ORCHARD PARK, N.Y. — Eco Serve Pest Services, Orchard Park, N.Y., is focusing this year to the season of giving. They not only work hard to control pests but are working hard to make philanthropy fun and filled with team work.

In October, Eco Serve completed its third annual Breast Cancer Fundraiser for the Breast Cancer Network of WNY. The entire team wore pink everything: boot covers, buttons, gloves, and new this year: pink face masks (thanks COVID)! In addition to spreading awareness throughout the community, the Eco Serve team sold raffle tickets for a chance to win a Buffalo Bills Gameday Giveaway Prize Pack! It included a filled Bills cooler and a 10 person catered dinner kindly donated by Chiavetta’s Catering.

Audrey Hall, president of Eco Serve, said, “I know as a mom, we all have so much on our plates right now. Our health is often put on the back burner which is why this awareness and cause is so special to me.” Eco Serve matched up to $2,000 donated and with donations received of $3,360, the Breast Cancer Network of WNY received a check for $5,360. Hall added that, “Our team, our customers, and our friends all came together. I am blown away by the enormous hearts in our community!” 

Eco Serve then doubled down on the spirit of giving in November when they adopted four children from a local Army Reserve Unit. Hall said, “This was really important to us. We have added on incredible team members who are Army and Marine veterans, have family who are vets, and most near to me, my mother Christine, who is an Army Vet.”

Eco Serve Pest Services connected with Jason of the KIA Memorial Road March (KMR) where every year they host a holiday party filled with presents, food, and cheer for families of the military. “The KMR goes above and beyond for our veterans. They are such incredible people, and we were so excited to work with them on this project,” Hall said.

This year, the KMR adopted 30 children from a Buffalo-based Army Reserve unit. Eco Serve took four children from the list, two boys and two girls, ranging from age 2 to 4. The entire team at Eco Serve took a field trip to the local toy store to pick out gifts and stocking stuffers for each child. “It was a total blast,” said Hall. “We all felt like a bunch of kids again and it was a great way to bring our team together for something so near to us.” 

To address these challenges, Brannes has assembled a team that includes his father, Gary Braness, Ph.D., who has had a successful industry career holding various positions in research, product development, and consulting acts as a technical research director. Together, son and father connected with a consulting team from the University of North Carolina to assess the industry, conduct innovative research, and develop statistical models which led to insights that sparked the concept of DataWave. To balance their combined 60 years of industry experience, they partnered with Pedrom Rejai, who was the project lead on the consulting project and will serve as Market Data Analyst. 

Braness said DataWave is is poised to provide actionable insights for business leaders, technical teams, and marketing managers that are tasked with making decisions on products that have the ultimate mission of protecting health, food, and property. DataWave’s first offering will be a syndicated report focusing on the ecommerce market segment.

Editor’s note: CO2, a pest control industry conference presented by Coalmarch that focuses on marketing, sales, and customer service topics, was held virtually last week. Attendees heard from a speaker lineup that included Tim Pollard (Arrow Exterminators); Mike Romney (Fox Pest Control); Ian Robinson (Massey Services); Bobby Jenkins (ABC Home & Commercial Services) and more. Another highlight was a presentation from Coalmarch’s Rachel Betterbid, who also played a big role in the creation of Coalmarch’s 2020 Pest Industry Marketing Benchmark Report.

To emphasize just how drastically digital is changing the marketing landscape, Coalmarch Vice President of Digital Marketing Rachel Betterbid reminded CO2 attendees that in 2019 smartphone traffic pulled even with desktop traffic.

“People are consuming digital content on an hourly basis,” Betterbid said as part of her opening remarks during her presentation titled State of the Industry — Marketing in 2021. “So it's no surprise that digital marketing has become the main way that businesses are advertising themselves the last five to ten years, with more traditional means of advertising like billboards and print ads and TV ads essentially dying out.”

