One question you should be asking yourself is, “How can I get more residential remodeling leads for my business?” The answer to this question is more complex than it appears. There are many things to consider.
Also, keep in mind that just because you bring leads does not mean they are good. It is important to ensure that the leads you are generating are worthwhile and can be turned into clients.
It can be difficult to find good leads, especially in a field such as remodeling, where there are many projects. Your leads are your lifeblood, and you cannot sleep without them. One good lead can make you thousands of dollars.
To ensure you don’t lose heart in your quest to finally get the remodeling leads that you want and need, we’ve put together a few proven strategies that you’ll be thankful for knowing starting today.
Educator Then a Remodeler
20 years ago, remodeling companies used different methods to attract new clients:
- Referred by a friend, family member, or client.
- Clients found the information they needed in yellow pages.
- A flyer was sent to clients with details, and they decided to take it up.
At the time, those methods worked quite well, but the internet came and revolutionized the world. The majority of education and purchasing can now be done online.
This means you don’t have to waste more time or resources with a particular client. Most of them will do their own research. However, it is important to provide information and educate them.
This will improve your chances of getting high-quality leads and make it easier for you to get them to join your company.
Many remodelers find it difficult to use social media. Others just don’t know how to create and properly manage a website. This is often the biggest problem with lead generation.
Clients want to be educated before making buying decisions. They won’t reach out immediately to request your services.
But what does education have to do with all this?
Remodelers who provide useful information to their customers are more likely to be noticed. This is actually a long-held principle that has been important for decades.
Now, with the internet, it is even more relevant.
This is important to remember because it will help you educate your current clients and leads before they even reach you.
Tire Kicker Leads
These leads are people who are not ready to buy but are always looking for a remodeler to work with them.
Don’t make the common mistake of asking people, “What is your budget?” This question can push them away from hiring your services.
Instead, try asking questions such as “What has Pinterest inspired you?” You can tell one or two things from the way they respond.
Keep in mind that if they can’t answer your specific question, it is likely that they don’t want to take a decision immediately.
In this case, try to connect with them via social media or by sending a follow-up email. However, don’t spend too much time trying to convert them as you will get the opposite result.
If they give you a precise answer and tell what they want, it is an indication that they are interested in the project more than just looking. Don’t miss this opportunity and send a personal follow-up email. This will skyrocket your chances to convert them from qualified leads to actual clients.
Try creating a place for all your leads. It can help your sales pipeline flourish. Every lead who contacts your remodeling business should have a connection with you.
Sites like Houzz and Pinterest are the most popular way to stay connected in the remodeling industry, closely followed by custom-educated emails.
Avoid Ambiguous and Indiscreet Phrases
Avoid using industry terminology and instead, use social media as a tool to make your business flourish.
If you invest time taking outstanding photos and making good content, your work will speak for itself. We will explore social media and content more later.
We will be focusing on the terminology and lingo you should avoid in your blogs, Don’t post or use phrases like “Quality remodelers,” “The best company in the world,” and “We build green and any other needs, not like other …” companies.”
Let your content speak for you instead of claiming to be a skilled remodeler. Let your references sing your praises for you.
The modern consumer is skeptical of remodelers who brag about their work but lack the proof to back it up. Avoid lingo in your marketing and let the consumers verify it for themselves.
These Pages Will Bring You More Leads
Marketing in the remodeling industry can be complicated. However, adding a few pages on your website could increase the quality of the leads you get:
- Gallery Page.
Here you can show off your high-quality workmanship by posting photos and videos. Customers will appreciate a central location where they are able to watch all your best work.
- A Process page.
Once they see your work, customers will start to feel confident and knowledgeable enough about your ability to produce the high-quality work they require.
Create a path in your website’s navigation where they can easily locate all the information they need.
You should include a “Contact Us” button so that the lead generated by your website can easily contact you.
- Conversion Page.
Keeping in touch is the key to converting leads into clients.
That said, we believe a conversion page is the most important. It adds contact information to your system and allows you to analyze the client’s buying stage based upon the content.
Be Known to Get More Qualified Leads
It is important to take action, but having a plan is essential. We will also go over metrics and statistics later to ensure you are able to picture this lead generation strategy properly.
The first step to obtaining a sales qualified lead is to “be discovered.” This is the awareness phase of the modern customer journey.
For example, you could be found on search engine results pages by organic search or paid per click advertising. This will let potential customers know that you are available to provide the services they need. But, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are considering you seriously.
