This is the ultimate resource for home improvement leads…
And in this post you’ll discover the very simple formula I used for getting more leads at a lower cost, with a higher value and without having to under bid your work simply because you’re racing to the bottom against 5 other contractors…
Home improvement leads are the life blood of any construction marketing plan… And to be frank, the life blood of your business…
It’s great to have referrals… But referrals come and go… And the timing of them in unpredictable…
It’s also “OK” if you’re buying leads from a lead vendor… Most contractors do when starting out… But it’s not the best ROI for your time and money… And making less money for your skill isn’t really how to become profitable, nor is it going to ever allow you to scale…
Now you may be fine with one or two clients per month…
But with the contractors that I coach, this simply isn’t the case…
They want to grow… They want to scale…
And if that’s you, then in this post you’ll discover:
- How we generated 169 laser targeted home improvement leads in 12 months for $20 each, which translated into $4.5M in revenues all without having to ever bid against another contractor… And with every lead having their credit card in their hand ready to buy NOW…
- How we leveraged 1 social media site to create a celebrity brand that gave us the authority to raise our prices higher than the competition increasing our profits by 80%, and never having a client question why we were more expensive… (They HAPPILY paid us more)
- How we used a simple email software to automate our follow up with every lead, and the 14-word email that made clients “spill their guts” on everything we needed to know to sell them before we ever got them on the phone…
- How I was able to easily & single-handedly close 95% of the leads that came into our system without EVER using pushy pressure-sales tactics and without any major construction experience…
- The advertising “slot-machine” that paid us $1,285.71 for every $1 spent in advertising…
Home improvement lead generation is truly an art form, but if you can master it, it’ll feed you, your family & your team for life…
I like to tall my clients that they’re “building a digital money tree”… You’ll see why in a sec…
Let’s get started!
1. How We Generated 900+ Exclusive Home Improvement Leads In The First 12 Months For Less Than $20 Each…
The biggest problem with most businesses is that they don’t understand marketing…
And this is an even GREATER problem within the construction industry…
They think “let’s just market to everyone”…
But that thinking lead’s to paying “through the nose” for your leads, with not as much ROI as you expected…
And it leaves you dealing with all of the “crazies” that most of us would prefer to avoid as clients…
So when I was planning out our marketing plan, I was very careful in who I was targeting…
We did kitchen remodels, and we we’re using two very specific brands of cabinets as our “catalyst” for exposure…
Meaning, we were targeting people that were looking into the cabinet brands themselves… We avoided the generic “kitchen remodeling” search traffic because it was simply too broad of a market…
And because of all the companies that were marketing full remodels for $7,000 here in our backyard in Southern California to people that were searching Google for “kitchen remodeling”…
We wanted to be specific, and we wanted a certain kind of client… Preferably clients with bigger budgets…
And the way we did this was by targeting “higher-end” cabinet manufactures…
Now we could have very well generated hundreds more leads if we would have went generic… But we wanted to make MUCH more money for our time…
Trust me… It’s better to make $1,000 in 20 minutes than it is to make $1,500 in a 40 hour workweek…
We starting teaching our clients about the benefits of these higher end cabinet lines… We went through the pros and cons, customer reviews, contractor reviews, ways to hack the cabinets, and all kinds of other goodies that positioned us as being the experts and the authority in the market place…
And because they were already shopping for cabinets and they weren’t tire kickers looking for a generalized bid so they could plan their project two years from then, we were able to pump our business with leads that we’re BLAZING hot and wanted to move forward ASAP…
(We actually almost imploded because we had TOO MUCH business coming in…)
Taking this “sniper” approach (vs the “shotgun spray and pray” approach) also allowed us to keep our customer acquisition prices DOWN to about $20 per client…
Not bad, right…
But then to offset the cost of the leads, we started charging for our design service… (which is something we used to give away for free)
Our design service is $297… So we were making money from the beginning, before they ever said “yes or no” to our bid…
The goal for you is really to acquire as many customers as possible at break even or better… And we were actually making a profit of $277 for every lead before the jobs began…
We spent $3,500 for the year in advertising and made over $46K in JUST DESIGN FEES…
There’s nothing like being paid for the opportunity to have someone tell you no 🙂
This paid for all of our advertising, my personal assistant, and a TON of Starbucks…
And one of the other HUGE benefits to targeting the cabinet brands vs targeting generic “kitchen remodeling” is that we were fishing in a pond where there was ZERO competition…
Every contractor that had 5 stars on Yelp, or were even on the first page of Google for being a general contractor in their city, couldn’t touch us and became irrelevant because we were reaching our clients and giving them tons of VALUE well before ever speaking with them and while they were at the intersection of “research & purchase”…
And well before they ever began their search for a contractor…
The logic is “these guys know everything about these cabinets, and they do everything else we need, we’ll just use them…”
It’s essentially relationship building on autopilot…
We became the family contractor with all of the advice and answers to their needs and questions…
2. How To Quickly & Easily Become A Local Micro-Celebrity To Generate More Home Improvement Leads With Just 30 Minutes A Day…
So I mentioned earlier that I leveraged 1 social media site to generate higher quality home improvement leads by becoming a local micro-celebrity…
How did I do it and which site did I use?
