Free Lead Generation Training for Beginners

Cold emails aren’t a numbers game.

WANT more leads?

Selling one annuity could net you thousands of dollars in commission.

Yes, this type of product appeals to a select crowd, but have to know where to look.

Here Are 5 Ways To Get Annuity Leads Online:

1. Annuity Lead Companies

One way you could get annuity leads is by paying someone else to find them for you. 

A multitude of annuity lead-generating companies exist; however, they aren’t all safe or worth buying from. It’s this catch that makes purchasing annuity leads one of the riskiest ways to grow your annuity business.

#1. LinkedIn
At the top of the list for best free lead-gen tools is LinkedIn. It's a great lead generation tool that drives traffic, and and enables you to connect directly with prospects. Check out my article on how to generate highly targeted free leads  on LinkedIn.

While YouTube is a fun way to scour for the internet’s most viral videos, it’s also a powerful way to disseminate your brand’s message. With over 1.5 billion monthly active users, the platform’s reach is second only to Facebook. In regards to video, however, YouTube is still the reigning king of content.

While its business-oriented functions are less clear-cut than say, LinkedIn, YouTube has a variety of features that cater to your business needs beyond the simple tutorial or webinar. With over 30 million daily active YouTube users worldwide, now is the time to take advantage of a platform that has yet to realize its full sales potential.

1. Optimize your content

The first (and arguably most vital) step of the YouTube lead generation process is to make your content shine. If you’re not sure where to begin, here are three rules of thumb in mind: educate viewers, answer questions, and provide calls to action (CTA).

Focus on the keywords that are most popular in your industry and find ways to incorporate them into the titles of your videos, on in their descriptions. While YouTube is its own veritable search engine, others like Google and Bing will index your videos; so when you include the proper keywords, you have the potential to show up multiple times in a given search. Since YouTube videos will play in succession (a.k.a. “related” videos), optimizing your content is crucial to its overall performance.

Here’s an example of a beautifully detailed description from the channel ASAPScience:

The key to a profitable contracting business is a steady flow of exclusive home improvement leads each month.

If you’re able to nail that down, then you can get more estimates out, take on more of the right jobs, and have enough cash flow to grow your team as much as you’d like.

Obviously, that’s a little easier said than done.

But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

And in this post, I’ll walk you through 10 tried-and-true ways of finding exclusive home improvement leads so that you can spend less time hustling for work and more time booking profitable jobs.

By the end, you’ll have an arsenal of proven contractor marketing tactics to choose from—some are free, others will require a bit of money—in order to grow your home service business.

Deal?

Keep reading…

1. Local Facebook Groups
First up on the list of proven marketing tactics for generating new leads for your home service business is leveraging local Facebook groups.

If you aren’t doing this yet, it’s one of the easiest ways to become the go-to contractor in your neighborhood and get a ton of qualified leads in the process.

All you have to do is head over to Facebook, conduct a search for your city name, and select Groups from the menu:
 
Once you hit enter, you’ll be shown a list of groups that match your search criteria. The key is to find large community-type groups that encourage collaboration and sharing.

For example, after conducting a search for Colorado, I came across this group:

Not only do the rules state that the group is for recommendations, jobs, and referrals, but there are also over 78,000 people in the group!

The majority of these people likely live in or around Colorado, so if you’re a general contractor that serves this area, this is a group you definitely want to be a part of.

Once you’ve found one or more of these local community groups, put in a request to join.

Usually, you’ll get accepted within a few days.

From there, the key is NOT to start spamming the group by promoting your services. First, you’ll want to read the rules to make sure you know what’s allowed and what isn’t.

Then, you’ll want to introduce yourself, let people know what you can help with (without selling), and let them know you’re excited to be a part of the community.

This tactic is all about providing value first by answering questions other people have, and then only positioning your services when people ask for recommendations.

Over time, once you’ve built up your reputation, you’ll have people recommending your services to others within the group. That’s when you know you’ve done a good job.

Note: You can even offer special discounts for members of the group only—this works wonders and makes people go out of their way to work with you.

2. Google My Business, Yelp, And Facebook Reviews
Next on the list is to leverage reviews on your Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook pages.

Reviews are like salespeople for your business.

