The Remodeler Marketing Blueprint

How to Attract Quality Leads, Increase Sales, and Dominate Your Competition

Spencer Powell

• Publisher: River Grove Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781632993397
• eBook ISBN: 9781632993403
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing
• Index: Business

The way people shop and buy has evolved... has your marketing strategy?

The way people shop and buy remodeling services has evolved. Has your marketing strategy kept up? In today's modern, data-driven world dominated by social media, the most successful and profitable companies understand that great marketing is more than just ads. It's about content that will attract and retain clients.

In The Remodeler Marketing Blueprint, inbound marketing expert Spencer Powell shows that it is possible to create an education-driven marketing strategy that your clients and target audience will actually enjoy. In this foundational guide for remodeling and custom building companies, Spencer shares his expertise to help builders, remodelers, and contractors harness the most powerful tool you have—the internet—to generate leads and close more sales by using the power of your companies' website to increase valuable web traffic.

Easy-to-follow explanations and guided templates provide vital information on harnessing search engine optimization, gaining traction on social media, creating a repeatable and profitable system, and growing your brand. With educational, tactical, and entertaining tools, you will learn how to stop creating ads and instead create content that will transform the way you and your clients think about your marketing. This is the blueprint to drive your business into the future.

CHAPTER 1

The Script Has Flipped

THE WAY CONSUMERS SHOP HAS CHANGED. HAS YOUR MARKETING?

The way we shop and buy things today looks extremely different than it did in the early-to-mid-2000s. Think about how you used to buy a new TV. You may have been exposed to the idea through a commercial. After seeing the commercial, you thought, “Man, I really need that new sixty-inch HDTV.” Then you went to the store and talked to a sales rep.

The salesperson had all the control and all the information. If you wanted to know the specs on something and how it compared to other brands or models, you’d rely on that individual for the information to make your decision.

The script has flipped. Salespeople have almost no power, and the consumer has taken it all. If you want to research TVs, you go to Google or Amazon or YouTube and look for information. Reviews, ratings, tutorials, comparisons, specs, pricing, and anything else you could possibly want to know is now online. You can do all the research on your own, and you never have to talk to a salesperson.

In our world of remodeling, we’re not quite to that point (although we may get there), but we’re still seeing this major shift influence the way we need to approach our marketing. The consumer still has all the power. If they want to know the cost of a kitchen remodel or how long it will take, they go to Google. If they want to compare companies, they go to Google. If they want to see design trends, examples of work, and even read reviews or watch testimonials, they go online.

You need to match your marketing process to the way people shop and buy. This means meeting the consumer where they are in their research process. It means creating the type of information they are looking for and making it available on your website and social media channels. It’s not good enough to post pretty pictures on your website anymore. You have to create helpful, educational content. You have to think of yourself as a thought leader. (You are!)

Your prospects and customers don’t know anything about what you do. Well, they know a little bit, but it’s probably 1–3 percent of what you know. Because we’re in it every day, the industry and what we do feel like common knowledge. But talk to a friend for ten minutes about your typical workday, and you’ll quickly discover they don’t know any of the specifics about what you do. Why would they? They aren’t in our industry!

Your basic knowledge can be expert knowledge to your prospects and customers. By sharing basic information like how the remodeling process works, what the latest design trends are, how much it will cost, and how long it will take, you start to position yourself as a thought leader.

In this book, I’m going to show you how to separate yourself from your competitors by sharing information that you already know on the internet. Sounds easy, right? It is easy in theory, but in my experience, almost no one is willing to follow through on the execution. However, it’s my hope that after reading this book, you’ll be one of the few who do follow through, and you’ll start to become the go-to expert in your service area.

I’ve been implementing this strategy of thought leadership content online for over a decade. Over that time, I’ve literally built my company from nothing. I had no connections, no experience, and no money to invest. But I had time. I learned about digital marketing and shared what I learned through my website, blog, and then later webinars, videos, and podcasts.

The more I shared, the more people found me. The more people found me, the more opportunities I created for myself. Now, my company, Builder Funnel, is a team of fourteen full-time marketers, and we’ve helped our remodeling clients close projects totaling over $100 million, all by creating content online.

We live in an amazing time. You don’t have to have the biggest budget anymore. You don’t have to be the biggest or the best company anymore. You just have to be the most helpful.

I’m going to walk you through the process of becoming a thought leader step-by-step. By the end of the book, you’ll have a blueprint for establishing yourself and your company as a thought leader. And don’t worry—this isn’t some pie-in-the-sky idea. I’ll connect the dots with digital tactics like blogging, SEO, email, social media, and your website so that you’ll see how this content generates real leads and real sales.

The process of becoming a thought leader will actually provide your business with stability because it will help you build a more predictable lead pipeline so that you can weather the storms (recessions) and stay strong during the slow seasons throughout the year.

Are you ready to become a thought leader? Let’s get started.

