If you are the owner of a home remodeling or interior design company, you are here for a reason. You are wondering “how to get more interior design and kitchen & bath remodel leads for your business?” The answer to the question in point is simple. Improve the marketing for your interior design and home remodeling business. And voila!
You will start generating more leads for your company.
Sounds so easy!
But, if you are a cabinet manufacturer, a home remodeler, or an interior designer, you know the answer is not that simple. Remodeling or redesigning a home, especially a kitchen or bath, is not an impulsive buy. They are big projects where productive leads are hard to come by. Leads are like the spark of life for your business. One good lead can provide your company with some significant revenue, and many refers as well.
Digital Marketing is the Way Forward
Home remodeling and interior design businesses need to use effective ways to get more clients and consistently increase their lead flow with minimum financial investment. With companies still relying on the traditional methods and tools of marketing to attract new clients, the digital age requires them to shift their practices. Billboard advertisements and cold calling cannot sustain businesses in today’s fierce competitive environment. Today, these traditional marketing methods will barely allow you to break even.
Word of mouth and market reputation, which were once the key source for reaching out to potential prospects in this industry, can no longer sustain. Overcoming the shortfalls of invasive marketing techniques like cold calling, digital marketing empowers designers and remodeling companies to focus their efforts on qualified leads that are actually searching for what you have to offer.
By harnessing the power of virtual networks, businesses can grow and position themselves for long-term success. Adding additional marketing channels to the overall marketing strategy is essential for interior design and remodeling businesses. These digital marketing efforts will help outperform the offline channels in real financial terms. To learn several digital marketing strategies to use in 2022 click here.
The focus of any good marketing strategy is to attract quality home remodeling leads, convert them into prospects, and earn profits from them. This is how productive lead generation can help your home remodeling and interior design company’s bottom line. But we all know how challenging it is to generate good leads in this competitive digital world. It requires time, money, and a strong grip on your digital marketing tactics.
Where to Start the Process to Generate Home remodeling Leads
Remodelers and designers are experts in making your homes and offices look beautiful. They can do wonders when it comes to changing the layout of your rooms or making over your building’s total outlook. They can add comfort, luxury, and safety to your living environment. However, when it comes to doing business, many interior design and home remodeling business owners are overwhelmed and do not know how to effectively market their business to attract the right type of clients.
With the virtual world of the internet packed with scammers, cyber threats, and unlimited glittering ways of making millions, interior designers and home remodelers may have hesitation and skepticism in knowing where to start their lead generation process. With longer sales cycles, a potential home remodeling client is thorough in their research. Instead of making impulsive buying decisions, prospects prefer going through the required due diligence, gathering information on client reviews, and checking out the service provider’s website for completed projects. The potential client will do all the homework before actually contacting the designer or remodeler.
The Digital Marketing – 3 Step Lead Acquisition Process
Before we cover detailed techniques on how to get more home remodeling leads for your interior design or home remodeling company, here is a brief description of a simple 3 step process for lead acquisition.
1. Get Found: The first step to luring in a lead into your potential sales cycle is to get found by the prospect. On the other end, this entails the awareness stage for the customer’s buying journey. You, as a home remodeler or interior designer will be found by the potential client on a search engine results page. This appearance could come from pay-per-click advertising, map listings, or the traditional organic search. At this stage, you are just a name for the potential client. Your existence is known but your capabilities or chances of consideration are zero.
2. Get Noticed: Now that the potential client is aware of your existence, you have to get noticed. On the prospect’s side, this is the consideration stage of the buying journey. Getting noticed requires your company to stand out from the other profiles, company links, and competitors. Something in your company must grab their attention more than the others. The attraction should be able to make them interested in your offer and make them your prospective lead. As a remodeler or interior design company, you cannot ignore the importance of either of the two stages explained above. You cannot simply rely on search engine rankings for getting found. You also need a great website to provide a competitive advantage in the client experience to get noticed. You will fail to get effective leads if you have a website that people are unable to find or if they do find your site the user experience is bad.
