Custom Home Builder’s Revenue from 1st Two Weeks of 2019 Exceeds All of 2018: Here is How We Helped

It is every companies’ goal to exceed the revenue that they generated in the previous year.

One of our clients, a custom home builder, did this in 2019.  The amazing thing is that they did this by January 15, 2019.

In the first two weeks of 2019 they surpassed their revenue from the entire previous year!

So how did they do this?  You probably want to know.

We will outline the strategy that we helped them implement that helped them achieve this amazing task.

Disclaimer: we do not take complete credit for the results but we do know that how we helped them did have a huge impact and is partially responsible for such tremendous growth.

Strategy Overview

The strategy that we developed for this contractor is based on Growth Hacking.  Having helped contractors for years we have run numerous marketing experiments and used the data and results from previous experiments to give this contractor a jump start.

The other facet to their strategy is that it is based on Organic exposure as opposed to paid advertising.  We have seen that the quality of the leads generated from organic exposure are much higher than the quality of leads generated from paid ads.

Using Data to Measure Results & Actionable Data

Key to the success that we were able to help this contractor achieve is our use of data.

In order to help our clients get the most out of their marketing each and every one of our clients receives a custom built marketing dashboard that they can access 24/7/365.  The dashboard includes data from Google Analytics, Google Search Console, as well as data related to their Houzz profile.  We also include data related to their lead and sales tracking.

You have to take advantage of data and we did just that in a couple of ways.

1. Measuring success – in their dashboard we can see how their various marketing channels are performing and make adjustments to their marketing so that we maximize the returns from the channels and tactics that generate positive results.  Ultimately, this means analyzing their leads and sales from various sources.
2. Creating actionable data – since we can analyze different marketing channels we can take actions that allow them to not only maximize their returns but it also allows us to help them reduce costs associated with channels or tactics that do not yield successful results.  This means that they can save time, reduce costs for labor, and even reduce advertising expenses.  We also create actionable data specific to certain marketing channels, which we can use to increase their organic exposure and ultimately increase their high-quality leads and sales.

Paid Ads

In this case ALL paid ads were eliminated.  These were predominately Google ads.

We were only able to do this because we were going to be optimizing their website for organic search.

Website Optimization

There are basically three different ways that we optimized their website:

1. Search Engines
2. User Experience
3. Data Management & Measurement

Search Engines

We performed research and then performed a complete optimization of their website.  This was done so that we could increase their organic rankings with the search engines for their most valuable searches.  Doing so increased the number of impressions that they receive with the search engines.

You can see from this screenshot from our dashboard that since we have been working with this client that we almost tripled the number of impressions that they receive each month.  In August they had 8,878 impressions in Google and in December the number of impressions had risen to 22,050.  Their Google impressions increased 2.48 X.

User Experience Optimization

This is a very important aspect to getting the most out of your website.  You have to make sure that it is easy for potential clients to navigate your site and especially important is to make it so that it is easy for people to “Request a Quote”.  We used various calls-to-action placed strategically throughout their site.  Especially important for contractors is to make sure that your galleries are optimized for users (and search engines!) with various calls-to-action.

You can no longer rely on people to find your contact page.  You have to make it easy for them.

Data Management & Measurement

In this case, with this contractor, we wanted to be able to include in their dashboard the number of submittals that they received from various sources.  This meant creating different “Request a Quote” pages so we could track how many quote requests that they receive from various marketing channels.  By doing so we can make adjustments to those marketing channels to improve results.

Social Media (Marketing Channels)

It is important to analyze your various marketing channels so you can improve results.  This is true for Social Media especially.  With the help of our dashboard and lead / sales tracking system we can do just that.  You need answers..

How many leads do you generate from specific social media?

How many sales do you generate from specific social media?

Are you wasting time on specific social media and not generating results?

Our dashboard allowed us to determine the best marketing channels (social media) for this contractor.

Houzz

Our analysis of the data in this client’s dashboard and data from other clients allowed us to show this client that Houzz was the best marketing channel (other than Google organic results).  The quality of the referral traffic to their website from Houzz was the best!  The problem that many companies have with Houzz is that they do not understand how it works, especially organic vs. paid.  With Houzz, paying for exposure does not, in my opinion and based on working with many clients, provide enough exposure for your company.  The only way to generate the maximum amount of exposure on Houzz is by dominating Houzz.

The Houzz section of our dashboard allows us to generate actionable data which we can use to help our clients dominate.

Here is another screenshot of how we are helping this client improve their organic exposure on Houzz.  Since they have been our client we helped them massively improve the position of their profile when someone searches their category.

In fact, for the 24 cities that we are tracking for them:

• They improved a total of 4,934 positions cumulatively.
• They went from having an average organic rank of 210.11 to 6.22
• They went from not having any Top 10 rankings to having 22 Top 10 rankings (out of 24)
• They went from having 0 #1 rankings to have 7 #1 rankings

All of these improvements have generated more traffic to their website from Houzz.  Remember, traffic from Houzz is the BEST traffic for contractors!  Now they are generating more high-quality leads and sales from Houzz.  Guess what though.  Their leads are actually being generated on their website and most not directly on Houzz.

This means that you need to get more people from Houzz to go to your website.  We even have ways to improve these numbers.

Conclusion

As a contractor your business success depends on referrals.  These certainly include referrals from past clients and business partners but that should not be the extent of your referrals.

Your online marketing, especially Google and Houzz, should be the biggest source of high-quality referrals.

The example of this particular custom home builder is not unique for us and our clients.  We help numerous construction-related businesses benefit from receiving more organic exposure online.  The foundation of all of our clients’ successes from marketing is data and the intelligent use of data.  That is why we have devoted time to developing our client dashboards and the tools to manage the data needed for us and our clients in order to be successful.

There are things that you can do to improve your organic exposure.  Having a strategy and the tools in place to optimize is essential.  Relying on paid exposure is not a good approach.

If you are a contractor and want to learn more just let me know.  Contact us here.