Marketing is undoubtedly the most crucial factor with respect to growing and sustaining your business. Let’s say that you are the greatest home inspector in Canada, with the best pricing. If you are unable to generate business, you will fail. This article is an introduction to the basics of marketing a home inspection business. While you may have heard of some of this, I think it is worth reading. If for no other reason, you may pick up a thing or two. You may notice that a lot of this tends to slant towards a web site. This is partly because web based marketing is my area of expertise, but it is mostly because a service based business should have a web site.Before we begin here, I am going to start by making a basic assumptions. First of all, I am assuming that you are the person who markets your home inspection business. Second of all, I am going to assume that you know little or nothing about marketing.

If we take a quick look at the Wikipedia, we see a rather complicated and verbose definition of Marketing:

“According to the  American Marketing Association marketing is: “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.  The term developed from the original meaning which referred literally to going to market, as in shopping, or going to a market to sell goods or services”.

I prefer the following (from MS-Encarta Encyclopedia): “The business activity of presenting products or services to potential customers in such a way as to make them eager to buy.  Marketing includes such matters as the pricing and packaging of the product and the creation of demand by advertising and sales campaigns”.

These general definitions are all fine for business schools and such. Now lets move on

Enough of  definitions, let’s move on to more practical stuff.

First of All, Let’s get One thing Straight, Aren’t All Marketers Liars!

If you are like most of the business clients that I have, you would sooner take a beating than get involved with the marketing process. Most people think of marketing in terms of some slick salesman trying to sell Shamwows on the TV. In reality this isn’t what marketing and selling is even remotely about. To effectively sell yourself, you have to believe in your product or service. Ask yourself these questions:

• Am I  a good home inspector?
• Will I do a good and thorough job?
• Is my service of value?

If you can’t answer yes to all of these questions, than I think you should look at another line of work. No joke here. If you don’t believe in what you are selling, you are lying to yourself, and to your clients when you try to sell your services. Your clients will pick up on this insincerity. I guarantee it.

The reality is this: if you are selling a good service you are helping your client, you are doing something good for them. In actuality, if you are a great home inspector that offers a great service that will be a lifesaver to your clients. If you don’t make potential clients aware of you, you are doing them a great disservice. How? Suppose they buy a house that is a money pit either because they hired a poorly trained home inspector that missed some bad defects (ie. someone other than you), or even worse they chose to purchase without the guidance of a home inspector.

This person is now put into a stressful situation that could have been avoided. You owe it to yourself, and to your clients to see to it that doesn’t happen.

So Where Do I Start?

So now that you know that marketing & selling can in fact be a positive process, we can move on to how this sort of thing is done.

As home inspector, you would be more concerned with what we refer to as direct marketing. In a nutshell, Direct Marketing is no more than the act of marketing to a specific target group. If you think about this, it actually makes a lot of sense. If you are spending marketing dollars and sweat equity, you certainly want to make every ounce of it count. Every dollar that is spent on people who aren’t buying what you are selling is wasted. That is a fact! For example, let’s say your marketing efforts were only observed by school-aged children (a highly unlikely situation), I sense that your phone would not be ringing off the hook. The fact is, that unless you live in Malibu, or Palm beach most kids can’t buy houses! They are not your customers.

The general idea in direct marketing is to construct a process that will:

1. identify, and target the group of individuals that may be in need of your services,
2. get their attention,
3. compel them to call you (or visit your website which convinces them to call you),
4. convert them to a customer (this is called selling, which is itself an art form).

The first step in this process usually requires market research. This can be as complex or as simple as you want it to be. Large corporations often spend millions per year on this. However, because you are in the home inspection business, we have a pretty good idea as to who your potential customers are….people in the market for a house. A pretty safe bet. At this point there is probably no need to spend money on this step. (that’s not to say that you won’t later – you can never know too much about your potential clients)

The trick now is to get their attention. That second step is a little tougher. It is not tough to get the attention of your market place…..if you have tons of money! However, most of us don’t fall into that category. Spending 10 or 20,000 on a large scale ad campaign is a big risk. As was mentioned before, the real trick is to gain the attention of the people that are real potential customers. So the question is, where can you find these people?

So, if you in the market for a house where would I find you? I would suggest that there are 3 or 4 sources that you could exploit.

