Word of mouth still works – It just looks different

By Emma Peterson. 

Angi’s co-founder stops by for a conversation about how contractors can build trust and generate leads in a digital world.  

Before the advent of the Internet, word of mouth was one of the best ways to find new business as hearing another person’s positive experience is key to building trust in a new client. And just because we have the Internet doesn’t mean that word of mouth and trust-building are no longer powerful, they just look a little different. To learn about how word of mouth operates in a digital era, Heidi J. Ellsworth sat down with Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angi, for an episode of Contractor Outlook™. 

Angi, formerly Angie’s List, was founded 30 years ago, prior to the advent of the Internet. At that point, it was a call-in service and newsletter. Angie explained, “You would call in and ask me something like, ‘Hey, do you have any plumber for me?’ And I would get their info and then call around the area and say, ‘I have someone who needs a plumber. Do you have a plumber that I can add to our list and we give them a review.’”  

This method helped a lot of contractors and homeowners, but the huge jump for Angi was when the Internet came around. Angie shared:  

It didn't change the purpose of our business, which was always about helping homeowners feel confident in the experts they are bringing into their home and trusting with their money, but it did change how we achieved that. Instead of relying on traditional word of mouth, where you might find a contractor because one person has hired them, Angi was able to become a resource for people where they can hire based on 20 people’s experiences that are available to read about online.  

This shift in Angi’s business operations showcases a larger change happening in the world of contractor marketing – the way word of mouth and trust-building happen are no longer in one-on-one conversations or interactions. Angie explained, “In the pre-Angi days, contractor lead generation was basically just putting an ad in the yellow pages and making sure your business started with an ‘A’ so it showed up first in phone books... Today, it’s grown beyond that. We have a whole new generation of homeowners coming up that grew up in a digital world and their expectations from an experience standpoint are different.”  

How is it different? People expect immediacy; they want to be able to go onto a site like Angi to see 20 reviews in one place, rather than asking individuals around town, or they want an instant estimate from a contractor and will look somewhere else if there is a three-day wait time. Trying to deliver on this can feel overwhelming for contractors, but just as technology has changed how homeowners operate, it has also changed how contractors can operate. Angie elaborated on this:  

We’ve grown Angi to include some tools that can help make your process more efficient and speedy. For example, we have messaging tools that allow you to set up a custom message to send if you are in the middle of a job and can’t respond to inquiries immediately. This is a great place to show who you are as a company, to tell the customer about your business’s story and really build trust by letting people get to know you. 

Because even though the way we go about it has changed, building that trust through word of mouth has always been and will always be at the heart of a successful contracting business. 

Listen to the newscast or Watch the recording to learn more!