The digital age has re-written the rules of the remodeling industry, changing the way contractors attract and interact with clients.

Customers spend more than 8 hours online per day. With easy access to the web anywhere, anytime, it’s easier than ever for consumers to plan a remodel on their own terms. For example, where it used to be the remodeler’s job to come up with Remodeling ideas and plans, now customers are coming to the table with hundreds of ideas and images of design inspiration.

Remodeling activity nationwide has been steadily climbing thanks to a bolstered economy, and the market outlook remains positive for the next two years. To take full advantage of this healthy business environment, you need to focus on connecting with your target audience at every touchpoint during their online buyer’s cycle.

This guide will arm you with six Marketing strategies to help you do just that:

1. Turn your remodeling company’s website into a 24/7 sales representative
2. Get noticed by search engines
3. Build out your content portfolio
4. Put some money behind it
5. Project your authority
6. Track, test, and continually tweak your campaigns

After reading, you should have a solid marketing foundation to build on. Need help with marketing for remodelers? Contact us below!

Your Blueprint to Remodeler Marketing Strategy Starts with a New Buyer’s Journey

When getting a remodel or renovation work done, homeowners used to follow a pretty predictable sales funnel that typically began with a recommendation from a friend. Now, however, homeowners twist and turn throughout the sales funnel, moving back and forth between the consideration and awareness phases:

Here’s what that new journey looks like in action:

• Jane is finally fed up with not being able to find anything in her kitchen – Awareness
• Jane logs onto Instagram and Pinterest to get kitchen organization ideas and inspiration by searching for the hashtag “#kitchenorganization” – Awareness
• Jane collects, pins, and saves all her favorite design images on Pinterest and Instagram, and then Googles, “how much is a kitchen remodel?” – Consideration
• Jane reads a blog on a remodeler’s website about the average cost of a remodel. She decides the cost is worth it and starts Googling local remodeling contractors.
• Jane posts on Facebook and Nextdoor to ask for kitchen designer recommendations – Awareness
• Jane Googles the reviews and projects of the recommended kitchen designers and sees one whose project she’s already pinned on Pinterest – Consideration
• Jane picks her favorite kitchen designer and contacts the contractor to ask for more information – Consideration
• Jane hosts the contractors at her home for a consultation. After the consultation, she signs on for a remodel – Purchase
• Jane documents the remodel process on Instagram and Facebook – Loyalty loop
• Jane raves about her new kitchen to friends and leaves a 5-star review on the remodeler’s Google My Business profile – Loyalty loop
• Two years later, a roof leak destroys Jane’s master bedroom. Jane skips the beginning stages of the buyer’s cycle and calls the remodeler directly for a quote – Loyalty loop, Purchase

The rest of this guide should help you create a winning digital marketing strategy that influences remodeling buyers at every touchpoint of their journey.

1. Turn Your Website Into Your Biggest Marketing Asset

Your biggest, most reliable, and most cost-effective source of leads should be your remodeling company’s website.

Your remodeling company’s website should be your number one marketing asset. Your website is where customers first get introduced to you and is the last place they visit when a project is completed. To turn your website into your 24/7 virtual sales rep, you need to give your customer an experience that’s on par with the experience they get with, say, Amazon or Uber.

Your website needs to have four characteristics in order to create a fantastic experience:

• Secure
• Fast
• Frictionless
• Mobile-first

Your Website Needs to Be FAST

The average homeowner expects your website to load in under 3 seconds. If it doesn’t, the user will get impatient and click the “back” button.

This is one mistake you can’t afford to make. The more files, features, plugins, and pages your website has, the longer it takes to render. Downloading different elements takes up about 80% of a page’s load time.

Even a one-second delay in page speed can hurt you:

• 11% decrease in page views
• 16% decrease in customer satisfaction
• 7% decrease ;in conversions

Your Website Should Be FRICTIONLESS

What do we mean by frictionless? We mean that you need to provide a fantastic user experience (UX). User experience is how a person feels after an entire interaction with a company’s website.

