More leads

MoonlightMerchandise

I realize that I am in a niche market (embroidery). I have been on TT for 6 years and I would like to grow my business. The number of qualified leads I get each month make it hard to even maintain a top pro badge. Is there any help for me in TT? It’s a great lead generator, and has lead to some great clients. It only accounts for about ¼ of my business, but over time leads can be invaluable.

WDodson

If you find yourself working mostly with local area where you live, I suggest getting better at local service area marketing. And if you are more regional or international then it's not about LSA marketing, its more about SEO and advertising, possibly. Either way, adding linkable content to your website is probably going to help in google search, but it does take a while. I think most marketing agencies (where most of my career was) try to wean their clients off paid lead gen such as TT and others. Partly because the agency wants that money, and partly because the competition on lead gen platforms is fierce, AND it relies on a large advertising investment by the lead-gen company. BUT, if you become a TT expert then you can probably dial it in better, and make it a key part of your new customer acquisition mix.

I'm not an expert on TT, but I have years of agency experience. My question to you is, how do you acquire the other 3/4 of your new business?

DustiO

@WDodson always dropping the incredible insights! Thank you!

@MoonlightMerchandise have you thought about checking the "I work remotely" option on your profile? @soonerkimmy is in a similar type of niche industry and she recently started shipping her artwork and now has clients from all over. Is that something that could work for you? I'm not super familiar with the types of jobs/leads you get now, but that may be something you could try? Depending on what the customer needs embroidered?

MoonlightMerchandise

Two things to know. I embroider on garments. Whether I supply them or a customer brings then to me I embroider them. I’m one of the very few professional embroiders in the area that allow customers to bring their goods in to be embroidered.

@WDodson I am familiar with seo and generating local business leads. I have another very successful business in the Seattle area that shows up on the first page of a Google search.

@DustiO I tried an experiment last august and September by casting a wider net and going national. As you say work remotely. Two challenges played out with most leads. One. I thought you were local they often felt mislead and stopped communicating. Two: customers who reach out through TT often do so at the last minute and didn’t have time to ship the garments me. So I gave it a shot, it cost a considerable amount of time and money and ultimately proved a non starter.

My issue is with thumbtack. They have set up a system where it is nearly impossible in my local market to continue to get top pro status. There are just not enough leads in my local market. The top pro is based on number of leads not a percent of the available leads. Otherwise I have an excellent 5.0 star rating, with a response rate of 87% in the first hour. Based on the TT criteria there is no other room for improvement. Except MORE leads. Or change the system. Make it based off a percent of available leads.

During the zoom meeting I saw how some businesses are just crushing it. It must be wonderful to be in such a high demand business. Unfortunately embroidery is not one of those.