These smartphone usage numbers are only expected to increase, creating “a situation where people are using their phones more and more to find really fast solutions and to engage with businesses just like yours every single day,” Betterbid said.

DIGITAL MARKETING AS A NECESSITY. Coalmarch’s owner is Donnie Shelton, who also owns and operates fast-growing Triangle Pest Control (TPC), Raleigh, N.C. Betterbid used TPC as an example of a company whose steady, consistent growth has been driven exclusively through digital marketing. Specifically, Triangle has focused its resources on search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click (PPC) efforts in order to dominate search engine results pages (SERPs).

“Coalmarch’s main marketing strategy [with Triangle] has been gaining what I would call search engine repetition and dominance,” said Betterbid, who then showed a Google screen capture where the words “Pest Control and Raleigh” were searched. At the top of the first page, in the paid section, Triangle Pest Control showed up twice: once in the Google local service ad and again in the traditional pay-per-click ad. In the organic section of the results page, in the map section, Triangle shows up first, and it is also the No. 1 organic result. “This shows that Triangle is showing up four times on one page, which also happens to be the very first page. That's a lot of real estate to take up on search engine results,” Betterbid said.

How did Triangle attain such dominance, and how can other companies improve in these areas? It starts with Google Services ads. “It is the very first thing people see on a pag when they search, and they get about 14 percent of all clicks,” she said.

Another area of importance is the Google Map Pack, which is important because this section includes reviews. Lastly, organic search results (driven by SEO). “This portion gets majority of the clicks (45%) and continues to be one of the best investments for your marketing dollars.”

2021 AND BEYOND. While Betterbid stressed that Google still dominates the landscape and that performing well on Google is critical to home services businesses, she said Coalmarch and Triangle Pest Control are investing in and investigating other areas.

The goal is to have an omni-channel marketing strategy, “which aims to provide customers with a seamless experience no matter where they are or what device that they're using. And the operative words here are multi-channel and seamless experience,” Betterbid said.

Digital marketing channels Betterbid said PCOs should keep an eye out for in 2021 include:

Amazon — Amazon has rolled out numerous new advertising features the last couple of years, including traditional display ads. “You don't necessarily need to be selling a product in order to be advertising here. You can be a brand that just wants to direct traffic to your website,” Betterbid said. Right now, Betterbid said this is very expensive and cost prohibitive for most pest control companies, but she said, “I think in the upcoming years, Amazon is going to continue to try and compete with Google.”

Instagram story ads — Since Instagram began selling story ads, they have become extremely popular as marketers want to reach the half-billion people who visit Instagram daily. “I personally look at Instagram stories more than I do my actual feed,” said Betterbid, who added, “it’s a great way to get your brand in front of people in several different areas throughout Instagram.” 

Influencers — Influencers are people on social media who have a sizable following and are able to influence or affect the purchasing decisions of whomever is following them. Although not common in the pest control industry now, Betterbid encouraged PCOs to look into influencer marketing. “I think it can help boost general brand awareness, trustworthiness and brand advocacy.”

Facebook Messenger — It's becoming even more popular for consumers to talk directly with businesses via Facebook Messenger, Betterbid noted. In addition, Facebook Messenger has added new features like auto responders, chat boards, etc., that businesses can utilize to provide real-time information to several customers at once. “In addition, I think that simply monitoring Facebook Messenger and making it part of your daily process and your CSRs' daily responsibilities is going to be really key.

DiLucente joined the company in January 2017. He was instrumental in many aspects of the company’s strategy over his four-year tenure, including the spin-off of American Home Shield into the publicly traded company frontdoor, inc., the international expansion of Terminix, the sale of the ServiceMaster Brands franchise segment, and the ultimate transition of Terminix into a pure-play pest control company. Under DiLucente’s leadership the company returned value to shareholders through operational improvements driving organic growth, accretive M&A, significant debt reduction, and the successful execution of the first share repurchase plan since its IPO in 2014.