Starting a construction business is a significant undertaking anywhere, but it’s especially challenging in areas with high competition. It makes perfect sense, right? Economies work on supply and demand and often-times many companies compete for the same supply. It’s similar to competitive sports. The best crush the rest.

I often converse with entrepreneurs in highly competitive regions like the Bay Area. Usually they’re asking me for advice on how to get more customers using online marketing. I always take a look at their business and their market. When I see someone is basically starting from scratch in a super competitive area, I use a simple analogy.

“This is like you going from highschool ball to the NBA.”

It’s true. In high population areas there are always many contractors and construction companies that figured out, a long time ago, how important online marketing is and have been going hard at it for years, sometimes decades. To come in fresh and expect to compete is silly.

If it’s someone starting a brand new business, sometimes I’ll ask them if they would ever consider moving and relocating their business efforts. I have clients all over the country and it’s very clear that you can still quickly take over a low competition area with some simple online marketing. This almost always happens in rural areas, however. Not in major cities. 

I do have one client in LA who happens to be in a niche where other companies aren’t too good at online marketing. It’s rare, but it does happen sometimes. However, if you’re a remodeling contractor, plumber, electrician, or any common type of contractor, you’re going to be facing some steep competition.

That’s not to say you should give up hope just because you’re not able to move. If you’re in a very competitive city, aim to dominate your neighborhood first. Google Maps works off of proximity first so it’s possible for you to beat strong competitors when someone searches closer to your location than to your competition. This is the blessing of Google Maps and being able to get customers through this platform as a local business. It keeps it somewhat competitive, even for the small guy.

If you don’t live in the area you want to work, you’ll need to talk to me in order to get my advice.

As a remodeling contractor for over 15 years and a marketer for nearly 7, I’ve seen all kinds of new marketing strategies come and go. The latest offering from Google – Local Service Ads – is proving to be a game changer for lead generation. In this article, I’ll explain what Google Local Service Ads are, how they work, and tips for getting set up to take advantage

of this powerful new advertising option.

What Are Local Service Ads?

Local Service Ads, also referred to as Google Guaranteed Ads, are a new form of pay-per-call advertising offered by Google. When someone searches for a relevant local service, these ads appear prominently at the top of the search results, before the regular paid ads and organic listings.

The key difference is that unlike regular Google Ads where businesses pay per click, with Local Service Ads you only pay when a potential customer calls your business directly from the ad. The ads stand out with a phone icon and a prominent “Call Now” button.

When a customer clicks on a Local Service Ad, they are taken directly to your Google My Business listing. This provides immediate access to call or message the business. They pull information from your Google My Business listing and those glorious yellow review stars sit right there in plain site. We all know how everyone loves those stars and uses them to make buying decisions online.

After helping many clients with this type of ads, I’ve seen call prices range from $25 to $250 per call. While that might sound expensive to you, if you’ve ever done regular PPC advertising, you know that this is right on par with how you pay per lead on just about any platform. I’m talking about actual leads here, not random contact information of people you never actually speak to.

How Local Service Ads Work

Google wants to ensure a quality experience for customers clicking on Local Service Ads. So there is an approval process required before a business can start running these ads.

First, you need an optimized Google My Business listing with all the key details like hours, photos, services, etc. Having lots of positive reviews is also important since these are one of your main differentiators with this kind of advertising… If you’re showing up next to other companies and they have 50x more reviews than you, you’re automatically at a disadvantage.

Google will verify your business meets requirements like proper licensing, insurance, staffing capacity, and more. You’ll also need to provide call recording consent since Google reviews recordings to resolve any disputes about lead quality. This is a good thing because you will get refunded for leads that prove to be bad or not relevant to your business.

Once approved, you set a monthly budget as well as choose your service areas and your ads will start appearing for relevant local searches. You can pause and adjust spend at any time without long-term commitments.

The backend dashboard provides helpful metrics like call history, the ability to mark appointments as booked, dispute bad leads, and listen to call recordings. While I recommend doing this yourself, we do offer this as a service if it’s worth it to you to have someone else monitor these calls daily, mark booked leads, and refute bad ones. If this isn’t done daily, th

e cost of your ads will rise dramatically, and fast. Google requires your constant feedback and will reward companies that do this over others that don’t.

Word on the street is that maintaining a booking rate over 80% is crucial to keep your costs down. The platform optimizes performance automatically, but small ongoing tweaks will improve results. It’s all about testing and seeing how your company is sizing up to the competition. Every city is going to be different.

Tips for Getting Started

In my experience, Local Service Ads work best as a secondary strategy once you have strong organic rankings and reviews. They provide a more immediate lead generation boost for new contractors trying to gain momentum.

While not as cost-effective long-term as ranking organically, the predictable lead costs can make budgeting simpler. Again, it’s just important to monitor these leads daily because some weeks can be busier than others and constant adjustment is sometimes needed to get the leads you want while maintaining your budget. Below are my top tips for getting started:

• Optimize Google My Business profile first – don’t pay for ads without reviews.
• Stack positive reviews before launching ads. These lend credibility alongside ads.
• Have proper licenses, insurance, and staffing to pass verification.
• Closely monitor performance data to maximize bookings.
• Focus on high-value service areas where $100-$150 calls make sense.

I’ve seen contractors generate 20-30 solid leads per month through Local Service Ads on a $2,000 monthly budget. I’ve also seen others in high competition areas and niches get just a few leads per month for the same budget. They both make money, just in different ways. I think it’s important to have reasonable expectations – this is a supplemental lead generation strategy, not a complete marketing solution. Feel free to reach out with any other questions!

Many contractors wonder how to find new customers and get more jobs. The truth is you usually don’t find jobs unless you respond to big commercial project bids. For most contractors like remodelers, electricians, and plumbers, customers find you when searching for local services.

In the past, this was all through word-of-mouth referrals. A homeowner would ask around for contractor recommendations and get either a good referral or a horror story warning. Referrals still work today but are slowing as more people search online. If you aren’t getting referrals, you likely aren’t doing quality work since happy customers tell friends about good contractors.

10-15 years ago, services like HomeAdvisor were great for finding leads. We paid $5-10 per lead and got tons of contacts weekly. But over time more leads were bad numbers or people who already had bids. It wasted our time and money. So around 2013-2014 when things were slow, we built a website to find customers.

Back then we were one of the only contractors in our area online, so the ugly site still brought in business. But like HomeAdvisor, over time our results dropped as more competitors made better sites. I had to learn about search engine optimization to get our site showing up on page one of Google for our service keywords.

I spent hundreds of hours learning this and after some work, our site was bringing in phone calls again. Now we’re booked out two years in advance and only get new jobs through the site and Google searches. Over time I built a team to handle this marketing so I could focus on contracting work.

With the marketing running smoothly, my team started helping other contractors optimize their online presence. We build professional websites, improve Google rankings, and get reviews to stand out. The goal is to get contractors showing up above referral sites on Google searches.

When you look at page one for most contractor searches, it’s dominated by HomeAdvisor, Angie’s List, Thumbtack, and more. These are lead reselling middlemen harvesting people’s contact info to sell as leads. They hide this fact and make it seem like you’ll get to browse contractors when really your info gets sold the second you submit the form.

If contractors had strong websites and Google listings themselves, they could get calls directly without paying for leads. You have a huge advantage over referral sites by being an actual local business. You just need a professional online presence to showcase it.

Getting your own leads this way has many benefits compared to buying from sites like HomeAdvisor. The leads are much higher quality since they already found and vetted you, so they’re almost ready to hire. With referral site leads, you’re one of 5 quotes they’re getting and the customers often aren’t even ready to talk to contractors yet.

You also control the lead flow with your own site and listings. You can use ads to get more calls, improve your site to get more organic traffic and more. With third-party referral companies, you get what they give you and are at their mercy.

So in summary, stop relying so heavily on HomeAdvisor and similar sites. Use them as supplements but focus on building your own online presence through a professional website, Google My Business listing, and reviews. This will provide a steady stream of quality leads without expensive middlemen.

Getting More Qualified Leads Without Overwhelming Yourself

For small contractors and remodeling businesses, getting found online is crucial these days. Most homeowners start their search for a contractor by googling something like “kitchen remodeler near me.”

The problem is, if you run ads on Google or do typical lead generation, you’ll get a ton of leads that require a lot of tedious follow-up calls and emails. Compared to dealing with referrals and repeat customers, it can be like pulling teeth. Most contractors hate having to work their way through so many low-quality leads.

Here’s the thing. They aren’t low-quality. They are normal. You’re just used to dealing with referrals which aren’t even leads. They’re like customers being hand-delivered to you! You just have to not mess it up!

As a contractor and the owner of a marketing company, I’ve realized that our core marketing service works because it’s very close to getting referrals. Prospective customers do a lot of research and homework to find our clients and when they finally make contact, it’s almost like they’ve already chose to work with them. All our clients have to do is take them through the process.

It requires less calls, less follow up, and generally less hastle to get customers this way.

If you’re wondering what exactly this core service is I’m talking about, check out this video on my Youtueb channel.

The key is guiding the homeowner’s journey:

• Make yourself easy to find in the organic results with good reviews, photos, and a great website.
• As they go deeper into your site, add in some qualification questions to filter out bad fits. For example, ask about their budget.
• By the time they contact you, they should feel like they already know and trust you.
• When you do get that lead, call them ASAP and focus completely on giving them an amazing experience.

Basically, organic leads should go straight from lead to customer without much nurturing. Just focus on being human, asking the right questions, and delivering epic service.

If you want more leads, I recommend doubling down on organic instead of trying to process tons of low quality leads. Work on your online presence until you hit the natural lead cap for your market.

Going further requires stepping back from operations and treating your biz more like a sales machine. And most contractors don’t want to play that game…nor should they!

If you’re going to do regular advertising, have reasonable expectations

If you’re doing advertising and getting colder leads, you just have to expect that you won’t reach a lot of them. It will require that you call them over and over again to reach them a lot of the times. There are things you can do such as call them back immediately. This will help your success rate.

The fact of the matter is, it’s just a lot harder to close deals with people that barely know you. Seems like common sense now, right? Referrals are great because they trust the person who told them about you. Organic leads the way we get them are very warm too because these folks found you on their own and have done some vetting already.

Advertising is a numbers game and there’s no way around it. To play, you must do some volume!

Good luck.

It’s no surprise to many of us that Homeadvisor and Angie’s list are under fire from contractors for providing fake leads and unsatisfactory customer service. Just this past week Homeadvisor made the news when they connected some unlucky homeowners with a convicted felon who trashed their home.

All one has to do is read a few reviews of these services written by contractors to understand that they are generally not very popular from the professionals’ point of view. It begs the question then: Why are these online marketplaces so popular?

If you’re reading the reviews online, you’ll have to sift through a few positive reviews written by homeowners to find a negative one written by a business owner. The fact is these services make finding professional service providers a lot easier for homeowners, at least they used to.

10 years ago the internet was young. Most businesses didn’t have a website, a Facebook page, or any online presence. They were working off of word of mouth and traditional marketing mediums like radio and tv.

When services like Homeadvisor and Angie’s List first made their appearance they were revolutionary in a sense. As thousands of consumers turned to the internet to find the goods and services they were looking for, a few businesses, the early adopters of the internet, were soaking up all the leads and profiting hugely.

Over time, two things have happened:

1. A lot more businesses have signed up to be service providers on Homeadvisor and Angie’s List.

2. Angie’s List and Home advisor have grown to be enormous enterprises with gigantic marketing budgets.

Now, in 2018, there are more businesses than ever sharing the pool of leads provided by these services. There is real pressure on companies like Homeadvisor and Angie’s List to continue to stay profitable amongst rising costs of advertising

Over the years they have managed to spend more on marketing than any other company in the industries they serve. This is why when you search for a remodeling contractor in your city, Homeadvisor and Angie’s List are the first search results you see. They paid for that!

