Service Magic, Good Or Bad?

cowtown

I joined Service Magic about 2 months ago and so far I'm frustrated with the results, anyone else with the same experience? I would also be interested in hearing from people who have had success with online marketing.

Last night I went on the internet seeking out information about contractors experiences with SerM. I came across this forum and it's been talked about before but I was hoping to hear from contractors who like or dislike the Service Magic leads. It seems to me that the service should work. I do get leads every week but the percentages that turn into jobs is very small. Is this just the reality of it? Is SerM being overly favorable to the consumer at the expense of the contractor? They advertise "prescreened contractors" but what about somehow qualifying the lead? I mean you call people right back after they submit their information to Service Magic and you just never hear from them again.
For example on my most recent lead for interior painting I called the homeowner within 24 hours (the job won't start for 2-3 months) and he said he was all set with the 3 estimates he was getting...that cost me $30 and I don't even bid on the job.

Charlie
Sunrise Painting

hauoli63

Welcome to the new and improved Service Magic! That will probably be the way most of your leads will pan out. Service Magic used to be great .... good leads, affordable lead fees .... but not any more. They've raised their lead fees and all I ever get from them are junk leads. Either the customer is no longer interested or they've already got someone even though I responded within a half an hour of receiving the lead. It's gotten to the point where I very rarely accept any leads and am considering dropping them all together. Too expensive with no returns.

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~~ Lisa ~~

www.chantillyplumbing.com

George Z

Hi Charlie,
I have no experience with SM but other lead service I tried,
results were not very good. Similar to yours.
However the great majority of our new leads come from Internet marketing.
There are a lot of posts on this issue here.

__________________
Toronto Painters Commercial Painting Commercial Painting Toronto Toronto Office Painters
Painting Toronto Blog

vinylguy

service magic leads plain suck here in pa. can't ever get them to call back answer the phone. or if they do it was a 12 yr old just playing on the computer. the concept is great but the results sucks

Grumpy

This thread has been asked and answered many many many times.

The quality of a service magic lead is pretty much junk now, except if it is an exact match. I've got more than a 50% closing on exact match type leads.

I used Service Magic to build my former bosses business but they quality of the leads has dropped through the floor. There is a high volume of leads though and if you are aggressive enough in calling the customer back immediately you can get good results but you have to be immediate in your call backs.

Mike Finley

That might be a little bit of the problem, from what I have heard the most successful users of SM wouldn't consider calling a lead within 24 hours calling "them right back". They talk of calling the lead within 3-4 hours or don't call it at all. The evidence seems to exist from the customer telling you he already had 3 estimates by the time you called him.

AAPaint

We call our SM leads back IMMEDIATELY. They will ring your phone in the field if you set it up that way as soon as a lead comes in. However, the quality of the leads has severely declined in the few months we've been using them. Now, they're just the jerks that swipe $30-100/week from my business account. I keep hangin in there because I've found a gem or two in their leads, but I'm about to jump ship....some leads I have found to be totally bogus.

__________________
-AAPaint

AA Quality Painting & Pressure Washing LLC
Jacksonville Painters
Jacksonville, FL.

firemike

Same here. At least 50% of the leads are either bogus (bad phone number/email/contact info) or just plain dead-end (tire kickers/people playing/etc.) I am ready to jump ship as well. The few good leads I did get are not worth all the aggrivation and wasted time from the others.

I believe at one time ServiceMagic used to be a professional company with the welfare the contractor (their only source of income) at heart. But it seems they have lost sight of that and don't really seem to care that so many contractors are unhappy, and are tired of wasting their hard-earned money on worthless leads. Over half of what I spend with them is wasted money. I am seriously considering charging for estimates. I may still have to pay for bad leads, but at least I won't waste my time with "tire-kickers" for nothing.

It's too bad too, as ServiceMagic has developed a great system in theory, but sooner or later the bottom will fall out and when enough contractors get fed up and quit, and they will fall by the wayside like so many others. People know that they can submit as many requests as they want for anything they want and it won't cost them a cent. I have gone to look at jobs and all they wanted was to pump me for information and ideas so they could do the job themselves.