The next step in the buyer’s journey is to “be noticed,” which focuses on consideration of your services or business.
You must offer something that will make them interested enough in your offer to convince them to contact you.
It is important to be noticed and found in this order to get more leads for residential remodeling.
If you ask yourself what other competitors are doing, we can give you the answer: residential remodeling contractors are focused on being found.
However, beginners in this part of lead gen don’t spend the time getting noticed or even knowing how they can make others find them. It is hard, but it is also often missed.
These are the two key elements of a marketing strategy: be found and bring awareness. Don’t forget to invest in each one regardless of your personal preference.
Optimizing Your Website for Users
When you think about the best way to be found, like in the previous strategy and being able to advertise your services, SEO (search engines optimization) should be the first thing that comes to mind. Why is this?
People all over the globe, including the United States, use Google to search for “residential remodeling contractors [CITY],” “bathroom remodels,” “home remodeling,” and other keywords. They just want to find the solution and perfect person.
You won’t see the old-fashioned newspaper option anymore. Instead, it is all about finding what you need online.
This is when you begin to think about how they will find your residential remodeling business and if you’re doing things right to be out there generating leads. The answer leads us back to the initial mention of SEO.
This aspect is important, and keywords, title tags, and heading tags are the ones you will be more familiar with when someone mentions SEO. Other factors like geotagging, working on profiles, and pretty much some of the lead generation strategies we have included and still have ahead of us are there.
Over 150 options exist to rank websites and ensure people find your company or remodeling services.
Below is a list of the most important ones that you need to start looking at if you want your site to rank high on the pages.
- Secured sites (HTTPS and HTTP).
- Mobile-friendliness.
- Page speed.
- Webpage content quality.
- Webpage content length.
- Local and social signals
- High-quality backlinks
- Images optimized.
- Domain age.
- User experience.
- Search intent.
Many managers and business owners will say that SEO and user experience do not go hand in hand, but we mention both in one for our subheading because it is possible. In fact, user experience is like synonyms to what Google loves.
Your rankings will not be as strong if your user experience is poor. Even worse, we give them a few days before they fall dramatically.
Many SEO techniques can be used to optimize your site for leads for residential remodeling companies. Some of them are listed below:
- Always be a resource.
When hiring services, people are more likely to have an idea of their needs and be able to tell you what their worries are. However, most of them won’t know what they actually want regarding how the whole project should look or what’s the best way to achieve it.
Potential leads have searched Pinterest, Houzz, and the internet looking for inspiration about the type of residential remodeling they want. Many would believe they come with a pretty good idea, but the issue lies in that most of them don’t want a straight-up copy. Instead, they want to add their own vibes.
As much as some remodelers hate it, it is actually good for you to help them come up with the final idea, and this is when you become a resource: you give them what they need but also want.
In addition, you can start being a resource with simple yet crucial tips for your potential prospects. You can begin by writing a blog about the pros and cons of marble counters or any other topic that is relevant to the lead.
This blog will allow you to show your work and provide knowledge about how you can help.
- Professional photos of high quality are required.
The old saying “Show, Don’t Tell” will always hold true, especially in this business industry. High-quality photos of your work will convey your message better than words since people will trust what you have done during previous projects.
- Details are important.
Think about how many companies use words such as “high-quality work,” “experienced,” and “attention to detail”? We are confident that the answer is “all of them,” and it’s only natural because many don’t know how to approach this message and just rely on the usual “let’s make it pretty and look professional.”
These phrases are so common that they don’t have any competitive differentiation value nowadays, and this is where most fail when doing their research.
It is important to highlight unique and valuable items that will be of benefit to the reader. You can provide examples or stories of contractors who demonstrated exceptional attention to detail.
You need to be as original as you can if you want to add value.
- Optimize your conversions.
It may seem obvious, but many marketing agencies and companies overlook the importance of optimizing for conversions.
The layout, frequency, and location of your calls can have an impact on how many people respond to them.
Remember to include a contact page on your website. You can optimize everything on your website to perfection, but if conversion rates optimization is not done properly, you will be letting potential leads pass by.
You want to work in marketing qualified leads, but you need to convert for it.
Start PPC (Pay Per Click) Campaigns
Pay-per-click advertising can be a great way to drive traffic to your site and generate leads. It is often missed or misunderstood as being money-consuming. However, it is the opposite, and cost-effective sounds more like the actual reality behind PPC.
