Entries Tagged as home improvement leads

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 →

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? →