Article's Content
Article's Content
Businesses such as construction companies, HVAC specialists, plumbers, electricians, pool services, landscapers, and pest control providers typically deal with a wide array of logistics as they interface with customers on a regular basis. Although these trade businesses are structured in a way that’s begging for software support, the industry has long been neglected.
For one thing, many of the past technology offerings have been clunky and difficult for users to learn. And trade professionals are often turned off by the price tag of software platforms or feel they’re too busy to handle the implementation.
“I just do things the way I always have,” one contractor told me. “There’s already enough to worry about, so I don’t want some system that might fail me during the busy season.”
ServiceTitan is finding success as it reassures some of these late adopters, which is driving their rise to prominence among trade businesses. And that performance has emboldened investors, who have poured in $1.1 billion in funding over the course of eight rounds.
Let’s dive deeper into what ServiceTitan is offering and how they’re connecting with an audience that traditionally has resided far from the cutting edge of technology. Spoiler alert: ServiceTitan’s primary strategy can be summed up by the name of the host who stars in the company’s YouTube video.
Leveraging the Blue Collar Nerd
ServiceTitan’s integrated SaaS platform provides tools to help professionals run their businesses, manage their offices, and improve their customer service. In the words of the company, “ServiceTitan is equipping tradespeople with the technology they need to keep the world running.”
But how is the company connecting with individuals who are inexperienced with technology? By speaking their language and drawing clear lines from the platform’s features to solutions for the customers’ pain points.
No medium does this more clearly than their YouTube channel, hosted by an affable, glasses-wearing guy known as the “Blue Collar Nerd.” He consistently posts videos on helpful topics, such as sending job progress photos from your phone and improving appointment efficiency with a scheduling tool.
These Blue Collar Nerd videos are punchy and move at a fast pace. And they’re key to ServiceTitan’s efforts of meeting trades professionals where they are and speaking their language.
It brings to mind the Similar-To-Me Effect, which is defined as “a cognitive bias that explains our tendency to prefer people that look and think like us.” This effect comes into play when we review the top-performing videos from ServiceTitan’s YouTube channel. The testimonial videos featuring electricians, plumbers, and other trade professionals are by far the most popular.
As you can see, two videos surpassed 300,000 views, while there are eight with over 100,000 views. When people look like us, talk like us, and are part of our group, we tend to listen. More importantly, we believe what they’re saying.
So ServiceTitan leans heavily on customer testimonials, as they’re an ideal way to promote benefits in a relatable way. And when they need to say something themselves, such as an explainer video for a new platform feature, they unleash the Blue Collar Nerd.
The Power of Connection
Because the trade industries have long been neglected regarding technology, there’s some wariness and disinterest from many businesses within the industry. They’ve managed this far just fine without SaaS solutions, and those individuals who might have tried tech in the past were sometimes burned by its poor design and function.
Within this context, ServiceTitan has more educating and reassuring to do than comparable tech providers in other industries. The effectiveness of their trust-building efforts are reflected in their Semrush Authority Score, which measures domain and SEO strength within a given industry.
One of the key factors in a website’s Authority Score is the quantity and quality of backlinks directed their way. Just as Google’s crawlers interpret such backlinks as a signal that a site’s content is worthy of links from other reputable sources, Semrush boosts sites with good backlinks.
What’s important is that ServiceTitan’s score is on the rise and is among the highest in the industry. Here’s where five of their top competitors fall:
HouseCallPro.com
CoConstruct.com
ServiceTrade.com
Workiz.com
GetJobber.com
As you’ll notice, HouseCallPro.com and GetJobber.com have comparable Authority Scores to ServiceTitan, while the other three contenders are rated substantially lower. Paid search is a main component of the success that HouseCallPro.com and GetJobber.com have found, and their recent increases in that category show their continued emphasis in that category.
ServiceTitan’s secret sauce for website performance, on the other hand, is backlinks and organic search. They have 1.2 million backlinks, which is more than all five of their top competitors combined. And their organic search traffic ranks near the top of the industry.
These numbers aren’t surprising when you remember ServiceTitan’s efforts to connect with its audience in its own language. This relatability and trust prompts more industry sources to link to ServiceTitan in their content, providing crucial backlinks that result in a stellar Authority Score and better performance in Google results.
Let’s take a closer look at where some of these ServiceTitan backlinks are coming from:
The vast majority of their backlinks are directed from NADCA.com, which is the website for the National Air Duct Cleaners Association. The relevance of a major trade association linking to ServiceTitan lends credibility, boosts search engine performance, and suggests that ServiceTitan’s efforts to connect with its audience are finding paydirt.
