Five Home Services Billboards That Stand the Eff Out
Roofing, plumbing, pest control, disaster restoration, lawncare, HVAC, house cleaning, electrical, tree cutting, crawl space encapsulation, carpet cleaning, foundation repair — whew!
Most people can’t name a single local company in these categories.
So what do they do?
They google “plumber near me” and get this:
Those are all paid-for listings.
From a consumer’s perspective, there isn’t much difference between any of these companies. They’re all reviewed highly. Most have been in business for a long time. They’re all “Google Guaranteed.” They all seem to be named after someone.
No one stands out.
There is one medium that does make home services companies stand out.
Here are 5 of our favorite home services billboards that did just that.
Trico Roofing
You might see the multiple designs in this campaign and think Trico spends a ton of money on billboards. Nope. They have a pretty standard annual campaign, but they’re on a rotary program. They only have one billboard per month, but the location changes every few months. This means they’re speaking to a new audience every few months.
Rotary programs have a multiplication effect. People see Trico on different billboards around town and think they have billboards everywhere. In reality, it’s just one.
We also change the creative every few months to coincide with holidays or cultural events. This keeps it fresh. People especially look forward to the holiday-themed billboard.
By the end of their first year using out of home, they were the most recognized roofing company in town. They were able to funnel ad dollars away from paid search They didn’t need to pay for a top search spot because people just remembered their name when looking for a roofer.
ServiceMaster Restore
You might have heard about a teaser or tease-and-reveal billboard campaign. This is when an advertiser posts creative that begs curiosity but holds back on the answer.
In this case, we created a billboard for a fake horror movie called Mold. Now, how is mold that scary? Well, yeah it can be. And that’s exactly what viewers were thinking.
We heard stories around town of people asking about that Mold movie. “When is it coming out?” “Do you know where it’s playing?” “WTF? Mold? Really?”
Two weeks later, we posted the reveal. And everyone thought it was a fun joke. “Yeah, ya got me.”
Did their business immediately skyrocket? Of course not. Restoration isn’t one of those things you buy for fun. You usually buy it when there’s an urgent problem. With consistent billboard campaigns and other fun stunts like this one, they also reduced their paid search budget and have a very healthy brand awareness. New customers still comment that they contacted ServiceMaster because they remember “the Mold billboard.”
Palmetto Mosquito Control
There’s no big idea here. This billboard simply brings the pain of mosquito bites to life. Larger than life.
As you might have guessed, the client increased their brand awareness and had their best season ever. Years later, new customers mention seeing their billboard, and they swear they saw it “just last week.” It hasn’t been up since 2017.
Wack’Em and Stack’Em
With a brand name like that, a headline was completely unnecessary. So we opted to bring that attitude and energy to life with a chainsaw tearing through the billboard.
And it’s not an expensive execution. With some propr design work, these SD extensions looked 3D.
This bad boy was just so big and simple and striking, it took my breath away.
1st Class Painting
We thought, “If they’re 1st Class, what’s 3rd class?” So we showed what hiring a 3rd class painter gets you—a mess.
This created quite the buzz. People kept going into the gas station next door to tell them someone spilled paint all over that van for sale. And we overheard people talking about it at a restaurant down the street.
This kicked 1st Class Painting up a level. Years later, they are still going strong and have grown into one of the city’s most well known painting companies.
You, too, can stand the eff out.
We want to be your billboard experts. From creative to planning to celebration. Let’s get up to something.
