Increase Your Leads with TrustMark

“How Would You Like A 43% Increase
In Your Internet SEO Leads
Within 12-Months?”

43% Increase In Leads!  This is really what happened to one ‘service industry’ after they joined TrustMark and they started to encourage all their TrustMark approved contractors to adopt the tagline...

“Working to Industry & Government Endorsed Standards”.

They took five different companies within their industry and monitored their current on-line leads, then monitored their leads once they became TrustMark approved and using the tagline “Working to Industry & Government Endorsed Standards” on all their marketing, Quotes, Letterheads, vans … in fact everywhere.

Overall an average increase of 61% in leads was found across all five companies with an amazing 43% increase from the FREE SEO (or getting to the top of Google) boosted by their trade bodies ‘consumer facing’ website.

Did these results happen over night?  NO

Did they come from just the TrustMark website alone?  NO

BUT COULD CARPET CLEANERS GET THIS RESULT?  YES

“Also, How Would You Like Leads From Over 18 Different Government And Consumer Groups?”

As TrustMark is a consumer facing Government programme to help stop rogue traders by endorsing approved contractors, they have over 18 ‘Government’ and ‘Consumer Protection’ groups supporting and driving leads to the TrustMark site.   

Here are a few you may recognise… 

2012 was a record year for the TrustMark website and people searching for ‘Approved Trades’.  In fact there were 3,890,526 searches form the public last year … that’s an average of 324,210 consumers per month looking for new trade service.  (These numbers are available for download from the TrustMark site).

Yes, we agree TrustMark and their website was originally set-up for the ‘Building Trades’ and these will always receive the lion’s share of the leads, however, there are more of the smaller ‘home service’ category’s being added and searches for other services are growing in number. 

For example, below I have listed three trades that are close to carpet cleaning and the actual number of searches for each of them in 2012.

Flood Recovery Specialists……..204,363

Floor Covering Installers………….43,999

Garden Landscapers………………..86,253

While the ‘Flood Recovery’ does include damp proofing, and therefore may be higher as more of a building trade, we suggest ‘Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning’ would receive more hits than ‘Floor Covering Installers’ who are not really a service provider in the same way (ie installers are not used as frequently as cleaners).  

Garden Landscapers maybe ‘closer’ to carpet cleaning, not for what they do, but as a ‘service provider’ and therefore we’d estimate the number of searches for ‘Carpet & Upholstery Cleaning’ to between 43,999 per year and 86,253 … around 65,126 per year and growing.

Now does being TrustMark Approved sound more interesting??

Getting Work Direct From The NCCA

The NCCA has never set out to provide its members with work, if you look on the website it states…

"The principal objective of the NCCA is the establishment and maintenance of minimum standards within the carpet and upholstery cleaning industry, with the dual aim of safeguarding the reputation of the industry and protecting its customers, whether in the domestic or commercial sphere.”

As a trade body we hear all the time of people expecting the NCCA to find members work.  An average of 70 enquiries per month come in to the office by phone or via the internet. These are fairly distributed to members on the basis of locality and are not, as has been suggested in the past, given to directors.

Regardless of this, more and more cleaners are demanding the NCCA do something to help.

We are listening and want to help.

With the number of new ‘multi-trade associations’, and on-line ‘approved-trader’ directories most of whom have no standards relating to our industry, it was decided that we need to find some way for our members to stand out from the rest and build consumer confidence.  

It was suggested by some members that we fight for government recognition but the truth is carpet and upholstery cleaning isn’t regarded as a ‘dangerous actively’ like fitting a gas appliance in a home.   Therefore it is highly unlikely the government will ever award us a scheme like ‘Gas Safe’.

Nevertheless, we looked for something we can use and for 18 months the NCCA directors, led by the Membership Director Glyn Charnock, have been worked incredibly hard behind the scenes to enable the NCCA to build an exclusive arrangement with TrustMark.

In October 2012, Glyn announced he has managed to agree an outstanding deal for the NCCA members with TrustMark.

Instead of the mandatory independent inspection (costing between £250 and £500 every 3 years) of your full company, including financial checks, equipment and cleaning procedures inspections, TrustMark have agreed to waive this normal requirement in favour of cleaners who are …

• Fully paid members of the NCCA  
• Abide by the NCCA’s ‘Code of Practice’ 
• All work to comply with PAS 86:2008 standards 
• Minimum of two years industry experience   
• Signed Health and Safety policy 
• Fully insured to a minimum of £2m and ‘Treatment Risk’ cover 
• Have attended an Advanced Spot & Stain Removal course.  

All you need is to attend at just one approved training event every three years to maintain TrustMark accreditation.