But managing these campaigns requires the expertise of professionals. This is why you should work with a PPC agent or really do your research and take some training (some YouTube videos can help) to start with the basics.
You can be sure that your PPC is responsible and efficient if you do it in-house and don’t hurry it when there’s no need.
Get Residential Remodeling Leads from Online Reviews
It is crucial to be able to differentiate yourself from others in order to get noticed and secure high-quality leads.
Review sites have become a key competitive differentiation because customers’ opinions are more valuable than what the company has to say about themselves, and well, it makes sense.
Statistics have shown that customers trust online reviews because people who are willing to go back and write one, either good or bad, are truly genuine about them. The question is, how to know if they are real? Users will notice just for your information, and if you create thousands of accounts to write some yourself, that will ruin your chances for leads.
So, this is why you need to have positive reviews but also honest and real ones. If not, they are worth pretty much nothing. Make sure that your clients add theirs or do the work manually with some of your assistance.
Some users may not be able to read reviews, so review schema markup can help you leverage them. It allows your average star rating under your URL to appear on search engine results pages.
We recommend using “Review Us” to collect reviews from clients who are not happy with your service.
Email Marketing Is Valuable
Email marketing is easy and can help increase your business’s lead generation.
Contrary to popular belief, this strategy is not only for large companies but also for small remodeling companies and remodelers.
It’s not a lie to say that it can be difficult to make it work. This is why we will follow the advice with some tips you should take notes of:
- Your emails should be easy to read.
- Make them mobile-friendly.
- Concentrate on the subject lines.
- Refrain from purchasing email lists since contacts will mark you as spam.
Highlighting completed projects can help you structure your email marketing strategy as well, so you might want to place this at the top of how to make this strategy work.
Facebook Ads and Social Media Can Create Interest
Although Facebook ads are a great way for you to get high-quality leads to help grow your business, you should not waste time or energy using them if you don’t know how to do it correctly.
Companies that fail are just because they think it is as simple as setting the campaign without any considerations. However, it has algorithms and better options to optimize your efforts while saving money.
Facebook’s advanced artificial intelligence capabilities will help you save money while maximizing your return on investment. You can also target the people most likely to take action on your online advertising.
A residential remodeling company can use Facebook ads to reach a specific audience and generate leads.
This is important because while you may be able to capture the low-hanging fruit of proactive searchers on Google, not all people will decide to spend money on services, so it is still crucial to encourage them and provide advertising.
Advertise on Instagram, YouTube, or Facebook. This is why social media is plural and not singular.
Facebook allows small businesses to compete against large corporations when it comes to leads. Facebook allows you to create Facebook Business Ads that target specific individuals and groups based on the personal data they collect.
Clients can be attracted to your content by sharing videos, testimonials, or blogs. Next, promote those posts to people who are not following your page but who meet the criteria of your target audience.
What role do Instagram and other social media play? You can complement the channels you use to grow your reputation and ensure you are able to work around any interest you create.
Guest Blogs
Guest blogging is an excellent way to generate referral business through content marketing. It also improves your SEO.
Many people don’t realize the benefits of spending a few hours each week or month creating content and posting on blogs.
We can give you a list of benefits if you’re not sure:
- Establishing new industry relationships
- You can improve your SEO by acquiring industry-relevant backlinks.
- Traffic from the right audiences.
Guest blogging on websites that are related to your industry but not directly competitive with you can help you get leads for your business.
If you are a marketing firm, you could guest blog for sign businesses. Sign makers may use your services to complement their marketing efforts.
It is okay to create guest blogs as long as they are related to your industry but not to your direct competitor.
For the best results, make sure your industry and geographical location are relevant to your guest-blogging site.
Optimize Your Conversion Rates
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the act of actively optimizing and improving the content on your website. What are you looking for? How do you bring people to your site? Answer these questions
This is why CRO often involves A/B testing in order to determine which version drives conversions.
The conversion rate refers to the percentage of website visitors who complete a particular action. Marketers often conduct multiple tests to increase conversions and convert leads into customers.
CRO testing can involve large changes in graphics or blocks of copy. Or it may focus on details such as headlines and words in a call to action phrases.
To generate leads online, you should evaluate your pages regularly. You should identify pages with low conversion rates and set up A/B or multivariate tests in order to find any elements that could affect conversions.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Residential Remodeling 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 Residential Remodeling 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 Residential Remodeling 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.