If you aren’t putting your positive reviews front and center, then you’re missing out on the power of social proof and its proven ability to drive new leads for your business:

The Big 3 mentioned above—Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook—are where you want to focus your efforts because they’re heavily used by locals when looking for general contractors and other home service providers.
And the best part is you don’t need hundreds of reviews to start. Just get a handful of solid reviews from your happy customers and make sure they’re clearly visible on each of the social profiles mentioned above.

You may have to twist your customers’ arm to get them to leave a review in three places, but if you hand them an iPad and walk them through it, they’ll be more than happy to help if you’ve delivered on your promise (if not, a small gift card can go a long way).

Other than reviews, you’ll want to make sure that your Big 3 profiles are filled in their entirety.
Make sure you add:
• Your business name, address, and phone number
• A brief description of your business
• A brief description of the services you provide
• Photos
• Videos
• Hours of operation

This not only helps you look like a legit business, but it also helps you rank in local search engine results.
In fact, if you want to be a part of Google’s Map Pack, then the amount of positive reviews your Google My Business page has is the most important ranking signal.

Your best bet is to make gathering reviews part of your post-job process. Read our article on Why You Need More Google Reviews (and how to get them) to learn more.

3. Promote a special offer on Facebook
Promoting a special offer on Facebook is an extremely effective way to generate exclusive home improvement leads for your business.

The key with this is not to offer something that will make you a ton of money up front, but rather something that gets your foot into your customer’s door.

It’s essentially a loss leader, and once your sales team is on site, it’s their job to upsell the customer if and when the opportunity presents itself.

This strategy requires a bit of money to pump into Facebook ads, but it can be well worth the investment if you do it right.

I’ve written about this tactic in-depth in my Facebook Advertising for Contractorsblog post, so give it a read if this strategy interests you.

Using Facebook to promote special offers and attract new leads for our contracting customers is a big part of what we do in our PLACE IT™ marketing system, so it’s definitely a tactic that can help you build the steady flow of home improvement leads that you’re looking for.

4. Promote a piece of content on Facebook
Another tactic that requires a marketing budget—again leveraging Facebook’s powerful ad platform—is promoting a piece of content to your ideal prospects.

This works especially well for home improvement businesses that offer more expensive services—roofing, window & door installation, landscape companies, etc.

For example, if you’re a metal roofer looking for more roofing leads, you could create a short video, slideshow, blog article, or even a PDF that goes into all the benefits of opting for a metal roof, and then promote it on Facebook:

You can paint homeowners a picture of how much money they can save by going with metal—more energy efficient (lower heating cost), more durable (less maintenance), increased curb appeal (higher home resale value), etc.

Anyone that shows interest in this piece of content could be a potential lead for your business.

You can even collect contact information in exchange for your piece of content—either email, phone number, or both—and make this more of a direct response marketing strategy.

Now, people might not reach out after seeing one blog post, video, or PDF, but if you use Facebook ads to retarget them and continue the nurturing process, you can have a marketing funnel that drives exclusive home service leads for you each and every month.

I used metal roofing as an example, but this content promotion + Facebook ads strategy can really work for any type of contracting business (we use it for landscape companies, roofers, window & door replacement companies, restoration companies and more).

5. Use Adwords and the Google Display Network
Adwords and the Google Display Network are another important part of our PLACE IT™ marketing system for contractors, and for good reason.

They’re extremely effective at getting in front of people that are ‘in the market’ so to speak and looking for specific home improvement services.

For example, we’ll serve ads to people that conduct searches like:
• Roofing contractor near me
• Metal roofing contractor NY
• Metal roof estimate
and more in order to get qualified prospects over to our custom landing pages, where we can then turn them into leads for the metal roofing contractors we work with.

I may be biased, but I believe that if you have any kind of marketing budget, running PPC ads on Google Adwords is one of the best investments you can make.

It allows you to get exclusive contractor leads for your business fast (within hours usually), and every dollar you spend can be tracked and measured so that you know exactly what your return on investment is (something you just can’t do with old-school traditional marketing like newspaper and magazine ads):

When you mix in ads on the Google Display Network (GDN for short), that’s when things really start to come together.
Whereas Adwords focuses on text-based ads on search results pages, GDN is all about banner ads on relevant websites around the web.

