So much has changed since we used to use the big Yellow book from Yellow Pages. Companies are now heavily investing online with Google, Bing and the like. However a recent trend has been the rise of middle man companies such as Bark, Hi Pages and Service Seeking for security hire.
We are going to break down some of the advantages and disadvantages of using sites like these when hiring security services.
The information we discuss may also apply to many other industries and markets but we are focusing specifically on security hire services in this post
So How Do Middle Man Sites Work?
So to break it down. When using a middle man service you need to input your contact details and answer some questions about the type of security hire service you need. The two most popular categories for security hire are CCTV installation and Security Guard Hire
The questions look like
- How many cameras do you need?
- How many security guards do you need?
- How likely are you to hire someone?
- What kind of property is this for?
- How often do you need the service?
- How likely are you to make a hiring decision?
Once you answer a series of questions you then wait for companies to contact you. Usually only between 3 to 5 businesses are allowed to contact you. Your enquiry is sent to all their members but your details are not visible. Only the services you need is visible and the answers to the questionnaire.
What is the purpose of a middle man agency?
The aim is to get as much interest from potential companies to bid on the lead or enquiry. The more companies respond the more money the the middle man makes.
They simply flood company inboxes with lead after lead and paying Google thousands of dollars. These budget aims to stay at the top of search results
The aim is for a company to provide a service, they must be using one of these middle men companies.
Does it help small businesses get more customers?
In most cases yes. Because by being the 1st on search results, these companies essentially have become every member’s Pay Per Click marketing agency. Doing all their online bidding to obtain majority of the enquiries and passing them onto interested companies
The middle man companies also push or recommend certain small businesses based on their membership tier or monthly spend. So the higher the spend the more benefits they receive. For example be one of the first look at leads to decide whether they will take the job or not
Ok so what are some of the disadvantages?
Now that may sound great but there are some drawbacks to this. We want to go into what they can be so customers can make an informed decision. The decision will be to engage companies like ours directly, or through a middle man like Bark or Hi Pages
Firstly the middle man companies market their own business heavily in each industry . Which sometimes kills the budget for average companies who want to pay for clicks on Google. The outbidding done by these companies simply drives the clicking bid upwards sometimes of $50, $60. We have even seen certain keywords fetch $80 per click!
What does it mean for small business looking to get ahead?
What does that mean for average small businesses? Well if they even think about staying relevant online they need deep pockets. And this is something many small businesses simply cant afford. So if someone clicks on your ad and just browses this could cost up to $80 in some industries. It also drives prices of small business’ services up to cover the cost of the ad spend.
So if a plumber used to cost $200 it now costs $400-800. That’s because of how much the average ad spend cost them to get to your home. There may have been multiple clicks on their ad by other people before you finally showed up. So essentially the serious customer pays for everyone else’s browsing.
Secondly most small businesses need to pay and subscribe to leads which generally go no where. In most cases customers have already been contacted by multiple businesses. By then the customer is just not interested or flooded with calls etc.
Other common problems with lead agencies and middle men companies
Spamming is also a common problem where subscribers to middle men sites just send bulk quotes. The quotes aren’t accurate and get the lead only to re quote once they are onsite. It breeds dis trust between the business and the customer. And gives other honest and affordable service based businesses a bad wrap.
There are multiple other drawbacks to using middle man websites to find local security services. For example companies will only respond based on certain answers given in those questionnaires. I.e if you are not “ready to hire someone” do not expect a great response or any at all.
A great quote which applies here is
“Most good businesses are going to be busy working hard. If you want a quote from them its best to call them and ask for one”
Basically saying if a company is busy they must do good at what they do. They look after their customers and therefore are continually getting jobs done. They don’t have alot of time to sit and wait for jobs from middle man agencies. If you call they will answer however and help you because you took the time to contact them directly
