This guide is part of our bigger home services lead generation guide, where we examine the most effective free and paid lead acquisition strategies, share our brightest advertising ideas, and predict home service trends to capitalize on.
With the U.S. home improvement industry accounting for over 50% of the global market – one of the few against-the-will beneficiaries of COVID-19 – home improvement marketing is becoming even more profitable in the hands of crafty marketers.
From selling building materials to decorating homes, there are more than enough sub-niches to generate home improvement leads. Speaking of which, I’ve researched some very specific types of home improvement clients – roofing leads, masonry leads, siding leads, and more – to assemble this helpful guide on home improvement lead generation and marketing.
Read on to master home improvement marketing and generate more clients with less effort.
Home Improvement vs. Home Services: What’s the Difference?
Before we dive into home improvement lead generation, I’d like to mention that home improvement and home services are not necessarily the same, involving slightly different lead acquisition strategies.
Here’s the key difference between home services and home improvement:
- Home services encompass a broad range of services – for example, home security – whereas home improvement focuses on very specific home renovations and enhancements – for example, kitchen remodeling, wallpapering, or replacing windows.
Home improvement leads usually know what they want, while home service leads may still wonder how to handle their issues. The former need specific upgrades or renovations and, therefore, require more accurate targeting.
But then again, equalizing the terms “home services” and “home improvement” won’t be a mistake either, as these are very close and often describe the same clients. Such ambiguities bother marketers, but there’s not much you can do.
Home Improvement Leads and Their Needs
Home improvement leads come in a great variety, from roofing to flooring to masonry and other niches, each with unique needs and wants you should appeal to.
You might be the only company in your city that provides roofing leak detection, or you might offer the most cost-effective ice dam prevention solutions – one thing is clear: you need a unique selling proposition to move forward with home improvement lead generation.
Here are some popular home improvement leads to focus on:
| Home Remodeling Leads | Remodeling leads are one of the biggest categories of home improvement leads, comprising clients searching for kitchen remodeling, bathroom remodeling, window replacement, and similar services. The difficult part about these leads is that they cover the widest demographics, so you should either capture them with a wide net, sacrificing quality, or pre-qualify them somehow before you contact them so you don’t waste time on irrelevant leads. |
| Plumbing Leads | An average plumbing lead is a male aged 30 to 70, possibly with unique needs like, for example, bathroom modifications for elderly people. If you provide such services, you can avoid competition and get a higher-than-average conversion rate. |
| Masonry Leads | Masonry leads are property owners looking for construction, repair, or restoration of brick, stone, or concrete structures. Among the popular masonry services are:
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| Concrete Leads | Concrete leads seek professional concrete services for indoor and (more often) outdoor projects. Understanding your expertise and target audiences (location, budget, etc.) will help you generate more concrete leads with less effort. |
| Roofing Leads | Roofing leads are customers searching for roof repair, maintenance, replacement, or inspection services. Many of them are also solar leads interested in energy-efficient roofing solutions. Another solid source of high-ticket leads is emergency roofing. |
| Siding Leads | Siding leads want to beautify their home exterior, increase its durability or energy efficiency, or repaint or maintain their siding. Custom siding solutions are a way to set yourself apart from the competition. |
| Flooring Leads | Flooring leads want to repair, replace, or improve destroyed or worn-out flooring. Some customers may also seek unordinary flooring solutions like, for example, hypoallergenic flooring. |
As diverse as home improvement marketing tactics are, there are only three underlying strategies to generate home improvement leads:
- Home improvement lead generation using organic traffic sources
- Home improvement lead generation using paid traffic
- Buying leads for home-based businesses from lead generators, agencies, and marketplaces
Let’s review these approaches in detail, starting from organic lead generation.
How To Get Free Home Improvement Leads
Earned media is the only source of free home improvement leads, at least from the perspective that you don’t have to pay for these leads directly.
Here’s the problem, though:
- Organic traffic channels – your blog, website, social media accounts, referral program, etc. – can only grant a sustainable influx of customers if you’re a popular home improvement company. Otherwise, you must rely on paid traffic, the backbone of most aspiring home improvement companies.
Nonetheless, developing your earned media is one of the smartest and least risky long-run investments if you want to generate home improvement leads for free eventually.
Organic lead generation through affiliate marketing will require market research, segmentation, and resonating content, all of which will give you an advantage in buying home improvement leads or generating them via paid advertisement. You’re killing three birds with one stone here.
Step 1 – Create a Marketing Core for Home Improvement Leads
All home improvement leads are different – for example, kitchen remodeling leads have little in common with bathroom remodeling leads – but you still need a generalized unique selling point.
- A unique selling proposition (USP) is what makes your home improvement services look better than the rest: local coverage, higher durability, lower price, or anything else you have that your competitors don’t.
Next, you can rework your general USP for different groups of leads, provided you know who your customers are, what services they want, and your strongest offer.
The good news is that automated lead management tools can make things simpler. For example, Phonexa’s lead management suite LMS Sync unlocks valuable marketing insights: what channels drive traffic, how customers interact there, and how to improve your sales funnel.
After crafting compelling USPs, you can unroll your home improvement marketing, leveraging online and offline channels.
Step 2 – Maximize Your Online Presence, but Don’t Overdo
Effective lead generation for home improvement means going omnichannel to identify the traffic channels you can double down on. That said, dispersing your efforts too much may not work well if you lack resources, knowledge, or – more importantly – an audience to cater to.