These companies have spent millions of dollars to be on top of the search results and they have to transfer these costs to someone. That someone is the businesses that rely on them to stay in business. This is why the price per lead has continued to rise and these mega-companies have had to resort to selling the same leads to multiple professionals to make ends meet. Some businesses have even reported receiving fake leads. But, how do you know if a lead is fake?

There is no way to be certain from the perspective of the home improvement professional. All they know is they paid $127 for a lead that never returned their call. Some have even reported talking to customers that already started and sometimes finished their projects.

There’s no doubt that something is amiss amongst these online service provider marketplaces…

So what does this mean?

The conclusion I come to is simple. These giant companies just aren’t needed anymore. These days it doesn’t take much for a business to get their name out there online without having to rent a listing from a company. Especially a company that doesn’t seem to value their business in the first place.

There are a few things every company should do, and often it’s enough to get all the jobs they want:

• Have a professional website
• Set up a GMB account – Google Maps listing
• Actively seek positive reviews from happy customers
• Be an active participant in their community
• Be active on Facebook and create a presence on social media

The over-arching idea is simple. Today’s community is taking place online, so be a part of it. Make your company known and put a happy face to it. Get good results for your customers and get them to talk about it. That’s really all it takes.

Continuing to rely on companies like Homeadvisor and Angie’s List to have your best interests at heart is a losing proposition and should be approached with caution. If this is your plan instead of doing the things listed above, you are digging a hole for yourself and hoping that Homeadvisor and Angie’s List will provide a ladder to climb out. Trust me, they won’t.

You can read more about it at http://www.remodeling.hw.net/

Curious about how these various services compare? Read all about it here:

Homeadvisor vs Angie’s List vs Houzz vs Yelp vs Bark vs Porch

Wondering what other types of marketing you can do online? Find it here:

Marketing Best Practices for Home Services Companies

If you’re a contractor looking for more customers, buying leads should be your last resort. Here’s a link to one of my most recent articles where I go over the major options for contractor lead generation go give you an overview of your options. I recommend checking it out before you get too deep into this long artile.

There is a table of contents below as well as in the sidebar if you are on a computer. This will help you navigate around the article as it is rather large and it’s easy to get lost.

If you have any questions that haven’t been answered please check the comment section below. If you enjoy this article or see a way it can be improved, please leave a comment yourself. Comments are done through Facebook so there’s no login necessary.

You can also watch the video I made on this article if you want to save some time.

Thanks for reading!

Table of Contents:

1. HomeAdvisor
   1. Pros and Cons
   2. Conclusions
   3. Reviews
2. Angi (Angie’s List)
   1. Pros and Cons
   2. Conclusions
   3. Reviews
3. Porch
   1. Pros and Cons
   2. Conclusions
   3. Reviews
4. Thumbtack
   1. Pros and Cons
   2. Conclusions
   3. Reviews
5. Bark
   1. Pros and Cons
   2. Conclusions
   3. Reviews
6. Houzz
   1. Pros and Cons
   2. Conclusions
   3. Reviews
7. Yelp
   1. Pros and Cons
   2. Conclusions
   3. Reviews
   4. My Personal Experience with Yelp Advertising
8. Conclusion for Homeowners
9. Conclusion for Contractors

HomeAdvisor Overview | Pros and Cons | Reviews

Formerly known as ServiceMaster, Homeadvisor is the largest player in the world of online home improvement marketplaces. It is owned by IAC, the same company that owns Angi (Angie’s List).

HomeAdvisor offers various ways for homeowners to quickly connect with contractors. Some of their services bypass the need for phone calls to set up the first meeting.

While the service is free for homeowners, contractors must pay on a per-lead basis as well as a yearly membership fee.

HomeAdvisor is popular amongst homeowners, but very unpopular amongst contractors.

Pros for homeowners:

• Contractors are pre-screened for criminal and financial background checks.
• It’s free to sign up.
• It takes some of the due diligence out of having to reach out to multiple contractors and check their referrals.
• Appointments can be scheduled online without the need to directly contact the contractor.

Cons for homeowners:

• Upon signing up, personal information is sold to multiple contractors, often within minutes of completing the form.
• Some homeowners complain about getting too many calls and emails as soon as they submit their information.
• Sometimes matches are made with contractors that aren’t local.
• The pre-screening process can result in a false sense of security for homeowners and lead them to believe they don’t need to run their own screening process. – Fox News Denver, CO.
• Contractor reviews on Homeadvisor are cherry-picked by Homeadvisor per their review guidelines and are not always objective.

Save Some Time and Download the Pros and Cons Cheat Sheet

Download Cheat Sheet

Pros for contractors:

• There have been reports of good leads being purchased from Homeadvisor.
• Building a Homeadvisor profile can help unestablished businesses get found on Google searches even if they don’t have their own website.
• If you are the only professional in your market, you will get more leads.

Cons for contractors:

• Shady Sales tactics. I’ve heard recorded calls where Homeadvisor salespeople will call contractors without stating who they are.
• You have to pay for leads even when they don’t turn into paying jobs. ($50 + per lead)
• Leads are sold to multiple contractors so the competition is heavy. The job often goes to the first caller (see Homeowner Con # 2).
• Since the service is free for homeowners, a lot of leads are people who aren’t serious (tire-kickers). Sometimes even other contractors.
• Homeadvisor is notorious for having terrible customer service. Just do a google search for “Homeadvisor reviews”.
• Canceling your subscription can be difficult and refunds hard to get. There are many reports of contractors being charged after canceling.
• Homeadvisor shares leads with Angi (Angie’s List), so if you subscribe to both services, you may buy the same lead twice.

There’s a class-action lawsuit against Homeadvisor and Angi (Angie’s List). Read about it here.

Conclusion: Should You Use Homeadvisor?

The sentiment on Homeadvisor is split between homeowners and contractors. Homeowners tend to like it because it takes some of the work out of the equation when it comes to hiring a contractor. The main complaint is that sometimes homeowners are contacted by too many contractors at inconvenient times, even when the “no-calls” option is selected. Do you want 20 plumbers calling you?

Contractors tend to dislike Homeadvisor because of the bad customer service they experience, paying for useless leads, and the fact that so many contractors are competing on the same leads at the same time. The consensus is that it’s a waste of money, but as business owners, they have to go where the customers are.

From the outside looking in, it’s apparent that the reason companies like Homeadvisor exist is for the convenience they add on the homeowner’s side. It’s unfortunate that there isn’t as much value offered to the professional side. Overall it seems to have a negative impact on the industry as it promotes contractors handing over their marketing to a company that doesn’t have their best interests in mind. This giant marketing machine then competes with businesses that are trying to market for themselves online, making it more costly and challenging for everyone.

Homeadvisor Reviews by Homeowners: Average Rating: 4/5

• https://www.bbb.org/denver/business-reviews/contractor-referral/homeadvisor-in-lakewood-co-22000608/reviews-and-complaints
• https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.homeadvisor.com

Homeadvisor Reviews by Contractors: Average Rating: 1.8/5

• https://www.resellerratings.com/store/HomeAdvisor
• https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/homeadvisor.com

Homeadvisor Reviews by Employees: Average Rating: 3.7/5

• https://www.glassdoor.com/Overview/Working-at-HomeAdvisor-EI_IE11291.11,22.htm

Update: I decided to check the review sites and see if anything changed. One thing I noticed is that on Trustpilot, most of the positive reviews are from people that have only left 1 review total. I see this a lot when companies buy reviews. Believe it or not, there are companies in places like India where you can order a ton of reviews and employees will go in and create fake accounts and leave reviews. I’m not saying this is absolutely the case, just making an observation.

From the contractor side, unfortunately, most of the reviews still look like this:

Angi (Formerly: Angie’s List) Overview | Pros and Cons | Reviews

Angi (Angie’s List) is the oldest of the home improvement marketplaces. In October of 2017, it was acquired by IAC, the owner of Homeadvisor it’s then largest competitor. “We are owned by that same parent company but we are two separate companies that operate independently.  We are one part of the Angi Home Services Brand portfolio.  This is a very important distinction.” – Jessica Blalack, Senior Solutions Consultant at Angi.

Angi started off as a paid-only service which helped improve the integrity of the system as a whole. In late 2016 Angie’s List changed their model to be free to join, but pay to play. What this means is that contractors can have a profile for free and pay to rise to the top of the list on page one.

Angi is an advertisement and directory platform and does not sell leads per se. The fee is monthly whether you receive ten leads or zero leads.

A common complaint by homeowners is that they don’t sign up for anything but they still get called by a bunch of contractors… I got to the bottom of why this happens by talking with Jessica Blalack, a higher-up at Angi. This is what she said:

“Non-members (Homeowners) who visit the Angi (Angie’s List) website and elect NOT to sign up for membership are sent through a service request funnel.  Their information, as non-members, is then sent to HomeAdvisor advertisers as a lead.  HomeAdvisor companies are calling these homeowners and paying to do so as they are considered leads.” – Jessica Blalack, Senior Solutions Consultant at Angie’s List

This might explain why so many leads from Homeadvisor appear to be fake or unresponsive… They are people that didn’t ask to be contacted.

Pros for homeowners:

• Background checks are performed on contractors.
• It’s free to sign up.
• Some contractors have been using this service for over a decade which provides a long history of reviews, which is the main strength of Angi.

Cons for homeowners:

• Though free to sign up, you must provide your personal information in order to read reviews and contact contractors.
• You may be bombarded with phone calls from service providers as soon as you tell Angi what you’re looking for.
• Even if you don’t decide to purchase the service, your contact information is sold to Contractors via Homeadvisor as a lead. (See quote above)
• The calls have been known to last for days. – Review on Consumer Affairs Website (Can’t link to it for some reason)
• Though “verified”, there are reports on occasional fraudulent reviews.
• You must be at Gold Level membership tier to receive customer service regarding contractors you hire through Angi. – Angi (Angie’s List) Website

Pros for contractors:

• Once in a while, you might get a good lead!
• Being established on Angi over a long time will result in better visibility.

Cons for contractors:

• You must pay to have your profile show on the first page.
• You pay for advertisements, not leads, so there’s no guarantee of getting a response.
• There is very high competition as leads are sent to multiple contractors immediately as they come in so you have to be ready to call as soon as you get the lead. This can be annoying for customers as 10 contractors are calling them at once.
• Profiles are owned by Angi so if you stop paying, you stop playing.
• Customer service is notoriously terrible. (See some reviews from Consumer Affairs)
• Angi shares a lead-pool with Homeadvisor, so if you’re paying for both services you might buy the same lead twice.

Save Some Time and Download the Pros and Cons Cheat Sheet

Download Cheat Sheet

Conclusion: Should You Use Angi (Formerly Angie’s List)?

My research shows that Angi is on a similar level to Homeadvisor, though less popular amongst homeowners due to the pay to play model and poor customer service. There are a lot more complaints… (See Reviews Here)

Contractors have similar complaints to Homeadvisor, in that they typically pay a lot of money for nothing. When they go to cancel, they find the process to be very difficult. Many reports having charges continue even after they decided to cancel.

Of the online home improvement marketplaces, Angi has the worst reviews.

Angie’s List Reviews by Homeowners: Average Rating: 2.2/5

• https://www.bbb.org/indy/business-reviews/contractor-referral/angie-s-list-llc-in-indianapolis-in-3041007/reviews-and-complaints
• https://www.yelp.com/biz/angies-list-sacramento-2

Angie’s List Reviews by Contractors: Average Rating: 1.4/5

• https://www.consumeraffairs.com/online/angies-list.html
• https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/angieslist.com
• https://angies-list.pissedconsumer.com/review.html
• This website tracks stats like the average amount of $ lost investing in Angie’s List. Amongst the 177 businesses, the average loss was $3900. Wow!

Angie’s List Reviews by Employees: Average Rating: 2.8/5 (Update 3.4/5)

• https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Angie-s-List-Reviews-E15700.htm

Thumbtack Overview | Pros and Cons | Reviews

The way Thumbtack operates is similar to Porch in that homeowners post their projects and contractors are able to pick which ones they want to pursue. While they used to use a credits system, they changed their pricing structure to straight cash.

