Are you ready to get real about the marketing mistakes your remodeling business made this year? One of the best ways to grow is to learn from your mistakes and vow to do better in the future. We surveyed remodelers from across the U.S. and Canada in Builder Funnel’s inaugural State of Remodeler Marketing Report and uncovered some mistakes remodelers were making and how to fix them to grow sales and boost your marketing in 2020.
Remodeler Marketing Priorities
In 2019, the majority of remodelers surveyed prioritized converting leads to customers. However, almost half of those remodelers said their biggest marketing challenge was generating traffic and leads. While converting leads to customers is an important aspect of any business, remodelers struggled to obtain leads in 2019, and also didn’t make converting leads to customers a goal.
In 2020, focus your marketing efforts on the areas that generate leads and close sales. For many of the remodelers we work with, lead generation often come from premium content offers such as design guides or cost reports. Once you have a lead in your database, you can keep in contact and nurture them to the purchase phase by providing additional information, building trust, and helping lead them through their remodeling journey.
ROI & Analytics
In 2019, more than half of remodelers surveyed couldn’t calculate their marketing return on investment (ROI) or didn’t know which form of marketing gave them a higher ROI. This is causing remodelers to lose out on money and leads by not monitoring the ROI of their marketing efforts. If a tactic isn’t working, it’s important to change it to perform better or remove it from the marketing set, reallocating that part of the budget and time to an area that is doing well.
In 2020, invest in your marketing and your business by installing marketing analytics software. Once you can see the data, check the numbers weekly to see if anything needs to be tweaked. Take deeper dives monthly to see what’s working for your business and what’s not. By implementing these suggestions, your remodeling company will start to generate leads and customers more efficiently.
Remodeler Marketing Content & Strategy
In 2019, remodelers said that growing SEO and organic presence was a top priority. It’s commonplace for consumers to take to the internet to do 90 percent of their research and decision making. However, this becomes a mistake when remodelers don’t take the extra step to boost their websites. Almost half of remodelers said their company never blogs, which is an important traffic driver and website booster.
In 2020, continue to focus your efforts on SEO and organic presence, but also consider more content creation for your website. We generally see content-heavy websites perform better in terms of website visits and leads, because with more options drawing people to your website, there are more opportunities for your content to be seen and for visitors to convert. Add blogs, videos, FAQs, process explainers, timelines, and any other pieces of content users would find helpful.
Sales & Leads
In 2019, more than half of remodelers said qualifying leads was their top sales challenge. It’s understandable that this is a challenge, especially while television shows on HGTV make remodeling seem like a fun, easy, and cheap process. Qualifying leads doesn’t have to be a long process or even a difficult one.
In 2020, let your leads self-qualify. Knowledge is power and your prospective customers want to learn more about the process before they begin. Why waste your own time by disqualifying leads after they’ve already reached out? Educate your consumers on the points that will help them self-qualify before they even get to you. Give consumers a range of what they can expect to pay for a remodel. Tell them the types of projects you complete. Show them what your timeline for remodeling projects typically is. All of this information can be given on your website — and ultimately saves time for you and for your prospect.
Creating Your 2020 Marketing Plan
We all make mistakes, but true failure comes when we don’t learn from our mistakes and instead continue to make the same ones. If your remodeling business is making any of these mistakes, consider the points above and work on a better system for 2020. For more stats and takeaways your business can use in the coming year, download the full 2019 State of Remodeler Marketing Report.
