Service Magic?

[Contemporary Carpet Clean]

I was thinking about joining ServiceMagic. Has anyone used them before? Their program is a pay per lead program. Any feedback with using ServiceMagic would be great. Thank you.

 

[Jtuseo]

I used it for 2 years. It is not bad, you have to be the first person to call the customer. That is the most important thing. You get the text or call stop what you are doing and call them right away. you need to close 50% of all leads otherwise you will lose.

 

[Becker]

I used it for 2 years. It is not bad, you have to be the first person to call the customer. That is the most important thing. You get the text or call stop what you are doing and call them right away. you need to close 50% of all leads otherwise you will lose.

Agreed, but also some people use the system that are not 100% ready to buy, or not at all just playing with it.

I hated service magic.

I'd call, no answer, I'd leave messages no reply, I'd email no reply.

And I called instantly when I received the text..

 

[Connor]

Don't.do.it.

Nobody ever stays with them for a reason.

 

[AshleyMckendree]

Its GREAT the first month or so.... then out of nowhere you will get TONS of leads that WONT answer there phone. I suspected SM of FAKING leads to get more $$ out of me.

STAY AWAY, that company along with GROUPON needs to DIE.

 

[Goomer]

Results will be based on your "demographics", how many competitors are servicing the zips you service, and your response time to the lead. Start off small with your immediate local area first.
It can be a very frustrating service, because you WILL have to swallow some bad leads, but the facts are a lot of potential customers are using SM.
If you REALLY need all the work you can get, there are some great leads off SM, but you gotta take the good with the bad.
Everyone should at least try it in their own area, and then decide.

 

[Connor]

Its GREAT the first month or so.... then out of nowhere you will get TONS of leads that WONT answer there phone. I suspected SM of FAKING leads to get more $$ out of me.

STAY AWAY, that company along with GROUPON needs to DIE.

It's a game SM plays. Internet consensus in every industry says the same thing about SM.

 

[AshleyMckendree]

Its GREAT the first month or so.... then out of nowhere you will get TONS of leads that WONT answer there phone. I suspected SM of FAKING leads to get more $$ out of me.

STAY AWAY, that company along with GROUPON needs to DIE.

It's a game SM plays. Internet consensus in every industry says the same thing about SM.

I would also have 2 or 3 leads every week that were just other company's in various industry's "Testing the waters" , when I would talk to them I would politely tell them that they just cost me 10 bucks and that they should tell SM what they were doing... and they would politely say "Whatever" and hang up

 

[keithk]

Yeah, hated them. they were the only ones who made money.

 

[Connor]

Something like SM could work if you offered immediate free in home estimates and out shined any competition. But that'd be hard for most O/Os to do.

It's not that much to get a lead, but you have the resources to work it. The other side to it is that I don't think the leads are at qualified as legitimate. Some contractors just call for requests to see how which other shops are using SM or SM makes up the leads in the first place.

 

[handdi]

run -run fast faster no faster yet

 

[FredC]

in the end I paid an average of $30 per customer...which isn't too bad....


that was when they ranked much better in the search results though

 

[Goomer]

SM does have a credit system in place for leads that are found to be false. Most of my requests for credit have been granted when the contact information is not correct, or the customer grossly misstated their needs, unfortunately they will not approve a credit request for price shoppers and morons.
Many times I have been frustrated and ready to dump SM, and that's usually when I land a couple if sweet leads.
Results will always vary depending on where you are, and how you play the game.

 

[GeneMiller]

funny they called me today to sell me their leads. never thought twice about saying no thanks , from the sound of it sounds like i made the right decision .

gene

 

[idreadnought]

Never Never again. For two bad experiences.

First one, I get a lead set up an appointment to do an estimate. go out to the house give the estimate lady says thank you. I ask if she wants to set up an appointment. She says no not right now. I usually do it mysels I was just wondering what it cost to have it done proffessionally. Apparently, she called them about a heating and air problem. While on the phone they asked her if there were any other services that she might need in the future. She wasn't a good lead, just a lookie loo that wanted to know how much carpet cleaning cost.

