Fatrank Podcast

Kasra Dash:
So James if I have a boiler installation business and I'm looking to grow the revenue, looking to acquire new customers, how would you do it?

James Dooley:
Boiler businesses, I think you've got three major players. I think you've got SEO, I think you've got PPC and I think you've got a lead generation company. At FatRank they do a no risk supply of enquiries for boilers. That's for boiler repair, boiler servicing, boiler maintenance and replacements of boilers like new boilers. I would definitely go down that route and team up with FatRank where you're only paying on the back end, but I will also not put all my eggs in one basket of just getting leads from FatRank. I would also look to try and find another lead generation company. I'd maybe try four or five others out, split test them and see who is the best lead generation company for boiler leads. Then start to use one or two of them to get a consistent flow of leads coming in.

But the major play is trying to generate your own leads long term. That could be via PPC, but it's very expensive, or it could be via SEO which again is still expensive, but it's a long-term major play. Within those three there's obviously other aspects we can talk about. What would you think would work best? Would you go down any others like traditional marketing, social media or anything like that?

Kasra Dash:
I think you could be doing videos on social media, like explaining for example if your boiler is making this sound, maybe try doing this. Or if your radiators are half cold, half hot, do a video on that explaining it. A lot of those are educational videos which could turn into actual paying clients. I think a great one for that is error codes on the boilers. When there's an error on the boiler normally you might need a heating engineer to come out. Then when the heating engineer comes out and they look to repair the boiler, it could be your boiler is 20 years old and needs replacing.

On that side I would be looking to SEO optimise those pages. So if there is a Bosch boiler, I would look through all the error codes and create an individual SEO optimised page going after every single error. Because nine times out of ten, like you said, a lot of the time they might need a new boiler or you can even sign them up for a boiler maintenance plan every year.

Doing organic videos on Facebook and Instagram is a play. Building out SEO optimised pages. In some cases doing a page for boiler installation Manchester might take you 12 months to rank, but doing the error codes might take you a month and you're getting something at that point.

PPC I am not a fan of because of how much it's going to cost. It's probably going to be about £150 a click and that's not even a contact form being inquired. I don't know if you know a bit more.

James Dooley:
It normally costs about £450 to £500 CPA. Out of them you end up getting a lot of people wanting refunds, you get a lot of people that decline. So you're thinking it's £450 and some of them end up not wanting it done. It's very costly in the boiler space. In other industries PPC can work well.

I think it's also important for boiler business owners to understand the target audience. Are you in the commercial market or in the residential domestic market? If you're in homes, maybe go down the route of repairs and servicing and putting a maintenance plan together knowing that might lead onto replacements. If it's literally new boilers you're wanting to do, then it's going to cost you a lot of money with SEO, social media and PPC. It's a very competitive niche.

That's where I think in this market the lead generation companies are probably the major play. If someone is a business owner of a boiler company and you're looking for leads, if you inquire with FatRank we would make sure we're asking you many questions to dig deeper into what exactly you want to generate leads for. If you just say you want more new boilers, that's too broad. We'd want to know what type of boilers, what brand you're installing, are you cheap or premium, and adding modifiers alongside boiler installation. Where do you work? Do you work nationwide? These are important because we try to rank for boiler installer in London, boiler installer in Manchester, and those types of terms.

I'd say in this lead generation would be the major play.

Kasra Dash:
One other thing to add. There's different times that for example if you're trying to rank for boiler installation London, that might take you two years. If you're trying to rank for boiler installation in Dundee, that might take you a lot less time. If you're going to SEO your own website, be aware that there are different difficulty levels.

Is there anything else you'd recommend?

James Dooley:
You've got other stuff people talk about like traditional marketing. Some do radio ads and TV ads. If you've got a big brand in the boiler sector, it can work. Sponsorships of big networking events can sometimes work. My issue with magazines, radio or billboards is you can't track the ROI. For me I'm a businessman who wants to track return on investment. The fact I can't track that means traditional marketing has been taken over by social media ads. I can target homeowners, ideally 25 plus, male or female, up to 65 or 70. That's my play if I'm in the residential market.

Kasra Dash:
One other thing as well. You've got certain councils that have certain grants. So even though you wouldn't do traditional marketing like billboards or radio, I think a good ad would be for example if your local council has a grant where they pay homeowners 50 percent of the fee of the new boiler, you could run that as a Facebook ad. It's time restrictive so people might need to enquire and get it installed by the end of March. Going down that route is better. With Facebook ads you know exactly how much that traffic costs, how many people have converted and how many installations actually happened. It's very granular. With radio ads it gets played six times and you know how many listened, but you don't know how many leads were generated.

James Dooley:
For sure. One more major play if you're looking to grow your boiler business is making certain if you are spending any money on PPC or SEO that you have the retargeting pixel set up on your website. Retargeting on Facebook or Instagram is the cheapest form of retargeting you can do. Get that pixel set up and make certain you're getting testimonials, reviews and case studies into those ads to get people back to your website who haven't yet inquired.