Now, how it works is a contractor can reach out to a homeowner if they want to bid their job. If the homeowner responds, then the contractor is charged based on the value of the job. A criticism of this structure is that the contractor does not know how much they are going to be charged until after the homeowner has responded. Another complaint is that even if the homeowner responds to let them know they are not going to hire them, they still get charged.

It’s not super clear how much they will be charging which doesn’t seem all that great to me. Here’s a screenshot of their policy for pricing.

Pros for homeowners:

• It’s free to use
• You can sometimes find good contractors to complete your project.
• There are a variety of services you can search for besides home improvement.
• The power of choice is in your hands.

Cons for homeowners:

• No background checks. There have been reports of unlicensed contractors and felons being part of the program. Thumbtack will remove the accounts of convicted felons if it’s brought to their attention.
• There have been reports of homeowners being connected with professionals that don’t offer the service they’re looking for.
• Homeowners can inadvertently cost a contractor money just for sending them a message.

Pros for contractors:

• There have been reports of successful connections with homeowners that lead to profitable jobs.
• Thumbtack’s Instant Match feature will automatically send quotes to homeowners for pre-selected job types.
• You can pay a subscription to buy leads automatically at a 20% discount (Not sure if this is a good thing. Would need to test)

Cons for contractors:

• You don’t get to see how much you will pay for a lead until after it’s charged.
• It’s been reported that fees and charges can occur without due reason or explanation.
• Reports of bad customer service.
• There have been reports of paying for messages from fake customers.
• Prices continually rise making the system less profitable, especially after abandoning the credits system.
• You pay for communications, not leads. If a customer replies to tell you they are going with someone else, you still pay for the message.
• You have to pay to boost your ranking, but if you do you will automatically buy all leads that qualify depending on your preferences you set up.

Conclusion: Should You Use Thumbtack?

In researching Thumbtack, I found it to be an interesting business model. Charging professionals for communications rather than leads allows Thumbtack to profit even when no value is being transferred. I wasn’t able to find many positive reviews on Thumbtack from anyone. The positive reviews I could find were written by homeowners for the contractors they hired through the platform, not the platform itself. This is unfortunate for the contractors because Thumbtack is getting credit for their hard work. Those reviews would be incredibly valuable on their Google Maps Listing, for example.

There were a lot of professionals saying the platform used to be great, but has recently changed their model and is no longer profitable for them. There are some very interesting stories scattered amongst the reviews. It’s worth taking a look through the links below.

Thumbtack Reviews by Homeowners: Average Rating: 3.9/5

• https://www.bbb.org/greater-san-francisco/business-reviews/internet-service/thumbtack-inc-in-san-francisco-ca-367066/reviews-and-complaints

Thumbtack Reviews by Contractors: Average Rating: 2/5

• https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/thumbtack.com
• https://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/thumbtack.html

Thumbtack Reviews by Employees: Average Rating: 4.4/5

• https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Thumbtack-Reviews-E414078.htm

Update: Just looking at the very first review that pops up from the top link above suggests things haven’t changed since 2018. Here’s a screenshot:

Bark.com Overview | Pros and Cons | Reviews

Bark.com is the new kid on the block. It was launched in 2014 and started as a marketplace for web services, but has since spread into local markets including the home improvement space. The way it works is like the opposite of Thumbtack. Homeowners can list their job for free and Contractors can pick and choose which jobs they want to pursue. When a contractor wants to make contact with a homeowner, they must use credits to send a message and receive the customer’s phone number and email. The cost of a credit at this time is 1.65. The number of credits it takes to get the contact information for a certain project is determined by an algorithm based on the estimated value of the project. The average in my experience is about 20 credits per customer contact info.

Here’s a screenshot from Bark’s website showing an estimation for credit cost per lead. They don’t have construction but I would assume it’s about 2x what web design is based on my experience of job cost having worked both industries extensively.

Pros for homeowners:

• There is a multitude of services you can find on bark, not just home improvement services.
• It’s free to use for homeowners
• Bark contacts service providers that aren’t even in the network yet, so you get access to a larger pool of professionals
• The app is very easy to use

Cons for homeowners:

• You don’t get to choose what professionals contact you.
• No background checks
• Might not be ideal for larger, more expensive projects because of the reasons listed above

Pros for contractors:

• You don’t have to create a profile
• You can choose what jobs you pursue
• They offer a money-back guarantee if you spend all your credits and don’t get any jobs from it (Update: they will return your credits if you don’t get any jobs, but only one time.)

Cons for contractors:

• There seem to be a lot of bad leads. People that don’t respond or are not serious about their project or people trying to sell you services. Some just don’t respond. – Ripoff Report
• There have been numerous reports of terrible customer service.
• Leads can be expensive with no guarantee of it paying off. It’s like gambling with your time and money.
• You are competing with a lot of other professionals for each lead.

Here’s a case study I found from a Wedding Photographer trying out Bark. It doesn’t seem like it worked for him at all.

Conclusion: Should You Use Bark?

Now that Bark has been out for a few years it appears to be on par every other online professional marketplace. It’s really easy and free to use for consumers which makes it very popular, especially for smaller projects. The real specialty of Bark is finding services such as a DJ for a wedding. It’s not really geared towards home improvement professionals so it seems to attract the smaller, more handyman-type projects.

Like the rest of the services in this article, I don’t think it’s a great primary lead generation strategy for a construction company. If you have some kind of niche offerings like a wedding DJ or something, it’s probably better suited for that. If you are a homeowner with some small projects you need help with around the house, or if you need your dog walked, Bark might be the perfect option. For contractors, there are better places to invest your time and money if you’re looking for large, serious projects. If you’re a handyman who just wants to make some money to buy beer this weekend, Bark might work just fine. Check out the reviews below to see what people are saying about this online marketplace.

Update 4/2020

I was contacted by the marketing director at Bark over in the UK. He asked if I would be interested in trying their service and updating my review of them. I figured it was worth a shot. You never know what’s going to happen with marketing until you try.

He explained that they are very popular in the UK but not so much in the US, but they would like to change that. I signed up with my remodeling company and let it ride. Over the course of 3 months, I only received 1 lead and they did not respond when I reached out. I got the notification late on a Saturday night, so it wasn’t until Monday that I called. Maybe they had already found someone else to handle their project.

From what I can gather, Bark works better for a handyman and other small project-type contractors. It’s not as popular for things like remodeling.

Overall, I didn’t get a ton of leads or make any money from it, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. I was very pleased with my dealings with the salesman and the account representative. They were very honest about what to expect and they also went through the sales process with me to make sure I was set up for success. The reason I am even mentioning this is that the customer service was very good and that’s rare in this industry. Just last week I had Homeadvisor saleswomen call me 8 times. The last time they called, they even lied about being from Homeadvisor despite using the same number as before… Pretty shady.

Bark isn’t shady. So, give it a try if you’ve already set up your Google Maps listing and have it completely optimized. That should always come first so you can ask for happy customers to leave reviews there.

(Update: There are a lot more reviews since first writing this article. The consensus seems to be that homeowners love the service while professionals hate it.)

Bark Reviews:

• https://www.trustpilot.com/review/bark.com
• https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/bark.com
• https://fitsmallbusiness.com/bark-com-user-reviews-pricing/

Bark Reviews by employees: Average Rating: 4.4/5

• https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Bark-com-Reviews-E1781995.htm

Porch Overview | Pros and Cons | Reviews

Porch is a little different than the other home improvement marketplaces. Here, homeowners sign up and post their projects, budgets, and timelines, then contractors can pick and choose which ones they want to pursue.

Contractors pay a subscription-based on their service and service-area. They can see the leads before they buy, which is cool. If they decide to contact the lead then they have to pay to do so.

Porch offers additional features such as an app that offers ideas and photos of home improvement projects similar to Pinterest. This can be helpful in communicating to the contractor what the homeowner is looking for.

Porch has numerous partnerships with companies such as Lowes and the BBB that help it bolster its offering to consumers and improve the quality of the information its site.

Pros for homeowners:

• It’s free to use.
• It’s good for finding professionals to complete smaller jobs that larger contractors might not be interested in.
• Background checks are conducted on service providers in certain areas.
• Contractors can be found on Porch through a local Lowes store.

Cons for homeowners:

• Even with background checks, there is no guarantee that the contractor you’re matched with will perform adequately.
• Some report being overcharged for services.
• Not all areas provide background checks.

Pros for contractors:

• Useful for small contractors who want small, handy-man type jobs that only take a couple hours to complete.
• Can sometimes ask for a refund for bad leads.
• Can pay a premium to be featured in local Lowes stores.
• While Homeadvisor will sell the lead to many contractors, Porch limits this to 4 contractors.

Cons for contractors:

• Though I listed this in the Pros, I still think it’s a con for the leads go to up to 4 different contractors so you will be competing right off the bat.
• Poor customer service.
• Can be difficult to cancel the subscription and stop payments.
• Porch offers the “Porch Guarantee” which is their version of a background check. One of the requirements is a strong online presence which can be a challenge for companies that are just getting started or have always found business offline.
• You are paying to promote Porch’s brand, not yours.

Conclusion: Should You Use Porch?

After conducting my research, I’ve found Porch to be similar to the other home improvement marketplaces. The reviews I read lead me to believe their customer service might be a step above the others.

Porch is a younger company but has secured partnerships with large, established companies. Its partnership with the Better Business Bureau allows its website to display more accurate and verified information on contractors. Their partnership with Lowes expands its advertising capability beyond the internet into Lowes stores.

For homeowners, it might be worth looking into. For contractors, proceed with caution. Check out the reviews and decide for yourself if you think it’s worth a shot. If you do give it a try, pay close attention to how much your paying so you don’t get ripped off.

Overall the reviews are hit or miss. The negative reviews seem to be about Porch while the positive reviews are for the people that do the work. In my opinion, those companies doing the work need these reviews on listings they own so hopefully they are getting those.

Porch Reviews by Homeowners: Average Rating: 4.1/5

• https://www.bbb.org/western-washington/business-reviews/contractor-referral/porch-com-in-seattle-wa-22830560/reviews-and-complaints
• https://www.trustpilot.com/review/porch.com

Porch Reviews by Contractors: Average Rating: 1.7/5

• https://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/porch.html
• https://www.highya.com/porch-com-reviews

Porch Reviews by Employees: Average Rating: 3.4/5 (Update 3.7/5)

• https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Porch-Reviews-E738201.htm

Update: I’ve looked at their reviews over the last couple years and it looks like they are making a serious effort to make things right with those who feel wronged. That’s a good sign that they are at least trying to provide a good customer experience.

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Houzz Overview | Pros and Cons | Reviews

Houzz is a Facebook-like environment where contractors can create profiles for their businesses and showcase their work and testimonials.

Homeowners can create profiles and browse large catalogs of pictures and products aimed at helping them plan and carry out their remodeling projects. One of the coolest features of Houzz is the ability to create idea boards similar to Pinterest. When homeowners and contractors work together on the idea boards it can be a great way to generate plans for a project, especially a home renovation.

The platform is free, but contractors can also pay to advertise, which will push them to the top of the list for people in their local area.

Since Houzz makes its money from advertising and selling products, it’s different than the other services which sell leads and communications.

As far as online home improvement marketplaces go, Houzz is in a league of its own. I include it in this list because it’s one of the main ways homeowners are connecting with contractors in 2019.

Save Some Time and Download the Pros and Cons Cheat Sheet

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Pros for homeowners:

• There is a large database of information and pictures that can help with remodeling ideas.
• Can buy home products directly from the site.
• Can browse contractor’s profiles for free.
• Contractor profiles offer a lot of valuable information about the business. Most include tons of pictures.
• Idea boards can be created and shared. This provides a creative experience where homeowners and contractors can communicate ideas for the project through pictures and notes.

Cons for homeowners:

• Can be hard to return or exchange items purchased through Houzz.
• It can be hard to leave an honest review of a contractor if it doesn’t meet Houzz’s review guidelines. They like positive reviews. This skews the integrity of the review system.
• The idea board system can be very useful.