My personal opinion is that they should charge a fee for submitting a work request, then issue them a credit/coupon or something. Then, if they hire a ServiceMagic contractor to do the work, they can turn in the credit/coupon to get their money back or credit toward the job. By charging a fee, I think they would eliminate a lot of the "tire-kickers" and bogus requests, and give contractors more qualified leads.

I have been looking into alternative sources, but most seem to be the same story with a different name....

cowtown

Thanks for all the replies. I did respond immediately to another lead today and it looks like I'll get that job. I never thought of marketing as a race to be the first to respond to a lead but it can't hurt.

Charlie

bob the builder

The early bird gets the worm....

Mike Finley

Really? Time is always a factor. Haven't you ever set an appointment for an estimate far out and then had a customer call you the day of and cancel for some excuse other than the real one which is they already met with a contractor that they struck a deal with so they don't see any need to meet with you?

BuilderRemodler

Does or did anyone receive Service Magic Exact Leads?

How did these work out?

WolfAtRest

I've called leads back within 15 minutes and had the same thing happen.

It's a ripoff all right. You'll get tons of leads but most are completely worthless. If you go to their website as a customer not a contractor you'll see that the whole thing is set up to get you a "free" quote. Nice for the customer, but sucks for the contractor as many people are just looking for a general idea of what the cost will be but have no intention of doing anything now. Then they have the "Exact Match" lead. They tell you this is a lead specifically tailored for your company and no one else gets it. What actually happens is that you happen to be the only contractor in the area that wants that type of lead, so since they can't charge several contractors for the same lead, they charge YOU more for the lead, it has nothing to do with how qualified you are, it's just a way to make the most money from the lead. I just canceled my account with them and I'm sure I'll be getting multiple phone calls from them telling me how much money I'll be losing by doing so. So far I've lost far more money on bogus leads than I ever spent on advertising. Do a good job and go with word of mouth, it's still the best advertising method out there.

TBE NYC

Me and my bodys both joined to this scam company called servicemagic.
We signed up for exat match leads which is mormaly one on one business with the client. I called the guy set for an appointment. You know what happend?
Both of my bodys got the same exatmatch.... 5 guys gat the same lead as an exact match.
We are suing service magic. If anyone have the same experiences writem me and can joine to a law suit against servicemagic.
So far we are in very good position.
So pls feel free to let me know if wnyone have the same experoences

God Bless All

silvertree

Well good luck, Service Magic has some guys post here and they promise this stuff gets taken care of. So look up their rep on CT, he wants to talk to you. Use the search feature.

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Kitchen, bath, St Paul remodeling
Minneapolis Remodel Blog
203K Loan Consultant Minnesota

DQSpec

Look Service Magic is what it is, I know because at my old job I sold against them with a competing online service and here's what I saw when talking to you guys day in and day out. First leads are leads and just that, so if you understand how and where they get them then you understand the success or failure rate. How and where: Is from the internet from banner ads, searches and other pay-per-click driven avenues, most say get free, 3-4 free quotes so the customer thinks they are getting an email with a quote in some cases, but the others are legit people needing your service who go on and fill out information for their needs. It is also different for a particular area of construction like a plumber might have a higher success rate then someone who doesn't do service work. The other is budget and company setup, if you realize it is a numbers game then you have to be setup for this kind of ad campaign so what I saw was contractors who had a $2-500 budget were not as successful as contractors with higher budgets and staff. What I mean is you have to have someone dedicated to call ASAP when the lead comes in because it goes out to 4-5 other contractors (remember their motto is when contractors compete you win) so time is of the essence. The biggest thing I see with contractors is that you are the last to embrace technology IE: Internet, SEO website, PPC campaigns etc. Service Magic understands this and get most of their leads from the internet, you can do the very same thing with the "proper" internet presence (proper SEO website with lead capture, PPC campaign with lead capture). You would then actually be using your website and advertisement campaigns to convert customers into a datebase and then sales therefore showing you an ROI and not "just another cost" of doing business. You guys get calls about internet advertising all day so remeber, you can't get on the front page of google in a week unless you use PPC, directories for the most part don't work because you can't stand out and if the guys or gal who call has to do it today then they are high pressure sales and that campaign won't work in the long run.
Hope this helps.

