5 Mega Flaws in Your Home Inspector Marketing
1.You’re Not As Good as You Think You Are
If you’re like most inspectors, one mega flaw with your home inspector marketing is that you overestimate your skills. Then, to make matters worse, you underestimate your competition. For example, if you go to any professional home inspector website right now, it probably advertises that they’re the best. Now, look up local home inspector reviews. How many companies have below a 4-star rating? Not many.
The obvious conclusion is that most inspectors are pretty good at what they do. And even if they’re not, their customers seem to think so. Unfortunately for us, this means that potential customers don’t see much difference between competing home inspection companies. Accordingly, if most inspectors are good and similar, price is the only meaningful differentiator. We all know where that leads.
Being a Skilled Through Home Inspector is NOT a Home Inspection Marketing Strategy.
Likewise, being the best, most thorough home inspection company is not a marketing strategy. Plus, even if it was, you’re probably not the best. And even if you were, all of your competitors are saying that they’re the best. In a recent poll of almost 100 inspectors, over 40 percent of inspectors stated that they were in the top 10 percent of inspectors in proficiency. It is not statistically possible for you to be as good as you think you are. So, stop talking about it.
Instead, assume you’re not the best and you’re never going to be the best. You’re not even second or third. Now how are you going to compete with other home inspection companies? What makes you the best choice for new customers even though you may not be the best home inspector?
2.You Avoid Real Estate Agents
When I first started my home inspection business, I instinctively thought that the most efficient way to get business was to advertise to real estate professionals. It was intuitive to me. Realtors work with prospective buyers and that’s my client base. So, I thought all home inspectors must market to Realtors.
To my surprise (and glee), the home inspection industry is full of prideful home inspectors who refuse to even be cordial with Realtors, let alone market to them.
I get it. It sucks. Sometimes it feels like they run the show. But it’s a blessing and a curse. Almost every one of your potential clients is working with a Realtor. That’s good news. Instead of needing to find every home buyer in your area, you just need to find the 20 percent of Realtors doing most of the transactions. And they’re all just a Google search away.
The “Math” of Home Inspector Marketing
According to the National Association of Realtors, 86 percent of home buyers use a real estate agent. Ultimately, the majority of home buyers use the home inspector their Realtor recommends, though no concrete data is available. This means all the Google AdWords, Facebook ads, and search engine optimization efforts, are competing for a much smaller subset of the available business. In other words, refusing to include Realtors in your marketing plan is a massive growth inhibitor.
So, get out of your own way and be humble enough to work with all referral sources.
3.You’re a Secret
All that being said, perhaps you are the one – you are the greatest inspector in your area, maybe in the whole universe. Do all of the real estate offices in your area know that? What about local home buyers?
In the real estate industry, there’s a term “secret agent” that refers to Realtors that no one knows about. They got licensed, chose a brokerage, attend trainings, bought business cards and marketing materials, and now they’re waiting for the phone to ring. But it’s not, because they’re a secret.
Unfortunately, many new home inspectors do the same thing. They may have years of construction experience or other qualifications that make them an amazing inspector. But they’re a secret. No one in their local market knows about them, and they aren’t doing enough to change that. Worse yet, they think their self-proclaimed greatness should spontaneously generate enough organic “word of mouth” marketing to create an avalanche of business. Is that your marketing strategy?
First of all, that’s not going to happen. Second, you have more in common with Realtors than you think.
As home inspection business owners, we need to develop an actual home inspection marketing plan. Simply put, you have to actually do the work. You can’t just do home inspections and deliver home inspection reports. Your daily tasks need to include marketing activities until you can pay someone else to do it. Here’s an excellent book on the work it takes to build a home inspection business.
4.You Quit Too Quickly
The most cringe-worthy comment by home inspectors about marketing activities is that they “tried it and it didn’t work.” For example, they tried visiting open houses and it didn’t work. Perhaps they’re convinced that it “doesn’t work in my area.” If you’re going to be a successful business owner or even just a decent human being, you need to start taking personal responsibility.
I guarantee I can make visiting open houses, cold-calling, face-to-face marketing, digital marketing, or any other marketing tool, work in any target market. These ideas work, but maybe you don’t.
Take Personal Responsibility in Your Marketing
Whenever something isn’t working, ask yourself what you’re doing wrong. Then learn, pivot, and try again. There may be weeks or months of learning and pivoting before you find an effective way to make it work for you. You’ll have to read books, listen to podcasts, and watch videos to troubleshoot your efforts. Afterward, you just keep doing that forever to make it even better.
You simply can not visit open houses for one weekend, or even one month, and quit because it’s “not working.” Plus, the alternative is waiting for that explosion of word-of-mouth marketing.
5.You Hired Someone To Do Your Social Media
You’re not Coca-Cola. You don’t need to hire a techie to manage your Facebook page. Your followers don’t want to see maintenance tips and generic home posts curated and posted for no one in particular. No one wants to see those posts. They’d rather see the best home inspector in the local community in action. Social media is a place to be social and engage with your followers and no company can create that for you.
There are amazing companies that imagine, design, and run social media ADS and they’re worth every penny. On the flip side, companies offering to be you, post for you, and speak for you aren’t worth much.
Think about the parts of your job that you love the most. Find a few minutes a day to share that on your social media. That will do more for you than most of these “social media managers” can do.
Bottom Line on Home Inspector Marketing
You have to understand that growing a home inspection business means devoting as much time to learning about business as you do houses. Otherwise, you’re just creating a job for yourself and not even a full-time one at that.
