About HomeStars“Whuffie” for Contractors – Marketing Home Improvement using Social Capital
Last week I was on vacation in South Carolina and spent the first couple days reading a great book by Tara Hunt called The Whuffie Factor. You’re probably asking: what’s whuffie? It’s actually a term I don’t really like, but it’s used to describe “social capital”. Specifically, it’s the influence you have, as a person or a company, on the people around you to either help you or buy your products or services. It essentially comes down to trust. People want to buy from, work with and help out those who they like and they have relationships with. Makes sense, huh?
In the online world marketing has changed the playing field for advertising. Sites like HomeStars allow users to go and review their home improvement specialists and contractors. Yes, your customers can talk back! We don’t really provide an advertising medium here at HomeStars (although it’s the product we sell), but instead a platform for contractors to communicate with their clientelle. They can portray their company with pictures, lots of text, but the real content that users of the site want to read are the reviews.
Lets look at some of Tara Hunt’s tenents for building this ‘social capital’ and apply them to the businesses on our site: home improvement specialists and contractors. These our our clients, and our community, as well as the homeowners that read and write their reviews. These are the people that really create the content on our site which is valuable to them.
The first rule of ‘Whuffie’ is to turn the bullhorn around and start listening. For contractors this means really listening to their clients. Many of them do this every day as they have personal relationships with many of their clients anyway. Most home improvement companies listen just because of the nature of their business – they are small companies that deal directly with the clients. But when they don’t, it can end up hurting them. Bad reviews, bad ratings and bad reputation can hurt a company immensly. On the other hand, good feedback makes a company better. Derek Morland from Mr Rooter GTA explains here.
Another rule is to listen and integrate feedback. People who take the time to review you, whether bad or good, want to know you’re listening. The HomeStars site will sent out an email to the reviewer letting them know that the company has responded to a review on the site. One excellent example is Carson Dunlop, a home inspection and eco-inspection company. If you look through their listing and reviews, they take the time thank their customers for taking the time to write a review. Another great example is Direct Energy who, despite some rough reviews, is taking the time to answer each one, take the feedback and solve the issues raised. Direct Energy is a much bigger company, so fixing customers service issues can be a challenge, but taking the time to thank those who reviewed you is important – not enough companies on our site take the time.
Be Notable. Contractors should go above and beyond and create the experience that customers want to write about. One of the most memorable examples comes from Mr Rooter in March of this year where their service tech saved a cat from between floorboards. Another example is Flavio of CanadaWide Plumbing, who always seems to go above and beyond for his customers, inspiring them to write reviews.
Importantly, you should be real and be yourself. It really helps. Brent Jefferies, of Classic Home Inspections, told me at one of our recent meetup events, that he is incredibly busy because of the site. He often refers jobs to his competitors (something that builds local Whuffie with his peers – again suggested!) but clients want him and him only. By the time they’ve read almost 90 reviews of Brent’s inspections, they know him pretty well before he even arrives at their house! Talk about building trust!
There are many more lessons to learn from the book, especially about social media – elaborating on some of the points that Mark Evans made a few weeks ago. I highly suggest you pick yourself up a copy. (write 3 reviews and tell a few friends and we’ll give you $15 gift card to Chapters/Indigo too!, which almost covers the price of the book)
We try and embrace these ideas at HomeStars and even set up our own page where companies and users can write reviews about us. It helps keep us honest, open and builds trust among our homeowner users and our listed companies. We have a forum, a facebook page, a twitter account, and even just email to get in touch with us. As we continue to say: give us feedback! It helps us grow.
Posted by BrianS