Who do you use for Pest Control?

Bulwark Exterminating released it’s most recent customer survey scores. Bulwark sends out surveys to each and everyone of their active customers each year.  The cost to survey their customers is not cheap, but the value gained by listening to the customers is well worth it.

Read the Article here:  http://blogpestcontrol.com/2010/05/pest-control-customer-satisfaction-scores/

Pest Control Customer Satisfaction Scores

New Score:

97% Recommended, 100% Guaranteed

I once heard a savvy business consultant say that the only question on your survey that really matters is “Will you recommend or refer us?” Ultimately this question tells all.  Customers have different expectations.  Customers may provide feedback that appears negative but they still love your service.  This one question reveals which side of the scale they are on.  If they are just bearing through the service because they see no other option then they will not recommend you.  When asked, “Who do you use for pest control?” a customer not happy about your service may reply, “Papa’s Bug Guy.  Their Okay.”

Being Okay isn’t good enough.

When an associate of your customer asks your customer, “Who do you use for Pest Control?” You don’t want to be the company that is just OKAY. You want to be the company that get’s. “I use Joe’s Pest Control. They are Great!” That is really marketing.

Choosing a pest control name.

Just  a few tips on choosing a pest control name.

1- Stay away from town or city names. Town or city names are not trademarkable.  Ask any trademark lawyer.  You may have the name for 20 years and a guy comes along and sets up shop across the street, calls himself  St. George Pest Control, and you can’t do a thing about it.  Plus it gets a little hairy in the marketing area as well.

2- Stay away from “kill, killer, slayer” or other like terms.  These names may sound great to you and you may think that they convey what your goal is, but studies show that such negative words can be deterrents.

3- Stay away from using specific pests in your name.  If you named your company the Mouse Control Guy, then you could be limiting yourself to targeting just mice.

This is solely from my experience at Bulwark Exterminating and my degree in marketing.  In the end, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.  Meaning, if you provide a great service then no matter what you call your company, people will still come off of your referrals.

 

Related articles

• Pest Control Slogans & Pest Control Quotes (pestcontrolseo.wordpress.com)
• Pest Control Quotes (blogpestcontrol.com)

Family Pest Control or a Pest Control Family?

What are the benefits of a family pest control over a big corporate run pest control?

What are the disadvantages?

Is there a happy medium?

One of Bulwark’s customers put it best for us… “Small enough to care, but big enough to do it right.”

But even beyond that is what Gerry touched on in a recent post.  A family business may have some flaws… what you may be shooting for instead is a business family.  Drawing from my experience with other family owned companies in the past, specifically a restaurant I worked for, it was almost hard to leave them because the owner and other employees had developed a real concern about each other.  I have even had one family company ask to keep me on for about 10 to 15 hours a week in the evenings, and I felt like I needed to stay to help them out.  The pay wasn’t great but it wasn’t about the pay.  It was about the family.

So does your family pest control company fall into the pitfalls of family members getting away with murder and ultimately ostracize the non-family employees? Or does your franchise run a tight ship were every sailor on board would risk life and limb for another?

Franchise, privately owned, or corporate…

Its not about family businesses but about business families.

Pest Control Companies – Google Maps

After a recent horrible experience with Google maps changing Bulwark Pest Control’s map result in Las Vegas, Bulwark posts it thoughts on Google Maps and Pest Control

It really is interesting how google’s recent update has affected so many different companies and industries. Google’s new update puts map results in all results that appear to be looking for local companies. In most searches now these results appear at the top. So the very first thing you see are what google deems to be local companies pertaining to your search. Unfortunately, there are a few hiccups. If your IP address doesn’t correspond with your actual home address then you will be served up different results. Some may not be so local. This is easily fixed if you login to google though and have them save your location. Which means they now have more info to spy on you with and better target you for their advertisers.

What is unsettling about this is the inaccuracies. I can go through and find several listings showing up in the top 10 of google’s results that are completely fake addresses. Or worse yet, are the same company with multiple addresses. But this may not be the fault of the business owner as other advertisers and online marketers are trying to sell leads and gather more visitors.

I will tell you one thing, if the results are wrong, its not an easy fix. Or if it is an easy fix for unclaimed listings then watch out, because devious individuals may hi-jack your listings.