CHAPTER 2

How to Think About Your Website

What if you had a salesperson who never took breaks, didn’t take holidays, never needed to eat or sleep, and always delivered your message the same way to every prospect? Wouldn’t that be incredible? That person can exist in the form of your website. If you build a powerful website, it will actually do the marketing, prospecting, and even—partially or completely—closing deals for you. Someone isn’t going to buy a kitchen remodel and pay for it online like she buys stuff on Amazon (although we might get there!), but your website can bring her 90 percent of the way to the close.

I want you to imagine a world where you have prospects calling your company or filling out your contact form to discuss a project. These prospects have already learned about you and your company. They understand your process and the types of projects you work on. They also have a good sense of what pricing will look like and how long it will take. By the time they’ve made it to an initial phone call, they are well educated and haven’t opted out. They are a good fit for you. They are the ideal client.

This is all possible because you have something extremely powerful (and often massively underutilized) at your disposal: your website. Yes, your website can make this happen.

Your website should be the center of all your marketing activities. I don’t know why we get it in our heads that people don’t research big purchases like remodels or custom homes online. We search for cars, houses, hot tubs, and jewelry online. We’ll even make purchases in the thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars without even talking to a sales professional. So you can be sure that people are looking for information online about remodeling their home.

Your website should be the hub of all information for the consumer. It can house the following:

•Blog posts

•Project photos

•Team and company information

•Your remodeling process

•Videos

•And more

Your website is kind of like a digital showroom on steroids. You’re not limited to a set amount of information. You can display as many projects as you want. You can showcase videos that tell your company story and how your process works and let people hear from happy clients via testimonials.

The best part about having a digital showroom that lives online? It’s open 24/7, and people can access it from their couch or bed on their iPad. We live in a world where the consumer wants convenience. We want things now. By maintaining a robust website, you give your consumers the ability to learn more about you and your company by investing minimal time.

Think about the way you do research. You want to learn everything you can about what you’re buying and, for larger purchases, who you’re buying from. Your website should provide all the necessary information your prospect is looking for.

Take a look at your website. It should provide answers to common questions your prospects have, such as:

•How long does it take to remodel?

•What are the current design trends?

•How much will this cost?

•What does the remodeling process look like?

•What if I don’t know what design or look and feel I want?

•Can I stay in my home while the remodel takes place?

Does your website provide answers to these common questions? Does it showcase your past projects? If you said no to these questions, this is a great time to start rethinking the purpose of your website. Your website is your #1 marketing tool and salesperson (if you build it the right way). And this salesperson sells the exact same way every time and never takes days off—even for holidays!

All this being said, a website is not an “if you build it, they will come” sort of endeavor. It needs fuel. It needs content. I’ll be going into content creation in much more detail later.

For now, just know that your website has two major components to it:

•The design (the look and feel of it)

•The performance (how many prospects are actually visiting and how many are converting into leads)

Most web design companies want to sell you a new design because that’s where they are strong, and that’s their business model. That’s how they make money. And they’ve gotten really good at explaining why you always seem to need a new design.

However, most of the time, you don’t need a new design. You need more performance. In the chapters to come, I’ll show you how to improve your website performance even if your design isn’t top-of-the-line yet. You can start increasing the number of prospects who visit your website right away even before you start working on a brand-new design.

And that’s where content comes into play. In today’s internet world, content is the foundation of all your success. You must have great content to thrive.

CHAPTER 3

Create Content That Matters to Your Customer

Before we talk about content, we need to know your customer. Is she married? Single? Does she have kids? Do she and her partner both work? What are her hobbies? Where does she shop? What are her goals, fears, dreams, and challenges?

In marketing, we call your ideal client a marketing persona. Your persona is a fictional character that represents the client you want to attract and work with on a regular basis. The more specifically you describe your persona and the more details you can put down, the better your marketing efforts will be. You want to get to a point where you’re truly speaking your persona’s language. You’re using her exact words and phrases. When she reads your marketing messages, it should feel like you’re in her head, thinking what she’s thinking.

This allows you to connect on a deeper level with your persona. Before you start creating content, it’s critical that you at least have an outline of your persona so that you know who you’re writing to. The more specific you can get, the better. Why do you think this book is written specifically for remodelers? It’s because I wanted to provide super-specific examples that are extremely relevant. That way, you get more value, and you know that I understand your world. It’s the same with your customers. They should feel like you get them.

HOMEWORK: BUILD YOUR MARKETING PERSONA

I’ve supplied a persona template that can be found on my company website: builderfunnel.com. If you’re like me, you probably don’t want to stop the flow of reading to work on the activity. If you want to keep powering through, I’ve also included a section at the back of the book that summarizes all the homework steps in order so that you can get the most out of the book after you complete it.

CHAPTER 4

Marketing Lingo

Before we get too far, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1: The Script Has Flipped
• Chapter 2: How to Think About Your Website
• Chapter 3: Create Content That Matters to Your Customer
• Chapter 4: Marketing Lingo
• Chapter 5: Build Your Marketing Funnel
• Chapter 6: Fill Your Funnel
• Chapter 7: Let’s Get Tactical
• Chapter 8: A Look into the Future
• Appendix