Pros for contractors:

• A free profile can be created and built up with pictures and reviews to help advertise your business on Houzz.
• Contractors can pay to advertise and boost their profiles to the top of the list.

Cons for contractors:

• Advertising contracts can require large cancellation fees to end the service and payments.
• There have been numerous reports of terrible customer service.
• Even if a contractor has a great, built-up profile, other contractors can pay to get ahead of them.
• Paying for advertising doesn’t guarantee jobs. Contractors must still put a lot of time and effort into building and keep their profiles consistently updated.
• There have been reports of getting negative reviews from non-existent customers.
• Houzz owns everything on the contractor’s profile, including the pictures posted there.

Conclusion: Should You Use Houzz?

I was surprised to find so much negative sentiment on Houzz. I have used this service successfully as a contractor, though it was very expensive. I ended up canceling it because it wasn’t as profitable as marketing for myself.

I have met some contractors who have built their entire business on Houzz and swear by it. Since the platform doesn’t charge per lead, it’s possible to get a steady flow of leads at a very affordable rate. Performance is determined by the quality of the profile and the competition on the Houzz platform.

The majority of negative reviews for Houzz are left by homeowners who are angry they cannot return or exchange a product they purchased through Houzz, so that doesn’t speak too much to the quality of connections made with contractors.

I grouped these reviews together because there was no clear distinction of who was leaving reviews on any site.

Houzz Reviews: Average Rating: 3.1/5

• https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/houzz.com
• https://www.bbb.org/losangelessiliconvalley/business-reviews/bulletin-board/houzz-in-palo-alto-ca-263825/reviews-and-complaints
• https://www.trustpilot.com/review/www.houzz.com?languages=en&stars=5
• https://www.bbb.org/us/ca/palo-alto/profile/bulletin-board/houzz-1216-263825/complaints

Houzz Reviews by employees: Average Rating: 3.5/5

• https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Houzz-Reviews-E716331.htm

Yelp Overview | Pros and Cons | Reviews

I didn’t include Yelp on this list until Jay Dawes out of Chicago called me up to ask me why I didn’t, and I realized he had a point.

Yelp is one of the most popular local service shopping platforms on the internet. It gets over 145 million visitors per month!

It’s got a reputation for attracting negative reviews. I think this comes from the fact that a customer can create a profile for a business without the business owner’s permission. This is typically done when they want to leave a bad review.

It’s free to sign up and create a profile whether you’re a business or a consumer. They offer businesses the ability to advertise similar to Google Adwords and Houzz. If you pay to advertise, they will show your listing on top of the list as well as of profiles of other companies that haven’t paid. They charge you per view, not per click, which is something to be aware of as they still use the term Cost per Click in their pricing.

Yelp is used for businesses in many different industries, including home improvement services. It’s hard to find information online about Yelp pertaining specifically to the home improvement industry, so I had to reach out to my network and ask about experiences people have had in order to get information for this article.

Pros for homeowners:

• Free to use.
• Typically there are a lot of pictures and reviews to browse.
• You contact the contractor directly, so there are fewer opportunities for miscommunications compared to other online marketplaces.

Cons for homeowners:

• Yelp has an algorithm that controls reviews, so your review for your contractor might not show.
• There are many complaints that Yelp gives preference to paying businesses and will skew reviews in their favor.
• No background checks are conducted on contractors.
• There is no customer service to turn to if something goes wrong with your contractor.

Pros for contractors:

• It’s free to create a profile, post pictures, and gather reviews.
• You can pay to advertise in the directory and on competitor profiles.
• There is a large amount of traffic looking for services on Yelp.
• It’s possible to get fake reviews removed by flagging them yourself.

Cons for contractors:

• If you don’t pay, competitors will advertise on your profile.
• Your reviews might be filtered resulting in a lot of client reviews that never get seen or counted in your star rating.
• Some business owners have said that their rating goes down when they cancel their paid advertising. – BBB Review by Andy F. on 5/20/18
• Yelp salespeople are relentless in pursuing your purchase of advertising.
• The self-service advertisement platform allows minimal control over how your money is spent and provides little metrics reporting. Even Yelp salespeople have told me the self-service platform is bad.
• General contractors focusing on larger projects report a lot of cheapskates and tire-kickers coming in from Yelp.

Conclusion: Should You Use Yelp?

Like the rest of the online marketplaces, Yelp is a good place for homeowners to look for local services. They will find tons of reviews and pictures that can help them make a more educated decision on who to hire. As always, it’s important for homeowners to do their own due diligence and research the companies they intend to hire.

Contractors should definitely invest a little time in creating a Yelp listing and throwing some attractive pictures on it. Those focusing on small projects or commercial jobs can get a lot of quality leads through Yelp, even without investing in the advertising platform.

General contractors and those focusing on larger projects report getting contacted by a lot of tire-kickers and customers requesting quotes with minimal information about their project. For these types of contractors, Yelp seems to be less useful and more of a time-waster.

If a contractor has tested Yelp and found it to be profitable, then I think it can be a great tool for lead generation. For most contractors, however, I wouldn’t recommend it as the main channel in which lead generation is pursued; more of just a small piece of a larger puzzle.

My Personal Experience with Yelp Advertising

In 2018 I was offered $300 credit to advertise on Yelp. Since I am into PPC marketing, I was curious about how their system works. I took them up on the offer and set up a profile. I set my budget to $10/day and planned on making my final decision of whether or not to keep this service after 30 days.

30 days went by and I had but a couple clicks. Hardly any of the credit was spent. At this rate, it would take many months to go through the $300 credit, so I let it run. I found the platform to be a little awkward to navigate compared to other PPC platforms. There was very limited information about what was going on and no options in regards to spending other than the daily budget.

After some time had passed, I checked back in. I was shocked to find that the spending had blown past my $300 credit up to around $600. It was a surprise because I hadn’t had any leads come in through Yelp… What also alarmed me was this: In the beginning, I was paying around $7 per click and getting about 4 clicks per month. By the end, I was paying over $20 per click. But, wait, didn’t I set my max daily budget to $10?

As a marketing manager, I would never have been willing to pay this much per click… Especially when I wasn’t getting any results. It wasn’t clear why the price had gone up that high. The amount spent that last month was exactly $300 even though there were fewer clicks than the month before. This makes it seem like the price per click raises to meet the budget, no matter how many clicks there actually are. This isn’t how other PPC platforms work.

I spoke to some people I know at Yelp and they weren’t able to tell me much more than I knew already. They said the self-service platform is controlled by computer algorithms and that they figured the prices rose because of competition. They couldn’t tell me anything factual or concrete. The numbers just didn’t add up to me.

Regardless, I take full responsibility for letting this happen, and I learned some valuable lessons.

The moral of this story is that the Yelp self-service advertising platform is not really self-service. The only option you can change is the daily budget which actually means monthly budget. Yelp’s computers handle the rest. I’m not telling you not to try it and see if it can be profitable for you, just be careful. Pay close attention and check it often to make sure you are spending what you had planned on spending.

For me personally, I would rather use other PPC platforms that give me control and provide me with enough data to understand what is going on. I found it very sneaky that a daily budget actually means a monthly budget. If it means monthly budget, then say it. Transparency is a key ingredient for good customer experience.

I grouped these reviews together because there was no clear distinction of who was leaving reviews on any site.

Yelp Reviews: Average Rating: 3/5

• https://www.sitejabber.com/reviews/yelp.com
• https://www.bbb.org/greater-san-francisco/business-reviews/internet-service/yelp-com-in-san-francisco-ca-193927/reviews-and-complaints

Yelp Reviews by Employees: Average Rating: 3.4/5

• https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Yelp-Reviews-E43314.htm

Overall Conclusion for Homeowners

In the world of online home improvement marketplaces, homeowners are the customers, so they are treated the best. All of these services provide easy ways for homeowners to find contractors to complete their projects. The unfortunate side of things is that contractors seem to get the short end of the stick. As they are forced to go where their customers go, they often feel taken advantage of by these massive companies.

My recommendation for homeowners is to find their own contractor. Start with Google. In the last few years contractors have become a lot better at marketing for themselves. With tools like Google Maps, homeowners can easily see star ratings and read honest reviews from customers. They can browse contractor websites to find the one they like the best. With tools like Google Maps Messenger, it’s never been easier to reach out to a contractor and request a meeting and referrals.

I think it’s best to reward those contractors who have invested in their own marketing by building websites and advertising on Google. This shows that they are established and committed to their business, and will likely provide a positive experience for their customers.

A decade ago, Companies like Homeadvisor, Angie’s List, Porch, Thumbtack, and Houzz played an important role in connecting homeowners with contractors. As the internet has matured and more and more contractors have created their own online presence, the need for these companies has diminished. The only reason they still exist is that they got so large that they could afford to advertise more than anyone else in this industry. They now create a large barrier between homeowners and contractors and charge millions of dollars to let the two connect. In 2019, there is no need for this.

If you’re a homeowner looking for a contractor, start with Google and go from there. If you see companies on these matchmaker sites, run their name through a Google search. Likely you’ll find a website and a Facebook profile in which you can connect with them for free. Everybody wins this way. The contractor wins because they have managed to attract customers with their own efforts, and homeowners win because the cost savings of not having to pay these large companies are transferred to the price of the projects.

Overall Conclusion for Contractors

The general consensus from the contractors I’ve talked to is that these companies are to be avoided. If you do decide to try them out, proceed with caution. In 2019 it’s very easy to find someone to build you a website and a proper marketing system that YOU OWN. There are tons of ways to generate leads without turning to these crooked companies for help.

Don’t get me wrong. These companies did offer some value once upon a time, but nowadays they have grown too large and are funding their growth by raising their prices. The conclusion I’ve come to is that these companies are rarely profitable for contractors and should never be the first choice when looking to get more jobs.

If I had to pick one, it would be Houzz. I have met a few people that have had a lot of success with Houzz. They post pictures daily and make sure every single customer they get leaves a positive review. They also pay to advertise. These three things put together seem to create a lot of success on this platform. The downside is that Houzz owns everything on your profile. If you’re comfortable with investing in someone else’s business instead of your own, give it a shot.

The promises these companies make sound great to contractors who just want to pay someone to handle their marketing so they can worry about other things. The fact is, it’s not always good to settle on the first option you come across. The best thing a growing company can do is hire a good marketing manager whether it be in-house or outsourced. Dig deep with this manager and flush out your goals and the roadblocks that might keep you from reaching them. Create a plan that fits your company, and roll with it. The most important part: You own the assets.

Take a little time to research the various free options there are for getting your name out there. Start with a Google My Business Profile and get on Google Maps. Get a website that features all of your business information and showcases your successful projects. There’s nothing better you can do besides learning a little bit and taking control of your fundamental marketing. The next best thing is finding a good marketing agency to partner with that can help you build your marketing assets over the long-term.

Wow… This article ended up way bigger than I intended. I hope it was helpful. I want to be clear that it was not my intention to write a negative article about these companies. I think that for some, they are great ways to acquire new business. From what I could gather, most contractors have a very bad experience and are not shy about telling everyone about it.

Please leave a comment below with your thoughts, stories, or any other information you think should be covered in this article. Thank you for reading.

Find out how other construction companies have successfully found leads on their own:

Case Study: Kile Construction

Case Study: Murrayhill Remodeling

Creating Your GMB Listing (3pack)

I’m not going to go too deep into creating a GMB listing. Once you start the process it’s pretty straight forward. Here’s a link to get it done:  https://www.google.com/business/

If you just can’t figure it out, give us a call and we’ll help you out.

Optimizing Your Listing

Once you’ve created your listing, it’s time to fill it out completely. It’s pretty simple. Just make sure all the information is totally accurate. If there’s a place to put information, make sure it has something in it! You can do this by clicking Info in the control panel on the left.

When you get to the information page you will see lots of pencils. Click the pencils to edit your business information. It’s critical to make sure the information is accurate. Google is constantly scanning the web looking for every mention of your business. If the information differs on different websites, Google gets confused and doesn’t know where to place you in the search results. The first place Google looks is your GMB account, so it’s the most important place.