You can use GDN to go after new prospects using their in-market and affinity options:

Or you can retarget existing website traffic (ie: people that leave your website without taking action) with ads to try and get them to convert:

That’s’ what makes GDN so powerful—you can literally follow your prospects around the web so that they continue to see your brand or business long after they’ve been to your website.

If you’ve got a marketing budget, definitely give Adwords and the Google Display Network a try. You can start small and invest more as you generate new leads and book more jobs.

6. Leverage Instagram locally
If you read my post about contractor marketing on a budget, then you know how important showing off your work is.
As a home improvement contractor, there’s no better platform to do that on than Instagram (okay, Houzz is awesome too, but Instagram is up there).

More importantly, Instagram is still in its early stages, which means you’re still able to reach your ideal audience and get a high engagement rate on your posts without having to spend money on ads (at least not yet).

To make Instagram work for your local contracting business, you don’t have to have millions of followers or post a dozen pictures per day—all you have to do is be consistent and leverage Instagram’s location story feature.

Here’s how in 3 easy steps:
1. Make sure your profile is public
2. Share an engaging photo or video of your team, your work, or a before & after shot to your Instagram story
3. Use one of the following before hitting publish: a hashtag that represents your city, a location-based sticker, or simply tag your location
 
Doing this will get you featured in your city’s story of the day, which means that anyone who views the Instagram story for your city (something that many people do in order to see what’s going on in their neighborhood), will also see your post!

By being in your city’s story feed frequently, you can become the go-to roofer, general contractor, or other in your area because people will constantly be reminded of your business.

This is a huge opportunity that most contractors just aren’t taking advantage of yet.

Are you?

7. Answer questions with content
As a contractor, you probably hear the same questions over and over from your customers.
Why not answer those questions with content?

Content marketing has been the driver of growth for thousands of businesses over the past few decades for one reason—it establishes expertise.

And when you become the expert, booking new jobs becomes a lot easier because you’re seen as the only logical solution to your customers’ problems.

For example, who would you trust to repair your roof:
• A faceless roofing company you’ve never heard of
• John from ABC Roofing that wrote about the 5 telltale signs that mean it’s time for a new roof, which you happened to stumble upon when you were looking for answers.

You’d call John from ABC Roofing all day.

And don’t think for one second that content marketing is just for big brands and tech companies—it works for general contractors too.

But only if you do it right.

Here’s a quick & dirty way to get started:
1. Choose your medium—text (blog posts) or video are the most popular.
2. Make a list of all the questions your customers typically ask and that you feel can help establish your business as the experts
3. Put aside time each week to working on creating your content, or leverage batching to create loads of content up front in a short period of time
4. Place the content on your website, social media profiles, and upload your videos to YouTube when applicable.
 
This new content will begin to rank organically on search engines over time, and if your local SEO game is strong and you’ve built out a complete Google My Business profile with a good amount of reviews, then there’s a good chance your content gets found by your ideal prospects.

8. Hit up neighbors during jobs
Just because we focus on online marketing to drive leads for our contracting customers, that doesn’t mean it stops there.

One of the simplest ways to get exclusive home improvement leads is literally to ask the neighbors of the people you’re doing work for if they have any interest in what you have to offer.

For example, one of our asphalt contractors commits to knocking on 5 doors every time he finishes up a job to see if he can get new business while he’s there.

His pitch is simple, and goes a little something like this:
“Hey, I’m Alex from XYZ Pavement and we just finished repaving your next door neighbor’s driveway. I was wondering if you had any interest in repaving your driveway as well? We’ve got time for one more job in the area, and being that my crew and equipment is already here, I’m knocking $XX off the regular price. Any interest?”

If it’s a yes, he gets the job done and boosts his revenue.

If it’s a no, he asks if next year might be a better fit, and if so, leaves with the person’s contact information.

And this can work with nearly any home improvement business! You probably wouldn’t start a new roofing job on the spot, but you can knock on doors, show off your recent work (by literally pointing to the roofing job you just completed next door), and ask if there’s any interest.

If not, leave a business card or brochure behind and let them know you’re there to help when the time comes.

A simple, non-aggressive sales pitch—but highly effective when it comes to generating exclusive home improvement leads.

