No matter what stage you’re in during your journey with your garage door company, leads are a must. Buying leads can seem difficult to accept, especially because of the industry vendors who generate the leads. They’ve made it difficult and very expensive. In this article, we’re going to break down strategies for companies of all sizes. I’m going to tell you why buying leads is important to your business.
Leads for startup garage door companies:
As a startup, time is your friend and spending money is your enemy. That will flip when you become more established. At this stage, you don’t need to focus on branding as much as staying busy. Every minute you’re not driving revenue, you’re wasting time. In fact, only 56 percent of startups make it to the fifth year (Mansfield 2019), which means the odds are against you. I say this because you need to know the severity of the situation. You’re at a massive disadvantage over established businesses for multiple reasons, but let’s address buying garage door leads.
Your marketing strategy will change as you grow but starting out you need opportunities that give you the best possible chance to succeed. Google Adwords (Google’s online marketing platform) is what most people rely on, but that can be a mistake unless you know what you’re doing. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) can take some time to get ranked for the keywords you’re going after, but you need more rapid satisfaction in order to spread the word of your business.
Ideas
This rapid success can be generated by buying leads from companies like HomeAdvisor and Google Home Services/Google Guaranteed on a per-lead basis. Buying leads is the absolute best way to generate business for your garage door startup. It’s the perfect relationship for you at this stage. You pay them $20 – $40, and you get a lead for a homeowner looking for garage door install/repairs. You get the information of an already-interested potential customer and it didn’t cost you a fortune. All you have to do is call and take the time to pitch a great presentation to win the job. These are called pay-per-lead or transactional leads; they are a great opportunity if you have any sales and/or presentation skills. Take these steps to build confidence with customers over the phone and fight for an opportunity to get in the garage. You won’t win them all, but you have to do your best to win most of them.
Leads for established garage door companies:
Years pass, you’ve established a local brand in your market. Do you still need garage door leads? I believe you do. If managed right, you should see a return, but now your processes have to be on-point. This means you’re most likely delegating the leads to your team, but perhaps they aren’t able to sell the appointment as well as you did or they may not be calling as quickly. Given this, you’ll probably want to pull back and only buy leads for smaller areas or more specific to services you don’t rank as well in SEO to supplement.
For example, if you rank really well for repairs but not for new doors, I suggest buying leads for new doors until you can get your SEO on-point. At this stage in your business, I’m sure you’re also dabbling in Ads on platforms like Google, Bing, etc. Buying ads can be really difficult because your creative content has to be on-point or you will not get the results you’re seeking. Many marketing companies I see do Adwords in a lazy way because they aren’t willing to pay to have it done right. Now that you’re established, you have to be willing to put money into advertising in order to make resources like Google Adwords work for you.
My Strategies
However, I’m not exclusively promoting HomeAdvisor or Google Home Services/Google Guaranteed. I have a love-hate relationship with them with my own garage door company, but the leads have been great for me. I’m in an extremely competitive garage door market, going up against 3 or 4 companies all the time. My strategy with HomeAdvisor & Google Home Services is different than if they come through Google Search. This said, I have to constantly change my campaign and try new things in order to stay relevant in the shifting market. Perhaps buying garage door leads is more difficult in different markets; however, I’ve tested this in California and Georgia and buying leads has served me well. Additionally, it’s very easy to track your performance. For example, my company has a positive ROI (Return on Investment) 12 out of 12 months from HomeAdvisor & Google Home Services.
What you need to know about buying leads from HomeAdvisor or others like them:
- You’ll pay for bad leads and when you request a refund, you’ll rarely be granted one by HomeAdvisor
- You’ll pay a lot per lead, but I think it’s better than paying a lot per click
- You need to respond quickly
- The presentation has to be top-notch
- Modify your strategy to the specific customer because they will be talking to other companies
- Measure your ROI
- Only use the services you need or that you generate the best net profit for you
- Evaluate your account and settings quarterly
I hope this article helps you understand how buying garage door leads can help your business. I plan to write another blog giving insight on how you can generate more garage door leads for your business by using different marketing strategies.
Source
Mansfield, M. (2019, March 28). Start-Up Statistics–The Numbers You Need To Know. Retrieved from https://smallbiztrends.com/2019/03/startup-statistics-small-business.html.