1. Mortgage Brokers (Independent or Bank Based) - these are the professionals that most people will go to see first.  After all, you need to know how much you can spend before you go shopping. I would go to these people and try to establish a reciprocal referral based relationship. If someone comes to you inquiring about an inspection, you simply ask them if they are working with a lender. If not you refer them to your source. The broker does the same thing. Each of you end up with more business from this relationship. If they have a web site, be sure to request a link, or a banner on their web site. If they agree, be sure to reciprocate with a link on your site.
2. Realtors – another obvious choice. Most of us deal with a Realtor when we are buying or selling a house. I would have a 2-way referral based relationship with as many Realtor’ s as possible. They are a great source for home buyers.
3. MLS Web Site – A link on the local MLS, puts you in front of just about every person that is buying a house in your area. You will have to pay for this, but it should be well worth it.
4. Interior Decorators – Many home buyers have decorators retained before they buy their house. There is no reason why they can’t refer you as an inspector once a house is found. One warning here. Be sure that they are a high quality professional. If you are referring them to a client, they should make you look good.
5. Renovation Companies, Architects & Engineers – These days, many affluent buyers are “neighborhood buyers”. They want to live in a nice modern house, but they want it to be in an old, well established neighborhood with “the life” that they want. This is a trend that increases each year, and you should capitalize on it. You are in an excellent position to refer people back to these companies. Many of the people looking to renovate may not have thought about who the would be using as a contractor or designer. You could refer a lot of business. Generally, I find that if you refer a lot, you get a lot back.
6. Real Estate Classified Ads Section – These days, many people try to sell their houses privately. They usually end up listed in the classifieds or private sale section of your local newspaper / newspaper web site. Find out where the private sellers are listing their houses, and get an ad there. It is usually cheaper to advertise on the web site, so if your funds are limited you may choose this route.

There are a lot of ways to compel customers to call you. We can pretty much assume that because they are looking at hiring an inspector they are aware of the need for a home inspector. So I would not try to compel them by pointing out how much missed flaws can cost them. You should certainly include this type of data on the web site, just don’t push it too much. You may scare them off from buying a house altogether!

1. Obtain testimonials and have them displayed clearly on your web site -This is arguably the best way to get your potential customers to contact you. Since your current customers are very happy with your service to them, ask them to write a paragraph or two about their experience. This goes a long way towards convincing a stranger that you are the man for the job. If you can do it, get a picture of the happy family (preferably in front of their new house) that you can place next to their testimonial.
2. Offer a Special Deal or Promotion – Offer a Discount to first time home buyers, offer to price match etc.  If business is slow, this isn’t a bad short-term strategy. After all it’s usually better to work and make less, than to be not working at all. No matter how you look at it, this will gain you valuable customers. Some of these customers will undoubtedly refer more business. When the market is hot, remove the “special” and put your pricing back to normal rates, and focus more on maximizing profits.
3. Have a Bio & Photo Of Yourself On Your Web Site – People like to deal with likable people. You should have an “about me” or bio page on your web site. Be sure that it is written in a personal, friendly tone. Not too factual and corporate. It never hurts to have a little tasteful humor in there as well. This will go a long way to making you look approachable so that the customer will make that scary first call. As for the the photo, be sure that it is a good high quality photograph. If you can afford it, get a photographer to take the shots for you. If you can’t afford this, get someone who is at least good with a camera to take the shots. A good backdrop would be your office, or a house. When shooting outside, be sure that you pick a bright, but overcast day. Overcast days produce pictured with no (or very minimal) shadows. This will do wonders towards making it not look like a mug shot. Finally, take at least 20-30 pictures, smile and have fun with it. Your relaxation will show. If you are uptight about such things, I would suggest a drink or two right before you start to take the edge off.I can’t stress the importance of this one. We recently consulted with a home inspector in our local area regarding how his web site wasn’t generating enough leads. The very first thing we did was to remove a very dark mug shot from his bio page which was replaced with a brighter, friendlier, relaxed & casual picture. We didn’t change one other thing, and his calls instantly began to increase.  All we needed was a bright spring day, a decent digital camera and a bottle. Imagine that!
4. Be sure to list your qualifications – All other things equal (price, experience, testimonials etc.) your work history & qualifications may get you the job over another company.  Don’t leave them out of your site.

Now that you have done all of this, what now? Well, at this point hopefully you will get a call or email requesting that sets up an appointment for an inspection. Then all as well. Unfortunately, all of this preparation could be for nothing. If the prospective client calls and needs some convincing, and you are unable to do it, he will become someone else’s customer. A very bad thing.

In the next article we will talk a little about the art of convincing. Also known as selling, which is a topic that deserves its own article.