9. Implement a referral program
Sticking with grassroots marketing tactics, implementing a referral program can do wonders for your sales pipeline.
The key is to put together a compensation plan for existing customers that would cause them to go out of their way to refer you new business.

It doesn’t have to be complicated either. A simple cash reward for anyone that sends a new customer your way will do the trick.

Now before you go out and buy $20 gift cards, you need to realize that it has to be a significant amount in order for people to take action.

No one is going to go out of their way to tell their neighbors about the awesome job you did installing their new windows if you promise to give them an Applebee’s gift card.

Obviously, the amount of money you’re giving up has to make sense for your business financially, but just know that you’ll get more referrals if you make it interesting for your customers.

This tactic can work for any kind of home improvement business. Just make sure you deliver great work before you ask your customers to refer new leads!

10. Network in your community
Last but not least, if you want to become the go-to home improvement business in your state, city, or neighborhood, then you’ve gotta be present.

Nearly every city has local events, meetups, and get-togethers that happen throughout the year where you can go to rub shoulders with other locals, contractors and business owners.

After speaking with our contracting customers, one of the things they mentioned that works really well is connecting with other contractors that offer similar-but-different services.

For example, if you own a painting business, you can reach out to renovation companies and ask if they need painting support. Assuming you’re a pro, you’re probably much better and faster at it than they would be, which means more profit in each of your pockets when the job is said and done.

Sometimes, a few key relationships are all you need in order to keep the jobs flowing and your crews busy.

If you’re already leveraging this tactic, then take it a step further and considering sponsoring local events to get your home improvement business’s name out there in front of your ideal audience.

This can work wonders, and it gets amplified when you put together some kind of special offer available only to those present at the event.

Again, an appealing discount or something thrown in for free (ie: a free door when you have a new set of windows installed) can really generate buzz for your home services.

11. Leverage Customer Reviews
There’s nothing more powerful than word-of-mouth recommendations, and the next best thing is online reviews. Choose one or two sites that suit your industry (e.g. Angie’s List) and then encourage your happy customers to review your business. Most business owners make the mistake of thinking this will happen automatically. Sometimes it does, but a better strategy is to build customer reviews into your process. For example, when you are quoting a customer or discussing the proposed works, show them your reviews. Explain that you’ll be asking them for a review once their work is complete too (this makes them feel more comfortable that you’ll be doing all you can to ensure they’re satisfied). Then, once the project is finished, call or visit your customer to check that they’re happy with everything.

During this discussion, request that they submit a review on your chosen site and explain how important their feedback is to your business. Then a day or two later, send them an email with a link to your chosen site to remind them. Even with this process in place, only a portion of your customers will submit reviews but they are an incredibly powerful way for a business to grow.

12. Write A Home Improvement eBook
Writing an eBook is a great way to show your company’s expertise in home improvement, as well as gather information about your audience. eBook ideas include “Home Improvement 101” and, “Home Improvement Tips & Tricks From The Experts.” When someone goes to your website to purchase the eBook, you can require them to provide information like name, email, address, phone number, etc. To market your eBook, the most effective techniques include email campaigns, social media posts, and having influencers promote it.

13. Use Content Marketing to Establish Yourself as an Expert in Your Industry
Since we are a tech company, KDG would suggest that small home improvement businesses use the power of their website to the best of their ability in order to get leads. One way we have garnered leads is by becoming “subject matter experts.” We post blogs regularly about trends, news, and tips in our industry. We also publish extensive help guides that people visiting our website can download. Home improvement businesses can do the same by sharing their knowledge on their site in engaging blogs and sharing guides on home improvement tips. With a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, the business can then organize people who subscribe to the blog or download the guide and send communications like autoresponders that keep these individuals engaged, teach them about their services/products, and potentially even turn them into customers.

14. Focus on One Lead Generation Strategy
Give it 100%, or go home.The more the merrier doesn’t work in lead generation. Don’t do 35% of PPC, 40% of social and 25% of content, because you need to spend 100% on one thing before you master the others, or it simply won’t work. Choose one strategy and stick to it. For example, start a social media account and stay active on it. Invite new people, engage with them and offer valuable content. Content is definitely the king, but if you don’t engage with your audience or work that more people see your page, you will not get the wanted results. Be patient. Stick with your strategy and the results will come.

