TOPIC: Just getting started, any advice?

Good evening,

My husband and I are starting a home inspection business.  He completed the required courses for the state, passed with high honors and is studying to take the state inspection license exam.  We are going to do some practice home inspections with some neighbors, to help get his feet wet with that and to practice writing of the report.  He's eager to get this going, he's topped out in his current career and also has a history in construction, so he's had experience in a general sense.  We are registering a LLC with the home inspections business as a DBA/tradename.

What advice can you give to folks just starting out?  We are clueless insofar as marketing and the like.  Any advice would be appreciated!

Thank you for your time.

Hi Claire,

Welcome to the HIP Forum! Where are you guys located? A lots of tips are location specific. Go over to www.HomeOwnersNetwork.com and sign up to help with your marketing (free to you as a HIP user).

Hi Dominic!!

Thanks for the greeting.    We are in southern NH.    That's a great site, I will absolutely take a look over it and see what it has to offer!  Thank you so much!

Welcome.
Be sure to fill out all your profile information everywhere you go is SEO marketing lesson #1

Do not expect overnight success. You have to market to agents, this is probably the toughest. Most agents do want good inspectors though. It is not about marketing, it is about relationships, which really is marketing I suppose (confused yet?) and your unique selling points. You have to offer something for the clients that is different or you become just another inspector.

You will need an effective website. Effective means that you are on the first page, preferably the top three results of that first page, for the search engines. You can learn all about that on this message board. Dom and his crew also make it easy to create a website that works, and the tech support is the best and it is FREE (there is that unique selling point).

Like anything else you do, the prep work is what gives you the best results.

Ditto what Michael said.

Get with Dominic about a website and how to build it with proper SEO in mind (beginning with the website name).

I receive a lot of jobs from clients shopping for a home inspector who state that their decision was based upon information/impression they got from my website.

I did not build my website initially to market on page 1 of Google, but as a landing site for someone to go to for more information off of my business card. (It eventually evolved into a marketing site). So you need to get involved and be able to control your own website as you will be changing and adding things as you go.

You do not have to be on page 1 for your website to work. But you need a webpage to supplement other types of advertising (from word-of-mouth, business cards, TV advertising, or whatever you decide to use). Advertising/marketing is a tool for the customer to take the next step. If you get a referral from a real estate agent, you get a phone call into the client, you need the client to see "who you are" on your website because they are buying you, not a home inspection.