

Being listed in the 3-pack is important because of how much room the map takes up on the search results page. A lot of emphasis is placed on the map and the businesses in it. It’s easier for a prospective customer to get information from a 3-pack listing and for you to get water damage leads by phone.

Another important Local SEO tactic (and one that helps increase your ranking in the Google 3-pack) is to get your company listed in local directories like Yelp, Porch, Home Advisor, and Angie’s List.

These local directories show Google (and other search engines) that your website/business is credible and relevant to the industry.

Important local directory sites for your water restoration company are:

• Yelp
• Porch
• Home Advisor
• Angie’s List
• Service Magic
• Yellowpages
• Thumbtack
• Superpages
• Manta
• BBB
• Yahoo

To maximize your Local SEO, take the time to claim and update your profiles on these sites to ensure your business information is accurate and consistent, especially your business name, address, phone number, and website URL. (It’s critical that the information you list on the directories also matches the information on your website.)

The Importance of Ratings and Reviews

The final major component to Local SEO is to get reviews. Reviews are also ways to show Google that your business/website is credible and relevant. The more positive reviews you have, the more likely that searchers will click on your 3-pack listing or search engine result.

Not only do you want reviews on your Google My Business listing, you also want to get reviews on your Facebook page, Yelp, Bing, and other home-specific directory sites (including those listed above).

Getting reviews for your business can be tricky at first, but once you get in the swing of asking for them or adding them to your marketing process you’ll start to see them coming in pretty regularly.

In summary, to effectively leverage local SEO, you should:

• Create and/or optimize your Google My Business listing
• Get listed in local directory websites, like Yelp, Porch, Home Advisor, and Angie’s List
• Get reviews from happy customers on your Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook pages

Improve Your Google Ranking with Search Engine Optimization

To get organic water restoration leads, you’ll need search engine optimization (SEO). SEO  is different than Local SEO. While it uses some of the same theories, the tactics are not the same. There are two parts to SEO: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.

On-page SEO involves optimizing your website for both search engines and users. While some of the optimization tactics users will see (like the content on your website), some of the tactics are more for Google’s bots and crawl spiders (like image files names and alt text). Together, these tactics work together to create your search engine ranking.

Here are some key on-page SEO tactics:

• Updating your page titles and meta descriptions so they each target one unique keyword.
• Adding links to other pages on your website. This is usually easiest in blogs, where you can link to your service pages or other blog articles.
• Include keywords in your image file names before you upload to your website. Then, once they’re uploaded, give them a title tag and alternative title.
• Remove any instances of duplicate content, especially if it’s duplicate content from another website.

Off-page SEO involves building your thought leadership and brand awareness across the web. Typically, off-page SEO is just thought of as linkbuilding. However it’s so much more than that.

While having links point back to your site is important, it’s the quality of the links that matters most. Google’s algorithm favors websites that have links from credible, quality sources versus websites that have thousands of links on whichever site they could get them.

Here are some key off-page SEO tactics:

• Create and optimize your social media sites. Make sure they include your website URL (linking back to your website).
• Create and manage any and all online listings of your business. This includes the directory sites you use for Local SEO.
• Find places to share your thought leadership about water restoration. This could be on question-and-answer forums, like Quora, or guest blogging opportunities. While a mention of your company name is good when doing this, you should also try to get a link back your website, specifically a page that relates to the topic you’re writing about.

Search engine optimization is a long-term strategy, meaning it can take time to see the results from your efforts. But if you (or your agency) puts in the time and work, SEO can yield both positive and profitable results for your water damage restoration marketing strategy.

If you’re not sure how well your site is optimized, you can request a free technical SEO audit and our team will manually review your website and share items that should be updated/fixed to improve your organic ranking.

Additional Water Restoration Marketing Tactics

Digital marketing also includes tactics like pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing, email marketing, and content marketing.

• Pay-per-click advertising – Paid ads are a good short term strategy, however the costs do tend to add up rather fast. And they can be even more expensive if your water damage ads aren’t converting into paying customers. If you do use paid ads, set and stick to a monthly budget. You can event set your ads to pause once you reach that budget so you don’t overspend.
• Social media marketing – Social media is a great way to interact with your customers and share your expertise. Share tips for preventing water damage or what to do when water damage occurs. You can use video or images to get more engagement on your social media content and more people aware of your company.
• Email marketing – Email marketing keeps your current and past customers informed about what is happening with your company. You can use it share company announcements, seasonal tips/tricks for preventing water damage, and much more.
• Content marketing – Writing and publishing content is how you can share your expertise and knowledge with prospective, current, and past customers. Whether the content is published on your site or you give an interview for a local news channel, content has the power to educate and boost your brand image. Use your content to show your industry knowledge, making people see why you’re the go-to company when water damage strikes.

Start Generating Water Damage Leads More Effectively

When someone is affected by water damage, they need help NOW. By using your website as a powerful, money-making machine and implementing a strong SEO strategy, you’ll start to generate organic water damage leads more effectively and efficiently.

Read How to Get Leads and Sales with SEO and Digital Marketing for Restoration Companies for additional ways to leverage your website and marketing strategy for success.

You can also contact us for a free technical website and SEO audit. We’ll manually review your website and provide actionable insights for making your website and SEO strategy more effective. We also provide SEO and digital marketing services for water restoration companies in the Northern Virginia area.

Learn more here or by filling out the form below and one of our reps will be happy to help.