Each potential customer you acquire first began as one of your staining leads – aka a cold contact. Without effective marketing, your business will not succeed. This is why you need to start understanding the basics.
Next, you should know lead generation strategies out there don’t work for every company, even when some of your competitors may be implementing a couple and getting results. The reason is simple: every company is different and its goals, although general, are unique.
The stunning, well-done stained concrete floor or polished concrete floor speaks for itself when advertising your work, but everyone would have clients if the marketing was this simple.
Concrete contractors should not rely on potential clients passing by to see their work or just because you show them a couple of pictures and then assume they will choose you. It is, indeed, necessary to deliver great work, but you will need to do more than show it to those around you only and without any kind of introduction.
Contractors need to promote their services online and offline to increase customer awareness and generate more business. Experts in the staining industry say that concrete is more appealing to people who know more about it or want to learn about it, which is why you can come up with a combination between information + actual pics of your work.
A minimum of one hour per day should be spent on business promotion and planning how to promote your company if you have more time, even better!
Promoting your company is about getting the word out. The first rule is to do it consciously. Regardless of the excellence of your service, you can’t depend on others to do it.
The second principle of business promotion is that it should be budgeted just like any other part of your business. Advertising does not need to be costly, and we want to make it clear with the strategies we have compiled for you.
Door-To-Door Marketing Works
This is the best way to get started if you haven’t set anything for your business yet.
Many people do not want to do this or are too scared to do so as they feel it is way too old and people won’t receive them happily—which is in many cases, but not all.
In fact, since it is an old strategy by this point yet that continues to work, you will get more leads if done right and not as your main method.
You can at least your first clients, so you are able to start building a reputation and a portfolio. Even when you have more strategies added, you can still get lots of leads with some employees assigned for the task in the future.
Just focus on neighborhoods with higher incomes when doing this.
HOA’s may require that they stain a place or space every 8-10 years. Here is a simple, effective script that you can use.
You can ask for work when you notice how worn out a deck is or if you notice that some appliances in which staining is needed could be happy with your service.
A small percentage of people will accept your offer if you approach them carefully and with a mindset in which you know they can pay for it but also need it. Do not keep quiet; ask for work, and you will get it.
To complete the estimate, you will need to schedule a time later. You may be expected to give the estimate right away by some people, but you should not do it unless they ask. A particular time will provide a higher closing rate, as all decision-makers are present.
Referrals and Lead Providers
Referrals can be among the best way to get qualified leads. Those clients that refer you will be more likely to recommend you if you offer excellent service and quality.
Many contractors are not reliable, communicate poorly, and do shoddy work. If a customer is happy because they know they can count on you, you have earned at least another customer + one with them.
You want to make sure that, whenever you ask this satisfied client to refer you, you are giving them something in return. For example, a discount for the next time they need you or for a specific project.
On the other hand, you can find companies that generate leads specifically for your trade, such as painting, carpentry, and so on, and they are called lead providers.
It works this way: You receive information from potential customers when they submit an online request for a quote. Example: “Barbara Johnson must stain her deck; her number is 323-xxxxxxxxxxx”
Some providers include:
- CraftJack.
- Thumbtack.
- HomeAdvisor is a more significant lead provider, but they have mixed results.
Lead providers usually charge per lead. You can also put a monthly budget to get a certain number of sales-qualified leads.
Overall, we don’t recommend using them since they can be expensive and, over the years, lead quality has decreased as more people complain about the leads they are getting and how they are not actually qualified.
Thus, we recommend you stick to the lead generation you can do and work around your own plan, and only consider this when having a hard time starting, not later.
Lawn Signs to Attract Prospects
For your staining business, lawn signs can be one of the most important investments. Ask your client to place a sign in their front yard with your company information while you are performing the service and a day or two after you have completed it.
You can even offer them a little discount if they are willing to leave it for more days when you make the proposal.
