Thinking of starting a towing company? It can be a fast-paced business with quick cash flow if you have towing leads flowing your way daily. To see success, it’s a matter of learning and practicing what works better for your company. If you set up the right tow truck marketing campaign to attract potential customers and bring in new leads, it’s possible to get:
- More high-paying jobs.
- Consistent work.
- An increase in revenue.
- Business expansion.
You should be aware that qualified leads are crucial for your business’s long-term viability, and remember that not all leads are worth your time and money.
The key is to learn about your target market and determine what strategies are bringing the qualified ones. Based on that, adjust and adapt your efforts to get the best results.
Of course, this is easier said than done, considering the number of marketing strategies today and how you need to work with more than one at the same time.
However, our goal with this article is to offer you the best options so you can build an entire plan around it. Thus, just keep reading and get to know your best options.
A Business Website Is Essential to Get More Towing Leads
A website is one of the essential resources you need for your towing company as digital presence and properties are key to attracting your prospects and where over 80% of them will learn about you.
The site will serve as the online storefront for your company and be a home base for all your marketing and advertising efforts.
When building your website, you need to make sure you are optimizing it accordingly so your prospects land on it without issues, are able to visualize it in a matter of 2 to 3 seconds maximum, and contact you once deciding to work with you.
When your website is done, you can add the company URL to your business cards, trucks, or where you would typically put a telephone number.
The target audience will find it easier to remember the URL, making it easier for them to contact you. Working on this option or your landing pages at least will help your prospects to:
- Find out more about your company.
- Learn about the services that you offer.
- Check out your service area.
- Get in touch with your sales team.
Also, how will potential prospects find your brand on Google if your website is not up-to-date? They won’t.
Your business may seize to exist without a website. Building an online presence is among the first things you need to do as you enter the business world, and keeping the site updated, so it remains relevant is part of the job.
Examine Your Current Marketing Strategy
Before you take steps to increase your business leads or sales calls, you should review the digital marketing strategies you are already implementing. The list may be comprised of:
- Google My Business listing.
- Facebook business page.
- Current business website.
- Use SEO keywords in the content marketing of your website.
- Any online directory listings.
- Paid ads on Google, Facebook, or Instagram.
- Reviews on Google and other review sites.
These digital properties will help you get off to a great start. However, don’t worry if you only have one or two of them.
It is never late to enhance your digital marketing skills and generate more leads. The point in determining what you are doing right now and what you have is to set priorities.
What needs your attention the most? Where should you be working if you already have a website?
For the latter, you still need to start with this site as it will help you set the bases of everything and ensure it works properly.
Focus On Your Audience & Understand Their Preferences
You should know your ideal customers if you wish to reach them. Towing companies often fail because they don’t know their target market and pain points.
Ask yourself the following questions:
- Are you selling to a male or female ideal client? Or both?
- Under what circumstances could they require your towing services, and why?
- How might they feel when they call you?
- Why would they choose to work with you instead of your competitors?
Once you have created a persona, it is possible to identify their pain points and help you refine your marketing strategy.
These can succeed by surveying customers, talking to your sales teams, or analyzing your competitors’ marketing strategies.
Just make sure you have a good idea of what needs to be done and how you want your clients to find you as well.
Current Market Trends & Your Competition
Analyze your competitors before revising your tow truck marketing strategy. You might find some tips when looking at what they have that you can use to improve your lead generation strategy.
But how can you go over this step? Start with:
- Identify your competitors, and choose a few to focus on them.
- Consider their pricing, work hours, discounts, and other details/offers.
- Look at their branding to see how they interact with customers and put themselves in front of them.
After you have collected all the info, you should ask yourself if any of these strategies can be adopted or adapted by you to make your business more successful.
In most cases, the answer is “yes,” but although many of them are based in the same industry as you are looking at your direct competitors, you just need to determine where you will start to make them work for your company in specific.