15. Use Postcard Marketing to Offer a Free Consultation
A great way to entice prospective clients to use your services is with a free consultation. Opportunity Knocks offers affordable mailing lists to help you target your local market using in-depth demographics, lifestyles, personal interests, and buying habits. You can then create custom postcards designed with 10 tested postcard marketing best practices and mail them the same day. You even get 1,000 free postcards when you order two consecutive targeted mailings. Click here to get started.

16. Use Facebook’s Lead Ads
Jonathan Alonso, Marketing Expert, Jongeek.com
Facebook is a great source with an ad format called lead ads .This ad format allows potential customers to submit their information without ever leaving Facebook. Strategies for this could include a price incentive like “$200 Off your repair” or “10% off your bill (Exclusive)”. It can also work wonders as a remarketing campaign because your website visitors will see the ad, and you can offer an incentive to get them back into the sales funnel. We have done this for some major clients, and it has returned 10X in customers with a cheaper cost per acquisition than Adwords or any other channel that may be used for lead generation.

17. Tailor Your Email Marketing to Specific Segments
Email can be a powerful tool in reaching prospects or upselling current customers, but nobody likes to feel like someone is constantly trying to sell them something. We spend a lot of time tailoring our messages to target specific segments of our prospect and customer base – whether that means timely upsells on upcoming pest threats, discounts to upgrade a lawn care package, or just information on how to maximize the results of the services they’re already paying for. This is an approach that home improvement businesses can build on as well.

18. Offer Financing Options
Research we’ve conducted on home improvement contractors that offer financing choices shows that those who provide financing choices can see up to 30 percent growth in sales – or more – vs. those who don’t, during an industry wide increase in home improvement spending. Customers paying with cash — usually a fixed amount — are less likely to splurge on larger projects. If you can offer a same-as-cash loan, they might upgrade a $8,000 home improvement project to $12,000. Or those who want to make low monthly payments would love to increase the size of their job — and can — if you offer a low-interest payment option. As much as you might think you know, you don’t know what your customer’s financial situation is. Don’t skip explaining financing options because you think they have enough money to pay for the project.

Sometimes, the homeowner in the nice, big home is mortgaged to the max and can only afford lower-value paint or to do one room, or just the exterior, instead of painting the entire home. On the flip side, the customer in the tiny shack might be a millionaire wanting the highest value options so it’s best not to assume.

19. Use Influencer Marketing
One lead generation strategy that not many home improvement businesses have taken advantage of is influencer marketing. Influencer marketing has grown to become one of the best marketing strategies to reach an unreachable generation. It’s important to keep in mind that influencer marketing is a long-term strategy and it is unfortunately, not as simple as connecting with a few people online and expecting immediate results. Influencer marketing should be integrated with your overall holistic marketing strategy. It becomes part of your social media and content marketing and PR strategy rather than working alone in isolation. Influencer marketing should not be viewed as a silver bullet or a quick fix. It requires considerable planning and fine tuning but if executed correctly can become a very powerful tool in your marketing arsenal.

There are many home improvement and DIY influencers who run popular and successful blogs (see here) which you can leverage, to help your home improvement business build trust, credibility and authority for your brand.

20. Market With Traditional Door Hangers
Brandon Cockrell, President/Owner, Linchpin Sales Interactive
So you are constantly going to jobs in neighborhoods with hundreds of homes that probably need some work done, or will need some work done. The best part is that you have a great reference already in their neighbor whose house you are currently working on (helps establish quick credibility). I recommend my clients take 10-20 minutes to walk around the neighborhood after they have finished their job to place door hangers on all of their neighbors homes. Now, make sure you provide some type of offer code (i.e. 10% off your first job, etc.) so you are able to properly track your ROI from this.

21. Get Yourself Featured in a Local Newspaper or Magazine
Amanda Berlin, Communications Consultant for Entrepreneurs, amandaberlin.com
Pitch yourself to be featured (we’re not talking an ad buy here; we’re talking free editorial media, publicity) as a local business, with a proven track record, and a history of helping the community with excellent work. You could even speak about some of the common hurdles people in your area contend with when improving their homes. Think of yourself as offering “news they can use”.

