Goal: Local search to replace directories
Roto-Rooter
Roto-Rooter is North America's largest provider of plumbing and drain services, with business locations serving approximately 90 percent of the U.S. population, one town at a time. Not one to be complacent with the changing marketing landscape, Roto-Rooter knew it had to adopt a creative strategy to increase its web presence, drive website traffic, and cement its position atop the industry. According to a recent Nielsen survey, 50 percent of consumers turn to search engines to find local businesses versus 24 percent who still use the Yellow Page books.
The challenges for a dispersed franchise organization like Roto-Rooter is that there are thousands of terms a potential customer might use (e.g., frozen pipes, leaky tub, kitchen plumbing) when searching, and those have to be multiplied by literally hundreds of geographies.
Paul Abrams, Roto-Rooter's public relations manager, has been very pleased with the results of the company's blogging strategy thus far, and attributes the success to the way blogging has humanized the company in the eyes of consumers. "No one would expect home improvement service industry professionals like plumbers to utilize Web 2.0 marketing techniques, and that's exactly why we started blogging," Abrams says. "Blogging has been an ideal way to differentiate ourselves from the thousands of other players in this market. The quick return on investment has far outweighed the expectations I had when starting our blogging program."
Targeting between 25 to 50 blogs per geography, Roto-Rooter is achieving an ROI of about 135 percent. In addition to the SEO benefits, Roto-Rooter has further differentiated itself from the competition by blogging about the way its plumbing service professionals double as superheroes to rescue family pets, needy animals, and prized personal possessions for customers.
"One of the aspects I've enjoyed most about blogging is its ability to give Roto-Rooter a true personality," Abrams adds. "We've blogged about everything from cats rescued from underground pipes to customers' diamond anniversary rings that our technicians recovered from deep inside sewers. Blogging gives us a platform to showcase the lengths our service professionals will go to when customers need our help."