DavidC

DQSpec, It does seem like you have something worth sharing with your posts. I wouldn't normally advise a consultant, I'm sure you know the importance of proper presentation. If your pinky could hit that enter key once in awhile it sure would be easier to read what your sayin'.

Our limited success with SM was a combination of a few factors, at least IMHO.

1. We were the first in the area to try them. There was no others getting the same leads for at least a couple of years.

2.There is a nearby Army base chock full of younger people. They move into the area and don't know who to call but they do know how to use the internet and SM knows how to attract them.

3. It was fully understood that it was a numbers game that would include at least some crap. For quite awhile we sold plenty enough work from their leads to cover the costs.

My turn against them also was a combination of a few factors. The first being that I accidentally discovered they were using our company name to drive leads to their website where I could pay for them. After a strenuous effort they did cease the activity but I never really got over it.

Next their marketing efforts began to pay off and we started getting some competition for the leads. Only a couple of other companies, but it made quite a difference when we were used to being exclusive.

Finally the groin kick to the economy that gave us 3 mos. w/o a sale. It stopped working and we got off the bandwagon.

Hanging out here has shown me that I could invest the $$$ in our own website and achieve similar results. That's the direction I'm heading in and can't see going back to SM in the future. There are a number of other minor issues that I experienced with SM but weren't major deal busters. We also tried a couple of other lead generators for a year with dismal results. When the ax fell, it fell on them all.

Good Luck
Dave

__________________
www.CookContractingLLC.com

Rita Lee

The problem as I see it is that SM has a high ranking site and they outperform my own site in the search results. So I find my website competing against my own company's listing in the Service Magic website for the same keywords. They even got the Yahoo Local Search directory listing, and so Yahoo maps links to their site for my company instead of my own. This handicaps my own site rank. Just my two-cents.

Rita Lee
multi-m-contracting.com

THEHANDYMAN

SERVICE MAGIC has worked for me, second year with them with great results. Do they work for everyone in every area NO! Do they work if you yourself don't work the leads NO! You have to sell yourself, if a customer don't answer the phone try e-mail try another phone call. I call just as soon as I get the notice, no way I would think of letting a lead just sit for 24 hours before contacting. Explore around the site, man there is some awesome stuff taylor made to help you out and help you sukseed. Just today I turned in 3 different bids that were from SM, all of them I typed up with some forms I found on SM. Just used MS WORD to fill them out, they looked real professional and will give me an edge over some hand written sheets of paper. I used both bid estimates and contract form. They are professionaly designed easy to use and look good.

There is a TON of free self help on the site both written and video. These ppl are pros at their job just like us they know what they are talking about. Use them if you only get one idea that will work for you, the effort is well worth the time. They are there to use free of charge it comes with the package. Call SM ask for some help or advice, they are always willing to help. Have one guy that has been working with me lately and I have learned much. I get the same leads as you guys, some answer some don't some I never hear back from no matter how hard I try. But as is mentioned it is a numbers game you have to work the numbers to be a winner. I several times have had to turn off my leads off for a few days to several days as I was getting to far ahead of myself.

WEB SITE is great but no way I can compete with SM, they have the marketing power that I could only dream of. Word of mouth is great and we get several referals and work from past customers. But if you don't have a wide customer base you are not going to survive by word of mouth only. Till someone can show me a better way I'll be gving my money to SM each month. It is a good feeling having it to give. I service ppl that I never would have seen other wise, they wouldn't know I exist.

RobSantGCS

I have been with SM since 07. I use them as a supplement for my business. You can't rely on them exclusively as far as I am concerned. A lot of the calls are curiosity seekers. I recieved 25 leads, 7 led to good jobs, I more than made up what I pay for the service but there is a lot of running around for the other 18 I lost. They can be frustrating. Even when I call back a customer in ten minutes I have been told they already found a contractor???? Now that's fast! I have been told by Service Magic that the calls go out to the five contractors at the same time, but I can swear it doesn't feel like it when I call the customer, I feel like Johnny come lately!
My area is lower Fairfield County, CT I would be curious how it is working for other Contractors in my vicinity. I am still only luke warm about the service .. They are always sending a survey asking how they can improve thier service... But I am not convinced they are reading the comments? To be continued....