Referring is easy with this method. People can see your work and get recommendations. If the customer is willing, you can sign up for the lawn for several months. This way, you can get months of advertising free.
Keep your lawn sign simple. Remember that most people cannot see the small details on it. Your logo, company name, and phone number are required, and the rest is more of an extra.
Lead Groups and Flyer Drops
Lead groups have been a great success for some staining companies. These business groups are made up of people from different trades and professions.
Various industries will meet once per month to exchange referrals and leads. One painter can get two to three jobs per month from lead groups, and the same applies to the staining service in specific. You can join any lead organization, but you could also search online to find other local networking groups.
Flyer drops have been a success in lead generation campaigns, but they can be costly. You can drop five thousand flyers and receive about fifteen call-ins. From these call-ins, you can sell eight jobs. However, the flyer drops cost you two thousand dollars. Even though you spent a few thousand on advertising, the eight jobs that you sold can make you profits.
If you are going to flyer drop, it is crucial to have a professional design. Many people try to include every detail about their company in one leaflet.
Imagine how many brochures and junk mail you already have. The headlines are only necessary for those flyers. Keep your flyers short and sweet and include a special message encouraging people to call by a specific time.
Online Advertising (SEO, Directories)
You are likely to get at least two calls per week asking you if you would like to appear “on the first page” of Google. These SEO companies promise the top spot on the search engine and for your industry and company.
First, be wary of anyone promising to put you on the first page. SEO can be complicated and take time to reach the top. Thus, it isn’t something that can be achieved in a day or two.
Instead, try working on it yourself by learning a bit more and making sure that, if you hire someone, they are actual companies willing to follow the required steps for lead gen and SEO.
On the other hand, there are several options available online that need to be on your checklist:
- Online directories: You will attain success purchasing banner ads with the BBB. You can search the internet to find manuals and websites that are available.
- Google ads: Consider advertising with the paid option given by Google as it is cost-effective and has great ROI.
Google is still the most popular search engine for online searches. If you do not have a Google account or a Google-linked site, you will not be found online.
Exchanging Business Cards
If you don’t have business cards, you are missing a great chance to bring more businesses your way for your staining company.
You need to design one and print it out so you can exchange them while networking, hand it out when you see someone who may be interested in your services, or just when you feel the moment is perfect for it.
In it, make sure your company logo, slogan, and contact information are on it; even your website should be included.
Whether electronic or printed, every document you send should include a letterhead that contains all your company information.
Do not forget to include a full signature with all of your business information and a promotional tagline. A section can be added with links to Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter so that the recipient can connect with your social media accounts.
Emails and electronic documents are great for updating your business promotions information. It is more than an email.
Transform Your Vehicle into A Mobile Billboard
Mobile business promotion does not have to be limited to actual online campaigns or using a shirt with your business name.
Many vehicles have the phone number and name of the business on one of their windows or doors. Consider all the people you see when you drive around, especially if they are in an area where traffic is often a problem.
The modern vehicle wrap advertising method involves the application of removable stickers containing your logo and other information. Wraps can be digitally printed on specially-applied media that will not damage the vehicle’s paint job.
According to the Outdoor Advertising Association of America, a single vehicle wrap can generate between thirty thousand and seventy thousand views per hour, depending on where you live and how large your population is.
This makes it among the most affordable ways to promote your company. You can go all out with a custom paint job for eye-catching advertising.
Blog And Write Articles to Promote Your Business
Writing articles is a great way to promote your business since it helps with SEO and brings more leads in the long run.
Writing well-written articles can be a great way to build positive word of mouth and provide free advertising, but it won’t be simple if you aren’t particularly good at it.
For example, you could write about how clients can take care of a recently stained floor or area of their properties, so they don’t ruin the job performed.
The more specific you are, the better. Write anything related to the niche and make it informative.
Now, the best way to build what is known as content marketing by writing those articles is by working on the channels available:
- Websites and blogs: These sites are hungry for new content. Many people will accept guest posts, articles, or blogs from others and even request them. These are massive opportunities to promote your business, provided you carefully choose the website or blog where you want to publish your work.