22. Partner with Complimentary Businesses and Offer Special Privileges to Their Clients
To generate more leads, contractors should consider the power of offering “value-added” products or services to clients and prospects. A value-added offering helps differentiate your company from the competition by bringing something unique and relevant to the table. For example, renovators who partner with our company can introduce our unique surface protection product to pique a prospect’s interest in learning more. If the product is described correctly, natural consumer curiosity generates phone calls or emails to the renovator that opens up dialogue and which could lead to more home improvement (HI) work. This indirect approach not only generates additional trust, but also gives the contractor an opportunity to engage and potentially uncover new work during the conversation.

Even better, negotiate a deal with that third-party company so you can tell your clients you can get them preferred pricing. We are having discussions with other contractors, particularly kitchen and bath dealers, who want to offer our product as a bonus offer in their advertising. “Let xyz build your new kitchen and we’ll throw in ExactMats Clearly Perfect(TM) custom liners.” This same strategy can be used with any number of related bonus products that bring something new or unusual to prospects.

23. Get Ranked in Local Map Results
One of the best ways for home improvement professionals to generate leads is through local SEO – i.e. appearing in the local pack of “unpaid” search results that sit below a map of their service area. Particularly in small to mid-sized markets (and/or for niche specific services), a couple of basic strategies is often all it takes to rank here.

To get started, simply create and verify a Google My Business listing, making sure to select the most relevant/specific business category for your services and filling out all other available fields. Note: most home improvement professionals are considered a “service-area business“, so be sure to set-up your listing that way. Next, ask a handful of satisfied customers to leave you a Google review. The easiest method is to provide them with a direct link to review your business. Lastly, make sure the Title Tag on your website’s homepage includes the main key phrase you want to appear for, as well as your city and/or neighborhood (e.g. HVAC Contractor in Chicago, IL | Business Name). Wait 4 – 6 weeks, then search for your key phrase in Google (e.g. “hvac contractor chicago”) and see where you rank!

24. Have a Creative Tagline to Stand Out From Your Competitors
It’s often tough for small home improvement businesses to set themselves apart from their competition, especially the big box stores. They all offer the same type of products and services; even their names often sound similar. A creative tagline attached to your logo can help people remember who you are and affirm your commitment to your customers. In 2017, Totally Promotional added the tagline “Our Products. Your Story.” We wanted our customers to know we create products to enhance their lives, their stories. Our tagline has been well received. Taglines might not be the ticket for all businesses, but they’ve certainly make a lasting impact on many: Nike (Just Do It), Capital One (What’s in your wallet?), Budweiser (The king of beers). See what I mean? I recommend hosting a contest on social media to solicit tagline suggestions from customers and potential clients.

Ask your followers to like your contest post on Facebook, share it and leave a comment with their tagline idea. A hashtag contest could also be very successful in gathering potential client contact information.

25. Use Special Offers Sites
Using special offers to catch the attention of potential customers isn’t a new tactic, but it still works. Because most companies use this method, the market is becoming saturated with special offers that all offer the same benefits. However, there is a way to stand out without offering greater discounts than your competitors and incurring too much of a loss from the lead. It’s all about being savvier about where you place the offer. More and more people are turning to special offers sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial to find bargains, and these often allow home improvement companies to place their deals on them. So if you haven’t already, why not try placing your deal on one of these sites? Doing so opens up the opportunity to reach new potential customers and to generate new leads.

26. Register as a Service Provider With an On-Demand Platform
The average home improvement company does not have the extra money in their budget to develop and maintain a mobile app, but with mobile connectivity increasing, it’s necessary to hop on that bandwagon in order to stay competitive. By registering with a home improvement on-demand platform like Lula, companies tap into upcoming generations that are adopting the mobile lifestyle. Your business easily generates and filters leads that are attracted to accessibility and to peace of mind, knowing that they are getting a background checked, quality professional to come to their home, who specialize in that request, and choose to accept it.

