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I received a phone call today from Home Advisor wanting me to sign up for their service. Cost is approx. $350??? to get set up, I’m not sure of exact amount. Business is slow and additional work would be great even if I have to pay a lead fee. Who is using them for leads? What has your experience with them been? Is it worth it. Lay your words of wisdom on me. Before they changed their name to Home Advisor I wasn’t impressed.
Different Name same turd, is my opinion. You have been in business a while, have you gone out like it was your first month in business in a while?
I’ve prospected like I I just started. Cold calls, existing customers, commercial, residential, property managers service monster fill my scedule, Been on it for 3 months. I’m busier than normal but would like more. There is a lot of, we’ll do something when spring is here. If I get 10% I’ll be swamped. Doesn’t help now.
Ive been out hitting the pavement also, not a lot of instant gratification but does help down the road
I have never used Home (lower your price to make no money to attract business and give us your profit for us to recommend you) adviser. Sarcastic, okay guilty. Positive answer. I would rather give the percentage off the add-on portion and add to the total dollar amount in the home per-visit and most especially when the weather is so so. Example: When I was in your situation… I once did a 50% off protector when you get your upholstery cleaned at regular price in February only. Also I had a 20% off upholstery in February only. I was glad to find that about half did some carpet too. Interestingly, the 20% off created more cash flow. We are mostly talking residential here.
On the commercial side, this is a good time to seek commercial accounts.
“Mom and Pop shops”, this a great time to approach them for a one time restorative clean and a monthly maintenance cleaning. Just stop in, introduce yourself and ask if you can leave them an estimate. Ask them to check out your website and ask when would it be the best time for them to have the cleaning done.
“Office buildings” are awesome also, it take more visits and more work to get, but worth the bigger volume, no travel time between jobs if you know what I mean.Interestingly, in 2016, Loren is my sixth best producer and Pat is number one. Pat wouldn’t be on top without his commercial work. They are both great guys.
I used HomeAdvisor for my first 2 years in business. The experience was extremely frustrating. While I did find customers from the leads they sent, the cost per sale was very high and the contact rates were very low.
Yes, there is an annual fee to keep your account active. Then you also have to commit to a minimum of $100/mo for exact match leads (sent to you only) and $100/mo for market match leads (sent to you and several other cleaners in your area). My cost per lead was anywhere between about $17 for market match leads to $27 for exact match leads. If those leads converted 100% of the time, that would be an ok cost per lead. The problem is that most leads will not convert. In fact, more than 50% of the leads you contact will never answer the phone, return voicemails, or return emails.
The problem with the user experience is this: customers find HomeAdvisor because they rank in search engines for terms like “Milwaukee carpet cleaners.” The landing page asks the user to submit a request in order to receive quotes on their carpet cleaning. In the customer’s mind they think they will instantly receive price quotes from a couple of cleaners online. They don’t expect their phone number to get blasted out to 3 cleaners who all try to call them immediately. Suddenly their phone starts ringing over and over as we try desperately to book a job. It is a really bad experience for the customer when they just wanted a quick price quote online.
The other problem with contact rates is this: you are supposed to call the customer as quickly as possible to improve your chances of winning the job. What about a customer who submits a request on HomeAdvisor at 8:30pm? Or 2:00am? Trust me – it happens. And you get the leads in realtime. When you try to call them when you open at 8am the next day, no answer. You can fix this problem by manually pausing your lead flow every night and turning it on in the morning. But that is a pain to remember every day.
In 2 years on HomeAdvisor, here are my results: 407 leads received, 96 jobs won, 31 reviews submitted by customers (all positive). That’s a 23% conversion rate. Probably higher than a lot of people get because I busted my butt trying to win these jobs so my ad budget wasn’t wasted. So I spent a minimum of $7500 on the service and collected a minimum of $9600 in revenue.
Unless you are just trying to fill the schedule to keep your employees busy and you don’t care much about profitability, I would stay away from HomeAdvisor.
Another thing: once you cancel your account, they hide your profile from customers on their site so all those reviews you racked up while you were active are gone.
If you’re looking for a lead source I actually really enjoy and get a lot of jobs for a low CPS, try Thumbtack.com. It is especially helpful in need periods because you can bid on every job that gets submitted to help keep your schedule filled.