3. Direct Contact: The third and final step of acquiring a productive lead for your business is to engage the potential client in direct contact. Urging him or her to get in touch with you through an effective call of action (CTA). This will be the point of contact and communication between your company and the lead. It is the stage where you can provide all the necessary information that can actually convert a prospect into a profitable client. The experience of the potential client will determine the decision he or she makes. Using compelling digital content, project videos, client testimonies, reviews, and references, provide a greater chance to convert visitors to clients.
Strategies to Generate Home remodeling Leads for Your Interior Design or Remodeling Company
In the lead generation space, there are three methods to generate leads for a business. The three methods are organic or inbound strategies, paid strategies and social media strategies. The next sections will cover each of these three strategies in depth with examples and video training.
Organic or Inbound Lead Generation Strategies
1. Website Optimization
A company website is a powerful digital tool for reaching out to new clients. It is the platform that enables companies to strengthen their relationship with potential as well as existing clients. Your website is like a sales executive that can help attract a lead towards making a buying decision (without any commissions!!!). It can help convert visitors into paying clients and address client queries like a customer sales representative.
An interior design or home remodeling website ensures your all-time uninterrupted presence for the potential client. It is a representation of your brand and physical showroom 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year in the virtual world. Having said that, creating a website does not guarantee profits. Fierce competition in the industry requires your website stand out and give potential client’s a reason to work with you over the competition.
Make your website stand out by creating:
- A Resource of Good Information – People looking for home remodeling and interior design services rely heavily on searching for information. Provide them with a resource for such information through your website. Update them about the latest kitchen trends, enlighten them with new kitchen styles, capture their attention through blogs and educate them with your home remodeling knowledge. Show them how you and your interior design or home remodeling company can transform their dream into a reality.
- A Place to Highlight Your Design Process – In the interior design and remodeling industry process is very important for client success. You should highlight your design and remodeling process from start to finish with timelines and activities to make it useful for the potential client. Sharing your process and procedures for the project at hand are also good ways to show your expertise and attention to detail. We have also found that a frequently asked questions section on your website helps prospects better understand your process and what it will be like working with you.
- A Venue to Showcase Your Great Work through a Portfolio or Gallery Page – Interior design and home remodeling businesses are focused on visual appearances and results. Adding a portfolio or project gallery page is a must add to your website to showcase your home remodeling capabilities and highlight the visually appealing nature of your projects to potential clients. Use professional-grade photos because nothing tells a better story and leaves a deeper impact on prospects than high-quality images.
- A Space to Tell Stories through Client Testimonials – Details are important for generating leads. Potential clients want to know how existing clients feel about your services. Instead of just making claims in the air, back your high-quality assertions with a specific story like testimonials that remain in the minds of the reader.
- Appropriate Calls to Action – Do not overlook the need to optimize your home remodeling or interior design website for conversations. Format, place, and number of calls to action (CTA’s) on your website can make a difference. For generating leads that convert, make sure you provide them with a space to interact. Add a contact form to your website with details on how to contact you for more information or purchasing inquires.
Without proper placement of valuable contact information and call to actions, you might be letting your leads slip away without making a move forward. Play the video below for additional training on developing your website to convert visitors to quality prospects (a 0.1 NKBA CEU training).
2. Improve Your Website Visibility
You can grow the traffic on your website by simply letting everyone know about it. Make sure to print the URL of your company website on all your business cards, marketing brochures, project posters, and all other types of advertising materials. Print it on the receipts and invoices so that existing clients can visit them for future projects. Also, ensure to link your company website with your business social media pages.
3. Search Engine Optimization
Websites are getting harder to reach for potential clients. They are different from social media posts and paid ads that pop up in front of you during a normal day’s online routine. Running across your website requires a prospect to search for specific keywords that you have optimized your website for. If you did your research right you will have optimized your website for keywords that your ideal prospects are actually typing in, not keywords you want to be ranking for but have no real buyer intent.