Other prominent backlinking websites from within the industry include sewerman.com and 1800plumber.com. These sites are frequented by the very people ServiceTitan is trying to reach, so the backlinks are dynamite.
Knowing that ServiceTitan hasn’t emphasized paid search much, let us evaluate their organic search performance trends over the past two years. The hypothesis here is that by incorporating trust-building testimonials from businesses within the industry, backlinks from prominent trade organizations, and a healthy dose of targeted content from the Blue Collar Nerd, ServiceTitan would gradually build an industry presence and reputation that draws strong organic traffic.
As you can see, ServiceTitan has indeed enjoyed an upward trajectory. This organic traffic is second only to GetJobber.com, confirming the success of ServiceTitan’s strategy.
A closer look at the traffic share reveals that the vast majority of ServiceTitan’s visitors use desktop computers rather than mobile devices. When a business website gets more than 80% of users on desktops, it can be tempting for the owner to ignore the mobile aspect.
But ServiceTitan’s team is smart enough to know that their mobile users still matter and that the desktop-heavy trend will likely be flipped on its head in the near future. The fact that many of the videos on ServiceTitan’s YouTube channel discuss topics related to business functions on a mobile phone show that they are helping lead that charge in the industry.
Let’s take a look at the mobile version of their website, which is well designed and manages to get all the relevant content above the fold.
In the header, they’ve included a “Get Demo” CTA and a hamburger menu. Below is a headline that perfectly sums up their pitch to clients. If I have any quibble with the headline, it’s the lack of punctuation. The headlines and subheads throughout their website lack ending punctuation, which is an acceptable stylistic choice so long as your lines don’t include commas. But some of the lines on ServiceTitan’s website include commas, which creates the awkward visual of punctuation in the middle and then an ending that leaves the reader hanging.
Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest let’s move on.
In the center of the homepage is a more prominent CTA with email capture. It’s helpful to get a visual of the dashboard below this CTA for context. And the AI chatbot is a nice addition, as modern consumers often prefer this resource for getting information.
The mobile-friendly mindset embraced by ServiceTitan is essential to their mission of staying ahead of the pack by staying closer to their audience. The fact is that tomorrow’s audience will always be different from today’s. And if you don’t anticipate that evolution, you’ll be left behind.
Leaning Into Innovation
ServiceTitan is helping lead the technology charge into the trades industry, which has been neglected far too long. You might think it would be an all-hands-on-deck mission just to bring adequate tech to an underserved industry, but the ServiceTitan team is dedicating significant resources to pushing things to new heights.
They have taken this approach to a whole new level with the launch of Titan Intelligence earlier this year. This suite of AI tools provides more visibility into data and trends than ever before, with the purpose of helping trades businesses optimize their operations, save money, make better projections, and deliver better service to customers.
You can imagine how much of a competitive edge a business could enjoy with a tool like Titan Intelligence, as it’s not common within the industry. Data analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning are staples of some industries, but trade businesses typically don’t have deep experience with them.
To bridge this experience gap, ServiceTitan is developing a wide array of educational resources and offers customer service to answer questions and help set customers up for success.
“Titan Intelligence is bringing the power of data and AI to the trades on a scale that has never been seen before,” says Vahe Kuzoyan, co-founder and President of ServiceTitan. “This industry will no longer have to wait years, or even decades, to take advantage of modern technological innovations. The launch of Titan Intelligence represents a giant leap forward for the trades, and another example of ServiceTitan’s commitment to provide contractors with access to the best technology to fuel their business.”
With the launch of Titan Intelligence, ServiceTitan has added another arrow to its trend-setting quiver. There’s a risk that clients will become overwhelmed by the new additions, so it’s imperative that ServiceTitan continues to pave the way for their clients with educational content.
Here’s a look at the resources section of ServiceTitan.com. In addition to the expected blog and tools, they provide step-by-step guides, webinars, and training sessions.
This commitment to educating their clients and preparing them for success seems to be paying off. Their website draws nearly two million visits each month, and the average duration is half an hour. That long of a stay suggests high engagement from users, and the fact that it has grown so much recently suggests that ServiceTitan’s new offerings are getting researched and implemented by their target audience.
If you want to build a rock-solid customer base like ServiceTitan, look for ways to speak your client’s language. It’s not enough to simply solve their problems, as they’ll never get the message if it isn’t delivered in a way that resonates.
Use customer testimonials, industry endorsements, and empathy to establish lasting connections. By doing so, you’ll set yourself up for success today and well into the future.
