If you’re a contractor, home builder, or remodeler and you are not getting the leads you want, the solutions may surprise you. The service you provide is specialized and requires a high level of trust from your potential clients. Marketing involves a multipronged approach to make your demographic aware of your company, get to know them, and imprint (brand) onto their memory. Effective marketing can lead the right client to you, then with a successful sales practice you turn them from a lead into a customer for life.
An Excellent Remodeling Website Leads People to Come Back
A lead-generating website works like a beautiful storefront to bring the right kind of clients to you. Not only do you have the opportunity to showcase your show-stopping portfolio of projects, but you can also use some facets of your site to increase organic Google searches, bringing local and relevant traffic right to your virtual display window.
A website is more than excellent local SEO (search engine optimization) and Google ranking. A blog can help with SEO, but more importantly, it provides prospects with insight into your process or company culture, and valuable information about home remodeling and building. While your content informs, your more personal blog posts help build a relationship with your readership.
Storytelling for Relationship Building
When you provide people with quality, well-researched, visually pleasing blogs, they’re more likely to remember you. They may sign up for your company e-newsletter as a reminder to read your new blogs. If they later get a beautiful piece of direct mail, like our informative print newsletter, or a postcard saying your company has a project in their neighborhood, they will recognize your company. Your brand, photos of your work, and each facet of your marketing plan will leave an impression on them.
This type of layered, content-based, brand-awareness is priceless: even if a person is not currently in need of your services, eventually, they will need, or know someone who needs, a remodeler—and your company will be the first one they think of. They may also share one of your mailing pieces with a friend in need of a remodeler (they held onto it because it was too gorgeous and informative to throw away).
The Most Valuable Advertising Assets are Referrals and Reviews
Speaking of word of mouth advertising, your greatest asset as a company is a happy customer. In the remodeling industry, reputation is key. A client who loves your work, and the way your company has treated them, will tell their friends. They know how difficult it is to have such a wonderful experience with a company, and they know it can be daunting to find a great contractor. Request customer reviews on Google, Facebook, Angie’s List, and more. When researching products and services, people are heavily influenced by reportage from their peers. Practice good review hygiene by responding to all reviews, reporting false reviews, and requesting reviews periodically from your clients. The best way to repair the reputation hit that comes with an unhappy customer is to attempt to fix the problem, whatever it is. Ignoring a bad review will not make it go away.
Social Media: Another Avenue to Connect with Your Leads
Another opportunity to connect with clients exists on social media platforms, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and more. Social media is a valuable tool for businesses, especially remodelers and builders like you. Social takes all the aspects of the marketing plan you’ve curated (or had curated for you) and brings them home. Your website is linked on social, and you can share in-process photos of job sites, gorgeous photos of finished projects, and links to your blog.
Engage with followers, ask them questions, promote events, and create connections. Referrals translate well onto social, where posts can be shared by followers, and potentially create more followers. Options like Facebook ads are hugely popular, partly due to their effectiveness. Targeted ads have become almost spookily accurate in recent years!
Prospects, Leads, and Customers are People too
At the end of the day, your “leads” are people. Humans crave connection, especially when they are tackling something like home improvement. People have a very emotional attachment to their homes, partly because we see our homes as a reflection of ourselves. Allowing your company into their homes and into their lives is a sacred trust, so it may take some time to build up a relationship, but once you do, you will have lifelong customers. They’ll tell all their friends about how amazing you made them feel and how awesome their homes look.
If you need a marketing company to help you tackle lead generation, the right way, fill out our get started form today. We have specialized in providing marketing to home builders and remodelers, just like you, for over 30 years.