According to HubSpot, 75% of users never click past page one of the search results. So, if your company website does not rank on the first page you are losing a lot of potential business. Adopt an SEO strategy that focuses on building a high-quality website, an exceptional user experience, a link development strategy, and superior content. Check out our complete SEO checklist for additional support.
Searches for home remodeling services have increased dramatically over the last year according to Rocket Mortgage. To make your website visible to these leads, you need to go beyond the three SEO ranking tools of title tags, keywords, and headlines.
Some of the key aspects to consider when optimizing your website for SEO include:
- Mobile Friendliness
- Page Speed
- Security Parameters
- Schema Mark-up
- Webpage Content Quality
- Backlink Quality
- Image Optimization
- User Experience
- Search Intent
There is a misconception that user experience on a website does not impact search engine visibility. Google and other search engines give lots of weightage to website experience for ranking. For more on SEO Myths click here. If you rank well but provide a not-so-good user experience, your ranking will not last for long. Click the video below to review our SEO Strategy Plan training video for a better understanding of this topic (a 0.1 NKBA CEU Training).
4. Strategically Driven Email Marketing
This digital method of generating leads for growing your business has been around for decades. Simple and modest, it is very effective for small home remodeling and interior design companies. Marketing experts underestimate the effectiveness of this digital marketing technique. In an analysis done by Hubspot, it revealed 2/3 clients made purchases as a result of a direct marketing email they received from the company. Their research also shows Email marketing is 40 times more effective than Twitter and Facebook combined.
Email is also a great way to maintain communication with previous or existing clients. It keeps reminding them of your company’s presence and highlights the brand for future projects and referrals. But that does not mean that email content does not matter. It is extremely important to draft a marketing email with attention to the following details:
- Easy to comprehend
- Short to scan
- Mobile friendly
- Must have good subject titles
- Highlight the solutions you provide
- Give insights into finished projects
- Must have a link to your website
Play the video below to learn more about our Email Marketing Tips training video (a 0.1 NKBA CEU Training):
Paid Lead Generating Strategies for Interior Designers and Remodelers
1. PPC or Pay Per Click Advertisements
Anyone searching for home remodelers or interior designers would start by going on Google. You can get the attention of such leads through Google Ads. These are the compact advertisements that show up relevant to the search at the top or bottom of the search engine results page or SERP. But the ad is only functional till the time you are paying. PPC is one of the best ways to generate traffic to your interior design or home remodeling website. It helps boost the number of leads by attracting new prospects to your company.
When working on PPC campaigns, you should ensure that you are targeted correctly and that your keywords are grouped accordingly. Go for specific keywords and geographic locations. This will help make your ad visible to leads searching for your services in that particular area. Fine-tuning your PPC campaigns with segmentation and target marketing allows you to generate leads that are qualified for future conversions. This will also ensure that you are not attracting visitors who are uninterested and will only burden your investment with unwanted and unqualified leads. To understand PPC ads and how they work go through our PPC Marketing Tips or click on our PPC Training Video below.
2. Google Local Service Ads or LSAs
These digital ads are powered by Google and are similar to PPC. But what makes them different is that they are specific to your demographics and location. They help promote your interior design or home remodeling company as a local business near you. They are displayed on top of the SERP and help deliver quality leads from the ads to your company.
So, potential clients can generate direct contact with your company through the ad. Unlike PPC campaigns where you have to pay for every click, the LSAs require you to only pay for the lead that will make a direct contact through the ad. This can mean cost savings from getting unqualified or uninterested leads. Get detailed information on Using Google LSA for your Interior Design Business by clicking here.Social Media Lead Generation Strategies
1. Create a Business Page
It would be difficult to complete your digital marketing strategy for generating leads without social media marketing. Like in every other industry, home remodelers and interior designers also need to create social media pages for their businesses. The medium might be a little slower than PPC and LSAs but is more cost-effective as an interactive way to attract leads.