Little roadblocks along the buyer’s journey can add up in a big way. Here’s an example of how:

Customer one lands on your web page after clicking a PPC ad. The webpage loads in three seconds and the content on the page meets the user’s needs. The customer fills out a contact form and immediately gets a confirmation email. Someone calls them within five minutes and closes the sale.

Customer two lands on a web page after clicking a PPC ad. It takes a full 10 seconds for the landing page to load, making the customer impatient. The content doesn’t exactly match what the customer was looking for, and they become frustrated, clicking around to try and find the correct information. After failing to find a phone number, the customer fills out a contact form and anxiously waits for an answer. The customer gets a call back 24 hours later, but by that time, they’ve already contacted another remodeler.

First is your overall design. Unfortunately, people are judgemental—75% of people have admitted to judging a company’s credibility based on its website design. Not only that, but people will form an opinion about your website in 0.5 seconds.

To rise to the challenge, your website’s colors, shapes, photos, fonts, and layout should communicate trust, authority, and friendliness.

Your Website Should Be Mobile-First

The modern homeowner expects your website to function perfectly on a mobile device—57% of website visitors won’t recommend a business if their mobile website is sub-par.  Not only that, but Google also ranks mobile sites higher in search engine results.

Mobile-Friendly vs. Mobile-First

When we talk about mobile-friendly websites, we mean that a website looks and functions great on any mobile device, like a smartphone or a tablet. A mobile-friendly website should be sized and coded for easy interaction on a mobile device, meaning:

• It’s easy to read the text (no squinting)
• It’s easy to navigate (buttons and links are large enough to be tapped with a finger)
• It’s pleasing to look at (the user experience is enjoyable)

The difference between mobile-friendly and mobile-first is this: mobile-first websites are built to be consumed on a mobile device first, desktop second. You want your website to be mobile-first.

Your Website Should be Secure

Your website needs to be secure (HTTPS instead of HTTP). Website security is a hot topic right now, and as a result, 82% of people refuse to browse an unsecured website85% of consumers would abandon a purchase if the connection wasn’t secure.

You can protect yourself and instill confidence in your customers by ensuring your website secure.

Making your website secure also helps your SEO, since website security is a ranking factor. If your site isn’t secure, it could be getting outranked by competitor websites that have an SSL certificate.

2. Get Noticed By Search Engines

Twenty years ago, when people needed a remodeler, they’d turn to a print directory like the Yellow Pages or even the ads section of a home remodeling magazine. With the explosion of digital capabilities, that’s changed.

When the modern consumer needs remodeling services, they go online—frequently to a search engine. Each month, Google processes more than 800,000 searches for remodeling keywords, 53% of which happen from a mobile device.

Search engine optimization (or SEO for remodelers) is the process of tailoring your online presence so your website ranks higher in online search engines. SEO is so valuable because it puts your remodeling company in front of someone at the exact moment they need your services. That’s why leads from SEO have a 14.6% close rate, compared to leads from print ads that only have a 1.7% close rate.

From our experience, SEO is the most reliable and cost-effective remodeling marketing tactic. It’s not a DIY project; however—SEO is a lot like investing in the stock market. You pick stocks—your keywords—based on your needs and goals. Then, you wait for the returns, occasionally tweaking your strategy.

Another similarity between SEO and investing in the stock market is that unless you know exactly what you’re doing, you should leave it to the professionals.

Every single page on your website should be optimized for SEO because each page of content has an opportunity to rank. More content = higher chances of ranking.

Imagine your website is like a fishing boat, and each web page is like a baited fishing line. More lines in the water (pages on your website) equals more fish (visits, leads, and sales!)!

You can’t just write some jibberish and call it good, though—60% of consumers won’t purchase from a brand with poorly written content. Not only that, but compelling copy draws 7.8 times more site traffic and produces brand recall, which brings higher engagement rates.

While there are more than 200 factors that affect a page’s ranking in search results, the ones that matter the most are:

• Whether or not your website is secure (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
• Whether or not your website is mobile-friendly
• The presence and quality of your website’s title tags and meta descriptions
• How fast web pages load on your site
• Whether a web page has the correct schema markup (a type of website code)
• The quality of your web pages’ content
• The length of your web pages’ content (which is tied to quality)
• Presence of social signals that point back to your website
• Presence of quality backlinks that point back to your website
• Whether or not you have optimized images on your web pages

Using Local SEO

If you’re a local remodeler, local SEO will be your best friend. Local SEO is different than regular SEO because it’s aimed at getting your company to the top of search results for a specific service area. Local SEO is what we use to help improve your Google maps rankings in the local pack. The local pack is under the paid ads, and above the organic search results.