Listen, Observe, & Learn
This tip isn’t as complicated as it sounds, but it can make a massive difference in the quantity and quality of business leads you to generate and the cash calls. Some of the lead generation strategies to apply here include:
- Survey: with it, you will learn more about your customers and competitors to keep up with market trends.
- Listen: talk to your ideal customers to determine their needs and what you can do to best serve them.
- Monitor: track market trends, consumer behavior, and the results of existing marketing strategies to determine what’s working.
- Learn: analyze your marketing strategy at critical moments throughout the year to keep your business moving forward.
Improve Your Truck Branding
Your fleet of tow trucks is a billboard, so ensure your branding is clear and visible. These are the two areas you should cover:
- Color: Select a distinctive color that will be associated with your company. Make sure it’s not already in use with any of your competitors.
- Logo Visibility: Place your business name on your trucks, and make it visible. It should be easy for people to see it while driving and from a distance.
On the other hand, it’s time for you to rethink your strategy if your tow truck business has large phone numbers on it. While people will see the number, are they more likely than others to remember a string between 7-10 numbers or your website?
You want customers to remember your business name and not your phone number alone, which is why you need to be smart about the font and how you add the info.
Create a Solid Review Strategy
Reviews are essential for any business, and towing companies are not the exception. You can find out what others have to say about you and your service before a potential customer calls. Here are ways to bring in more positive reviews since great ones are essential:
- Ask customers for feedback.
- Ask your customer to leave a review online if they are satisfied and provide them with a link that makes it easier for them.
- Thank your customers with thank-you notes after leaving reviews and even reply to them when they are left in places like your GMB profile.
Canvassing Your Area
Although canvassing for towing leads or cash calls may seem old-fashioned marketing, your ideal customers will be more interested in doing business with you when you do it this way, or more like you get more chances to find them in the first place.
They are more likely to remember you and work with you if they can see you face to face.
Canvassing can take place on weekdays before people go off during weekends. To get the best results, you should do the following;
- Even if you don’t get the answer you desire, be courteous.
- For each interaction, set a goal. Collect contact or lead information, leave an email address and send a business card to your target audience.
- After getting their information, follow up with potential customers to see if you can add them to your mailing list.
Pay-per-click (PPC) & Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Towing leads can come from a good PPC or SEM campaign. It is a proven strategy that has successfully generated towing cash calls and business leads for a while. The fact that this remains to provide great statistics after years is a reason alone to add it to your strategies.
Due to its popularity, Google is still the most used search engine for PPC and SEM campaigns. But don’t forget Bing. Although it’s not as well-known, the search engine still has a large user base. Many of these could be your customers.
Are you still unsure whether to use PPC or SEM for lead generation? These stats will help you decide:
- Businesses make $2 on average for each $1 they spend on Google Ads.
- Approximately 41% of clicks on search results go to the top 3 paid ads.
- More than 85% of internet users use the internet for local towing services.
- People who visit your site via PPC/SEM are half as likely to purchase.
The Use of Local SEO
Search engine optimization remains to be the king of digital marketing. It will get your towing company to the top of Google’s page and keep it longer than your competitors.
SEO can be sufficient to generate most of your towing leads if your campaign is strong enough. However, we recommend that you also read the other towing advertising ideas.
Setting up your Google My Business account is a good start. You can then move on to backlinking (linking to other towing websites with high authority) or content marketing (sharing towing-focused information with your customers).
A professional SEO consultant can help you get up and running. An experienced digital marketing expert can also make suggestions for improving your SEO campaign’s effectiveness over time.
Advertising on Facebook and Instagram
If you have the right strategy and are familiar with the ad builders, advertising your towing business on Facebook or Instagram can bring in more leads. You might consider hiring a professional if you don’t have the right strategy.
Targeting your ideal customers can be done by using their location and liking other pages (such as your competitors). These social media following have the most significant following globally.
This audience can also benefit from your ads, as it creates and boosts awareness about your towing company. People will remember your name more quickly if they see your ads and logo everywhere.
A Facebook page dedicated to your company is essential. However, it is also an excellent idea to create a group page.
