ICYMI - CommuniTEA networking hour recap (12/8)

DustiO

Last week @soonerkimmy @ShaquealThomas @Mage @Lemargriffinfilms @AllAroundMusic @Adele_Alexandre @AGradeNevada @musicmanwiththeplan and @Stat joined myself and two other Thumbtack team members for CommuniTEA — a biweekly networking hour where our Community members are invited to come together to network and share ideas. We wanted to share some highlights, and invite the rest of you to join us next time (where we'll host a holiday celebration with a mixology class from one of our Community members).

Community members shared tips & tricks and helped each other find solutions. The biggest focus of this session was on how pros who are new to Thumbtack can set themselves up for success. One new pro shared, "I originally got on to Thumbtack and started to create my account, because I was seeking to get my Pest Control Company off the ground. But I've heard and read and done a lot of research, and there's a lot of conflicting reviews out there. So I just thought I might want to get a little bit more educated on how it works and to see whether or not it's something that I can actually get a return on.” And, this was the perfect forum to get some perspective from some of our tenured Thumbtack pros and Community members.

Our new pro had 4 main concerns:

1. Leads will be too far away
2. They will have to commit a lot of money upfront
3. They will be locked into a time commitment
4. Leads will not match the services they provide

And our CommuniTea group shared their thoughts on these topics:

From @Stat — One of the biggest benefits of Thumbtack is that you can do targeted marketing. You can set a specific travel area, specific job types, a weekly budget, and more.

From @soonerkimmy — You are not locked into a time commitment, and you set your budget to what you want it to be.

Our group also shared their tips for creating a compelling profile, including:

1. Collecting (up to 10) reviews from past clients
2. Posting quality pictures of your work
3. Including the right information in your profile introduction
4. Filling out the FAQs section of your profile
5. Responding as quickly as possible to new leads

@Stat shared —  The more info you can share about yourself and your business, the better. Get some good quality pictures, get the 10 reviews you can from outside Thumbtack, earn that Top Pro badge. Anything you can do to make yourself stand out. I would be thrilled to review your profile if you would like! And, for starters consider some stock photos that will create an emotional response. As you start doing jobs, you can replace those stock photos with job photos. Remember, advertising is about creating emotion.

@Mage shared — If you are a one-person business and you charge a premium, it’s hard to answer all of the leads all of the time, so that is why I hide my business if I am with a client/student! I end up missing leads, but I also end up not paying for people that won’t hire me if I don’t answer in 2 minutes.

Our pros also shared feedback with Thumbtack (both positive and negative) and shared with us why these CommuniTEA meetings are impactful for them:

@AllAroundMusic shared — All in all we are here because we appreciate Thumbtack. I'm very happy that you guys are doing the community thing, because now you can hear from your customers, right? They're your professionals and so I think talking like this is very helpful to both parties to hear from you and from each other and I appreciate you guys having this space.

@musicmanwiththeplan shared that he has had issues with leads being inaccurate, and our team is looking into to see if we can help to solve!

And @AGradeNevada, one of our newer Community members shared — I want a platform that will support the level of the brand that I'm building. I'm excited to understand that you guys all seem to have a community. Some of you seem to attend this regularly, and it's a support system that I don't currently have now. So I'm just looking forward to understanding more.

It was a really great discussion and we look forward to many more of these! For those of you awaiting follow up from me, stay tuned! And, I hope to see all of you and more next time as we celebrate a great year and toast to the year ahead! RSVP here.