*drumroll*
I used YouTube…
And I shot videos JAM PACKED with value without ever asking for the sale… I simply gave and gave and gave and gave before ever asking them to spend a dime with us…
In boxing, and according to marketing & branding expert Gary Vaynerchuck, it’s the “Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook” approach…
I would use Googles Keyword tool (free by the way) to look up what words and phrases our target audience was using to search for the cabinet brands we were targeting…
I then shot 3-10 minute videos answering all of the questions they were asking…
Here’s the scenario…
They would search Google for a keyword/keyword phrase…
My video popped up…
They watched that video, and then saw that I had many more videos with valuable information…
After watching a few more (sometimes all) videos, they were sold on us being the answer to their kitchen remodeling prayers…
They would then click the link in the YouTube description box and head over to our website to read our blog, check out our work, watch customer testimonial videos, etc…
That’s when they would make the decision to call us or to sign up for a free design consultation…
NOTE: we offered a free design consultation, which is MUCH more specific than just “Get A Free Quote” or “Get A Free Consultation”… We would go out to the their home with all of our samples and discuss with them styling options, construction options, and budgeting…
Essentially we expanded our value proposition even more by giving them MORE value in person before asking them for any money… Once the consultation was complete, I’d simply assume the sale for the design service by saying: “So, for the design service, did you want to pay with debit or credit?”
BOOOOM…
Sale was made 99% of the time…
The cool part about using YouTube to generate home improvement leads is that it was free traffic and essentially free leads… It cost me a little bit of time up front to shoot & edit the videos and getting them to rank on the first page of Google, but after that, I paid nothing to acquire the leads…
But that’s not the only benefit to using YouTube…
I started being recognized being out in public… (no poprazzi madness, but 1-2 people a week would say “Hey, You’re the guy from YouTube!”)
And when I would show up to someones house for a consultation, they would say things like “I cant believe you’re here… Oh man, my wife and I have watched all of your videos!”
This kind of branding and authority (even though I truly didn’t know too much about construction lol) is what allowed us to raise our prices higher than our competitors and increase profits by 80%…
All because of the micro-celebrity brand I was able to build on YouTube…
How long did it take to shoot these videos? About 10 minutes… Then editing would take maybe 20-30 minutes… And I’d have them up on YouTube within about an hour of total work (this includes the time it took to render and export the videos and the upload time to YouTube)…
YouTube is the second largest search engine on the planet next to Google… And if you’re not putting out valuable content through video to generate your own home improvement leads, then you’re going to lose business every time to someone like me 🙂
[feature_box style=”8″ only_advanced=”There%20are%20no%20title%20options%20for%20the%20choosen%20style” content_font_font=”Lato” content_font_style=”normal” content_font_shadow=”none” alignment=”center”]
Want Us To Build A Marketing System That Generates High Quality Home Improvement Leads On Autopilot For You?
Click the link below to fill out our client request form and to schedule a free 30 min marketing strategy call with us…
Schedule My Strategy Call
[/feature_box]
3. Home Improvement Leads & Automating Initial Follow Up
One of my favorite things in life is automation…
And if you’re not using technology to leverage your time, you’re missing out BIG TIME…
We started using a software tool called Aweber to automate the email follow up for our new leads…
We would send out this one email, and the response was magical… Here’s how them email was setup:
Subject Line
RE: {First Name}
Body:
Hey {First Name}!
Just saw your email about doing a (brand name) kitchen…
How can we help?
~ Tara
Sent from my iPhone
That’s it…
They would then reply telling us everything they wanted to do for their kitchen… And often times, they’d ask us if we also did bathrooms, closets, etc, etc…
It was an automated email that was sent out IMMEDIATELY after they requested their design consultation… But it looks like Tara, my assistant, literally took the time to write a response to them from her iPhone… Even at 2am…
And they ALWAYS thanked us for the prompt reply…
Which is something that 99% of contractors have a problem with…
If you’re not replying immediately or don’t have someone answering your phone when a new lead calls, guess what your prospective client is going to do?
