Author:
Malcolm Porter
Between managing your fleet, sorting permits, handling logistics and juggling customer service, marketing can easily slip to the bottom of a skip hire company’s to-do list.
But generating new leads is essential to growing your business. Whether you’re covering domestic waste removals or partnering with construction sites for large-scale clearances, staying visible online is crucial if you want your skips booked out regularly.
At Advance Online, we’ve helped many skip hire companies get found by the right customers at the right time in the right locations. In this blog post, we walk through proven strategies for attracting more skip hire leads online, from setting up a solid website to social media – and everything in between.
Your website is the digital shopfront of your skip hire business. It needs to be clear, quick and trustworthy.
Visitors should immediately understand what you offer: the skip sizes available (mini, midi, maxi, builder’s skips, etc.), delivery and collection times, pricing (helps at this stage) and how to book. If it’s hard to navigate or looks outdated, customers may leave before making contact.
It’s also important that your website is mobile-friendly. Many customers will be searching from their phone while on a building site or during a home renovation. If your site isn’t easy to use on mobile, you could be losing business.
Make sure you also include the following:
In short, build a website that clearly explains your services, represents your brand and portrays a trustworthy and reliable company. That way, you’ll turn visitors into paying customers.
Did you know that the top search result receives up to 40% of the clicks?
When someone types “skip hire in Surrey” or “cheap skips in Reigate” into Google, your business should be right there at the top.
That’s where Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) comes in. SEO is all about making your website more attractive to search engines, such as Google, so they place your website near the top of the search results. Local SEO is exactly what it sounds like: SEO but within a specific geographic (i.e. your) area.
Local SEO is especially important for skip hire. After all, you’re not going to make much profit delivering skips to Newcastle when you’re based in Brighton. You want to appear in results when someone is searching in your local area.
You can do this by:
Interested in discovering more about Local SEO? We’ve written loads more content about it – why not start with our ‘Comprehensive Guide to SEO for Local Businesses?’
Google Business is increasingly trusted by customers looking for local services, and that’s no different for skip hire.
Setting up a profile is free and only takes a few minutes. Make sure you include your service areas, phone number, business hours, website link and photos of your skips.
Google ranks Google Business profiles based on three criteria: ‘Relevance’, ‘Distance’ and ‘Prominence’.
‘Relevance’ refers to the closeness of the match between the search term and the services offered, so make sure all your skip hire services are accurately described in your Google Business profile.
‘Distance’ refers to the distance between the searcher and the service area of your business, so this needs to be accurate too.
‘Prominence’ is mainly about the number of positive reviews you have. Once your profile is live, encourage (happy) customers to leave reviews. To make it easier for them, provide business cards with QR codes that, when scanned, lead directly to your profile.
When people need a skip, they rarely shop around for hours – they want fast service, upfront pricing and immediate availability. That’s why PPC advertising, such as Google Ads, is so effective.
By running targeted ads for terms like “skip hire near me” or “8-yard skip Birmingham,” your business can appear at the very top of Google search results.
You only pay when someone clicks on your ad, so every penny goes toward capturing people who are actively looking to hire a skip. The amount you pay is decided by ‘bids’ between those competing for the ad spots. For ‘skip hire Birmingham’, for example, it’s around £0.50.
Just make sure the page you send people to is built to convert, with clear contact info, fast loading times and a simple booking process. If you can convert one in twenty visitors, that’s only a tenner spent to secure what may become a return customer for years to come.
Ever found yourself going down a social media rabbit hole, watching professionals clean old rugs or clear overgrown gardens? Well, you’re not alone!
It’s no great secret that everything has its place on social media, and that’s no different for skip hire. Posting before-and-after shots of clearance jobs or timelapse videos of a skip filling up can be strangely satisfying for social media users. What about showing the most outrageous items you find in your skips?
Social media helps grow your online presence and builds trust by humanising your brand. You can also use it to post special offers and pay to ‘boost’ them into users’ feeds.
Publishing helpful content on your website is a great way to attract visitors and build trust.
Speak to customers’ reservations, questions and pain points. They’re probably concerned about skip regulations, permits and whether they’re booking the right size.
Think blog posts like:
These articles can rank in Google and bring traffic to your site. If you answer someone’s question better than anyone else, there’s a good chance they’ll become your customer. Content also improves the SEO of other pages – by linking them internally, you can share their authority.
While not every customer will need a skip again soon, builders, landlords and businesses often do — and staying on their radar can lead to repeat bookings.
Send occasional updates, useful tips or seasonal offers. Even a simple email like “Need a skip this summer? Here’s 15% off” can generate bookings from past customers.
Just don’t overdo it. The goal is to be helpful and visible, not annoying.
There are plenty of ways to monitor the performance of your digital marketing, but make sure you do the following at a minimum:
Use the data in the above tools to make adjustments to your strategy, for example, by improving the copy of a webpage, targeting new keywords or building new backlinks. You might also decide to expand your marketing efforts by, running PPC or email campaigns if you aren’t already. Monitor the impact of this change, adjust again if necessary and repeat.
Still not convinced digital marketing is for you? Then take a look at this skip hire case study. We show how we helped our skip hire client obtain over 8,000 new leads in 12 months.
With enough time, patience and know-how, it’s possible to market your skip hire business in-house. But if all of the above sends you to sleep or reads like gobbledegook, it could be time to seek out the professionals.
Advantages of employing a local digital marketing agency include:
The days of relying solely on word of mouth and the Yellow Pages are over for skip hire companies. Now, if you’re not visible online, most potential customers won’t even know you exist.
From building a strong local SEO foundation to running smart Google Ads and staying active on social media, a consistent digital marketing strategy will help you fill more skips, more often.
If it all sounds like too much to take on yourself, consider working with a digital agency that specialises in local trades. Because every empty skip is a missed opportunity — and the right marketing puts your business exactly where it needs to be: in front of people who need it.
Running a business can feel like spinning plates. Accounts, marketing, recruiting, inventory, prospecting – the to-do list goes on and on (and on…). And then on top of it all, another problem lands in your lap; a one-star rating on your Google Business Profile.
You’ve invested time and money into your website, and you’ve dabbled in SEO. The homepage looks good and appears to be ranking okay for the right keywords. But you still have a nagging concern: Is the website generating enough leads?
It’s 9 am on a Tuesday. You’ve barely touched your morning coffee, and already your inbox has three new messages….
At times, a Google Business Profile (GBP) can feel like a website in its own right. It appears when someone searches your business, it displays your hours, phone number, directions, reviews and photos.
Changing agency wasn’t supposed to be this difficult. Really, it wasn’t. But your incumbents have decided to drag their feet because – well, just because, and it’s all turned into a bit of a nightmare.
They flood your inbox. They clutter your browser. They ring you up when you’ve finally – finally – found a moment of peace.
That’s right, we’re talking about companies offering ‘cheap’ digital marketing.
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