You can post helpful content, such as something you wrote to help with your content marketing efforts. Interact with other group members to build trust and brand awareness among your audience.
Tele Marketing and Email Marketing
Email marketing is among the oldest digital marketing strategies that still work perfectly. You’ll get a return on investment of $40 for every dollar you spend on this method.
The reason why this works is that businesses that keep in touch with their ideal customers by email have a 50% increase in sales-ready prospects, and they spend 33% less on sales.
Telemarketing used to be a popular channel for towing leads generation. However, many people block unwanted calls from their phones. There are still companies that can telemarket to you and make appointments with potential customers, but we wouldn’t put our bets on it.
Online and offline reputation Management
Did you know that 85% of people use the internet to find local towing services in an emergency? These people also research your reputation to see past customers’ opinions about your service quality and pricing.
Are you able to show up on-time and complete what you promised? This and more will be the main aspects they will want to learn about you.
You can also use word-of-mouth offline to your advantage. Ask satisfied customers to share any information about friends, family, neighbors, or acquaintances that might be interested in hiring towing services.
After completing a project, give them lots of business cards and ask if they would mind putting a temporary sign in the yard.
Next, you can list your company online on review sites and ask satisfied customers to leave reviews on Google. As we discussed earlier, it will increase your chances of bringing in business leads.
Have A Unique Selling Proposition
Your business must have a unique selling proposition (or USP) to stand out from the competition. This could include your service level, industry experience, and reputation.
It could also be your pricing, employees, or your guarantees. These are all things that will set you apart from your competition.
After you have identified your USP, use it in your marketing materials.
You can look at your competitors’ leads and cash calls if you don’t know where to begin. How can you match their USP? What is more important to your customers or the people you serve? Here are some USP ideas that will help you get started:
- Eco-friendliness.
- Services specialized.
- Towing capabilities.
- Guarantees.
- Service and friendliness.
- Professionalism.
- Availability.
Collaborate With Relevant Businesses
You partner up with another business interested in sharing lead generation opportunities to co-market. You might team up with a collision repair shop or mechanic to offer customers a discount if they use both of your services. This combination of marketing can result in more towing leads.
Partnering up with local businesses is another great way to increase your leads. O’Reilly Auto Parts, AutoZone, and other local businesses could be partners if they are in your city.
Partnering with them will recommend your brand to customers and show your business cards and other marketing materials. These prospects will also offer a steady flow of marketing qualified leads.
It all narrows down to your network and the relationships you make within your local community. Do you know of any other small businesses you could team up with?
A mechanic or collision repair shop? A property management company that handles parking on-site and off-site? These could all be excellent sources for high-quality leads or cash calls.
Make Helpful YouTube Videos
YouTube is a top-rated platform that appeals to a broad range of demographics. Why not make the most of it? Register for an account. It’s free! Start posting videos about towing.
You can use the videos to document your workday, show the progress of a job, or highlight warning signs that you should never drive a car without damage.
These videos will help you build your reputation as a tow truck business and build trust with your viewers.
Place your contact information in the description of the video and a link on your website to help them to learn more.
LinkedIn for Commercial Business Leads
LinkedIn is an incredible way to build your reputation as a towing specialist and reputable business, but it’s also a great place for generating towing leads.
How? To discuss your towing needs, do a Google search to find local property managers and businesses.
It is possible to set up productive business relationships with sales-qualified leads. Since these are professionals in your industry, you can be sure that they will need your services.
Send Press Releases About Your Towing Service
Press releases can be an excellent way for you to communicate new and exciting information about your towing company.
Do you offer a unique service? Are you looking to expand your reach? Let them know anything new!
What about offering a discount to repeat customers and those who refer friends? Send a press release highlighting these new products to your mailing list. This initiative will help you generate leads.
Your marketing or sales team can apply the above tips to help you generate more clients.
It is not hard to market your service as long as you know what you are doing. The secret is to do everything right and remain consistent in all your endeavors.
Once you have everything in place, you will discover that lead capture is not as hard as you thought.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Towing Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Towing Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Towing Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.