Don’t Smash Your Re-Hash

Browsing through Qualified Remodeler this week, I came across an article entitled Three Ways to Spruce Up Your Marketing—Instantly.

The article’s “Instant Improvement Idea #1” was “Get a Better Follow-Up System”.  In other words, learn to make re-hashing really work for you.  Being an Internet guy, I naturally began wondering what that meant for online-leads-gone-cold.

In short, it’s a big opportunity.  Re-hashing Internet leads is as valuable as re-hashing your leads from other media. You’d think that would be an obvious point, but for too many home improvement companies, Internet leads still fall to the bottom of the follow-up pile.

Search Engines – Clawing Your Way Up – Part 4

My past three posts explained why home improvement companies have such a hard time clawing their way to the top of the search engine rankings. If you haven’t (yet) read them, don’t despair. I’m finally getting to the point.

Here it is: Real responsibility for high rankings on the search engines does not rest with your home improvement company.

It rests instead with the owners of the brands you sell.

Why? Let me offer a bit of history.

Search Engines: Clawing Your Way Up – Part 2

Last week we considered search engine rankings—and why it’s so hard to get (and stay) on top.  It seems that Web sites run by online lead brokers and national brands dominate the search engine results.  You’d simply like to get your own Web site to rank highly for common terms like “replacement windows” and “vinyl siding”, the ones you know homeowners in your territory are searching for.

Those Web sites that do get the high ranks certainly look authoritative.  But the frustrating part is that you know that their owners have probably never swung a hammer for a customer in their lives.

Search Engines: Clawing Your Way Up

I typed the term “replacement windows” into Google this morning.  I then confirmed what many of you already know.

Online lead brokers dominate the search engine results for replacement windows terms—particularly in the organic results of the pages.  Here’s just a quick list of some of the Web sites I found:

http://www.1st-replacement-windows.com

http://www.windowreplacementsite.com

http://www.easyreplacementwindows.com

http://www.windowreplacementic.com

http://www.vinylreplacementwindows.org

…and there are plenty more where they came from

Most of these Web sites embrace the best practices for search engine optimization, i.e. getting high search engine rankings.  They’ve invested in doing all the right things—selecting relevant domain names, ensuring deep, successful histories with Google, etc.

Hello, Hello – Is Anybody There?

The roof of my sun porch recently sprang a leak, causing water to seep into my ceiling and walls. You know what water damage looks like—ugly and brown.

Because I have the home repair skills of a toddler, I decided to call a contactor before any more damage was done. I figured that I could call someone who knew roofing and could handle the interior wall work and repainting.

Unfortunately, instead of calling just one contractor, I had to call five.

Why? Because the first four didn’t answer the phone and worse, they didn’t bother to return my calls.

Home Energy Audits: Mandatory, or Opportunity?

So I was cruising the blog over at Qualified Remodeler and I ran across their piece on energy audits being mandatory when homeowners try to sell their homes in Austin, Texas. It’s 2009 and a home inspection isn’t enough anymore…now you need an energy efficiency audit in San Francisco, Berkeley and Austin.

While mandatory energy audits might seem somewhat extreme to the average homeowner, who just wants to sell their home and move, these audits could represent an excellent opportunity for the clever home improvement company.

I Was Told There’d Be No Math: Choosing the Right Metrics For Your Web Site

If you’re a home improvement dealer, the Internet has hit your business like a sledgehammer. Like it or not, your customers are going online to make home improvement decisions in ever larger numbers – and they’re not going to stop.

And while most home improvement providers have responded by building a Web site, a number of myths have cropped up about they should judge their success. Are the total number of visitors to the Web site the most important? What about the number of phone calls? How about form submissions?

Do Strong Offline Home Improvement Brands Have an Advantage Online?

As a home improvement company, your marketing efforts have likely been primarily offline. All of the home improvement veterans I know built their businesses with traditional advertising media, such as TV, radio, newspaper and direct mail.

While these veterans were obviously looking for leads, offline media served an additional purpose – to help build their brand, which over time would compound in value and generate even more leads. Thousands of successful home improvement companies were built this way – and many are still successful with that approach.

But do all those years of offline brand building mean anything as homeowners increasingly go online? The answer is: sort of.

Home Improvement Leads: Starting With the End in Mind

Ever hear of the blind squirrel finding a nut?  The comparison is apt when I look back at how my partner and I got into the home improvement lead game. Unwittingly, we did a couple of smart things.

The first is that we listened carefully to what our first client, Moonworks, wanted from an online lead generation program.

·         They wanted branded sales leads from homeowners in southern New England

·         They wanted the leads to be exclusive to their company, to reduce competition