You guessed it, their going to continue to call every other contractor in the Google search results and whoever calls back first USUALLY wins…
So when you automate your followup, you automatically add another reason that separates you from your competition…
4. Closing Home Improvement Leads Into Sales At A 95% Success Rate
Over the last 2 years I’ve single-handedly closed well over 350+ home improvement leads into sold kitchen remodel contracts…
And at a closure rate of 95%…
With one magical skill set…
Listening & Asking Better Questions…
I’ve heard horror story after horror story from homeowners about how they had a contractor come out to their house and proceed to tell them and sell them on what they thought was best for the homeowner…
They didn’t really care about what the homeowner wanted, and because they were the contractor, they tried forcing their ideas on the homeowner without ever hearing what the homeowner actually wanted…
Now this may sound like common sense, but it’s a common mistake that contractors make…
Simply listening to your client, and asking questions based upon what your client is telling you is the only way to ensure you’ll close the deal…
You’re building rapport with your client during this process…
We even start off the rapport building before we show up for a consultation…
I have my assistant call and run through a pre-built questionnaire that we have setup in our CRM software (Zoho)… She documents all of the answers and then sends them to me for review… This allows me to walk into a consultation knowing EXACTLY what they want…
I can even pick up specific samples for things they want in their kitchen and “just so happen to have a few of them in my car”…
This not only builds rapport fast, but makes you look like the perfect company to work with because you have “everything they want & need”…
A couple other things to consider for your initial face-to-face meeting with your clients:
- Dress Well: If you batch your appointments back to back two days a week, you can dress nicer than wearing the usual tattered contractor garb.
- Smell Good: I keep a stick of deodorant and a bottle of Acqua Di Gio by Armani in my glove box. Don’t spray half the bottle… One spray per appointment will do the trick.
- Avoid Bad Breath: This is HUUUUUUUUGE… Bad breath say a lot about you and leaves a bad impression on your clients… Instead of them taking in all of the value you have to offer, they’re focused on how bad your breath smells. I keep Ice Breaker mints in my center console and am constantly drinking water throughout the day. Dehydration not only messes with your mental clarity, but it also causes REALLY BAD BREATH.
When we first started the business, this is what gave the impression that we were a “big deal” company that “had their shit together… ”
5. The Advertising Slot Machine: How We Made $1,285.71 For Every $1 Spent In Advertising
We made a ton of money and generated a lot of leads from our content marketing efforts (blogging and YouTube videos) but my secret weapon for generating laser target home improvement leads is Google AdWords…
I’ve been in the contractor forums and have seen contractors say AdWords “doesnt work” or is a “ripoff”…
But the problem is really in the lack of knowledge on how to properly use AdWords…
You can definitely “lose your shirt” if you don’t know what you’re doing or if you hire someone that doesn’t know what they’re doing either…
I’ve been using AdWords for the last 5 years in multiple businesses and niches… And I can tell you first hand from being in the tranches and being a certified Customer Acquisition Specialist, that AdWords is the fastest way to kick start your business, and do it at a profit…
When I meet with a contractor that’s hired me to build out their marketing plan (similar to what I’ve outlined in this post thus far), I look at their Google Adwords account to see what they’re already doing…
9.9999999999 times out of 10 their targeting too broad of a market… And they’re using “broad match” keywords…
With Google, there are 4 types of keyword phrases, 3 of which I’ll cover below…
Broad Match: Let’s say you’re a kitchen remodeling contractor…
You tell Google, “I want my ad to be seen by people typing in ‘kitchen’…
What most people don’t know is that they’re going to have their ad shown to people Googling ‘kitchen’, but they’ll also show up for ‘Playschool Kitchens For 3 Year Olds”…
See how dangerous and how EXPENSIVE that can be?
Phrase Match:
This is when you tell Google you want to show up for a specific phrase, let’s say ‘kitchen remodel’…
Google will run your ad to people searching for ‘kitchen remodel’, but they’ll also run your ad to people looking for ‘kitchen remodel school’…
They’ll take the phrase, and then any words that the searcher types in before or after your phrase will also trigger your ad to show up… It’s MUCH better than Broad Match, but it still has it’s targeting issues…
Exact Match:
This is where the targeting gets SEXY…
You can tell Google, “I only want my ad shown to people that search for ‘kitchen remodeling contractors in Dallas, TX’…
Now there’s a lot less traffic for this keyword, but it’s SUPER targeted. And if you combine it with a great initial offer, Google will reward you with cheaper clicks, thus driving down your customer acquisition costs…
But you’ll also be speaking with leads that are ready to pull the trigger on their remodel AKA you’ll more than likely be speaking with BUYERS…
And that my friend is exactly how I built out a construction marketing plan that consistently kicked out home improvement leads that were laser targeted, worth more money, and were ready to buy NOW…
And if you got any value from this post on generating your own Home Improvement Leads, please take a second to comment, like & share…
~Matthew Hamel
[feature_box style=”8″ only_advanced=”There%20are%20no%20title%20options%20for%20the%20choosen%20style” content_font_font=”Lato” content_font_style=”normal” content_font_shadow=”none” alignment=”center”]
Want Us To Build A Marketing System That Generates High Quality Home Improvement Leads On Autopilot For You?
Click the link below to fill out our client request form and to schedule a free 30 min marketing strategy call with us…
Schedule My Strategy Call
[/feature_box]
