servicemagic.com

[shane mapes]

i've been wanting to try servicemagic.com to see if it will help with my lco. i have read threads on this site , but i wanted to find out currently from you guys what you think. i have already talked to a rep. and he claims no set-up fees and no contract. basically can stop at any time. i would like your input... thanks in advance

[MowHouston]

I've got no experience with Service Magic, but I'm gonna check em out.

I've been using Superpages with great results. But there is a year contract with them.

[MowHouston]

Update: While going through my profile set up, I see there is a $99 activation fee:

"IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE $99 US ACTIVATION FEE

One time charge for screening, processing and activating account
Only charged if account is approved
Transmission of billing information is protected by a secure server"

[shane mapes]

Update: While going through my profile set up, I see there is a $99 activation fee:

"IMPORTANT INFORMATION ABOUT THE $99 US ACTIVATION FEE

One time charge for screening, processing and activating account
Only charged if account is approved
Transmission of billing information is protected by a secure server"

i was told that it would be waived because he has been trying for a year to sign and said that i would only be charged for leads..hopefully true.

[MowHouston]

Yeah. I wouldn't doubt them doing that to get you on board.

I had a website optimization company approach me asking me to sign up for their services for $550 down and $100/mo.

When I told them I don't have the money for it (an obvious excuse) they said they would take $50 off of the initial fee and give me 2 months free if I signed up -that- day. haha.

I haven't found anything on there about how much it is for leads though. Any info on that yet?

Also having trouble with them accepting my card for some reason. Says my card number isn't valid and it is... Probably gonna have to talk to a human to get that fixed. Ah well.

[shane mapes]

the rep. stated that leads are from $5.00- $12.00 per lead . the $12.00 lead is for exact lead and the other is for someone n the ball park as to what i do. i'm mostly a mow and go so i would assume that all my leads will be $12.00..

[MowHouston]

Hey Shane, I just got a call from my assigned rep and had him explain everything to me so I understand the deal now.

I couldn't get him to waive the $99 fee for anything other than if I referred 5 people to ServiceMagic.com hehe.

He says that $99 goes towards the application process as well as the "web site" that they set up for you. (Which is where they direct your leads to) He says it is important that you have pictures of your work and stuff like that on your website.

You're right, its $12 per lead for lawn maintenance. They basically match the customer up with the contracter, but, they will match any given customer with up to two more contractors other than yourself. So when you do get a lead, you better respond fast and hope you're better than the other guy.

I asked him the percentage of leads in the lawn care industry that actually turn into customers and he said it would be at least 1 out of every 5 customers. Given that, you might be paying $60 to get one customer.

So if that customer turns out to be a $30 weekly lawn, that has paid for itself in about two weeks or so.

I dunno. I would have to test it out to see how well it works. I mean, they're still in business since 1998, but for me, it seems (for now) that Superpages is a better solution for me. I spend about $240-260/mo to advertise online with them and that lands me about 10-15 new customer per month during the growing season and about 5 per month Nov-February.

Service Magic might work out for you since you are in a smaller city. Least you could do is give yourself a budget of $60 for the month, let 5 leads come in, and see how many of them convert into customers. If it doesnt work out, then at least you know it doesnt.

Good luck.

[Team-Green L&L]

Waste Of Money!!!!

[MowHouston]

Waste Of Money!!!!

You've used Servicemagic.com?

[Team-Green L&L]

I've used them and 2 other ones just like them with a little different programs, but one thing was consistent. The leads we got were not very strong and cost us WAY too much for a cold lead. Not to mention that they give the leads to 3-4 contractors in their network.

So, for $150 a month you can get 9-11 leads that they will give to 3-4 contractors.
Keep in mind that all those 9-11 leads will not be good for your company, but you still have to pay for them.

If I remember right, that was ServiceMagic's program, but I may be wrong. They may have had the other one:

Leads cost between $14-60 each (depending on job size) and they are still cold leads and, more often than not, tire kickers.

I have heard positive references from guys that are only doing fertilization, like Tru-Green and Scotts, but that's about it.

[MowHouston]

Yeh. Seems like a bum deal.

Probably better if you have higher paying work, as in, another industry outside of lawn work. Pools, landscaping, etc

[Team-Green L&L]

Pools, landscaping, etc. are what we do. Not a good avenue. Installation attracts "tire kickers" that don't know what building costs are and want you to drive 40 miles just to tell you how they "can help in labor" to reduce the costs. Well...you know where that goes.

[kandklandscape]

Dont do it, for the cost we spent around $350, got a job an hour and half away thinking it maybe worth while to do the job, well after running into about 5 problems, fuel costs went up of course. They paid for the additional problems but thats besides the point.

Point is that we spent around $350 on servicemagic.com We got a nice job out of it, JUST ONE! The job was a 10k job, however after spending $350 on around 30-40 leads???? Does not sound like it is a great service. It costs average $100-$125 to obtain a new customer, check some studies these numbers are pretty current and correct. So out of the $350, we should have obtained at least 2 customers. Not one.

So I would not use servicemagic.com ever again. Now I would say for some of there markets it maybe good for this servicemagic.

Renovationexperts has worked great for us. Spend total $175 a year, we get average 2-4 customers a year. So thats $87.50-$43.75 per customer, thats a steal!

Go with renovationexperts.com not servicemagic.com

There is also a new landscape one that came out, never tried it yet.