The information in the local pack is pulled from your Google My Business Account, which is why your GMB account needs to be claimed and optimized for local SEO.

To optimize your Google My Business page, follow these steps:

1. Choose the correct, most descriptive business categories on GMB.
2. Write a long (200–300 words), keyword-rich business description.
3. Include the correct NAP information (Name, Address, Phone number).
4. Add a link to your website
5. Connect your social media and online review profiles
6. Add photos. Lots and lots of photos.

Reviews are part of optimizing your local presence—88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, so having a negative reputation online may deter potential clients from contacting your company. Getting more Google reviews and reviews on other online business directories can help increase your exposure from SEO.

3. Build Out Your Online Content Portfolio

Traditional advertising and marketing campaigns don’t produce the results it once did. Today’s consumer carries around a library of information and example remodeling projects in their pocket. Most homeowners like to do their own research and have already collected photos of remodeling ideas and established their budget before they even call your company.  Connect with them using content marketing.

Content marketing for remodelers is one of the most valuable investments you can make—it generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less. Not only that, but 82% of customers also have a more positive opinion of a company after reading custom content, and 70% of customers feel closer to a company after reading or watching their content.

Because you’re in a highly visual industry with many nuances, there is no shortcut to successful content marketing. The better content you have, the higher you’ll rank, and the more leads you’ll get.

Types of Content Marketing

• Blogs – Unless they’ve gotten a remodel before, homeowners have a LOT of questions before they sign on the dotted line—so make sure you have a blog for each and every question they could have. If you need ideas, just head to Google and look for the “People Also Ask” and “Searches Related To” sections in the search results:

• Infographics – Everybody loves infographics because people prefer images to text. For easy ideas, take any of your blog posts and put them in infographic form!
• News articles – Homeowners looking into a remodel will be interested in current events and news that will affect their purchase process. Creating news articles around your company are one way to generate more interest in your company and amplify your authority.
• Social media updates – Much of the modern homeowner’s remodel planning process happens over social media—specifically Pinterest, Instagram, and Houzz. Be sure you’re sharing projects, tips, and updates regularly, and putting a budget behind those posts to amplify reach.
• Videos – Americans now watch up to six hours of digital videos per day. Get in on the action by shooting video testimonials, home walk-throughs, time-lapses of projects, how-to videos, trend alerts, and tips.
• FAQs – Most homeowners have more questions than they know what to do with at the beginning of a project. Make it simple by creating an FAQ page with all your frequently asked questions.
• Email newsletters – Stay in touch with current and former clients by sending out regular email newsletters.
• Ebooks – Ebooks are a great way to show off your authority and your creativity. Great ebooks for remodelers include color guides, countertop guides, money-saving tips, and more.
• And more

Take Advantage of Video Marketing

U.S. Internet users now spend up to 6 hours per day with digital video. YouTube is also the second-largest search engine, and 86% of viewers say they regularly turn to YouTube to learn something new.

One minute of video is worth about 1.8 million words, so it’s no wonder the best remodeling companies are taking advantage of video marketing. Your industry is perfect for video marketing, and about 97% of marketers say video has helped increase user understanding of their service, and 76% say it helped them increase sales.

