MEET THE MEMBER | PPC108 September 2022
Kelly Farrant is the owner of Pest-Tech Ltd in Maidstone, Kent. From a career in the military to starting Pest-Tech eight years ago, Kelly’s business is going from strength-to-strength. Here he tells PPC how social media has helped his business get bigger and busier.
PPC Pest-Tech has a really strong social media presence that we wanted to talk to you about. Which platforms do you use?
KF Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (a little). We go through phases of using Twitter but I don’t feel we get a lot back from it, mostly it feels like shouting into the void. I use LinkedIn here and there, it’s great for getting to the decision makers. You have to make sure you’re more professionally put together on LinkedIn, but you can get big contracts that way. I just won a big guano clearance job there.
But mainly we use Facebook and Instagram.
PPC Which of your social media channels do you think is most useful for bringing in customers?
KF With Facebook you can target groups in your area, so we do get more work coming from there than the other channels. I get notified on posts where someone has asked, “can anyone recommend a pest controller in the area?” and there are multiple comments suggesting Pest-Tech. Those kinds of recommendations are really valuable, these are basically free salespeople for you because you’ve helped them before and now they’re passing your details to other potential customers.
It takes time to build that, but it’s really worth it. There’s a passive element to it too. Most consumers now, when they’re researching a business, they’ll go on Facebook and see what other people are saying about them. And if they don’t see a presence, it could make them disregard your business altogether.
I think it’s worth mentioning that we don’t do any conventional advertising. We get a lot of repeat work and referral work, and our social media presence is enough to show people what we can do.
PPC What would you say is the key to making social media generate leads for your business?
KF All my social media channels are about helping people. When I post I try to pass on information. My theory is that if you can give people as much information as possible, they’ll think ‘this guy knows what he’s on about’ and they’ll pick up the phone to you when they have an issue.
Too many businesses think they can just post a picture of a rat and “we’re here for all your pest control needs” and that’ll do the trick, but people want something more comprehensive. They want you to show that you’re an expert, you know the subject matter and you’re the go-to person when they have questions. You have the knowledge, so show it off!
And honestly, yes – people often want to know if they can sort something out themselves. But if you give them enough information, they often realise they can’t and will come to you.
“Too many businesses think they can just post a picture of a rat and “we’re here for all your pest control needs” and that’ll do the trick, but people want something more comprehensive.”
I get told all the time that we’re crazy because we offer help and basic advice. But at the end of the day, if you help someone solve their problem without them having to spend a penny, you’ve just hired yourself that free sales person we talked about earlier.
KELLY'S TOP TIPS
Try to sell your point - what are you doing and why are you doing it?
Don’t just post things like “Pest-Tech here to solve your pest problems” and a phone number – you have to interest people and show what you can do
Show people things they wouldn’t normally see, people are sponges and they want to soak up information
Don’t be disheartened if you don’t get traction on every post - social media is unpredictable and sometimes the posts you think will do brilliantly get no reactions at all and the throwaway posts generate lots of interest
Don’t post dead pests! There’s a time and place for it, and social media when you’re doing brand awareness isn’t it. What we do is emotive, and even the people who need pest control will still find it distasteful. Don’t create problems for yourself.
They will always champion you to people, so for the price of being helpful to one person, you could get multiple jobs. It breeds loyalty and trust, and that’s really important when it comes to customer relations. Instil that confidence in people, that you aren’t there to rip them off.
PPC Do you think people should use multiple social media accounts or find one that works best for them?
KF I think it comes down to the confidence of the user. I would suggest Facebook and Instagram to most people. It’s debatable as to whether having one that you don’t use often is worse than not having one at all, but I’d say why have it and not use it?
I post on Facebook at least every other day and on Instagram I try to post the same amount, but I’ll admit it occasionally falls behind. Building that presence does take work and time, you might have to sit on your lunch and craft some posts, but that’s what running a business is all about.
PPC What would you say to anyone who considers themselves a bit of a technophobe or isn’t confident using social media?
KF First of all, don’t be worried. As a pest controller you can put some fantastic content out there, things that most people would never know about or see without people like us showing them. It naturally generates interest.
Secondly, if you’re running a business then you have to understand things are moving on. The days of getting in the local parish magazine or the ad-mag are over. You can waste a lot of money that way, when these tools are out there for free.
I started off by going to a couple of free workshops run by a local lady, to understand things like hashtags and retweets and all that jargon. I didn’t have those social media accounts then and I didn’t understand much about it. Those workshops helped me massively, to understand what I should be doing and how it could help build our brand.
Face your fears, you have to get onto it. Otherwise everyone else will and you’ll fall behind.
PPC What about those people who say they don’t have the time?
KF I understand that, because running a successful business is time-consuming. But building your brand is part of that.
You do have scheduling tools like Hootsuite that you can use. You can write one post and then make it appear on all your channels at once. But while I’m doing things like eating my breakfast or waiting for a customer, I’ll use that time wisely and post something. If you have time to sit and scroll on your own personal Facebook feed, then you have time to put a post on your business page and potentially bring in jobs worth a few hundred quid.
Maybe that’s the workaholic in me talking!
“Ultimately, ‘the customer is king’ and you still have to be professional, no matter who is right or wrong. Be honest and polite, and you can’t go wrong.”
INSTAGRAM: A GREAT PLACE TO SHOWCASE PEST CONTROL
A picture paints a thousand words and people are naturally curious. This is a brilliant industry and there’s so much you can show people. Every job I go to I take at least one picture, usually more. It’s a very visual job, you’re going to see lots of unusual and interesting stuff, so show it off!
PPC Something that might worry people is negative comments, so how do you deal with those?
KF Don’t shy away from it, most people are very reasonable as long as you are. We had a couple of negative reviews and I always engage with people, to see how we can do better.
At the end of the day, we want people to be happy with what we do and if they aren’t, we want to try and resolve it.
I never get confrontational, that’s just bad customer service. Ultimately, ‘the customer is king’ and you still have to be professional, no matter who is right or wrong. Be honest and polite, and you can’t go wrong.
PPC Any plans for future social media stuff?
KF I’ve got to start looking at TikTok, I’m not sure how that’s going to go but it’s very popular and we do take some great videos of things like bee removal. I’m doing my homework on it at the moment. I said to my wife that I need to sort out a TikTok account and she said that our daughter is going to be devastated!
I don’t like talking on videos but if that’s what I need to do to sell our brand, then I have to overcome that and just get on with it. I find it exciting too, researching different things that can help my business. Owning a business is a hell of a journey, it blows your mind sometimes.
Source: PPC108