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If you own a home-service business in Canada, you’ve likely heard of HomeStars. It’s the most popular contractor referral website in Canada for homeowners to find local businesses.
But is HomeStars worth it for business?
From plumbers and carpet cleaners to electricians and HVAC specialists, service companies can use HomeStars to generate more leads and increase their sales.
Customers can write reviews of businesses on HomeStars and the companies with the highest ratings can expect the most leads and attract more customers.
So to maximize your HomeStars investment, getting more reviews should be a top priority.
NiceJob’s review marketing software integrates with HomeStars to 4x your customer reviews as an easy way to set your business apart from the competition.
But how exactly do HomeStars and HomeStars reviews work? And how can you get the best use out of HomeStars to ensure you’re not throwing your money away?
In this post, I’ll outline HomeStars reviews and discuss the importance of reviews. Plus I’ll reveal how to get more HomeStars reviews to book more jobs and increase your sales!
HomeStars is the largest directory of local home-service companies in Canada. They have over 130 business categories for potential customers to browse.
We’ve included it on our list of the most important contractor referral websites that local service companies should know.
What sets HomeStars apart is that it caters only to Canadian homeowners looking for home services and businesses that provide these services.
Roofers, landscapers, drywall contractors, bricklaying companies and more can generate leads and sales from HomeStars as long as they’re based in Canada.
But how exactly does it work? Let’s look at the distinction between the two different account types, HomeStars Basic vs. HomeStars Brand Builder.
HomeStars Basic is the free version of HomeStars for business. You can create a company profile that potential customers can find to contact you. Although, it has its downsides.
First, HomeStars will display links on your profile to some of your competitors who have upgraded to a paid version.
Check out this below example of a Toronto window cleaner with a free HomeStars account.
HomeStars is promoting three separate competitors below the company information.
Who likes losing potential leads to your competitors?
Second, with HomeStars Basic, leads can only contact you if they manually find your profile on a list for your business category.
With HomeStars Brand Builder, those pesky competitor links on your profile will disappear. But what’s more, you’ll also qualify for the HomeStars Rotation to better attract leads.
When homeowners visit HomeStars, they can submit their information for HomeStars to automatically pair them to a service provider.
Homeowners provide job details of the work they’re looking for and HomeStars will suggest up to three companies from the “rotation” that could be a good match.
It makes sense this would be a compelling option for customers—it saves them the trouble of having to manually sort through a long list of service providers.
So upgrading to HomeStars Brand Builder is something you should consider if you want to secure a chance of appearing in the HomeStars Rotation.
The million-dollar question remains, if you upgrade to a paid account of HomeStars, will it be worth it?
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to that question, but it’s quite possible you can make a profit.
HomeStars claims that paid accounts can expect to receive at least 2-4 monthly leads compared to free accounts that generate zero leads, everything else considered equal.
For the most part, your lead volume will depend on how crowded your industry is and the size of your local market. Some companies receive a dozen HomeStars leads a month.
And other companies that invest in collecting reviews to earn a HomeStars rating above 95% can get upwards of 40 leads a month.
Your rating is your Star Score, a percentage score determined by the average quality of your reviews, how recent your reviews are and how quickly you respond to leads.
And you guessed it, your Star Score is one of the major factors that impacts your odds of HomeStars recommending you in the HomeStars Rotation.
Getting more quality customer reviews on HomeStars increases your Star Score and earning a high Star Score gets you more leads.
Simple, right? More HomeStars reviews = more sales.
And the benefits don’t end there. Getting more HomeStars reviews speaks to why reviews are important in general.
Consider that 97% of customers say reviews matter when trying to decide on a business. And 90% say they trust reviews more than anything a salesperson says.
That means reviews are both important for HomeStars to recommend you and for leads to study them to get peace of mind before reaching out.
We’ve outlined lots of tips for how to get customer reviews. They range from asking for reviews promptly to providing great customer service to leave a positive impression.
However, soliciting for HomeStars reviews can still be a drag. Just like getting Google and Facebook reviews, for instance, it can be awkward and time-consuming.
With the NiceJob HomeStars integration, you can take a lot of the guesswork and manual labor out of the equation.
With NiceJob and HomeStars, you can enroll HomeStars customers into automated review campaigns to increase your reviews by 100%!
You can connect your HomeStars account in one click, create review campaigns and generate HomeStars reviews.
Don’t believe us? Check out our reviews to see what you’re missing out on ;)