The sky (or at least the tallest billboard) is the limit when it comes to marketing, and we’re always looking for new and creative ways to help you get your home inspection business out there.

If you’re just getting your business off the ground or have yet to devote much time to marketing, our post on 6 Marketing Strategies for Home Inspectors is a great place to start.

Ready for more? Great. Here are three more ideas to market your home inspection business.

1. Print Door Hangers

There’s a reason people still use direct mail advertising; sometimes old fashioned ideas still deliver results.

Door hangers are a minimal-effort way to reach a ton of customers quickly—especially if you target homes that are on the market and neighborhoods with a lot of real estate movement.

You don’t need to be a designer to create one; an online printing site like VistaPrint offers pre-made templates you can use to create your design.

For a clean look you should keep the text to a minimum, but be sure to include a few key elements:

• Company name
• Services
• Phone number
• Website

Once you’ve got a design, order them through the mail for around 10 cents apiece. Carry a pile with you in your vehicle and make a habit of hitting a few houses in between inspections each day.

2. Host a Workshop

This idea takes a bit more effort to put together, but can pay off big time in the form of realtor relationships.

First, you’ll need to put together a workshop topic.

What questions do people ask you over and over? Is there an issue you continually have to resolve for realtors or clients? These things make great ideas for classes.

Once you have your topic, build an outline of five or six different subtopics you’ll cover within the workshop.

For example, a workshop on historic homes might look like this:

• Introduction to Historic Homes
• Foundations and Roofs
• Inside the Home
• Preservation and Maintenance
• Common Problem Areas
• Audience Questions

A one-hour workshop is ideal for your first time, so shoot for spending about ten minutes on each topic.

We’re willing to bet you could talk at length about most of these subjects, so you should have no problem coming up with talking points. Transpose these talking points into a Power Point presentation, and there you have your first workshop.

The next step—and probably the trickiest—is to find the right platform to hold it. You’ll need to identify the right contact person and may need to be a bit of a squeaky wheel, but remember: this is all about establishing a relationship that will benefit you over time.

Here are a few places to pitch your workshop:

• Realtor’s associations
• Large real estate offices
• Chambers of Commerce
• Neighborhood associations

If you can get ten people to sign up, you’re in great shape. Consider giving your first workshop or two free, then charging if you see people are responding well and they’re paying off.

The day of your workshop, provide light refreshments and leave a few minutes at the beginning and end to meet each attendee.

Be sure to collect business cards for each person attending so you can follow up. You could even raffle off a prize as an incentive for people to leave their cards.

As you can see, if you did one workshop per quarter, your list of contacts (AKA referral sources) would grow quickly.

3. Outdoor Advertising

No, we’re not talking about your face on a billboard (though that can work too). Outdoor advertising includes any form of outdoor signage that publicizes your business.

There are two we think work well for home inspectors: vehicle wraps and yard signs.

Vehicle wraps cover all or a portion of your work vehicle, advertising your business no matter where you go. If you have a dedicated work truck or fleet, it doesn’t make sense not to use vehicle wraps.

We cover more on the vehicle wrapping process and payoffs in this post.

You’ve probably seen plenty of yard signs for landscaping services; home inspectors can use them too, and once they’re printed you can use them again and again at no added cost until they wear out.

Here’s how to use yard signs for your business.

After you complete an inspection, follow up with the new homeowner a few weeks later (you should probably be doing this already to gather positive reviews!).

If they did in fact go through with their purchase, ask if you can place a yard sign at the edge of their property for a month. In exchange, offer them a small compensation like a Starbucks gift card or entry into a raffle drawing.

Many satisfied customers will be happy to oblige your request, and you’ve got yourself one month of free (or nearly free) advertising.

Want more ideas to market your home inspection business? Follow us on Twitter @Inspector_Pages, or sign up for our free weekly newsletter below.