So The deal is done…   

The NCCA have arranged an exclusive deal with TrustMark so your company can become endorsed by the Government and consumers will be able to find you under our a category of ‘Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning’ on the TrustMark website.  

Now It’s Your Turn…

All we need to do to open this category, is offer ‘national coverage’ of approved cleaners.  The government sets this at a minimum of 60 companies (unless a specialised section).

And here lies our problem…

A little like which comes first … the chicken or the egg?

To get the category open, we need 60 approved cleaners...

To get 60 approved cleaners, we need the category open!

You would think it would be easy for us as a trade body with almost 600 members, to reach 60 cleaners within a few weeks, but as yet only 10 members have signed up, and although some others have come forward and requested information, if they if they don’t sign up and soon we may lose this opportunity.

TrustMark is not a chequebook organisation… the NCCA can’t just pay the fees for 60 members, we need 60 members to come forward and agree to become TrustMark approved.

If you are ‘sitting on the fence’ and waiting to see when (or if) the category will appear DON’T, YOU MAY BE TOO LATE!

New NCCA Web Search 

Once we have the category up and running the NCCA will have the option to change the way people search for a member.

Part of our restructure in 2012 was to add the new-tiered membership, which has been designed to recognise continued and long-term support of the Association and reward additional training beyond the basic criteria for joining, the aim being to raise standards within the industry. 

Therefore our search may no longer just offer the nearest members… it could show TrustMark members and the tiered membership so consumers can select which level of member they want rather than just which member is closest.

In addition we could help with your SEO.  At this moment, if you was to type ‘carpet cleaning’ and ‘your town’ name (for example ‘carpet cleaning Leicester’) into Google, a NCCA listing will not be on page one.  The NCCA website and directory was never designed that way.   However, with SEO the new search directory will come up, and although we can’t guarantee it we are told this should be on page one for towns we have NCCA members.

The new search capability on the website is only in the pipeline and isn’t going to be set-up until we have at least 60 members in TrustMark.

Should Having ‘No Category’ Stop You
From Joining TrustMark Now?

The answer is NO!  Without a doubt, using TrustMark now in your own marketing, both on-line and off-line could give you the jump on your competition.   

The cost of TrustMark is currently only £150+vat.   In total £180, which works out to £15 per month or only £3.50 per week.  So for less than 50p per day you could be using the tagline “Working to industry Standards and Government Approved”.

As a NCCA Member, if you have attended the NCCA’s (or other recognised course) on Advanced Spot & Stain Removal recently your entry training requirements are complete. 

If you haven’t attended an Advanced Spot & Stain Removal Course, the NCCA with give you a voucher for £100 off the TrustMark fee (the NCCA will pay this to TrustMark directly) if you attend one of the next two NCCA spotting courses.

Then you can start marketing yourself as being ‘Government Approved’ or ‘Government Endorsed’.

We recommend you use a tagline like this …

“Working to industry Standards and Government Approved”

One area you can use TrustMark approval with immediate effect is in a ‘Google Pay Per Click’ (PPC) campaign.  If you look at the image below this ‘sample’ advert uses almost all the allowed number of letters you can have in one Google PPC advert.

This is a sample of a Google advert … so you can see it works.

The FIVE steps to follow for a great PPC advert are…

1. First line, give the subject ie ‘carpet cleaner’ and your local town name. If you have other services like upholstery or additional towns make additional adverts. We also recommend you also make additional adverts for different uses of words like ‘cleaner’ or ‘cleaning’.
2. Use the ‘Display URL’ … this does not need to be your website home page so can add more information.  Shorten your URL and add something like www.YourWebAddress.com/TrustMarkApproved.   Remember to keep the words together (no spaces) and to make it readable by adding a capital letter to the start of each word.
3. Use a strong ‘Tagline’ like Working to industry Standards and Government Approved this fits in.
4. Use the ‘local’ STD phone number to match the town in the top line of the advert.  This way people will know you are local and often don’t need to click the advert saving them time and you money.   
5. The actual URL (not the display URL) should direct people a ‘LANDING PAGE’ on ‘YOUR WEBSITE’ which explains about your company working to NCCA and industry standards and being approved be the Governments TrustMark scheme.

 

I ‘Trust’ you can now see the benefit of your company becoming a TrustMark approved cleaner, and look forward to seeing you make the change.

I hope you liked this information and if you have any questions please call the office on 0116 271 9550.

Regards

Keith Robertson
NCCA Vice President and Marketing Director

PS. If you haven’t ready signed up please do so now, and start gaining more leads … it will only cost you £180 for 12 months, less than 50p per day and you can use the TrustMark name and logo in all your marketing.