Be very careful about paying for advertising with certain businesses! I tried one. You only have 30 days to cancel so I am stuck with a bill.
How They Work
The Advertisers send leads to you from the people searching for your kind of services on their website. They have many categories available for people who need help with repairs and services to search. They spend a lot of money on advertising to bring people to their website. Great idea!
The trouble is that Home Advisor also sends the same leads to may other businesses in your area at the same time at $35 and more a pop. It is then up to the business owner to call these potential customers to give a bid on the job that they need. Basically whoever responds first will probably get the job. It becomes a feeding frenzy and the Advertiser makes all of that money from each business even though only one business gets the job.
My Experience
The sales guy with the badge advertisers knew I only wanted commercial bids for my town of Spartanburg SC and I wanted regular weekly office cleaning jobs. My first opportunity came in for a bid. It was for Greenville, 30 miles away and it was a one time clean! Not good. I only need one commercial job.
I called them to cancel and the guy talked me out of doing it right then, he said he could just turn the bids off. I figured I could think about the things he said for a few days. Well I missed the 30 day cancellation window and now I owe more money even though my credit card gave me a credit!!
I am not happy! You cannot get a customized setting on your bids. You get whatever they want to send you at $35 to $50 a pop per lead even if you don’t get the job, beside the $280 sign up fee.
Can you imagine how hard I would have been hit if I had chosen the home cleaning category too? There are many more searches for that!!
There is another well known company that uses similar tactics. They are Red and often come up in google map searches. Before you know it you are paying $300 or more, and that could be every month! Maybe you have the budget for that. I did not!
These people make a Killing!!
A Better Way
I believe you do better building your good reputation by word-of-mouth advertising or just listing your business on Google Business Profile (Google My Business) for free. Facebook advertising can work too or by advertising on Google with ads. Offer your existing customers a credit or a free cleaning if they find you another regular account.
Or try a private lead generation business that will send only you the leads that they find in your town. They set up a landing page and adjust it to show up near the top of Google. Why have to compete with other people over leads? You can pay per lead or a monthly fee.
Save your money unless you are a large company. The Badge People are not for the small cleaning business, maybe if you can hire someone to constantly stay on top of the bids!