Your business information found on the rest of the web (citations) should match your Google Listing in order to get the best rank possible.

To read more about citations, check out this great article by Moz.

Google Maps Categories

The next critical step is making sure your categories are in order. The first one should be your main category, but there’s room to add more. Go through the list and add any that are relevant to your offering. Don’t get silly with it and pick something that isn’t relevant.

You can see on mine I chose the website designer category first. This is what I want to rank for most in my city. Then I go down the list in order of what I want to rank for the most. This structure resembles the structure of my website which will come into play later when we’re trying to rank our GMB listing.

Another thing to note is that it’s good practice to include these exact category names on the headers of your website. Remember, we want Google to find consistent information about your business no matter where it looks.

Once you have chosen your categories hit the apply button and we’ll move onto the next step.

GMB Address Section

Next, we’ll take care of the address. In the past, it’s been very important to include a physical address even though you have the option not to. As of July 24th, 2018 this may not be the case. We are seeing more and more GMB Listings showing in the top three without showing a physical address. So, it’s up to you whether you want to or not. You could try not having one and see how you do. If you aren’t where you want to be, add an address and see if it helps.

Go ahead and fill in your service hours, website, and any other spots you can input your info. Definitely, don’t forget to write a good description! This section should be customer focused meaning try and write it from your customers perspective. How does your product help them or change their life?

Services Section

A new addition to GMB is the Services Section. That means if you fill yours out completely you could gain an edge on your competition who hasn’t noticed this yet.

The services section can be found underneath your website link.

Click on that and let’s see what’s going on in there.

Filling Out Your Services Section

The services section is your chance to show people what you have to offer. It’s good practice to throw in some copywriting and write about your products from the perspective of your customers. Tell them what the items are and what they will do.

Conclusion

If you’ve done everything to this point, then you are in good shape. You now have the proper foundation set to get your Google Listing to the top. Give it a day or two and do some searches for your product or service in your city. Where is your listing showing? We would make note of where the listing is every time we check. We want to know when it’s moving so we can figure out why and take actions that move it up the ranks.

There are many things you can do from here. Some of them are:

• Ask every customer you please to give you a good review!
• Create a Google Website for your business. (button found in GMB menu)
• Create a Google+ account
• Add tons of pictures to your GMB listing
• Post regularly on your GMB with offers, valuable content, or whatever you see fit
  • Share these posts on your Google+ and Facebook pages
• Monitor where your listing is so you can begin to understand what’s moving it
• Keep track of the actions you take so you can see what you did that made a difference
• Perhaps the most important thing you can do is structure your website pages properly to reflect your GMB categories and build more pages to grow the topical relevance of your website. Once your website is more relevant than your competition’s you will be on top!

I hope this article was helpful to you. As always you may contact us to get whatever help you might need.

We offer GMB setup and Ranking Services as well. If you’re interested in having professionals handle this for you, contact us today.

Note: There are so many options in today’s world for generating leads. More than ever I’m seeing business owners and marketers get carried away with all the flashy new tools and strategies while they completely ignore the fundamentals.

For most contractors getting the fundamentals right would bring them all work they ever need.

“That sounds great, but what are the fundamentals?”

I’m glad you asked…

The fundamental marketing set up for any business is a website that is seen by the right people at the right time and shows them what they need to see to buy. That’s it! In your average market, this is enough to bring in new business.

If you don’t have the fundamentals right, you’re stepping over dollars to pick up dimes. In other words, you’re unnecessarily wasting time and money.

If you do have the fundamental set up and are looking to expand your lead generation capabilities, the rest of this article is for you. Grab a cup of coffee and dive in. Invest a little time in your knowledge of marketing to help your business be as successful as it can be.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   1. About Me
   2. Where Most Contractors Stop
   3. Summary of “How to Profit as a Contractor” Book
   4. When Lead Generation Becomes Important
      1. Reasons to Invest in Lead Generation
      2. Reasons not to Invest in Lead Generation
   5. Lead Generation Costs Time and/or Money
2. Word of Mouth – The Original Marketing Plan
   1. Pros and Cons
3. Reviews –  The New Word of Mouth
   1. How to Ask for Reviews
   2. How to Handle Negative Reviews
4. Google Maps Listing (GMB)
5. Websites – The Bedrock of Your Online Presence
   1. Case Study: Website Combined with Adwords for a Remodeling Company
6. SEO – Search Engine Optimization
   1. Case Study for SEO for a Construction Company
7. Content Marketing – Giving Away Free Value
8. Email Marketing – A Gentle Helping Hand
9. Marketing Funnels – The Holy Grail of Online Marketing
10. Joint Ventures – A Match Made in Heaven
11. Professional Clubs and Associations
12. Networking Events
13. Pay-per-lead Companies
14. Online Home Improvement Marketplaces
15. Partnerships with Big Box Stores
16. Physical Advertising – The Real World
17. Direct Mail
18. Radio and TV Ads
19. Conclusion

For Sales, Leads You Must Have

Generating sales is a practice as old as business itself. In order to have sales, you must have leads. What’s a lead? Honestly, I hate the term lead. It’s so impersonal and non-descriptive. I prefer to replace the term lead with conversation. A conversation is a prerequisite for a sale in 99% of cases anyway. In residential construction, it’s more like 100% of cases.

So, if we want more sales, we need to have more conversations. Finding those conversations is what we are referring to when we talk about generating leads, and every business owner has their own favorite way of doing this.

One of the coolest ways to generate conversations (leads) I’ve ever heard of was done by a Remodel Contractor named Wayne Johnson. Wayne was a funny guy and a great storyteller. He was loved by his customers not only because he did great work, but because he was entertaining as hell the whole time he was in their home. It was probably a skill he developed over dozens of years on job sites passing the time by shooting the shit with co-workers.

Wayne’s lead generation strategy was unique and genius. When a big project was coming to an end, he would convince his customers to have a party celebrating the completion of their project. If they were reluctant, he would offer a small discount on the final bill. Wayne would do anything to make this get-together happen.

All of the customer’s friends, family, and neighbors were invited over for cocktails and to see the newly remodeled home. Wayne would be there to tell them all about the project. Everyone there left with a smile and one of Wayne’s cards. This strategy kept Wayne busy throughout the entirety of his career. He eventually sold his business but he’s still telling his stories, and people are still listening.

This is just one example of a creative way one can generate leads for a construction business. As a business owner or salesman finding possible future sales is a part of everyday life. If it isn’t, long-term sustainable growth will be replaced with periods of famine. We’re all familiar with the term feast or famine. The purpose of this article is to provide you with man ideas for avoiding famine and keeping food on the table all year long.

The creation of the internet has added a whole bunch of new and exciting ways to find customers or have them find you. Online methods offer a degree of scale not imaginable by people of the past. Another benefit of online lead generation is that a lot of it can be automated. For a business owner who is already spread thin, this can be just the lifeline they need to grow and scale their business.

Who am I to talk about this stuff? Good question. I’m a long time contractor who has tried it all when it comes to generating leads that turn into sales. Over time I’ve evolved into an online marketer in order to help contractors and business owners generate sales and grow their companies. Here’s a bit of my story.

Like Most Contractors, I Started at the Bottom and Worked My Way Up

For me, that meant working as a laborer for my father’s remodeling company. I remember it fondly now, but as a teenager, I always felt like I had better things to do than carrying bags of concrete up a hill or cut tile outside in the winter when it was 28 degrees out. When I close my eyes I can still see the icicles forming on my arm hairs as the mist of the tile saw sprayed all over while making cuts.

Over the following decade, I worked my way up the ladder eventually landing a job with a remodeling company in Portland as superintendent. At 29 years old I was getting the itch to go out on my own. I was ready to be my own boss. My boss at the time, Patrick Richardson of Murrayhill Remodeling, gave me a book to read called How to Profit as a Contractor which got me really excited about the idea of being my own boss and making more money for the hard work I was doing. It showed me how to set up a business to be profitable and sustainable. This book might have been what sparked the fire for me that eventually led to me starting my digital marketing agency, Adapt Digital Solutions.

Around this time, our company was experiencing the pain of not having enough sales. We lost the one job we were working on and had nothing else in the pipeline. Everything came to a screeching halt. I remember asking myself, “How can this happen?” I mean, this company had an amazing reputation and had always done great off of referrals alone. Why had jobs stopped coming in now? Why were we dead in the water? What could we do in the future to make sure this didn’t happen again?

Looking back, I don’t think there was any good reason for it. That’s just the randomness of relying on word-of-mouth to generate sales. It was completely out of our control. As a go-getter, I took it upon myself to fix this. I mean, I had nothing else to do, so why not? I found a mentor to teach me web design and marketing and got to work building us a new website. One that had a clear call to action. One that showed all the necessary trust factors that homeowners look for when shopping for a contractor. I did everything my mentor told me to do, then I used Google Adwords to get homeowners to the website.

It wasn’t long and we were busy going to meet people in their homes, looking at kitchen remodels, additions, garage conversions, all sorts of stuff. I really cherish this experience because it taught me how to sell remodeling projects. I had always been good at customer service, but it’s a different ball game when you’re meeting people for the first time and helping them make their way through the process of making their home the way they want it.

After a few months we were back on the job site, hammers swinging. It was an amazing feeling knowing that I had made it happen. I was responsible for getting this remodeling company back on track. The fact that one could purposely generate sales for a company was thrilling to me. I now saw lead generation as the one thing every business needs.

Over the following year, I was responsible for putting over 1 million dollars on the books, filling up the schedule for over a year. All this with the power of online marketing. I was hooked. This is the golden ticket for anyone running a business. To be able to harness the power of the internet to grow a business puts all the power into the hands of those willing to tap into it. When you know the steps to take to get more customers there’s no limit to how far you can run with it.

Since this all went down in 2017, I haven’t looked back. I created Adapt Digital Solutions and have made it my mission to help other business owners generate those conversations that turn into sales for their businesses and put food on their tables.

Where Most Contractors Start and Stop

Most contractors I meet started similar to the way I did. When they get to the point where they’re ready to start their own company, they continue doing things the way they were taught or picked up along the way. They do really good work not only because they take pride in it, but because they know pleasing their customers will cause them to tell their friends and families about the great job their contractor did.

The word-of-mouth marketing system feeds the contractor and he is finally self-employed. He’s his own boss. This is as far as most contractors get. They raise their hourly rate a little every 5 or 10 years, eventually making 65 an hour and employing a helper or two. This is the top for most, and that’s awesome. It’s great to be your own boss. You’re in charge of your time, your money, and your life. But is that as far as this path goes?

I thought this was the end of the road for a long time. After all, it’s where most guys find themselves until they retire. This is being a business owner, right? Actually, that’s wrong. According to Micheal Gerber in his book called The E-Myth, there’s a difference between being self-employed and being a business owner. If you’re self-employed, you probably do mostly hourly work. You’re basically a wage earner that has control over his own wage and how much he works. The problem with this model is that you are capped out by how much time you can spend on the clock. You’ll never be able to pass a certain point because there is only so much time in the day. The only way to earn more is to raise your prices, and you can’t do that forever either. Nobody is going to pay $500/hr for a carpenter, right?

In Micheal’s opinion, a business owner is someone who leverages other people’s time to expand the amount of work that can be done by the business. This can be scaled until the business owner is making however much they want to make. If you want to make 100k per year, you can probably do that as a self-employed contractor. If you want to make a million, you’ll have to scale. But how?

If you’ve never read the E-Myth, I highly recommend it. It might be a bit alarming if you’ve spent your life thinking of being self-employed as the same as being a business owner, but I promise this knowledge will page dividends. You can find it here on Amazon or at your local Goodwill store.

The question of how to scale plagued me until I read another book called A Simple Guide to Turning a Profit as a Contractor. It’s a short book that explains how to become a business owner instead of an independent contractor. It teaches you to change the way you think about everything related to your business. It’s the true guide for evolving from self-employed to a business owner and earning more with a few small changes to your mindset.

