Pool and spa marketing is what we do. If you’re an up-and-coming pool and spa business, you’ll need to learn the ins and outs of pool and spa marketing, local SEO, social media marketing, and a few elements specific to pool and spa marketing to make things work.
Here’s the best collection of tips we can offer (unless, of course, you want to meet up with our sales team ….)
What’s Different About Local Marketing for a Pool and Spa Business?
Most of the pool marketing tips and tricks you find online are specific to national businesses and ecommerce stores. While local pool and spa dealers can absolutely benefit from an ecommerce store, unless you’re running one currently, you need local marketing advice, not national advice.
When it comes to marketing a local pool and spa business, you don’t need to worry about reaching a national audience. But you do need to saturate your own market with ads. In the age of digital marketing, you can do so with localized Google ads. But don’t discount the other search engines, like Bing and Yahoo. While their share is less, they still account for billions of online searches every month.
What’s a good monthly Google ad budget? That depends on your market. If you’re in a small town, and the nearest pool and spa dealer is 50 miles away, you might be able to generate adequate leads for $500 per month. If you’re located in a more heavily populated area with lots of competitors, start with $1,500 per month and see how you’re performing after 2-3 months.
What Do I Need to Know About SEO for My Pool and Spa Business?
Your website needs to be optimized for SEO. Huh? Well, that means that it contains all of the keywords you need to target. For example, if you’re a spa dealer, you’ll need keywords that tell Google, Bing, and other search engines what your pages are about.
Remember how we said that local pool and spa dealers don’t need to try to reach a national audience? This applies to SEO and keywords, as well. So, if you’re a spa dealer in Omaha, Nebraska, you don’t need necessarily to rank well for “hot tubs” but you do need to rank at the top of search results for “hot tubs in Omaha,” “Omaha spas,” and “hot tubs near me” in local searches.
SEO research is a deep pool, and to do it well you need a great deal of knowledge and experience. But you can do it reasonably well in a small market without much competition if you weave in keywords for each of your product and service lines, and sprinkle in plenty of mentions of the areas you serve in the process. Don’t forget to add keywords like “water testing,” “pool service,” and, “hot tub chemicals.” If you sell it, you’ll need to utilize keywords for it.
How Do I Use Social Media Marketing for My Local Pool & Spa Business?
We often utilize LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, and other social media platforms for some of our clients — particularly the B2B clients like manufacturers — but for our local pool and spa marketing clients, absolutely no platforms beat Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Facebook is where you’ll catch your mature crowds with deep pocketbooks. (Think grandmas who want a pool for the grandkids and grandpas with bad backs who need a hot tub.) Instagram is where you’ll nab those Millennials who own homes and have disposable income to invest in a pool for the growing family.
While producing good YouTube videos and ads is more work than producing Facebook and Instagram posts, these ads and videos are well worth your efforts. This is where you set yourself apart from your competitors by providing amazing visual content. Share images of the pools you build. Show them how hot tubs get delivered to their home. Create videos on how to do water testing right and how to add chemicals. Google actually ranks video content better than most written content, so YouTube is an amazing SEO boost!
Pool and Spa Marketing is as Easy as 1, 2, 3 (Sorta)
While there’s a lot of to-dos on this list, you don’t have to take it on all at once. If you’re just starting out, your first step should be a great website. That’s the digital marketing equivalent of your storefront. So take as much care and attention with your website as you do your showroom.
The second step should be adding search engine advertising to drive traffic to your website. The better you’re doing with your SEO strategy, the better your search engine ads will perform. Even if you’re paying for ads, Google still looks at your overall SEO rating when displaying ads to shoppers. For example, if your website is SEO optimized, but your competitors are using outdated, spammy SEO strategies, your ad will likely end up on top, even if they’re spending a few dollars more on their monthly Google ad budget.
Then we recommend supporting all these efforts with a strong social media strategy. If budget is a concern, start with Facebook. Add Instagram when you can. Then support all those efforts with a strong YouTube channel.
Maximize your content’s value by sharing all your blogs on Facebook and Instagram, and promoting all your channels on the others. For example, add social media buttons to your website and YouTube channel, and frequently share your YouTube links on Facebook and Instagram. Get the most bang for every content buck you spend.
Don’t Take On Too Much Too Soon
All of these tips for the new pool & spa dealer may sound like a lot. You are already wearing so many hats. You are a business owner first and foremost. But, if you’re just starting out, you’re probably also the accountant. And the manager. And a salesperson. And a technician. Do I need to continue?
The point is, you already have a lot on your plate. Continuous digital marketing was probably not something you accounted for. But it’s okay. We can help.
At The Get Smart Group, we help pool and spa dealers all over the country with their digital marketing. Whether it’s monthly marketing management, social media ads, managing reviews, sending email broadcasts, or all of the above, our services have you covered.
Schedule a free 30 minute consultation with us today. We’ll discuss exactly how we can help you with digital marketing for your new pool and spa business.