To get started, we recommend starting with these videos:

• Competitor differentiators – What makes your contractors stand out from your competitors?
• Guarantees – Strong guarantees can help turn a viewer into a customer. This can be as small as a guarantee that you will make sure the customer is happy with their project.
• Testimonials – In the past two years on YouTube, videos with “review” in the title had more than 50,000 years’ worth of watch time on mobile devices alone. Share your best testimonials to convince customers that you’re the company for them.
• Remodeling company history – Personalize your brand and create authenticity by letting prospects in on the history behind your remodeling company.
• Video guides – Videos can make a dream remodel come to life, so help homeowners visualize their dream home with 360-degree walk-throughs and videos of past projects.
• How-to videos – Recent research from Google revealed how-to videos earn the most attention of any content category on YouTube. Create how-to videos on cleaning a new marble countertop or tips to organize a small kitchen

Be Active on Social Media

Historically, a big part of the architect or designer’s role was to mock up potential layouts, introduce material options, and essentially provide prospects with a virtual picture of what their project could look like. Today, that phase happens before they even visit your website.  Your consumer is more educated than before, and you need to provide enough visual inspiration for a client to make basic design decisions before even visiting your site effectively. Social media is the perfect place to do that. We recommend you have a presence on the following platforms:

• Facebook – Facebook is the Grand Central Station of social media and where most Americans go to socialize online. Having a Facebook page matters to your overall SEO, so this is one platform you don’t want to skip.
• Houzz – Houzz is a great way for remodeling companies to connect with customers who are looking for home improvement ideas.
• Twitter – Twitter is the RSS feed of the online community. Post photos, videos, and interactive content for the highest engagement.
• YouTube – YouTube is the second largest search engine and has a larger adult audience than any cable network. Posting before and after walk-through videos, how-to videos, and customer testimonials can help with lead generation.
• LinkedIn – LinkedIn is perfect for remodeling companies targeting commercial or B2B clients.
• Pinterest  – If you’re a remodeler, Pinterest is one platform you can’t ignore. Modern homeowners plan their remodels from start to finish with help and ideas from this social platform. Nudge them toward using your company by providing them with images of their dream remodel.
• Instagram – 72% of Instagram users have purchased a product from an account they found on the platform. Instagram is your ideal place to share your creativity and amazing design work, so don’t miss out!

Increase Remodeling Leads with Email Marketing

When done right, email marketing campaigns are efficient, cost-effective, and are read by relevant eyes—making it an easy way for your remodeling company to generate additional qualified leads each month from homeowners who have already shown interest in your remodeling services.

Content to Use in Your Email Marketing

• Videos and recent guides you’ve created
• Blog highlights with links to your posts
• Recent project photos
• Before/after photos and videos
• Photos of your company’s community involvement
• Highlights of large projects you completed
• Infographics
• Testimonials from former clients
• Upcoming webinars and events

4. Get More Leads with Pay Per Click Advertising for Remodelers

We already covered that 97% of consumers go online to find local products and services. What you may not know is that 63% of online searchers say they click on paid ads, and 75% of people say paid ads make it easier to find the online information they’re looking for.

If you want to extend your brand and bolster your SEO efforts, we recommend adding in PPC for remodelers.

Types of Paid Online Advertising for Remodeling Contractors

1. Display ad campaigns – Display ads show your ads to consumers while they’re browsing other relevant websites. You’ve likely seen display advertisements on popular news sites, weather sites, and even on smaller blogs you follow.
2. Search ad campaigns – Paid search ads appear above the organic search results when people look for products and services you offer. You only pay when people click to your website or call your remodeling company. These are some of the most valuable ads you can use, and we highly recommend starting a paid search campaign.
3. Remarketing campaigns – Remarketing (often called retargeting on social media advertising sites) is a feature that lets you show ads to people who have previously visited your website. You can tailor your bids and ads to these visitors when they’re searching on Google and search partner sites.
4. Social media campaigns – The average social media user spends two hours on social media sites each day. However, thanks to most social media platforms’ algorithms, it’s nearly impossible for businesses to be noticed—unless you put money behind it. Choose campaigns for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Nextdoor.
5. Video campaigns – Consumers are 27 times more likely to click through online video ads than standard banners, and companies that use video ads in their marketing grow revenue 49% faster year-over-year than those which don’t.

5. Every Marketing Plan for Remodelers Should Include Authority-Building

Nobody wants an incompetent remodeler, so your perceived authority matters. This extends not only to your reviews and testimonials but also having authority-builders on your website and on other relevant websites.

Generating Online Reviews

Referrals and recommendations have always been and will continue to be the best source of qualified remodeling leads. However, while recommendations and referrals used to happen face-to-face, they’