A very brief summary of Turning a Profit as a Contractor:

The first thing you’ll have to do is decide to raise your prices. In order to grow past your own capabilities, you have to hire either employees or subcontractors to carry the larger workload. You have to decide how much you want to make and add that into the overhead and cost of goods sold to come up with your bid price.

(Click the picture of the book to learn more)

You also have to decide which customers you want to work with. You’ll no longer be competing with the independent contractors who are willing to take small jobs and work for an hourly rate. You’ll have graduated to the next level, bidding on the big jobs and earning more than ever before.

This is when it becomes necessary to invest in lead generation. You need to be able to produce sales to drive the growth of your business. Growth depends on choosing the right jobs so you must have some to choose from. Gone are the days of taking every job that comes your way. It’s important to choose the ones that will help your business grow.

Relying on word-of-mouth is dangerous and cannot be the only way you get new customers. Anything that leaves you not in control is dangerous. The clear signal that it’s time to start thinking about how to generate your own leads is when you want more jobs than you have coming in, or the jobs you have to pick from aren’t the kind you need to grow your business.

When Lead Generation Becomes Important. Are You Ready?

This article is about what contracting companies can do to generate leads and sales for their business. To be clear, it’s not for everyone. There are certain reasons a contractor needs to start thinking about investing in lead generation. Some of them are:

• They want control over the flow of new customers coming in.
• They want to grow their business beyond what it is now.
• They have extra funds to invest in growing their business.
• They don’t have any new work coming in.
• The current job options are not good enough.
• They want their business to be sellable.

Here are some reasons why a contracting company should NOT invest in lead generation:

• They can’t handle any more work.
• They only want to work when it’s convenient for them.
• They aren’t interested in growing beyond where they’re at now.
• They have no interest in ever selling their business.
• They want to close their business.

Investing in Your Future: Time or Money

So, you’ve decided that you want to generate more leads for your business. There are two ways to do it:

1. Invest time
2. Invest Money

I believe wholeheartedly that the absolute best thing the owner of any company can do is learn how marketing works. Even if you hire someone else to do it for you, understanding human psychology and how to properly promote your business is extremely valuable. The fastest growing companies either invest heavily in their marketing or have an owner who has taken it upon themselves to handle it.

If you don’t have time to invest, then money can take its place. The amount of money depends on your goals, short and long-term, and how fast you want to grow and scale your business. The rest of this article is dedicated to the various avenues available to construction companies for generating leads and sales.

The Original Marketing Plan – Word of Mouth

This is the go-to marketing plan in the independent contractor world. Word-of-mouth should be the goal of every company. If your product or service is great, then people are going to talk about it. If it’s bad, they will talk about it even more. In today’s world, with social media and smartphones, word travels faster than ever. Everything gets shared, so paying attention to the details and keeping customers happy should be the number one priority of every business.

Referrals from past customers should be treated like gold. Make these new customers happy and they too will spread the word. In the remodeling world, it’s not that hard to make customers happy. Smile. Treat them with respect. Always stay positive even if things aren’t going well. That’s pretty much it. Even if something goes wrong, if you keep your focus on making sure they feel good, the job will usually go smoothly.

A little note on staying positive no matter what’s happening. Growing up my dad taught all of us employees to replace curse words with the word “perfect!” Whenever I would mess up I would shout “perfect!” Our customers thought we were the shit… Always striving for perfection!

One thing that some guys know but don’t do is ask for referrals. It can and should be part of the process for every project. Keep in touch with past customers. After 6 months has gone by after finishing a job, call your customer and ask them how everything is going. Let them know you were thinking about them. Once you have caught up a little and established that all is well, ask them if they know anyone that could use your services. You’d be surprised at how often they will say they do! If not today, maybe tomorrow. Staying on top of their mind is key.

Customer referrals are like a fire you can keep stoking. If you lose touch with a customer and only reach out to them 5 years later when you need a job, they might not quite remember how much value you gave them. You will have let the fire go out. However, if you keep the relationship alive by checking in once or twice a year, you will always be on top of their mind when the subject of home improvements come up. If you ever ask them for a referral they will be even more obliged to help. After all, you’re not just the contractor that remodeled their bathroom, you’re their friend that checks in with them more often than their kids… Well, maybe not that much, but you get the point!

There is a principle called the 1000 True Fans principle. It states that if you have 1000 true fans that will pay you 100/yr for your goods or services, you will make 100k per year. The idea is that you don’t have to please the whole world. By having a small, dedicated fanbase who will use your services and tell others about them, you can make a nice living. In construction, I think the number is much less. With 100 happy customers who always hire you back and tell their friends about you, you can make a very nice living as a contractor. With 200 you can build a very successful remodeling company.

Pros and Cons of Word-of-mouth Marketing

Pros

• It doesn’t cost money
• Referrals are highly trusted
• It can be influenced by your effort to build long-term relationships with your customers (100 true fans)

Cons

• You’re not in direct control
• Bad word-of-mouth spreads faster and wider than good
• It cannot be scaled, meaning it’s limited by the number of people you can directly affect

Reviews – New World Word-of-Mouth

Over the last decade, reviews have grown in popularity and usage. These baffling statistics, found at brightlocal.com, explain a lot…

• 85% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• 73% of consumers will trust a business just because it has positive reviews
• 49% of consumers need to see at least 4 out of 5-star reviews before they will trust a business
• 97% of consumers used an online search to find a local business
• 68% of local consumers left a review when asked

Though these statistics are impressive, reading them didn’t surprise me in the slightest. I, myself, will look at online reviews before making almost any purchase I’m considering. If there are negative reviews, I’m out. If there are zero reviews, I am skeptical and probably won’t buy if there’s an alternative with good reviews. If a product or service has good reviews, and a lot of them, I will usually stop researching and move into buying mode. Why is it that reviews carry so much weight?

I think it’s due to the nature of reviews themselves. For one, people don’t have to leave a review, so when they do, it means something. Two, typically angry consumers are more likely to leave a review than happy consumers. These two facts lead me to believe that if a business has a lot of good reviews, it’s likely trustworthy. I trust one friend, but I trust 100 strangers more. Is this herd mentality?

As consumers, we know that we only leave reviews when something is really good or really bad. As business owners, we know that good reviews aren’t typically easy to get. With this knowledge in mind, it’s easy to see why reviews can be such a powerful marketing tool.

Asking for Reviews

So, does your business have any good reviews? I hope so. If you don’t know how to ask, it’s pretty simple. Wait until a moment when you have given a lot of value to a customer. This moment typically comes along when you finish a project and your customer is super happy. Their project is finished and you are leaving their home. It’s a good day! The best time to ask them to leave a review is when they are happy about your product or service.

It’s common to wait for some time to pass and send an email with a link for them to leave a review. The problem with this strategy is that you are relying on the fact that they are still excited enough about the value you gave them to go through the trouble of leaving a review. This greatly diminishes the chances of getting one.

As I said before, the best time to ask is the moment you give them a lot of value. Something we’ve been doing with great success is handing our customers a business card at this very moment. On the card is a short and sweet message such as, “Please help us help others and leave a review at www.reviewkconstruction.com. The link goes to a special page that has simple instructions on how to leave a review and a button that opens up the exact screen where they can leave a Google review. We choose Google because we find it generates the most business for us.

Having this review funnel set up allows us to get more reviews than we were getting before and in more places since it is easier for our customers to leave them.

How to Handle Negative Reviews

My hope for you is that you don’t get a lot of negative reviews. If they build up too much, they will sink the ship. It’s hard to recover from too many bad reviews. If you do happen to get one, don’t worry just yet. Sometimes they offer the perfect opportunity to flex your customer service muscle and handle it with care and grace.

The first thing you need to do when a negative review comes in is to always agree with the customer, as long as it makes sense. You don’t have to admit fault, but agree that they are feeling bad and that you are prepared to do whatever it takes to change that. If you are able to fix this problem on a public forum and get them to change the review, this will forever work as a badge of honor for you and your company. People that check reviews are looking for the bad ones. Show them how you turned a negative into a positive and you’ll earn even more trust than you would have otherwise.

We’ve established that reviews are important, but you already knew that. Here’s another interesting statistic: 48% of consumers will visit a business’s website after verifying positive reviews. What they find on the website will determine their next step. Are they ready to buy or do they need to continue searching for the right company to hire?

Google maps – The key to getting found by local searchers

Being on Google Maps is perhaps the most important fundamental marketing tool for a local business. With the majority of consumers using Google to find their local service providers, a business not known by Google is a business not known by many.

If your construction company has been around for a while you might have a Google maps listing despite never creating it yourself. This is because Google will automatically put businesses on its map that it knows about. If this isn’t the case for you, you will have to do it manually. You can get started on this process by going to Google My Business. If you need more help, you may contact us here and we will talk you through it.

Check Out This Guide For Setting Up Your Google Listing

There are two main reasons why having your business on Google maps:

1. Consumers using their mobile phone will be shown search results on Google Maps.
2. The 3-pack is found at the top of the search result page when searching for local services and products.

The Google 3-pack is found at the top of Google search results:

Once you have a Google Maps listing, getting it into the 3-pack depends on the content found on your website. By making your website more topically relevant and geographically relevant, you can make sure your business shows above your competition.

Getting in the top 3 Google Maps listing will result in your business getting the majority of the attention from consumers searching online for a contractor.

Your Website – The bedrock on Which Your Online Presence is Built

For your business, the website is the number one place to present your company exactly how you want. Your websites are the one place you have total control and ownership of. Have you ever thought of that? You might be using Homeadvisor, Facebook, Yelp, Adwords, or many more avenues of promoting your business, but you don’t actually own any of these platforms. Why is ownership important?

Control and ownership are bedrocks of growing a successful, sustainable business. Services like Homeadvisor and Facebook change over time, and there’s nothing you can do about it. There have been countless businesses that went belly up or damn near when a service they were relying on changed the rules of the game and threw them for a loop.

Business websites are ingrained in our culture. They are part of the way consumers shop for products and services, especially home services. I’m sure you’ve heard it many times. “Do you have a website?” Customers who are considering large, invasive construction project on their home will research for months, sometimes years before they’re ready to pull the trigger. They will look through every nook and cranny of the online world to make sure they are putting their trust in the right company. We’ve had people tell us they debating between our company and another for over a year before finally choosing us. What was the final straw? The website.

If it comes down between you and a competitor, the final comparison might be your websites. If yours is outdated or even non-existent and your competitors is awesome, who do you think the homeowner is going to pick?

Your website should be the place for consumers to find all the information they need in order to trust you. This means your contractor’s license, customer testimonials, association badges, awards, and of course, beautiful pictures of your work. If your website has all of these things, you are in good shape.

To learn more about what a can do for your business, check out these articles:

• 7 Reasons Why Your Website is Important to Your Business
• Case Study: How a website saved a remodeling company in Portland, Oregon

The next 4 Lead Generation strategies are built using a website as the platform on which they stand.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Getting Found By Those That Are Looking

You’ve probably heard of SEO before. Search Engine Optimization is the act of modifying and creating website content in order to make it easier for search engines, such as Google, to index and present to those who are searching for related information. It can be easier to understand this concept by imagining you are Google.

If you are Google, what is your number one goal? As a for-profit business, the number one goal is making money. How does Google make money? In a nutshell, Google makes money when people are using online assets that Google owns. These assets include products such as Gmail, Google Search, Google Adwords, and hundreds of other products you’ve probably never heard of. Let’s focus in on Google Search.

Google wants people to spend as much time on the Google Search screen as possible. In order to achieve this, they need to make sure they show the exact information people are searching for. The better job Google does, the more people will use their search engine. Obviously, they’ve been killing it as they’ve been number one forever.

#1 goal of Google Search: Show the most relevant and accurate information possible for any given search.

Knowing this, if we want to show up on Google search, we must make our website content as accurate and relevant as possible for the topic (keywords) we want to show up for. If our website is about bathroom remodeling in Portland, Oregon, then we want to make sure we have a lot of content about bathroom remodeling in Portland, Oregon. If we don’t mention Portland, then people searching for bathroom remodeling in Portland won’t find us.

