Online Lead Gen: How to Win & How to Lose

In my last post, I shared how Sears has natural advantages over local home improvement companies when it comes to online lead generation.  Sears has national buying power — online advertisers just love that because they work with a single client that can buy out their entire inventory of online leads and advertising.

Smaller home improvement companies can’t make national buys. That puts them at a significant disadvantage over the big national players.

So, how do the local guys fight back? The answer is for them to look to the brands and manufacturers of the products they sell.

Is YouTube Your Next Big Thing?

YouTube as part of your marketing mix? Maybe yes…and maybe no.

I’m often asked whether or not home improvement companies should post videos on YouTube, Google’s wildly popular video-sharing Web site. If you haven’t seen YouTube yet, “enormous” doesn’t begin to describe how big a phenomenon it’s become, particularly with the younger demographic. To provide some perspective, YouTube has more viewers every day than the three major TV networks…combined.

So should you use YouTube to generate leads? On this point, I sit squarely on the fence—there is a good case to be made for YouTube, and a good case against it. Allow me lay out the pros and cons:

Industry Trends: Are The Good Times Upon Us?

If early signs are any predictor, many home improvement companies are going to have a strong spring selling season. Have I got your attention now?

Let me share what some of you may already sense. The home improvement market is, well, improving. And, if early signs are any predictor, many home improvement companies are going to have a strong spring selling season.

National Lead Gen: Metrics Shall Set You Free!

Many home improvement brands spend great sums of money buying national media to generate leads for their dealers. A great strategy…or a big waste? Read on.

As we’ve worked with home improvement brands and manufacturers, we’ve learned a lot about their challenges of running national media campaigns. Turns out that brands that run campaigns on behalf of their dealers take on key challenges…not just to develop programs that work, but to also track the results.

Everyone’s Gone Banner Blind (Part 2)!

Internet banner advertising is essential for lead generation. But ONLY if you follow these important tips.

Last week I wrote about ‘banner blindness.’ That’s behavior that Internet users have developed that causes them to ignore banner advertising on the Web pages they visit. This week, I promised to share with you how you can make Internet banner advertising work for your home improvement company?

Here’s the short answer: get your media salespeople selling you offline advertising to throw-in banner advertising on their Web sites.

“Throw-in?” you ask. What is a “throw-in”? And why would a media salesperson “throw in” banners into a media sale?

Agencies! Consultants! SEOs! Oh My! (Part 2)

When it comes to Internet marketing, you’ve got loads of options to choose from. That’s the good news…and the bad. Here’s the second installment of my advice for separating contenders from pretenders.

Last week shared the many options home improvement companies have for Internet marketing help.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of pretenders out there, and choosing them can lead to losing out on your online opportunity, as well as wasting your money.

This week, I want to help you sort through your choices, and differentiate among the good, the bad and the ugly.

Enjoy the Holidays & Set More Appointments

Want to get your 2010 off to a great start? A little preparation now will go a long way come January 2.

It’s December, and homeowners across the continent are looking forward to a joyous holiday season. As they do, you need to set your sights out just a little further: the upcoming home show season.

What should you be doing? Get prepared to follow up on your home show leads. How? One step is to plan how you best stay connected to those homeowners who inevitably tell you during your follow up, “I’m just not ready to meet with you yet.”

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.