8 tips for your first promotional campaign

This year may go down as one of the best times in years to launch a new residential contracting business, according to at least one measure.

The average cost per lead for residential contractors fell 10.5 percent to $242.53 in 2018, according to Remodeling, according to a survey conducted for the 2018 Remodeling 550. That compares with $280.16 in 2015.

The decline, reports the magazine, reflects the fact that contractors have shifted their focus from generating leads to keeping up with demand. Their growing waitlists and lead times are creating opportunities for other contractors prepared to launch promotional campaigns.

In the residential contracting business, promotions generally aim to boost lead generation through email, direct mail, advertising and even public relations. No contractor should launch his first promotional campaign until he or she can answer the following questions:

• How does my target customer shop for the product or service I’m promoting?
• What is my goal? For instance, I want to increase qualified leads by 15 percent within six months at or below $250 per lead.
• How do I define my goal? For instance, how do I define a “qualified lead”?
• What metrics can I use to track my progress toward the goal?

A promotional campaign’s message will vary depending on many factors, including the maturity of the industry you are in and the marketing channels you use. Since the Internet of Things is still in the early adoption phase, for instance, contractors specializing in installing internet-enabled devices and appliances for smart homes  may want to focus on explaining their benefits and address privacy concerns. A vinyl siding installation contractor, on the other hand, might want to talk about his or her years in business and high customer satisfaction ratings, or he or she could offer an incentive that would compel prospects to share their contact information or refer friends or neighbors.

Regardless of what home remodeling, maintenance and repair services you offer, these tips will help you get the most out of your first promotional campaign spending:

Study the competition:

Find out who your most successful direct competitors are and how they are spending their promotional dollars. Try to get a holistic view of their marketing ecosystem — what social media channels they use and how they use them in conjunction with local print, radio, television and outdoor advertising. This may tip you off to which marketing channels to use and how to distinguish yourself in each.

Consider hiring a professional:

Consider how much your time is worth and whether you can hire a professional marketing firm to do the work for less, particularly on your first promotion. There are dozens of digital marketing firms that specialize in managing websites, social media, search engine marketing, direct mail, email and other marketing channels for mom-and-pop contractors. A good firm will be able to tell you whether your promotional goal is realistic by sharing results from promotions they’ve run for similar contractors. While they can’t — and should not — guarantee results, they should be able to estimate how much it will cost you to run your first promotional campaign.

Drive traffic to your website:

Your website needs to be the hub of all your marketing activity. Every promotion — like every vehicle wrap and business card — should list your website. Better yet, they should drive people to your website, where you can present and cross-sell all the services you offer, collect email addresses via newsletter subscriptions and contact forms, share customer testimonials and promote your social media sites. In this way you will ensure that every promotional dollar you spend will simultaneously help recoup web development costs — all while building your customer database and your brand.

Keep it simple:

If you prefer to run your first promotional campaign yourself, keep it short and simple. Limit it to one or two marketing channels that will drive prospects to your website. If you’ve been in business for years but are promoting a new product or service, consider promoting it to your existing email subscribers or followers on social media. In addition to being easy to use, both these channels offer robust online help and metrics you can use to hone and measure your promotion’s performance before adding other channels. 

Monitor weekly:

If you handle a promotion in-house, break your goal into monthly milestones and measure your progress against them every week. Before hiring a marketing firm, ask them what weekly reports they can provide and how much they will cost.

Be patient and innovate:

Resist the temptation to pull the plug on an underperforming first promotional campaign before it’s run its course. Instead, commit to making incremental progress through constant tweaking. In digital marketing, as in direct mail, improvements in response rates come gradually and are often measured in tenths of a percent. Even if a promotion falls short of its longer-term goal, you can build on what you learned, which may be that you completely misunderstood how your target customer looks for your services. That’s a valuable lesson.

Come up with a compelling offer:

On Facebook, that means making an offer that is both highly valuable and low friction, according to Ben Levesque, content marketing strategist at Webrunner, an online marketing firm that specializes in helping contractors. Homeowners looking to replace their roof, he explains, are unlikely to give up their contact information for a $150 coupon, given that a new roof will cost them thousands of dollars. They are also likely to shy away from promotions loaded with paragraph-long footnotes listing restrictions. “It’s just not compelling enough,” Levesque explained in a recent post to the Webrunner blog. “A free inspection, higher discount or no payments for a certain period of time would work better in this case.”

Focus on customer referrals:

A whopping 70 percent of 1,729 homeowners who hired contractors in the five years prior to 2016 said they started their search for a contractor by either asking friends and relatives (42 percent) or contractors they already knew (28 percent) for customer referrals, according to a survey commissioned by Contractor Nation. That compares with 13 percent who started their search online using Google or other search engines. Although fewer still started with review sites like HomeAdvisor, Yelp or Angie’s List, 36 percent said they used online reviews to help them decide who to call, and half said they trust online reviews more than friends’ recommendations.