5 Tips for Marketing Your Handyman Franchise

Marketing your franchise successfully is one of the best ways to ensure that it can enjoy longevity and continued profitability. If you’re looking to start a handyman franchise and become your own boss, these five tips will help you to advertise your home improvement business effectively and efficiently.

Since the start of lockdown, UK homeowners are estimated to have spent a huge £55 billion on home renovations and improvements [Money.co.uk]. This alone should evidence just how much demand there is for reliable handyman services across a range of different sub-sectors. With demand comes competition, but with good marketing comes the ability to stand out from this competition. The following five marketing tips will help you to start a handyman business and build a successful franchise in no time at all.

Marketing a home improvement franchise effectively: 5 top marketing tips

Some marketing tips are evergreen, but some are more strictly applicable to running a handyman franchise. In this article, you’ll find tips that are directly tied to the home improvement industry, and to the demands of franchising in this area. If you’re looking to make a career change with a handyman franchise, there’s no better place to start...

1. Pay attention to the market (and to your customers)

Good marketing makes a customer feel seen, heard and understood. That kind of marketing leads to customer referrals, and then to more customer referrals, and eventually to becoming one of the top handyman franchises in the UK. But how do you achieve this kind of marketing? By seeing, hearing and understanding, on the one hand, and on the other by keeping up with the ever-evolving home improvement market and the latest wider industry trends. When you do both, you’ll know:

• Which emerging trends appeal to your customers and might interest them soon
• Which needs, expressed by your customers, might soon become wider industry trends
• Which emerging trends don’t seem popular in your segment of industry/to your customer base
• Which gaps in the market haven’t yet been filled by competitors
• Which rules and regulations might impact your work/your customers

2. Invest in a well-designed website

38% of people will stop engaging with a website entirely if the content or layout is unattractive [HubSpot] and 75% of customers make credibility judgements about a company based on its website design [Kinesis]. That’s three quarters of a customer base, turned off almost immediately. It’s easy to see, knowing the statistics, why ensuring your franchise has a website matters so much. Not just a website, but a good website. From a marketing standpoint, a good website is absolutely crucial for any handyman business.

If this isn’t something that’s included in your franchise package, it’s something you should get to work on right away, especially in an industry like home improvement in which credibility is so crucial. Make your website quick-to-load, easy-to-navigate and SEO friendly, and implement content marketing strategies that allow you to regularly update a “Blog” or “News” section of your site with recent information. Keep adding value to your website, and people will keep visiting it.

3. Utilise support offered by your franchisor

One of the biggest advantages that comes with running a handyman franchise, as opposed to simply becoming a handyman and going it alone, is the access you’ll have to expertise and franchisor support at every turn. At any point at which you’re struggling with marketing your franchise, or wondering what to implement next to gain some advertising traction, you can turn to your franchisor for guidance.

Remember that when you succeed, your franchisor succeeds too. This makes them uniquely invested in the success of your business and all of its marketing campaigns. Indeed, many franchise agreements will clearly state that comprehensive marketing support is on offer, and many more franchisors will actively provide marketing materials, free of charge. Don’t forget what your investment has bought you, and don’t turn away from verifiable expertise and a strong track record of success in favour of doing it all alone.

4. Sponsor or host events in your local community

One interesting way to actively market your handyman franchise in a non-digital, real space is to host or sponsor events that occur in your local community. Regardless of the event, and regardless of whether you’re a handyman working out of client homes in an exclusive territory, or a handyman working out of a dedicated space, connecting with your community is hugely important (and hugely beneficial).

While investing with a network means benefitting, in many cases, from a nationwide or global reputation, your local customers still want to know you and your branch of the wider tree. By getting involved, you make your franchise visible to the community and earmark it as a business that cares about and actively immerses itself in local life. Two birds, one stone.

5. Make seasonal considerations when running advertising campaigns

Demand for handymen and women tends to be higher in Spring and Summer, tapering off in Autumn and Winter as the days get shorter and the nights get darker. When you’re marketing your handyman franchise, you’ll need to account for this, weighing up the best moments in which to run adverts and who to target when you do. You might even choose to try and buck tradition and advertise in the “off-season”, knowing that while demand will be lower, so will the amount of advertisements running in direct competition with yours.

Advertising is an investment, but the low response rate during the off season may not be enough to offset the investment you make. Marketing campaigns can quickly become expensive, especially in an omnichannel market with wide reach or high frequency.
- Mark Zimmer, Zimmer Marketing

Start running your own business in the home improvement sector today

If these tips have successfully shown you how to market a handyman franchise, and you’re now more ready than ever to jump into the industry, you can browse Point Franchise’s wide range of handyman franchise investment opportunities to find the right fit. From Access4Lofts to Jackson Fire and Security, there are options in all kinds of sub-sectors and specialisms to consider as you choose the handyman franchise that’s right for you.