Second one, I booked a job for a customer. The customer typed my name in google and they found me through sm. For that lead that wanted to change his appointment it cost me $30. Save your money and do your own adwords campaign.

Don't believe us? Go to a plumbers message board, a heat and air message board, any other home service message board and they will say the same thing..... RUN!

 

[Charlie Lyman]

Many times I have been frustrated and ready to dump SM, and that's usually when I land a couple if sweet leads.
Results will always vary depending on where you are, and how you play the game.

That was the problem, I didn't want to play anyone's games. I ended up spending money each month for pretty much nothing. I am usually higher on Google than them anyways.
Don't waste your time and money.

 

[Mikey P]

just hire Full Circle to answer your phones


amazing how much can get away these days if you are not ON TOP OF YOUR PHONES

 

[dgargan]

Your better off getting listed with Angies list. Find some of your customers that are members and have them fill out a report on your service. The more reports the better for you. Also you can do some paid advertising with them. The return is much better than Service Magic and the customers for the most part are high end.

 

[GeneMiller]

and yet they called me again today, i should have told them they don't rank to high on Mikey's Board , maybe they would come here and advertise.

gene

 

[caleb211]

We have not tried them, and we probably will not after reading this... Thanks!

 

[Dmreed4311]

To this day you will find my business listed in various place with their phone number, I quit them years ago. They own citysearch and even if you delete the listing it gets added back up a month later. They are on the way out, I have not heard a commercial for a couple of years and they rank terrible in my area for google, bing and yahoo. They have lost their steam.

 

[Becker]

To this day you will find my business listed in various place with their phone number, I quit them years ago. They own citysearch and even if you delete the listing it gets added back up a month later. They are on the way out, I have not heard a commercial for a couple of years and they rank terrible in my area for google, bing and yahoo. They have lost their steam.

Yeah. That whole my business name thier phone number pissed me off.

Discovered it 6 months after I told them to take a hike.

Took work to clean it all up.

 

[Connor]

7]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBpsbgMtBEc7]

 

[Newman]

As said above - I did get some great jobs but I also I experienced the same problems. The absolute worst part was the SEO they did with my good name and their phone number in my market, that they are good at. It is hard to unring that bell once they put it out there on the internet. It took over a year before the SM phone number for my company was completely gone.

You have the option to turn SM off for a while - during that time I did a test call for my company and their answer gave me the impression that I was out of business, so if an existing valued customer found the number and called...dang!

Google SM before you decide, Read up on info from sources other than SM, search SM on this and other forums. They are the Angies List EVIL twin. Angies List has been awesome for me in my market.

If you do not have and do not intend to have a web presence on your own, SM may work out for you. My lazy ass Brother in Law has run an HVAC biz exclusively off SM for over 5 years. Not very successful but he does survive.

 

[Derek]

from my experience, if your goal is to be the cheapest then you will get some work from SM. that isn't my goal. out of perhaps idk 70-100 leads they have sent my way over the past 4 years or so, perhaps 25-30 were bogus (i got refunded on MOST of them). i got maybe 5 new clients. the rest were only out for the lowest price somewhat amus

at the beginning i used like 50 zip codes...bad for me. i am down to like the 5 closest zip's now. i want to be able to drive to their home and measure / give a quote if i can.

 

[greentech]

I used it for 2 years. It is not bad, you have to be the first person to call the customer. That is the most important thing. You get the text or call stop what you are doing and call them right away. you need to close 50% of all leads otherwise you will lose.

Agreed, but also some people use the system that are not 100% ready to buy, or not at all just playing with it.

I hated service magic.

I'd call, no answer, I'd leave messages no reply, I'd email no reply.

And I called instantly when I received the text..

Same here. I used the system just like they told me to. I would say that maybe half of all "leads" that I paid for I couldn't even get the person on the phone.