Here are the 6 most profitable free channels to generate home improvement leads:
| Website & Blog | Website and blog are the places to flaunt your USP and expertise without boundaries other social media may impose. Coherent, customized customer experiences are a must for an effective home improvement marketing strategy. Even if you focus on similar audiences – for example, bathroom remodeling leads & kitchen remodeling leads, both representing interior remodeling leads – it makes sense to target each group separately. |
| Email home lead generation is as old as the Internet itself, so you might want to add some flavor here. For example, you can use AMP technology to display dynamic information like pricing in emails and allow users to order your services without leaving the inbox. | |
| Social Media | Make sure to synergize your goals with the demographics of the social media platform in question. LinkedIn is good for B2B lead generation; Instagram works well with strong visual content; TikTok is excellent for targeting Millennials and Gen Z. |
| Directories & Forums | Directories and forums allow you to establish personal connections with local home improvement leads. The only fly in the ointment is that you can’t automate this type of marketing, so all the work will have to be done manually. |
| SEO | Optimizing your content for specific keywords is a surefire way to get more home improvement leads for free. Choose realistic keywords – possibly local–that reflect your buyer’s search intent. |
| Referral Program | A referral program will maximize your customers’ lifetime value and incentivize potential clients to engage. Make sure to include flexible rewards – cash, bonuses, perks, etc. – and bonuses for new customers. |
Step 3 – Synergize Online and Offline Home Improvement Lead Generation
Since home improvement companies operate offline – you can’t distant-clean clogged pipes, can you? – offline marketing is one of the best strategies to generate leads. From door-to-door canvassing to direct mail campaigns to local TV, you can win locals in so many ways. And don’t forget that offline events are great for creating content for online campaigns.
How to Get Home Improvement Leads Using Paid Advertising
The knowledge of organic lead generation and social media will be of great help when setting up paid advertising campaigns, but you need a bit more all the same.
To generate home improvement leads with paid advertising, you need to know:
- How paid ads work across media platforms and how to set them up
- What platforms fit your target buyer’s persona
- How to craft a compelling advertisement that hooks your clients
Here’s our comprehensive guide to generating paid home improvement leads with paid ads.
How To Buy Home Improvement Leads
Whether you struggle to generate organic leads or want to save on marketing, you can follow the well-trodden path of buying home improvement leads from lead generators, agencies, and marketplaces.
Here are the main differences between these three paid traffic sources:
| Home improvement lead generators | Home improvement lead generation companies usually provide a platform where you can promote your services by creating a company account and featuring your brand in listings. However, most lead gen companies don’t sell leads directly. |
| Home improvement lead agencies | Home improvement lead agencies sell leads directly to advertisers. You can buy cheap pre-generated leads or more expensive exclusive home improvement leads. |
| Home improvement marketplaces | Home improvement marketplaces run lead markets where you can buy and sell quality leads at a lower price if you’re a good trader or just caught your lucky break. |
Here are two major categories of home improvement leads you can buy:
| Exclusive home improvement leads | Exclusive home improvement leads are sold to a single company. They are quite expensive and likely to convert, but there’s still no 100% guarantee they haven’t contacted other home improvement companies. |
| Shared home improvement leads | Shared home improvement leads are sold to several competing companies at the same time. They are cheaper and less likely to convert. However, buying shared home improvement leads makes sense if you can snatch them from competitors. |
There are sub-types of shared and exclusive leads, making your marketing for home services more flexible. For instance, there are live transfer leads, whom you can connect directly to your inbound call center, and aged home improvement leads, who were interested in home improvement services before disengaging.
Supercharge Your Home Improvement Lead Generation with Phonexa
A well-automated home improvement lead generation system will beat anything human marketers are capable of. With Phonexa’s comprehensive lead generation software suite, you will automate & coordinate heterogeneous marketing campaigns to generate and convert more leads with less effort while always staying on the legal side of the fence.
Here’s more about Phonexa’s performance marketing proprietary software suite:
Here’s more about LMS Sync, the tool you might need in the first place:
Here are the eight cloud-based solutions you’ll get, all at one price:
| LMS Sync | Lead tracking & distribution |
| Call Logic | Call tracking & distribution |
| E-Delivery | Email & SMS marketing |
| Cloud PBX | Cloud phone system |
| Lynx | Click tracking |
| Opt-Intel | Suppression list management |
| HitMetrix | User behavior recording & analytics |
| Books360 | Automated accounting |
Get your lead management software bundle now to acquire more home improvement leads, or schedule a free consultation to learn more about how Phonexa can propel your home improvement marketing.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where do I get the best home improvement leads?
There are three principal ways to get home improvement leads: generate them from earned media – your website, blog, social media, workshops, etc. – paid advertising, and buy home improvement leads from lead generators, agencies, and marketplaces.
What are the most profitable home improvement leads?
The most profitable home improvement leads are leads who convert well while purchasing expensive services. These may even be non-exclusive leads (shared or aged leads) if they are cheap and have high conversion rates.
How much are leads for home improvement?
The cost of home improvement leads varies from around $15 for shared leads to $200 and more for live transfer leads and other exclusive, high-intent leads. The price per lead also depends on the delivery method – for example, home business leads can be added to your CRM system or instantly connected to a matching live operator – and the lead agency itself.
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