A COMPLETE GUIDE
Almost any business today will have some sort of online presence - long gone are the days of trawling through the Yellow Pages for hours on end only to find that the phone number was invalid!
And if you’re conscious about not spending too much money online in order to promote your business, one of the best free ways to market your pest control company is through creating a good social media presence.
In this article, we’ll discuss some of the most effective ways to optimise your social media channels as a pest control business.
It’s totally understandable to get confused by the amount of social media channels today, as there are so many. It’s important that you familiarise yourself with what are known as the ‘Big 4’ in business. These are Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. However, since 2020, there has been an enormous rise in another key social media channel: TikTok.
While all of the aforementioned social media channels are useful when it comes to promoting your pest control business, it is important to utilise them in different ways, as they have relatively different functions.
These will all be explained in further detail in the rest of this article. However, if you’re really unsure on how to make the most of these different social media platforms, it might be worth getting in touch with a specialist social media marketing agency, who can do all of the work for you instead.
Across your social media channels, consistency is key. Ensuring that you have a solid brand identity is also key to this - making sure that your tone of voice as well as your graphic design is the same across all platforms is very important.
In addition, optimising the language that you use in your posts is important, because across all different social media platforms, you will attract a different audience.
For instance, on LinkedIn, you are attracting a professional network of other business owners, employees, and potentially other pest control companies and their customers, too. Using professional language is hugely important on LinkedIn.
On the other hand, you can have a bit more fun on the likes of Instagram and Facebook - people are there to browse social media, so a more relaxed tone is much more acceptable. You can also utilise your posts with emojis, to them stand out.
X is another great social media platform to promote your business - but you will often find that you have to rephrase any posts that you have written for any other social media platforms because X has a character limit of 280 - meaning that you can’t exceed this in one tweet. Being concise, while still getting across the main point of your post is a useful skill to have especially when you’re posting on X.
Regularity is key - using scheduling tools such as Gain, Meta Business Suite, Hootsuite, Hubspot, Canva Pro and more are very useful for being able to plan your posts ahead of time, leaving you time to do other work, but being able to rest easy knowing that your posts are automatically going out.
You should aim to post to each channel a minimum of once a week, preferably more often. Customers will know that you’re a consistent business and have plenty of work coming in if you’re posting regularly.
Out of all of the Big Four, Facebook is probably the one that most people (including pest control company owners) are familiar with - after all, there are over 2 billion active monthly users on Facebook!
The first thing to do is to create a Facebook Page for your pest control business. This can be done once you have created a personal account, you can then create and manage your own page (or give the agency representing your pest control company access to manage the page).
You will need a name for your page - which will naturally be the name of your pest control business - such as “Adam’s Pest Control Company”. You will then want to fill out the page with as many details as possible, so that it is easier for people and potential customers to find you.
Some of the most important information to include in your Facebook page is a contact email address (preferably your business one), a phone number, and the hours that you’re open. You should also make sure that the profile picture is a good-quality picture of your business logo.
The cover picture should also represent your business - usually including your logo, and some contact information.
It is also worth noting that previous customers can add reviews onto your page - encouraging them to leave a review can help you with what is known as “social proof” - people see that your pest control business has a good reputation due to numerous 5 star reviews (hopefully!), and this will help you to stand out against your competitors and other pest control companies who may not be using social media as effectively.
You can also add a personal handle to your business page on Facebook, which can help potential customers to find you easier: the simpler, the better is definitely the case for this. For example, if your pest control company is called “Adam’s Pest Control Company”, your handle might be “@AdamPestControl”.
Instagram is another excellent channel for optimising your pest control company’s social media presence.
The primary function of Instagram is to share photos and videos (which are known as reels) - so this is the best channel for photo sharing.
A good idea of types of photos to share include jobs that you have done, explainer posts using technical terms and their definitions, photos of yourself of employees undertaking work, and client testimonials - it is always good to share reviews across all social media channels, but especially so on Instagram if you can create a good graphic design which will catch people’s eyes.
