Entries from Category Home Improvement Contractors

Congratulations to our client, Minnesota Exteriors for their participation in an upcoming episode of ABC’s Extreme Makeover Home Edition. The popular TV show, that builds a new home for a deserving family in less than one week, recently announced that it had selected the Morris family of St. Paul, MN for this amazing gift.

Hundreds of people gathered on October 2nd, to surprise the Morris family to tell them they’ll be getting a new home. Sandy Morris is an important part of her community and provides day care for many children in St. Paul. Unfortunately her 100 year old home, the home she grew up in, is in disrepair and unless it is fixed Sandy will be unable to renew her daycare license this winter.

Continue Reading Three Deep Client Minnesota Exteriors Participates in Extreme Makeover Home Edition →

Recently, our National Sales Director for Home Improvement Contractors, Tom Audette was interviewed by the folks at Remodeling Magazine for their article, Web Marketing Makeover.  You can view the article here.

For the most part, the article provides a high level overview of what you can expect from your website, how you can refresh your website to receive more leads, and how many companies are relying on the web as their primary lead source.

While I agree with the general tone of the article (contractors need to have a web presence, NOW), I can’t help but feel as if they may have overstated a few points and left out some vital pieces of information.

Particularly, there are several points made in the article that I would like to refute (as well as several true statements):

Myth #1: SEO Is Cheap

Continue Reading Three Deep Mentioned in Remodeling Magazine →

If you were a business owner, would you rather have your sales department closing on average 50% of the leads they run or 35%?  At first glance this seems like a stupid question, obviously the higher the close rate translates into more sales, right?

We recently had this discussion with one of our home improvement clients.  Last year his company ran 2500 appointments and installed about 1200 jobs — 48% close rate.  The sales manager was very proud of the fact that his team’s close rate was as high as it was.  This is a company that does a lot of advertising on radio and outdoor billboards, so the phone is ringing constantly with people looking to set an appointment.

What we realized very quickly was that the company spent a lot of time on the phone with each caller.  They were extremely selective about which appointments they set and ran.  As a result a lot of potential appointments were never set, because the company determined — over the phone, that the prospect either “wasn’t ready” or “wasn’t worth running.”  We find this over qualification of sales inquiries to be a common practice among too many home improvement companies today.

Continue Reading 50% Close Rate Vs. 35% Close Rate — Which Is Better? →

In Why Most Local Search Resellers Fail Their SMB Clients, I reacted to a recent study that revealed 90% of SMB’s quit their search marketing programs after 6 months.  It turns out that the reason why people quit these programs is because they do absolutely nothing to help the company generate new business!

700 clicks per month for $1500 — Where do I sign up????

Caveat Emptor: Clicks don’t mean a thing!  Clicks aren’t phone calls, clicks don’t generate sales, or pay the rent.  Most importantly, if these clicks are “bad clicks” — meaning coming from people not actually looking for your particular service — your ROI won’t justify the expense.  Bad clicks waste your company’s time, and cost you potential revenue by throwing off your signal to noise ratio.  If you become accustomed to only seeing bad clicks/leads, then you may become jaded toward the good ones.

What do I mean by “bad clicks“?  Here’s a real world example:

Continue Reading Local Search for Small Business – Part 2 – Clicks vs. Leads →

Author’s note: I started writing this article in reaction to a recent study published, and I ended up writing so much that I needed to break it into two posts!  You are currently viewing part 1, and part 2 will be released first thing Monday morning.

The other day, a report came out from Borrell and Associates saying that most small businesses (SMB) that try local online search advertising almost universally give it up after 6 months.  More specifically:

• 50% give up within the first 90 days

• 90% quit within 6 months.

  Continue Reading Why Most Local Search Resellers Fail Their SMB Clients →

Congratulations to our client Cardinal Builders for being mentioned in the upcoming issue of Replacement Contractor Magazine. Cardinal Builders will be featured in the article To Your Credit.  The story is about how contractors are quickly incorporating the new tax credits that are available to homeowners who make qualifying replacement window upgrades in 2009 or 2010 into their overall marketing strategies. View the article from Replacement Contractor Magazine featuring Cardinal Builders.

Two days after the 2009 Economic Stimulus Bill was signed into law in February, Cardinal Builders VP of Operations Mike Lelasher called Three Deep Marketing with an idea.  He wanted to put a red CNN style breaking news banner across the top the Cardinal website with the headline:

Breaking News: President Obama signs stimulus plan into law, includes up to $1500 tax credit only for windows with .30 u-value or lower. All windows Cardinal Builders offer meet or exceed requirements to earn tax credit. Click here for more information.

Continue Reading Three Deep Marketing Client Cardinal Builders Featured In Replacement Contractor Magazine. →

I have heard a lot of discussion over the last year about nebulous leads, especially in the home improvement industry. What do I mean by “nebulous?”  By definition, nebulous means indefinite.  A nebulous lead is prospective buyer for your product that happens to be early in the educational buying spectrum.  While they might not be at the stage of soliciting estimates yet, (and therefore won’t respond to traditional advertising), these prospects certainly have product needs on their mind and are gathering information preparing to do the project.  Putting systems in place that identify these potential customers presents a tremendous tactical opportunity for savvy companies to make contact with these prospects before their competitors.  These companies are then able to introduce their company and their products to these potential customers; building goodwill that can ultimately be translated into a sale when they are ready to buy.

Marketers typically identify this type of prospect by offering free information such as a whitepaper, or a free sample or through sweepstakes marketing efforts — the thought being that if an individual is interested enough to request a free window brochure, or sign up to win a house full of windows they will become a window buyer sometime in the foreseeable future.  Conventional wisdom suggests that 85% of respondents to these types of offers are prospects for the product.

Continue Reading Nebulous Leads – Can Your Company Turn Them Into Sales? →

November / December 2008 issue of Replacement Contractor.

Tom Audette, National Sales Manager for Home Improvements was the featured writer of the Trade Secrets column Search Friendly. This column which included contributions by Jeff Sauer and Dan Derosier, highlighted the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for a home improvement contractor’s website.

Among the highlights of the article:

Continue Reading Three Deep Marketing Featured In Replacement Contractor Magazine →