If you have one or more articles that are not getting much traffic, it will not help you. It may even harm your business.
You want your article published on a website or blog that is highly trafficked and likely to be visited by potential customers. It is vital to consider your target market when
- Magazines: The magazine business is not dead, and many are still looking for content. The trick is to publish your article in a magazine your target audience is likely to read. These magazines can be searched online by topic.
You can also find information about all publications that may publish your work on freelance writing websites. Make your research seamless by starting with a great site that provides all kinds of lists and information on markets.
- Newspapers: You can still use print media to promote your business and generate leads. You can pitch your article to the local newspaper’s Business editor. If everything else fails, you may be able to send your essay as a letter to Editorial Section to get it published in the print or online editions of the paper.
For Business Promotion, Use Press Releases
Another way to promote your business and improve lead quality is by sending out press releases, but there are some limitations. Your press release must contain newsworthy information and engage enough people to grab their attention.
Is your business growing? Are you selling a new product or service? Are you involved in promotional activities such as sponsorship of a charity event or other similar activities? Has your company won an award recently?
These are all examples of “news” that you can use to promote your business.
As A Business Promotion, Give Away Freebies
We all know the horror stories of advertisements promising that the fifty-first people to call will get a discount or maybe a freebie in terms of products or items the business prepares.
However, although it isn’t as popular as before to do this, people still like it and are inclined to give you a call if you offer something for free.
This type of spot promotion is well-known because it works. Freebies are a favorite with people. You can regularly use freebies as business promotions and customer “rewards.”
What are some small, easy things you could give your customers to help them think highly of you? Think about them and set some items.
It is a win-win situation to combine customer rewards with business promotion.
Give a Seminar or Presentation to Promote Your Business
Your expertise is something that others are interested in, and if you share it properly, you get the chance to promote your business.
As a staining business, you can offer a free seminar about how the industry works, why staining is important, and how it can be done. This seminar teaches relevant info, and you get the chance to show how relevant you are in the business. Thus, people trust you in the end.
Even if there is no direct connection to your service, you can still present on a related topic and ensure it is worth their time, so they are bound to contact you for your service or more information.
You can arrange for the seminar to be held elsewhere if it is impossible to have the workshop at your location. Numerous government-sponsored programs and non-profit organizations are always looking to host business professionals who are comfortable giving presentations.
You might also be able to arrange to present your topic via the Continuing Education branch at your local college.
Promoting Your Business at a Talk Show
You might find programs on your local cable TV or radio station that need guests. This is a great lead generation strategy to promote your company at a low cost! Do not forget about searching the internet for suitable podcasts. Ideal podcasts are those that deal with your type of business or are close to the niche. You can find the host’s name and contact them to ask for your expertise on a specific topic.
You might be able to make a guest appearance as an expert on call-in programs.
Before you contact the program host, make sure your proposal is well-written. Also, be clear about the details regarding your appearance and what you will be providing them.
You could also create your podcast to improve lead quality. It could become a popular podcast.
You Can Help Others by Helping Yourself
Your audience should find some value in your marketing, and this is pretty much what we have been mentioning so far. Thus, we just want to go over the essentials for your lead generation process to be a success.
Using these tips, you can make your marketing more of a pleasant intrusion than an irritation to your audience:
- Offer useful information. Information marketing is a powerful lead generation tool for increasing sales. You can educate your audience about the problems they care about and grow your customer base. This will help you position yourself as the solution and learn how to do lead scoring.
- Offer assistance. Answer questions on forums and websites such as Quora. Then direct your audience to the website for more information. You can find a variety of platforms on the internet for your lead generation process.
- Entertain your audience. You can make them smile or cry. Consider the touching and funny ads you have seen and how quickly they were shared.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Staining Services
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 Staining Services 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 Staining 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.