Video content arguably does better than photos on Instagram, so if you can film bits of your day, or behind the scenes work, this works really well, too. Reels are optimised for being filmed on a smartphone, so you can literally film clips of your day and put them together in a reel.
The use of hashtags is also important on Instagram, and you can add up to 30 hashtags per post. As an example, some of the best hashtags for pest control companies are #PestControl, #PestControlCompany, #PestControlService, #PestControlUK, and #PestManagement.
Instagram users can follow certain hashtags, so the chances are if someone is following the #PestControl hashtag, they are very interested in this service, so the more posts that you put out with this hashtag attached, the easier it will be for you to appear to those potential customers.
From the perspective of a business owner, LinkedIn is probably the most effective social media platform to promote your pest control company on.
As with all other social media platforms, posts with media attached to them (that’s videos, pictures, or audio) perform better than just text based posts.
As a pest control business, it is worth adding a strong CTA (call to action) to your LinkedIn posts - such as ‘Call us on [insert phone number]” to make sure people know exactly how to contact you.
It is also worth sharing posts from your pest control company’s LinkedIn page on your own personal profile - that way, all of your connections who may not follow your business page can still see the content you are producing, as well as how to get in touch with you, should they need your services.
Posting your pest control company on X (formerly known as Twitter) can be quite difficult, given that you only have 280 characters to play with (unless you plan on paying for verification, Elon Musk’s new subscription system whereby you can be ‘verified’ with a blue check mark for £8 per month).
But this makes posting to X fun - you can utilise pictures to get your point across, or upload explanation-style videos so that your audience can see what you’re talking about while you may not have the characters to say what you want.
X also supports hashtags, so if you have room at the end of your tweet, you can always add a couple of the high-ranking hashtags that we listed above. This can be a good way for potential customers to find you and your pest control business on X.
Creating a TikTok account is one of the most efficient ways to market your pest control business on social media.
Despite many people's preconceptions of TikTok, it is not just an app where young children learn dances from Gen Z influencers - it’s one of the best apps to create content for your business.
With the latest feature added which means that you can add videos which are up to 10 minutes in length, TikTok is no longer simply restricted to short-form content.
However, as this feature is relatively new, and the best way to grab your audience’s attention is through short-form content, it is probably a better idea to stick to videos which are under a minute long.
One of the most useful features about TikTok is that it is optimised for filming on your smartphone - as long as you have a smartphone with the ability to film videos, you can create content on TikTok.
This can range from short FAQ-style videos, where you can address some of the biggest FAQs that you face, or you could take various clips of yourself at work, and stick them together in a montage (all of the editing tools that you will need are available in TikTok).
You can also add music to your videos, captions, thumbnails and more - and schedule the videos in advance so that you never fall behind.
TikTok is similar to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, so if your videos are under 60 seconds, you can also share them to both Instagram and YouTube, and have two more social media channels to work with that way.
Creating a Google My Business profile can also help you as a pest control company when it comes to social media.
Adding information such as your opening hours, a phone number, email address and more can help people find you more easily and quickly when they conduct a Google search, looking for pest control companies.
You can also read and reply to customer reviews - and create your own personalised link in order to contact customers for reviews.
Building up the amount of reviews you have will also publicly show potential customers your average rating - and the more reviews you have, the more genuine and reliable you appear.
These reviews are also a fantastic way to generate content for your social media channels: taking the text from a review, and adding it into a branded graphic (which you can create via Canva) and then posting it on your social media channels shows your business to another demographic.
For instance, those who are simply browsing social media will see that you are getting plenty of good reviews, and taking the customer feedback to account - because you’re regularly talking about them.
The best way to optimise your social media as a pest control company is to follow a few simple steps which have been outlined in the article above.
Get your branding on point through a graphic designer or graphic design software such as Canva. Next, make sure that you’re posting consistently across all channels - if this is something that you do not have time for, then get in touch with a professional social media marketing agency or freelancer who can take care of this for you.
Creating regular content across your social media channels is key to building up a presence in the digital world that we live in, and is a free way to advertise your business to potentially millions of people.
Happy posting!
For any more information, please do not hesitate to get in touch.
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