The key is to ensure that you build a complete profile with all the pertinent information. Incomplete profiles can look unprofessional and mislead the prospects when they might not think you offer a service that you really do, but your incomplete profile did not convey the correct information. For home remodeling specifically, you should opt for Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest. Click on the video below to learn more about setting up your Facebook Business Profile the right way.
2. Posting Valuable Content and Engage with Users
Unlike in the past when people used to turn to interior design magazines and home improvement catalogs for ideas, social media is the place most people look at for design inspiration and home remodeling ideas. Posting your completed projects on various platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Houzz, and Instagram will help accentuate your presence in the market.
Posting your photo-centric content on these platforms is a powerful tool for growing your brand recognition and increasing awareness among your ideal audience. You must keep your social media pages updated with quality content and authentic and valuable information. It is better to focus on a couple of social media platforms rather than jumping onto all of them, as each platform has its own parameters to work within.
The key is to ensure the following considerations
- Upload high-quality images of your projects
- Update your profile regularly
- Follow Remodeling experts and professionals.
- Engage with users
People looking for inspirations, ideas, and remodeling services turn to these visually focused social media platforms for information. Building your presence on these platforms will help bring a boost to your lead generation process. Below are some ways you should use these social media platforms:
- Offering Interesting Content – Your social media page should have creative videos, images of your top projects, how-to articles, the latest trend updates in the industry, and the most popular social media DIY content.
- Widespread Outreach – Social media is a platform that allows quick sharing of information. In very little time you can share significant marketing information and gain popularity for your brand and reputation.
- Capitalize on Client Reviews – Highlighting reviews on your business page, you can give visitors access to your remodeling and interior design capabilities. Such reviews and testimonials are a great way to attract new leads to your business and give people confidence in working with you.
- Interact With Users – Social media allows you to start conversations and communicate effectively with a target market. Use your page to increase your brand’s popularity among the targeted audience and help them by responding to comments and messages. Engage with users/prospects to show them you care and are responsive to their request and concerns, which will make you more appealing to work with.
- Share Updates – You can use this social media channel to keep the audience updated with your company information, new offerings, promotional services, and completed projects.
To learn more effective digital marketing tips on Houzz, Pinterest and Instagram check out our training videos below. For a full list of our advanced training videos click here.
3. Social Media Ads (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.)
Facebook ads are a great way to generate high-quality leads for your home remodeling and/or interior design company. To get the maximum advantage of this social media advertising technique you should target the right leads. Using the advanced features of Facebook’s artificial intelligence system and custom audience you can segment users and showcase your ads to the people who are most likely to purchase your product or service.
The ads help capture the attention and engage a customized audience through content that is relevant to their interests and needs. It also targets people according to demographics, geographic location, and even their behavior on using social media. Using the personal information and profile data of the users, Facebook allows you to set up laser-targeted business ads with a message that have better odds of getting a positive response. You can track and target leads with effectiveness through Facebook ads. Other platforms like Instagram, Pinterest and LinkedIn have similar targeting features for your ideal audience.
To learn some basic tips on leveraging the tool of Facebook Ads for your business read about it in detail here.
Retargeting Ads to Generate Leads
It is very important to recapture the attention of a potential lead who has visited your website but did to act. Both Facebook and Google Ads enable users to market their business ads to potential clients for a second time. This is specifically designed for those people who visit your website once, watch a video or engage in some research and then leave without effectively converting. Because these leads have already shown some interest in your home remodeling and interior design offering, they are likely to grab the attention again and possibly buy after second thought.
Final Take
Understanding the digital processes and selecting the appropriate methodologies are very important for the success of your digital marketing endeavors. The key to remember is that you do not have to do everything. The best way is to create a strategically driven plan and work on a combination of the above lead generation tactics that make sense to your target audience and your internal company capabilities. Leverage each method to strengthen your holistic and comprehensive plan of action. Bolstering your marketing efforts to generate productive leads can ultimately help you gain the right outcomes and grow your business now and into the future.