In a nutshell, SEO is about making sure website content is as relevant and accurate as possible for the given keywords a business wants to show up for. Like any career, there are a ton of techniques and strategies an SEO craftsman will use to make a website rank better. For the purposes of this article, we just need to know that showing up higher in Google search will result in more people visiting the website. What those people find on our website will determine whether or not they become leads for our business.

Content Marketing – Giving Away Free Value

Content marketing is the action of creating content with the intent of getting visitors to convert into sales for a business. It’s closely related to SEO in that content is often created in order to rank for the specific keywords the target audience is typing in when they want to buy a product or service.

The content used for marketing can be written articles, videos, podcasts, webinars, and any other medium that allows information to be transferred.

For Contractors wanting to generate leads and sales, content marketing can be extremely powerful. Many companies write or hire blog writers to consistently publish articles about remodeling and other topics related to the services they offer. When prospective customers find these articles during their online research, it allows the construction company to connect with the customer before they are even close to buying. If you can hold their hand and walk them through the research stage of their remodeling project, you will already be in the best position when they are ready to move forward with their project.

If writing isn’t your thing, videos can be equally as powerful. Publishing consistent videos on the job site talking about the projects your working on can give prospective customers the inside look they need to be able to understand the construction process and imagine what it will be like to have their own home turn into a construction site.

“But wait! What if my videos aren’t perfect?”

Here’s the thing. People don’t really care about perfect. They are more concerned with finding a contractor they can like and trust. Creating content is not about showing how perfect you are. It’s about showing how much you care about what you do and how you’re willing to go the extra mile to help your customers. Convey this information in your content and customers will like and trust you, and therefore hire you. Being perfect has nothing to do with it. I know that’s a hard pill to swallow for us perfectionist craftsmen, but that’s the way it is with consumer psychology. Forget about yourself and think about your customers.

The more types of content you produce, the better, but the golden rule is to just produce something. Something is infinitely better than nothing, and once you get in the habit of producing content, you will be well on your way to creating a long-lasting lead generation system that produces leads long after you produced the content. This method can be extremely cost-effective as the main resource required to carry it out is time.

There is a snowball effect on content marketing. At first, it won’t do anything for your business. After some time has passed and you have created a fair amount of content, the results will increase rapidly. Once the engine is going, it can continue on for a long time without putting any more gas in the tank.

To learn more about SEO for a construction company, check out this case study:

• Case Study: Local SEO for a small construction company

Email Marketing – A Gentle Helping Hand

Open up your email and what do you see? If you’re me, you see one or two important emails and 20 marketing emails from various companies. 9/10 of them get deleted, but every once in a while one catches my attention. Why? Because the headline is about something I’m interested in at this moment in time. I’ll read this rare email and ⅕ of these emails will offer a product or service I actually want, and I’ll buy it.

This is email marketing. Some call it spam. The thing is, it’s only spam until it’s something you’re interested in.

Email marketing goes hand in hand with content marketing. Scattered around your content is what we call lead magnets. Lead magnets offer the person on your website some sort of value in exchange for their email address. Once the email is collected it is put into a list. You can then send periodic emails to the people in your list that will help them along with their project. These emails can be about topics such as planning for a remodel, hiring the right contractor, choosing lights, etc.

If the owner of the email is thinking about remodeling their home, they will likely want to read these emails and soak up any knowledge found within. This positions the sender of the emails as an expert in remodeling. It also keeps them on the top of their mind so that when they are ready to move forward with their project, they are thinking of you first.

The best part about email marketing is that it can be completely automated. It takes some time and effort to set up an email campaign, but once it’s set up, it will run automatically. An example of an email marketing process goes like this:

1. A person finds a video you made about a kitchen remodel and gets value from it.
2. They trade their email for a downloadable ebook on how to hire the right contractor. They read the ebook and get more value. They think the author is pretty smart.
3. Your automatic emailer sends them an email once per week about a different topic relating to planning and carrying out a remodeling project. It also reminds them to read the ebook.
4. Your 4th and 6th email offer them a free consultation along with links to more videos you’ve published.
5. They take you up on the consultation and you visit their home to talk about the project they’ve been planning for months.
6. They like and trust you, and based on everything you’ve taught them, they look to you as the remodeling expert. They hire you based on massive trust built automatically by your marketing funnel.

This is a very simple example, but it doesn’t have to be more complicated than this to work. It’s all about knowing your customer and what they are going through. If you can help them through this process, it will likely turn into a meaningful relationship for both of you. Even if they don’t hire you, they will likely spread the word about your awesome content and grow your reputation that way.

You’re starting to see how all of these methods can work together. If you can implement all of these strategies over the course of a few years, your problem will never be finding work. Your problem will be handling all the work coming your way. A great problem to have if you want to grow a business.

Marketing Funnels – The Holy Grail of Online Marketing

A marketing funnel is the ultimate online sales system for a business. A good marketing funnel will attract the right customers and move them through the entire buying process all the way to the sale. In businesses such as e-commerce, marketing funnels allow for the entire business to be automated. In construction, a properly executed marketing funnel can not only attract the right customers and move them through the cycle, but it can qualify the ones you want to work with before you ever even take the time to talk to them.

The fundamental building blocks are what we have already discussed:

1. A website
2. Traffic (SEO or Paid Advertising)
3. Content
4. An Email Marketing Campaign

Getting these ideas to work together is the natural evolution for any company that is using the internet to get new customers. To help you better understand how these work, I’ll use my own marketing funnel as an example. For a business owner who is interested in setting up online marketing systems for their company, the steps go something like this:

1. Traffic + Website – You are interested in learning about lead generation for your construction business so you go to Google and type in “how to generate leads for a remodeling business.” Since I worked very hard to make sure my article shows up on the top of Google, you saw the headline you were looking for and clicked onto my website.
2. You enjoy the content I’ve produced and have received a lot of value from it. A button pops up that says, “Download an Ebook on How to set up Google Adwords for your Business in 15 minutes” and you click on it. You type in your name and email address to have the Ebook delivered to your email.
3. You read the Ebook and learn how to set up Adwords for yourself. You might do it or not, but that doesn’t matter much in regards to this funnel.
4. Over the course of the next two months, you receive an email once per week that provides a little bit of valuable information and actionable ideas on improving the profitability of your business. You enjoy these emails. They aren’t annoying or spammy and you’re getting a lot of value from them for free.
5. The 5th email contains an offer for a free 30-minute phone consultation to directly discuss your current marketing system and how it can be improved.
6. During this consultation you get a lot of great ideas and learn about me and why I am an expert at this stuff. I share with you some stories about business owners such as yourself that transformed their companies with my help.
7. Following the consultation, you continue to receive value emails once per week.
8. The end of the year is approaching and you have some money to invest in your business to avoid paying extra taxes. You decide marketing is the best place to invest because it will result in earning more money next year. Since we have already been in constant contact and you view me as the marketing expert, you decide to hire me to build you a marketing funnel.

This is how thousands of construction businesses are acquiring new customers online. They give a ton of free value up front and it comes back around in the form of qualified customers who are educated about your service. It’s a win-win for everyone involved.

This was just one example of how a marketing funnel can go. Each time a person goes through it, it’s slightly different because each person and business is unique. The idea is that you can have a lot of different people going through this funnel at the same time, each at their own pace. The steps can be modified and adjusted to make improvements. Each person can be tracked the whole time so the business owner knows how many people are in the funnel and where they’re all at.

Are you wondering how this could work for your remodeling company? It took me a long time to realize how powerful this can be for generating leads. As a remodeler, it’s extra challenging to move new customers through the buying process. Each person and house is different, so no two projects are ever the same.

A common problem for remodelers is clients that either don’t know what they want or are just trying to shop around for a price without regard for the time of the professional their dealing with. So much time can be wasted when meeting with people, looking at projects, and thinking through them to create detailed estimates. The worst is when you spend 10 hours meeting with homeowners and writing an estimate just to have them stop returning your calls and emails.

A prime reason to build a marketing funnel is to eliminate the time wasted jumping through hoops for customers that are never going to pay you.

Most successful marketing funnels for remodeling companies start with Content Marketing. I use a Portland-based remodeling company called Mosaik as my example because they are absolutely killing it.

Mosaik has spent the last five years building up a database of valuable articles related to home remodeling. They get over 5000 organic visitors per month to their website. This means 5000 people search for remodeling related keywords on Google and land on Mosaik’s website. When the owner wants to increase traffic, they pay for Facebook ads and target their ideal people and locations.

Some of these visitors enter their marketing funnel by trading their email address for some sort of downloadable content. An automatic emailer kicks in and continues to provide valuable content relating to what the person was reading on the website. When the prospective customer is ready to take the next step and request a consultation, they are directed to an online worksheet where they fill in information about their project.

Information such as the age of the home, the scope of the project, and budget are addressed in this worksheet. Mosaik typically has a few of these worksheets coming in every month, so they are able to pick and choose the clients they take on.

Imagine having a stack of project descriptions in your hand that you could look through and see exactly which ones you wanted to take on and which ones could be passed on to other contractors, or just passed on. This is the ultimate luxury of any company. It can be accomplished with a well-executed marketing funnel.

The Marketing funnel is the essence of online lead generation for construction companies, but there are plenty of offline options as well. One such option is Joint Venturing with another company.

Joint Ventures – A Match Made in Heaven

A joint venture is when two businesses team up to help each other grow and scale. A classic remodeling joint venture is when an interior designer and a general contractor team up and use each other’s services to compliment each other in completing projects. They also refer each other business when their particular services aren’t needed.

If you’re a general contractor, spend some time talking with local interior designers. They are always looking for just the right general contractor to work with. You would be surprised at how hard it is for interior designers to find a good contractor. We all know of the difficulties each group has with working with the other, but those that can figure it out and make it work prosper. When a good match is made, it can be worth its weight in gold.

If you’re a general contractor and you want to partner up with an interior designer, what do you do? Check out what Patrick did in the next section.

Professional Clubs and Associations

If you are a general contractor, then you have probably heard of the NHBA or National Home Builders Association. Being involved with an organization such as the HBA gives your business the benefit of being able to advertise your membership as a badge of credibility amongst consumers who recognize this association.

Besides the reputation gains, being a part of a network like this can help a business learn and grow past its current limitations. The annual events can be a great place to partake in workshops, learn about industry trends, and create a large network of professionals to communicate, learn from, and trade referrals with.

My favorite example of taking advantage of professional associations was carried out by a friend of mine, Patrick Richardson. Patrick is the owner of Murrayhill Remodeling based out of Beaverton, Oregon. Patrick started his remodeling business 22 years ago and has developed the reputation for being one of the most honest and transparent contractors in Portland.

Patrick wants to grow and scale his remodeling company passed the $1 million per year level. In order to do this, he either has to take on a lot more projects, or larger, more profitable projects. He opted for larger, more profitable projects. Large-scale remodels on high-end homes typically require a thorough design to be done before a bid can even be made. Patrick decided that he wanted to get in with some good interior designers because he saw this as the first step for the type of clients he was after.

Patrick found and signed up to attend meetings with an organization called NWSID, or Northwest Society of Interior Designers. When Patrick showed up to his first meeting he found himself in a room with 30 interior designers. He was the only general contractor. Not to mention he was one of only a few guys… Bingo!

It wasn’t long at all before Patrick was discussing working with some of the designers. After a few months of constantly attending meetings, Patrick was regarded as a regular and was planning projects with multiple designers in the group.

The decision to join NWSID was exactly the right move for him. All it took was a small investment of time and money and he was able to completely skip the lead generation process and join forces with interior designers becoming the general contractor of choice for the Portland chapter of NWSID.

Networking Events

As I talked about earlier, the expression “generate leads” is interchangeable with “generate conversations.” Networking events can be a great place to find these conversations. Sure, there are your typical trade shows and whatnot that are frequented by general contractors, but have you ever considered going to other types of networking events? I’m talking about the ones that are frequented by insurance salesmen and accountants. These things are typically full of a diverse group of business owners and professionals looking to develop referral-partnerships and find new clients.

