Top businesses are seeking ways to stand out and ensure that most gutter leads go their way and don’t even consider their competitors. However, this can prove to be more difficult than what they initially anticipated.
You enjoy working in the field and getting dirty, or maybe this is an occupation you found profitable and decided to jump in. Whether one or another, you will need to learn how important it is to learn about marketing and advertising along the road.
Although marketing may seem like the last priority, in today’s digitally competitive landscape, it is essential that you have robust solutions to get gutter leads and keep your company afloat.
Marketing itself is not the only thing on your to-do list. There were nine hundred thousand construction firms in the United States in 2021, and most of them struggled with the same problem: creating a digital marketing strategy that works.
This basically means you need to work towards your plans and goals while optimizing your resources. You need to make sure that every aspect is in place so you can achieve results through your lead generation strategies.
You can use digital marketing as the main strategy in terms of where and how you will get started.
You do not need to be a professional marketer to create a successful strategy. First, you can rely on the free options and those that can be learned based on how much you research and the time you invest in it.
Even the most creative lead generation campaign in the entire world can go stale if there is no company branding, and our objective for this post is simple: we want to make sure you have at least the strategies that can work for your business.
Thus, there’s no need to think about what you need to include in your plan but rather focus on how you’re going to work around those methods.
This will simplify your life, and we’re all in for the option of giving you as many details as possible to get high-quality gutter leads.
Online Visibility Is a Must
Online visibility is essential if you want to be found by clients, and this pretty much summarizes the necessity for online strategies today.
97% of customers search online before choosing a local company to improve their homes. Digital lead generation solutions for gutter companies will help you increase exclusive gutter leads, book more job opportunities, and grow revenue. So, how can you be present?
Digital marketing, also called online or internet marketing can be complex. It can be challenging to know the channels you should invest in to increase your company’s visibility. It would help if you determined how much marketing budget each channel should receive.
Also, it is essential to continuously optimize your lead generation campaigns so that your local competitors are not showing up on search engine result pages. It isn’t a one-time process but rather something that requires work along the road.
Make sure you give homeowners reasons to call and make a strong case for gutter guards. You can offer a discount for a limited time, full-season use of the guttering, or any other reason that is both compelling and emotionally satisfying to increase urgency.
Bright colors and simple fonts are best for your printed material. Please keep it simple. It should be easy for homeowners to find your phone number. Ask the homeowner where they heard about you, and keep track of it for the next campaign.
Social Media’s Power
Social media marketing is a massive way to connect with your customers and generate leads for your company.
It can have a tangible impact on digital marketing for gutter companies as people spend at least 2 hours on any platform today. If you manage your strategy well, it will be part of your channels that generates leads the most.
You need to embrace social media marketing services that target each market. You can employ a team to help you develop new approaches to reach prospects and increase your social media presence, but it can also be done slowly and by learning yourself.
While most business owners know they require an online presence, it can be overwhelming if you do not know where or how to begin. It is crucial to concentrate your marketing efforts on one strategy and not spread your efforts across multiple platforms.
Social media has proven to be a challenge due to algorithms and how some platforms tend to prioritize posts and accounts.
To start working on this, focus on regular updates that can be posted using scheduling apps or social media management platforms like Buffer and Sprout Social.
Use hashtags that are relevant to your post’s reach and increase views. Interact with your followers via comments and messages to start a conversation.
Build Partnerships for More Success
Every business owner should have valuable relationships. It is easier to spread your brand awareness when you have a network that will receive the same from you but without actually stealing leads from one another.
Find complementary providers who can work with you to create a win-win situation.
For example, you could build a relationship with local roofing contractors.
If You Don’t Invest, You Don’t Win.
Many home-improvement contractors lack the time or expertise to generate quality leads. Sales teams can help you build this system instead of starting from scratch.
They have a proven method to increase brand awareness and generate gutter leads since they work in making sure that every aspect and factor is on point.
Additionally, they have simplified solutions to match contractors with homeowners. High-quality leads can help improve your chances of closing deals. This has a significant impact on your bottom line.
They get information from homeowners about their projects and run it through verification solutions. Before passing the lead on to you, they ensure it is an actual homeowner and worth your time.
Although it may seem obvious, gutter contractors need to remember this: treating your customers well is one of the best ways to find your next client. You will not only get their business, but they may also recommend you to their friends. It’s the little things that matter. A sales team will help you find the best lead generation strategy for your gutter company.
However, we don’t want you to think you have to outsource every service for marketing. We want you to understand that it requires some investment whether you decide to hire a team or not.
This means you have to be open to the idea of investing some money, sometimes it may be a few bucks and sometimes thousands, to ensure you get the desired results in this lead gen process.
Get Rid Of Your Old Website
You need a website if you do not already have one, and if you do, are you sure it looks good and is the page you want to use to send your leads to?
It may be time to redesign your gutter company’s website if you have not updated it in five years or if you feel like it is slow and there’s something missing.
High-quality photos and great content make a great first impression. Your potential clients will be happy with your website. Make sure you have easy-to-find contact information on every page.
Your website is the first way to communicate with your audience and generate leads. It is vital to have a gutter site that guides prospects through your marketing funnel. Professionals offer website design for gutter companies and web development (building) services.
You can always learn to use a couple of builders or find a way to learn more about WordPress and how to get your site done.
Make a Brochure That Is Eye-Catching
A brochure or flyer can be all you need to win new business locally since, despite what many believe, it is not all about social media. Traditional marketing still works, and for businesses that depend on their communities, you don’t want to forget about the usual flyers and ads.
