Best Home Improvement Marketing Tactics to Grow Faster

Updated on March 25th, 2022
Best Home Improvement Marketing Tactics to Grow Faster

Your home improvement company can have the best closers in the world. But you still have to get your salespeople in front of qualified people to sell to. That means you need to generate or buy qualified leads. And that, in turn, means investing in digital marketing and other marketing strategies.

Here are some of the most important home improvement marketing strategies, digital marketing strategies, and lead generation techniques in use today among home improvement contractors and remodeling services businesses.

1. Begin with the end in mind.

Take a step back and think about your home improvement business model as a whole. Exactly what products or services do you want to sell, and what kinds of people buy them? Only once you answer those questions can you create an efficient, focused marketing system that will reliably place your home improvement company message in front of the right people. 

2. Define Your Key Marketing Techniques and Metrics.

These are a little different for any home improvement business. Every market is different. But there are two vital metrics you should be looking at because they drive your marketing strategy and decision-making process: 

Measure Your New Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC).

This figure represents your marketing and onboarding expenditure for each of your new customers. Your CAC is the number of marketing dollars you need to spend, on average, to bring a new home improvement customer on board. It's an accounting of your all-in cost to promote your brand, generate quality leads, and nurture leads through the sales process.

This marketing budget figure may include, but is not limited to:

  • Advertising costs and ad charges per click,
  • Web content
  • Direct mail 
  • Sales recruitment and training
  • Commissions and incentives paid
  • Total costs paid for qualified leads
  • Digital marketing consultation and digital marketing agency fees
  • Cost of time spent monitoring online reviews and responding to customers on review sites
  • Search engine optimization and online marketing costs

Your goal is to lower this number and keep it low, by keeping your marketing spend very efficient. But don't be afraid to spend what it takes to rank well in the search engines.

Measure Your Customer Lifetime Value.

This is the net present value of the total future stream of income you can expect of a new customer.

Lots of people don’t stop at one home improvement repair or upgrade. They’ll do multiple projects over a period of years. They may move across town and need work done on their new home. Or they may have kids move away and want to turn a bedroom into a home office.

Either way, a certain number of your existing customers will come back to you for other work.

Create a digital marketing strategy to keep your name and brand in front of your customers.

3. Focus on Customer Retention.

It’s usually a lot cheaper and more profitable to get repeat business than it is to generate a new customer from scratch. Your existing customers already know you and your work. They know your brand. They already know you can deliver. It’s just a matter of leveraging digital marketing tools and techniques and reaching them at the right time, maintaining a “top-of-mind“ presence… and making sure your customers are very happy with the value of your offering.

That doesn’t mean you don’t market to them. That just means your digital marketing to this segment will be much more efficient than your marketing to the general public. Upselling and cross-selling to your existing customers maximize your CLV number and is a great way to invest your marketing dollars. 

4. Provide Potential Customers with Flexible Finance Plans.

Many customers won’t have the cash on hand for your services up-front. In fact, studies show that most Americans would have trouble meeting a $1,000 expense without having to borrow money.

While homeowners tend to be more affluent than renters, that doesn’t mean they have enough cash on hand to handle emergency home expenses or start the improvement projects they’d like to do.

According to a recent Consumer Affairs report:

  • 69% of homeowners feel “house poor.”
  • 3 in 5 homeowners didn’t expect repair, maintenance, and upkeep costs to be as high as they are.
  • 3 in 5 homeowners are sacrificing home-related essentials in order to afford their housing costs.

This is where flexible finance plans come in: Flexible financing allows customers to pay for projects or services in convenient and affordable installments. We help home improvement companies help their customers do just that. 

A good financing program with a finance company that understands your business and your customers is absolutely a differentiator from your competition – and you should advertise it as such. Don’t limit your market to people who happen to have oodles of cash on hand. Offering a flexible financing plan enables you to serve exponentially more people, and generate more business and growth. 

The best finance companies for a home improvement business should offer the following:

  • Easy, quick applications
  • Fast credit decisions
  • Common-sense, manual underwriting of ‘on the edge’ applications
  • Approves a wide range of credit types - not just people with perfect credit
  • Lends enough to cover a large sale
  • Flexible terms to keep payments down
  • Competitively priced. 

The beauty of offering financing is that it's both low-cost and easy to implement, as long as you have the right support. 

To offer financing to your customers with a best-in-class consumer finance company that specializes in the home improvement industry, fill out this brief vendor information form.

5. Create a Powerful Home Improvement Internet Marketing and Email Campaign.

Email marketing is a solid and results-proven way to grow your home improvement business.

Great email marketing strategies are based on three key components:

  • A captivating subject line that compels people to open your email and read it.
  • High-quality content, such as blog posts or videos, for viewers so that they stay engaged with your message.
  • Relevant clickable links throughout the email for readers to take immediate action and convert into customers.

As a home improvement business launching an email marketing campaign, strong calls to action at the end of each email rather than simply providing information about home improvement services or products will be effective in engaging your potential home improvement clientele. 

For example, ask recipients if they want to see more examples of completed past home improvements projects in your portfolio or how their experience was when using a particular product. This way you will see which types of messages resonate better than others so you know what kinds of details to focus on.

Develop an advertising strategy that makes sense, targeting specific keywords such as "home improvement contractor."

Make sure you have a responsive website that displays well on both desktop/laptop computers and mobile devices.

A good digital marketing plan will create sales 'funnels' designed to convert visitors into sales leads, capture detailed information on those leads, and then nurture leads through the entire sales process until they become new home improvement customers.

 

6. Create a Powerful Incentive for Referrals.

The easiest way for a home improvement contractor to incentivize customer loyalty and drive sales is through referral programs. For instance, if someone invites their friends or family members on Facebook to use your services, you can offer them an exclusive discount in exchange for it.

Social media sites like Twitter also enable people to share information about your company with others who may be interested enough in your services, thus making these different social network avenues worth exploring.

 

7. Leverage Social Media and Online Groups.

Nowadays, businesses are realizing that they can tap into their target audience via online social groups. If you're in the home improvement industry, then this is a great way to find potential customers. Be active, friendly, and helpful in relevant online discussion forums and bulletin boards.

The best social media practice builders know how to sell by not selling. That is, they position themselves as approachable, reliable, and knowledgeable subject matter experts. They don’t pitch their own products or services, other than letting people know who they are. They concentrate on serving their customers and the general public. 

And they get more than their share of business by doing just that. 

 

8. Maximize Home Improvement Company Local Search Results.

Unless you’re a truly national business that can work anywhere, you want to focus on generating search results specific to your city, county, or state. 

Here’s why: 

  • 46% of all searches on Google have local intent. 
  • 97% of users searched online to find a local business. 
  • 28% of all local searches are followed by a purchase. 
  • 24.4% of clicks on local searches will go to the first business listed. 
  • “Near me” searches grew by 136% last year. 

To maximize your benefit from local search traffic, make sure you have content on your website or blog specific to your location. It could be case studies from local projects, reviews of other local businesses or contractors, blog posts that mention your town or the places you want to do business. 

Ready to Take Action?

The time to take advantage of the home improvement industry is now.

A compelling marketing strategy that lays out the roadmap for the tactics you need to implement will serve you well.

Without a doubt, flexible finance plans are one of the most powerful ways to grow your business.

 

Sara Hafeman

With years of experience in the consumer financing industry, Sara Hafeman currently leads marketing and partner development at Time Investment.