I’ve been to a boatload of these events and you know what? I haven’t seen a single general contractor at any of them. This is most likely due to the fact that most of these events are held in the middle of the day and most GC’s are on the job site working. This means if you go to these events, you will likely be the only GC there, in a room full of professionals and business owners. Some of them are likely to need work done on their home, so go mingle and hand out business cards. Answer questions and position yourself as an expert and you will undoubtedly come out of it with some leads, or better yet scheduled meetings where you can begin the conversation that will lead to the sale.

If you’re short on time and long on money, there are some companies out there that will do the legwork for you. They’ll find the prospective customers and sell you their contact information. They’re called Pay-per-lead Companies.

Pay-per-lead Companies

There are companies in every city that are purely lead generation companies. The smaller ones typically have a website and Google Maps listing and pose as a normal service business, such a plumber or electrician. They run ads and publish content on their websites pretending to be plumbers and electricians. They have their own sales funnels that generate leads for the industry they are targeting. When they get these leads, they turn around and sell them to actual service businesses.

Chances are you have been approached by at least one of these companies trying to sell you leads. Not all of them are small though. Homeadvisor is a pay-per-lead company as is Angie’s List. These companies are so large I have another name for them: Online Home Improvement Marketplaces.

Pay-per-lead is often the first step in the marketing journey for a lot of contractors. They are approached by a salesman offering them leads and they try it out because they need more work. Sometimes the system works great and the leads are of high quality. The jobs that result are profitable and the business is able to continue paying for leads.

Other times the leads are shit and the contractor decides it was a waste of money and ends the service, moving onto the next idea.

There are two major setbacks to the pay-per-lead strategy:

1. The leads you get might not be very high quality.
2. The flow of leads could stop at any time, so if you’re relying on them to keep your business going, you could end up in trouble. I mentioned earlier how important control is. This is one reason why.

It can be difficult to find the smaller companies that offer leads for sale, but the larger ones can be found with a simple internet search. Homeadvisor, Angie’s List, Thumbtack, these are all pay per lead companies on a giant scale.

Online Home Improvement Marketplaces

I wrote a large article outlining the specifics of how these companies work as well as the pros and cons for both homeowners and contractors. You can check it out here.

One thing I’ll say here is that for some folks these companies provide great leads and the resulting sales are profitable. For the majority of business owners that use these services, however, they find that it’s hard to make a profit on the money they invest. These services are geared towards the homeowner, not the contractor.

If it’s something you’re considering, check out this article. It will give you all the information you need in order to help you make your own decision.

Are you a contractor who is just getting out on your own? Hardly a dime to invest into marketing? Look no further than starting a partnership with a big box store.

Partnerships with Big Box Stores

You might not know this, but stores like Home Depot and Lowes often form partnerships with contractors to install the home improvement products they sell. A great example of this is cabinet installations. My father and I spent years installing cabinets for Lowes. The pay wasn’t the best, but the constant flow of jobs was nice for keeping the famine at bay. Another great perk is that if you do a good job, the homeowners you work with will often have you back to work on another part of their home. This has been a source of new customers for my dad’s company for over 20 years and counting.

If you’re interested in pursuing a partnership with a Big Box store, go to your local Home Depot or Lowes and talk to their Install Sales department. They will give you a list of requirements necessary to be in their program and let you know what kinds of trades they are looking for at that time.

There are two main requirements common among these kinds of partnerships. First, you must have a minimum liability insurance. Second, you must pass a background check and also run background checks on your employees. You can find the specific requirements here:

• Lowes
• Home Depot

For a budding contractor, these programs can be a great way to get started. Even for an established company, the projects received through Big Box Stores can be a great training grounds for new employees as well as a way to keep guys busy during slow periods. Even a handyman can make a living installing a few storm doors per day. I did for a while…

One of the best parts about working with Lowes and Home Depot is that their customer is always right. This means that if anything goes wrong, breaks, or isn’t right, the store will stop at no end to make it right. It’s nice having this attitude behind you when trying to please customers. You get to be the face of the awesome customer service.

There are a few marketing practices that go back to the pre-internet days. Can you remember back that far? These tactics work as good today as they did then, so let’s talk about them.

Physical Advertising – The Real World

You see them when you pass any large construction site. A big banner on the fence with the name of the construction company and their phone number. You can even see them on residential projects in the form of a small sign stuck into the grass out by the road.

Using these signs is a good way to let the world know that you are a company and you are working on projects. Though not often, we have received calls from homeowners who saw our sign in front of their neighbor’s house. Or they saw the giant magnet on the side of our truck at a stop light. Some call it branding, but I just call it wearing a name tag.

Letting people know what you offer is the first step to getting sales. Makes sense, right? Nobody can hire you if they don’t know who you are and what you have to offer. Some companies take this to the extreme and paint their entire truck with their branding. What a great way to show off how awesome your company is… I mean, if you can afford a big-ass truck like this, then you must be doing well. If you’re doing well, you must do good work!

You don’t have to go balls to the wall, but it’s important to have some branding and show off your company. Grab some shirts for your employees to wear on and off the job sites. When Christmas comes around, buy your guys some nice Columbia jackets with your brand logo on the back. Let them proudly show off their company and let everyone know what you have to offer.

If there’s a particular area you think you might find some great customers, perhaps direct mail is the way to go.

Direct Mail

Snail mail, as they like to call it, is still alive and well. If there’s a particular neighborhood you want to target, put together some sales flyers and send them out. There are services such as Mail Shark that will take care of everything for you.

The key to direct mail marketing is to have a great offer. Most people will throw your flyer directly into the garbage can, but a couple of them will say, “Hey! I was just looking for something like this!”

If it’s an entire city you’d like to target, perhaps mail is out of the question. You need something a little broader, like a megaphone. Or, like radio.

Radio and TV Ads

Radio and tv ads used to be the bread and butter of marketers. Before the internet, people got most of their information from these two mediums. Even in today’s world, this strategy can be effective.

Take a plumber for example. The week before Thanksgiving they broadcast a funny ad about how much food everyone eats on Thanksgiving… All these family members together eating a ton of food… Can you see where this is going?

In case you didn’t get it, Thanksgiving is the time of year where most toilet clogs happen. This smart plumber made sure a ton of people knew his number on Thanksgiving day when undoubtedly 100’s of them would need a plumber in a jiffy.

When applied creatively, tv and radio ads can generate a ton of sales. When done incorrectly it’s a huge waste of money.

Conclusion

Wow. If you’ve read this entire article I have to congratulate you. Not only do you have some endurance but you now know a lot about lead generation for contractors and construction companies. You have so many ideas and ways you can imagine generating more sales and building your business.

If you’re really hurting and don’t have a penny to your name, there is one more option…

Door to door. That’s right! Put a big fat smile on your face and walk door to door asking homeowners if they have anything they need help with. Surely most will turn you down, but a couple will have some work they need done on their homes. While you probably won’t get rich with this strategy, you definitely won’t starve!

Going door to door not only builds a customer base, but it builds character. Don’t believe me? Ask any Mormon. They spend a couple years of their teenage years going door to door spreading the word of God. It’s not just to spread the message, but it teaches them how to talk to strangers and be comfortable in uncomfortable situations.

That’s it, folks! Go out and try this stuff. It really works, I promise! I’ve done every strategy I wrote about and they all work. For a business owner, it’s a matter of trying them out and seeing which ones work best for you.

What I Do

The best way to use Instagram on a computer that I’ve been able to find is called Desktop for Instagram. It’s a Chrome add-on that allows you to use Instagram as if you were on our phone but from your computer.

I tried it and it worked, but this isn’t something I do often so I don’t keep the addon installed. It’s always wise to be careful with any kind of add-ons. Since this particular one has great reviews and almost 500k users, it’s probably safe. You can find it here.

There’s another one that doesn’t have as great of reviews but it doesn’t hurt to have a backup plan. Find the second Chrome addon called Web for Instagram plus DM here.

Are There Other Ways to Send DMs from a Computer?

One option for Windows users is the Windows Instagram app for Windows 10. I haven’t used it myself and people tell me it’s a bit buggy, but if you’re in a pinch then it might be worth checking out. If you are on a mac you won’t be able to use it so the Chrome plugins are probably for you.

Windows Instagram App for Windows 10

Windows 10 now offers a free Instagram app that allows you to access your profile, direct message users, and take photos. The very simple process includes going to the Microsoft App Store and downloading it… then do the following

1. Go to the Windows App Store and look up the Windows Instagram App
2. Click “Get” and wait for the download to complete
3. Click “Launch”
4. Grant the Application access to your contacts
5. Click “Sign In” located at the bottom of the window
6. Log into your Instagram account
7. Click on the “Direct Message” icon and dm away!

BLUESTACKS (ANOTHER OPTION)

If Free stuff is your preference, then Bluestacks Player might be for you. Bluestacks is a FREE Android emulator that changes your Mac or Windows computer into an Android device, which will allow you to sign into a google account and install Instagram. It has been known to be buggy and inconsistent, but what do you expect for a free tool? You get what you pay for, right?

1. Download Bluestacks from its official website, install and launch onto your own computer
2. Login using your Google account and click the “right arrow” (located at the bottom right of your screen)
3. Once you are finished, it will redirect you to the Bluestacks dashboard, then go to the Google
4. Store, search and download the Instagram app.
5. Finally, open the Instagram app and login into your account, then tap on “Instagram Direct” and select whom you want to start a conversation with

A little more about the Instagram DM Feature…

The What, When, and Why of the Instagram DM (Direct Message)

DM’s give you the power to send private messages, photos, or videos to almost any Instagram user, along with sharing profiles, posts, and other network content. You can also create DM groups that can include up to 50 people! It is a very interesting tool as it instantly creates a way to communicate with users on a more personal, more intimate, and more individual level.

Some Benefits of the DM Feature?

1.  Engage with your followers

Getting to know your audience is necessary to separate yourself from the crowd. It gives you the chance to build relationships and much more with your followers as if someone reaches out to you, it’s because they’re interested in what you have to offer. Anytime you have someone send a message in your inbox, there will be a blue dot next to the name. You should always increase your follower engagement and make an effort to respond because you never know how a follower could positively impact your brand. Without engagement and active followers, an Instagram with a million followers would be useless.

You can always increase engagement, trust, and brand by sending a simple message to your followers thanking them for the follow. This process shows you care and shows your brand personality which not a lot of influencers and users are taking advantage of. All consumers want to feel important and want to feel valued. I know what you’re thinking. “This would take me forever!” That is true, and that is why special apps have been created to automate Instagram direct messaging new followers so you can be engaging while maintaining your real life.

2. Find networking opportunities

Instagram’s DM system is the single biggest networking or business development opportunity of our era.  So many individuals are trying to sell, market, and take advantage of people but aren’t solving their needs. You need to ask “How can I solve your problem,” or “How can I make it easier for you and bring you value”.  The solution is to connect on a mutual level first, provide value, then when the moment comes you can ask what you can do for them. A LOT of companies and individuals and influencers can bring you A LOT of value you an opportunity. That being said, most individuals are well connected, and many might be friends or employees of the person you are trying to reach.

Who benefits the most from using the Instagram DM feature?

By far most people who are using the Instagram dm function are normal people like you and me who just want to be able to have a private conversation with people we know and meet on Instagram. In some countries, such as Indonesia, Instagram DM is the main way of communication replacing Facebook and even text messaging. There are many reasons for these trends that we won’t go into here, but the point is that there are millions of people around the world who use Instagram as their main way to communicate with others.

Besides normal folks, business profiles are using direct messages as a marketing tool to boost their consumer satisfaction and to connect with clients. Successful businesses, entrepreneurs, social media agencies, influencers, or anyone looking to build their Instagram follower base is using this method of interacting with others across the world. Instagram itself reports that more than 80% of accounts follow at least one business, with 200 million visits to business accounts every day! This gives you the chance to create a community of mutual interest where you feed off each other’s success and knowledge.

Thanks!