After your first meeting with potential customers, hand them your business card as well. Just keep everything people would usually do on your list and add all lead generation strategies and digital methods to the list, so it is an entire to-do list, not an uncompleted one.
Just make sure that if you are going to invest in flyers and all the “old” adoptions, ensure they are budget-friendly yet incredibly appealing to your public.
Program to Encourage Referrals & Postcards
Your existing customers are an invaluable resource, as discussed before. For each referral, offer a reward or small gift to encourage people to recommend your gutter company to their friends.
You can offer a gift card to Starbucks or movie tickets as an incentive. Free stuff is a great thing! Consider doing something extra for people who refer five or more people. You might offer them a complimentary cleaning or a gift certificate to an excellent restaurant to show your appreciation.
On the other hand, we are back to the traditional options. Although snail mail may seem outdated, it is still a powerful marketing strategy for gutter cleaning companies.
Send out a postcard a few weeks before the busy season to remind people that it is time for their gutter cleaning. You might include a coupon if you feel generous.
Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) for Gutter Companies
Pay-per-click advertising can be a great way to reach your target audience in a cost-effective way that, although it will need some budget, you will always get your ROI when done right.
You can choose the keywords that best describe your business activities and start ranking for them with the use of ads that are only paid when someone clicks on them.
You can select your advert to appear when people search for “need rain gutter clean” or “local gutter cleaning.” Keep checking your campaigns often! Test the best ad text regularly to find what works better too.
Your PPC strategy is a vital aspect of digital marketing since it has proven to bring more leads in a shorter period of time. However, do not forget about organic or SEO strategies, as they need to be in balance with paid ads.
PPC management, like SEO, should be approached with a plan. You need to manage all aspects, including keyword selection, ad creation, and bidding. You need to create a winning strategy that generates more traffic at a lower cost, no matter how much PPC investment you consider.
Learn to Stay in Touch with the Magic of Email Marketing
It is essential to stay in touch with customers after they have requested a service, and even if they don’t end up hiring you for it, you can be there, so they won’t forget you’re available for the job.
Just think about it, they are looking for someone to clean out the gutters you installed six months back, but they don’t remember your number or name.
Simple: you got them by sending a regular newsletter with all the info about your business, so they know you are still present and they don’t end up going to one of your competitors.
Sending out an email newsletter every other month is an excellent way to start. The content should not be self-promotional.
Your newsletter should be informative, entertaining, and valuable. You could, for example, discuss the importance and provide advice on how to keep a gutter clean in the basics.
Local SEO and Reputation Management
Local SEO is a particular part of a more comprehensive digital marketing strategy.
It allows gutter companies to get more leads from local customers, whether they are a large gutter franchise or a small business in a smaller market.
The scope of this whole process is connected to how your community needs you and the digital properties you should claim and own.
For example, have you claimed your Google My Business listing? That one that allows you to show on maps as a business and be open for any directions?
It is important to have it, and along with it, you want to make sure directories and filled with your profile information so local people can find you easily.
In addition, GMB listings allow you to have reviews where you can reply to clients after they leave a positive or negative one, so you are able to build your reputation and manage it accordingly.
Custom Analytics and Ad Tracking
How can you make sure that your online marketing services generate a sustainable ROI for your business? Analytics and ad tracking are the keys to success.
Your gutter company will get leads with a more detailed report for each ad campaign, helping to maximize the digital marketing strategies.
You will also get detailed reporting on metrics such as click-through rates and leads generated. This will give you a complete picture of your advertising’s performance. You will optimize your campaigns and improve ad performance with our data.
Empathy Is a Powerful Tool
It is not the same as donating a kidney to help homeowners clean out their gutters.
However, this does not mean your brand development strategies should not strive to build empathy between your customers and you. Please demonstrate that you are sensitive to their needs and pain points. This is where market research can be a powerful tool.
Perhaps they are kept awake at night by the animals in their gutter. Leaks could have caused damage to their lawns and gardens or even compromised their home’s structural integrity. Perhaps they are just too tired to clean their gutters themselves.
You will build a loyal client base if you show that you truly understand your market.
Be Consistent!
You must be consistent in all things you do if you want your branding strategies and your gutter cleaning business to succeed. Your branding should be consistent in everything from your logo and voice to how you market services.
You should use the same design and feel for your social media sites, review pages, print marketing, and online marketing.
It is not a good idea to compromise your brand recognition after all the hard work you have put into it.
Branding is more than what people usually say.
If you are creating a brand strategy to promote your gutter cleaning business, you should make sure that you use a unique voice when writing content and work around yourself and not other competitors.
Create your catchphrases and lingo, and try to write in the same manner as you speak. An authentic tone for your company and business will help you build trust with clients and promote transparency.
Share Your Story
Nearly 65% of consumers believe that brands that share their beliefs and values can help them build relationships.
There is much anxiety around brands having opinions about controversial topics. Still, the truth is that it is impossible to make lasting connections if you do not know who you are and what your values are.
Telling your story creates a real connection without the risk of alienation. Discuss why you started your gutter cleaning company, the community you serve, and what you liked about it. Also, discuss the needs your competitors did not meet.
There’s a thin line between being vulnerable and becoming personal and having an aggressive opinion that not everyone in your market will accept. Choose the first option.
Always Gift Something
Everyone loves free services! A giveaway on your social media accounts is a great way to grow your followers and show loyalty by rewarding loyal customers.
You could offer 20% off their next appointment or a free inspection of their gutters if they tag friends or share your social media post.
You might consider collaborating with local businesses to offer a bundle of home maintenance service packages. It will be a win-win situation for everyone as it puts the content in front of more people.
All these tips will help you to generate high-quality gutter leads for your business.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Gutter Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Gutter Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Gutter Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.