About Face

I am president of Clearwater Exteriors, a window and siding company that serves Colorado’s Front Range, including Denver, Fort Collins, and Colorado Springs. 

Clearwater was founded in 2014, but I have nearly 40 years’ experience in the home improvement industry, and during that time built and sold several large companies. One of those organizations was American Exteriors, and while growing that company, I relied heavily on direct marketing in order to scale the business. 

We invested in canvasing, events, and a lot of warm-lead drip campaigns. If we had prospects that we were unable to sell to immediately, we would continue to market to them over time. We knew that they were homeowners with an interest in our product vertical, and that made it worthwhile. We would often see great results depending on the market.

Falling Into The Trap

At Clearwater, we had a great deal of traditional mass media in our marketing mix­— digital, social, TV, and radio. That type of outreach is pretty commoditized. What that means is that anyone can purchase pay per click, social, or radio advertising. With so much competition in the market, our presence became diluted, and the return on investment continued to go down. How low? It can go below the floor. The truth is, there is no floor. 

Our marketing was 80% mass media, and 20% in-person. We’ve reversed those numbers and now sit at 80% in-person and 20% mass media.

We learned that it’s easy to fall into the trap of chasing after ROI on traditional mass media compared to our old methods of direct marketing. The reason that direct marketing is so successful is because it’s extraordinary difficult. You can’t just write a check. That low barrier of entry on the digital side occurs because all anyone needs to do is pay. It’s a lot harder to manage in-person campaigns, but for us, they are a tried and true approach. 

With all that in mind, we made a significant change. In the past, Clearwater’s marketing was 80% traditional mass media, and 20% direct, in-person. We’ve reversed those numbers and today our mix sits at 80% direct marketing and 20% digital and legacy media.

Innovative Methods

Along with that shift to direct marketing, we’ve also become more innovative. We don’t only rely on homeshows but instead have become more creative about utilizing fairs and festivals. For example, we’ve had better results at events that are slightly less crowded and don’t necessarily emphasize our product line. For instance, if we can get into a bridal festival, we’re likely to be the only window company there. 

Other methods of direct marketing include a more grassroots approach. We’ve collaborated with customers to host a general neighborhood barbecue at their home, alongside the sales team. For those events, we tell the homeowner that for every lead that sells they will receive $500. Often, they know a lot of people. 

Brand Equity 

The right lead-gen approach varies greatly depending on a business’ location and how well known they are in their local market. Other than possibly Renewal by Anderson, there are no real household names for window replacement at the national level. Conversely, there are regional, or city-specific, companies that have a lot of brand equity, and they can probably get good results with traditional marketing. They can turn up or turn down the dial on their spend. The problem is they can’t grow without huge cost. If they want to go into any other markets where they don’t have brand equity, it’s going to take a long time to build a base there. It’s very difficult. The return on investment is in inverse proportion to the amount of money that you spend.