[Ravenwood Landscaping]

I used Service Magic last summer to help start up my business and I thought it was very good, at least in my area. The website is actually decent. It's a boxed website, so yours will look like everyone elses, but at least it's there. Customers can give you ratings and if your rating is high, you have a tendancy to stay higher in the search engines. Whether this is on purpose or coincidence, I don't know.
The leads I got were good. Only a few of them weren't relevant and I got credit for them. And despite grumblings I've seen on this site, getting a credit is easy when it's actually wrong. I got a few decent sized accounts ($3K each).
The use of this site is entirely up to your effort though. The references go to three contractors and in my experience, the first responder is typically the one that gets the job. I've only had a couple of people actually look at all three companies. You will also find that out of the three, many times only one will call. So if you put the effort into responding, it will pay off.
You can get customers info from a text message right away, so if you are on a job, you can call without having to wait until you get near a computer.
I think for the $1000 or so you will put into this site over the course of the year, you should have no trouble making 10x that amount from the people you get.
Again, this is only my opinion and experience, so take it for what it's worth.

[flhntr]

i use service magic lead cost 12-18 dollars im very happy with them i sign up 18 customers for monthy contract in two months one time fee of 49 dollar and 12-18 per customer it paid for itself pretty ouick for me 18 customers averaging 120 a month per customer

[Team-Green L&L]

We have focused our money into long-term marketing and it has paid off. We used RE and SM and did get some jobs, but they were using SM or RE (not us).

After spending 2 years branding our company, we have found our "direct traffic" (users that type our domain URL into their address bar and not through search engines or any other link) increase to almost 60%.

This is quite significant (although it did cost $10,000 in advertising) because of this:

We used to get 200-400 unique visitors each month and sell 4-6 jobs a mo. from them.

That was with a "direct traffic" rate of 28%.

Now, we're seeing 600-700 unique visitors a moth and selling 10-16 jobs from them.

This is with a "direct traffic" rate of 65%

As you can see: our traffic increased by 25% but our conversion rate more than doubled.

If all that made sense to you, then you're welcome...if not, then read a little and you'll make a couple extra bucks without having to endorse a third-party site in order to drum up business.

[hackitdown]

I use service magic, and it works for me. I do strictly maintenance. I allow them to sell me leads only in 2 towns, and I only get mowing leads. They charge $12 per lead for mowing. I close about 1 in 3 leads.

[ken6224]

They told me it was $17 per lead.
That's a little more than I will Pay for a Lead :hammerhead:

[Team-Green L&L]

It all goes by your area (how many leads they avg. per mo. in your target area).

[jamo1911]

I have used them for 1 year now. It's totally hit or miss. I have had great leads that have paid for themselves and horrible leads that did not or worse were wrong #'s, other contractors "checking" the system etc. I keep them because I am aggressive. My business is 100% design build so one job can easily support the cost for the year. Compared to my yellow pages ad they are cheap for the amount of leads I get.

[kootoomootoo]

We have focused our money into long-term marketing and it has paid off. We used RE and SM and did get some jobs, but they were using SM or RE (not us).

After spending 2 years branding our company, we have found our "direct traffic" (users that type our domain URL into their address bar and not through search engines or any other link) increase to almost 60%.

This is quite significant (although it did cost $10,000 in advertising) because of this:

We used to get 200-400 unique visitors each month and sell 4-6 jobs a mo. from them.

That was with a "direct traffic" rate of 28%.

Now, we're seeing 600-700 unique visitors a moth and selling 10-16 jobs from them.

This is with a "direct traffic" rate of 65%

As you can see: our traffic increased by 25% but our conversion rate more than doubled.

If all that made sense to you, then you're welcome...if not, then read a little and you'll make a couple extra bucks without having to endorse a third-party site in order to drum up business.


nuttin like trying to dazzle with numbers.
All those "jobs" and still a non existent portfolio on your website. Little ironic dontyathink.

[scagwildcat]

Waste Of Money!!!!

i used it for almost a year, they promised me all these leads that no one else had for my area,they said that they were getting alot in my area but had no lco's signed up. i did get leads that i had to pay for, it was about ten a week, i went on only one estimate! and they lady told me up front that she tried servicemagic because she was looking to have the job done cheap! all the rest were jobs that didnt pertain to the jobs i do. and the rest were all way out of my service area, even though i told them what my area was! i would say that if you feel like giving your money away and getting nothing in return try them out!!

[jk landscape]

The people that use service magic are looking for the cheapest price. Most of the jobs are jobs that u wouldn't want anyway. I gave estimates out last spring for 20 leads and only landed one job. AS far as someone calling for work u don't do or out of ur area u get it refunded. This takes a little while becouse they call the homeowner and look into it.

[Deltacare, LLC]

I have used servicemagic for a few weeks now. Slow season obviously, however, here is my two cents.

Had quite a few leads. I have my dollar limit set at $150 per month. There is some truth to all previous threads good and bad. There are a lot of tire kickers out there so far. There are also some serious people out there. IF you put the pencil to it, you can figure out exactly what you are spending per job landed. Much better than most advertising. The setup fee is $99 which I think is very reasonable. Try running an ad in a quality, targeted paper for less. I have landed on plow account which has lead to six others in the same neighborhood. That is about $500 each snow in a very small area. That will translate into about $1500-$2000 revenue for the next couple of season assuming a decent retention. So far I have spent about $300 for that job.

I am going to give it a few months to see how it goes. It only takes about 1 in ten leads to bid acceptance to make it worth while depending on the type of job. One $5000-$10000 job pays for an entire year. Also, you build the cost of advertising into the job, you shouldn't have a problem making it work.

I think a lot of it depends on your area. Its like everything else in life, not going to make you rich, but might make you a few bucks.

[Uranus]

All this reading reminds me of something. I need to go and delete the 6 messages I got from service magic this week. I looked at there web site and submitted a little info to see if I could find out what they were all about. 8 of my last 25 calls were from them.
I think I will pick up the phone next time they call and get rid of them.