27. Take the Top Spot on Yelp
Traditionally, general contractors get leads through referrals and relationships with professionals in shoulder niches, like real estate agents and hotels. We have found that we get the most leads through our Yelp profile. People go to Yelp to get quotes and we found that if we rank #1 on Yelp for terms in our area we get a lot of quote requests. After we invested a lot of time and money into working with a team to improve our Yelp Reviews and page quality we started to see over 30 quote requests per month, ranging from simple floor installations to complete room additions. Our strategy now has shifted to getting a Yelp review from every project we do in ensure we keep our #1 rank on Yelp.

28. Evaluate Every Lead You Get from Lead Generation Websites
James Pollard, Marketing Consultant, TheAdvisorCoach.com
If you’re going to use any of the popular lead-generation websites that promise to send you leads directly, MAKE SURE that you stay on top of them and evaluate EVERY lead. Even if the leads are good, there’s a chance that they’re sending it out to dozens of different people in your area. Finally, if you are using these popular websites, make sure you only have them working when you need them. I’ve seen a few home improvement companies get their calendars completely full and still pay to have leads sent to them. It’s a waste of money.

29. Work for Referrals and References
Stephanie Lantz, Principal, Lantz Consulting: Branding & Communications
Home improvement contractors must position themselves where homeowners first look: word of mouth, community newsletters, community groups on Facebook and other platforms. They must promote not only their skill sets, but their values as well. Although they leave when a job is finished, their brand remains. Did they show up when promised (integrity)? Did they do what they promised, with the quality materials promised, in the time frame promised, for the price promised (honesty)? Did they treat the home with respect, leaving it clean each day’s end, and did they do what was necessary to protect it while working? All things being equal in work quality from so many companies, it is important to remember that people buy a service-and remain loyal to that service- not for what it does, but for why and how it does it.

30. Reverse Engineer the Current Buying Process
My #1 recommendation for home improvement businesses to generate leads would be to reverse engineer the current buying patterns of customers through the channels that already exist. For example, people are already using platforms like Home Advisor & Google to seek out your services. I suggest starting with Google Adwords to gain an immediate presence on page 1 for targeted search terms in your area. Make sure you are putting your best foot forward on these platforms & be sure to include customer/client reviews and pictures showcasing your work. I’d also suggest getting creative with referral opportunities. If there are other contractors in your area that offer complimentary services, offer to take them to lunch to discuss referral opportunities. This can be a cheap and effective way to start generating repeat business from other contractors who are already “in” with local clients!

31. Get Creative With Your PPC Advertising
Don’t just target keywords directly related to your home improvement niche; target queries potential customers might search for when just considering the idea of needing your products/services (e.g. “bathroom remodel cost”). Utilize geo-targeting to focus on areas in which your target customers likely reside. Set up a campaign targeting keywords related to a recent current event or upcoming holiday to benefit from the high search volume. Think outside the box, and see what works best for your business.

32. Connect With Your Target Market Online
Gideon Lipnickas, Owner, New Concept 180
Use social media to reach your prospects but choose the right platform for your business. For professional contractors, Houzz is a great source because your prospects can ask you questions about the home improvement projects. So engage with your clients, answer their questions and provide valuable information to get the wanted leads.

33. Tailor Your Strategy With Market Research Surveys
A unique idea and approach to lead generation is using market research surveys. To try and build a book of business and new leads, you must first understand what your customer’s awareness, perception, and image is of your home improvement business. Do they know your brand? How do they make their choice? What source(s) do they use? When do you plan on starting your next project? You can even use the last question of the survey to ask the respondents if they are interested in receiving more information about the business (for follow-up leads). This can be completed online using regional panels of participants and social media for as little as $3,000.

34. Be More Visible Online By Improving Your Page Speed
To generate leads, you need to be visible online so make sure your page speed is up to snuff. Effective July 2018, pagespeed will officially become a ranking factor for mobile pages, which is a crucial issue for the home improvement industry. That’s because the bulk of the home improvement consumer population is in the 35 to 64 age range, and people in this demographic are much more likely to search for home improvement options on digital devices, including mobile. You can test your site speed at a Google site to discover how quickly your site loads if a site visitor has a 3G connection. You will also be shown what percentage of site visitors will bounce off your site because of your load time (lead generation percentage is zero among the page bounce crowd) along with recommendations to fix site-speed problems.

35. SEO for Local Lead Generation

Speed sells!

Q:  So how does website performance affects sales for an average online business?

A:  Dramatically!