If anyone wants to discuss HomeAdvisor or other online lead sources further, shoot me an email r.rock@heavensbest.com or call 414-202-8515. Happy to help.
Great info Reuben. I have never been a fan of paying for leads. They often are just testing the waters and don’t seem to pan out, plus it feels like a feeding frenzy when a lead comes in between all the companies (similar to the home loan websites if you’ve ever gone that route for buying a home). Getting reimbursement for leads that are in the incorrect area/etc always seems to be a pain as well.
I will say this, I do like this page from Home Advisor. One of the few websites out there not trying to bash low moisture cleaning.
http://welcome.homeadvisor.com/carpet-cleaning-experts/?rmid=02-20-2017_Handyman-Save-Money_TT_LEFT&rrid=aWQ9NjA3MzI1NzU=&m=homesense&entry_point_id=32210458
Here’s what they said a few days ago. The offer to me is $285 for them to certify me. No talk of a maintanence fee. They use a number of links of other websites to promote Home Advisor. When people in my specific area contact home advisor either directly or thru these other links. There is a charge of $14 per contact that they send. If these contacts are out of my area, are unable to be contacted or are just kicking tires, supposedly they do not have to be paid for. But I must contact my representative at home advisor. I supposedly can turn on or turn off being sent contacts. Yes, contacting the potential contact immediately is nessecary. Supposedly there has been 16 contacts in my area over the last 2 weeks. Tempting but I’m not sold yet and will not be doing it. Still, the additional work would be great during the slow season. Ugh. I hate winter!
Home Advisor = Bad Business Decision…..
There is so many better things you can do in a slow season, if you collect all your customers email addresses….send out a offer threw email. If you have all your customers addresses….send out a postcard, great ROI there. One great idea Cody had me do was to print out a list of specials for the day with the regular price and a discounted price for extra services. And yes you have to print it out so the customer see’s it and make it look professional with the logo, phone number. Just don’t tell them. So if you are scheduled to do carpet cleaning….there’s a good chance you will be cleaning a sofa, tile or a extra room of carpet. Customers love deals. Get that ticket price up per job to make up the deference of being slow. You can also offer 10% for any added service too.
Does Anyone use home Adviser today? keep getting calls from them saying that other locations are using their services.
We use Angie’s List, and the price is starting to get out of hand. we make sure every year we get 10 to 15 percent return on our marketing dollars. They were purchased by the company that owns Home Advisor.
I decided not to use them. They keep calling saying they have 2 dozen customers looking for someone to clean. Tempting but for the price I get a much better return from EZ NET TOOLS fill my schedule. Plus I don’t have to spend anything if I am busy enough. I do use it during the winter months. Getting ready to use them again.
OMG-Home Adviser–Hang up, Run, etc. Customer service does not exist. E-mail your so called Rep. and never get a reply. Fee’s charged range from $16.05-$59.99. And when you get in touch with
a so called lead, the $59.99 fee could be for a living room and hall, maybe a $100.00-$125.00 job that’s 45 min. away. I can’t afford to loose money for working! First 2 customer leads I received
were not even in my areas. But, they charged my card $16.05 on both to clean an area rug-$25.00 job OMG. E-mailed my Rep to get a credit on the fee’s. She said she would look into it and take care
of, never heard from her again.(phone, e-mail, nothing) Two months into it I e-mailed my rep and said I wanted everything shut off, no more leads sent to me, take my name out of your contact list etc. Got no reply, they kept sending leads maybe 1-2 a week, kept charging my card etc. I finally had to cancel my card and get a new card they could get so I could stop the bleeding. Out of 15-20 so called leads with approx. $800.00 in lead fee’s. I did end up getting a couple jobs later from earlier leads for about $275.00 of income. When I cancelled my card I disputed the lead fee’s with my card
company and got credit for now, except for the annual membership fee. Home Adviser sends all kinds of junk e-mails, about every other day that you cannot even send a reply or tell someone else that
you are not happy and want out, etc. I don’t know how they got so big with such outrageous fee’s and NO SERVICE? Biggest Mistake I have maid since I have been an Owner with HB.
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