Master Your Marketing Mix

I’ve often heard from contractors that this type of marketing doesn’t work or that type of marketing doesn’t work. Just because it hasn’t worked for you doesn’t mean that it can’t. When it comes to marketing tools, most home improvement companies are mediocre at many and masters of none. That needs to change to achieve consistent growth.
 

The Major Mistake Contractors Make When They Hear Marketing Ideas

An easy trap to fall into in this industry is to attend an event or a webinar or read an article online, and walk away with too many marketing ideas. Yes, too many.

I have a concept called the “2 of 10” rule. If you read 10 tips or have 10 takeaways from an event, you should only try implementing two immediately. And the two you pick better be feasible for your business. Ask yourself: “Do I have the financial resources and the people to truly commit to making this work for me?”

Don’t settle for mediocrity in your marketing mix.

For example, you attend an industry event and hear how successful another contractor has been with a canvassing program. That’s great. But do you have the people in place to pull that off? Are you willing to make the investment to hire someone to manage a new department and make dozens of hires just to get started? If yes, go for it.

But if you think that you can simply test the waters by sending a couple of part-time employees out into a neighborhood to knock on some doors, you’re setting yourself up for failure. And you’re likely to tell others canvassing doesn’t work.

Another example might be promoting giveaways. Many companies have succeeded in holding sweepstakes. The easy part is getting people to sign up for a chance to win free windows or a new roof. The difficult part is turning those leads into appointments.

Running sweepstakes requires a dedicated team to follow up with the entrants by using a script designed to convert them into “today” leads. Generating names from giveaways isn’t very fruitful unless you have the resources to turn those prospects into leads, and those leads into appointments.
 

The Majority of Your Leads Will Come from Only a Few Sources

The truth is that any lead source you’ve heard about is working for someone in this industry. What’s right for someone else may not be right for you. And that’s OK. But how can you know what will work for you if you don’t commit to it the way you should?

The most successful marketers in the home improvement space rely on two or three main lead sources that, when combined, generate a large majority of their leads. This is where they’ll wisely spend the bulk of their marketing budgets and the bulk of their time making incremental improvements.

The remaining lead sources act to fill in the gaps and shouldn’t require a lot of your time to implement and execute. You shouldn’t be spending an unbalanced amount of your financial and people resources on marketing tools that only generate a small percentage of your business.
 

How to Avoid a Mediocre Marketing Mix

Before you latch on to a new-to-you marketing idea, determine if you’re willing to give it a fair chance to work for your business.

Don’t be the company that runs a couple of months of TV ads on a local station and then pulls the plug, or the one that sends direct mail to a few people one month, and then declares direct mail to be dead. Make a commitment, study the results, and make improvements.

It’s a new year in a market that most expect to be tighter than the past few years. Don’t settle for mediocrity in your marketing mix.

This year, I challenge you to try two completely new lead sources or two lead sources that you’ve tried in the past (but only half-assed). This time, commit to giving them the financial and people resources required to make them work for you.