Local Lead Gen With Facebook (6)
Hey guys,
I'm doing some local lead gen for a client of mine who runs a roofing and renovations business. I'm trying to get him as many leads as possible, he has about a 5-10k advertising budget per month.
I want to mainly focus on roofing, kitchen / bathroom renovations and basement finishing since that's what most Canadian homeowners seem to be in need of (see below).
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Top planned renovations (among Canadian homeowners planning renovations):
Basic home maintenance (including painting, flooring,
general repairs and replacing appliances) 57%
Bathroom renovations 33%
Kitchen renovations 32%
Replacing windows or doors 29%
Landscaping (including outdoor deck) 27%
Basement 23%
source: http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/1329...-renos-in-2014
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At the moment I've been doing SEO which is getting him some leads but I want to really start hammering the paid traffic. If over 50% of homeowners are in need of bathroom and kitchen renovations I should be able to pull a massive number of leads through FB right?
Any tips or advice when it comes to local lead gen and Facebook?
I've done a ton of lead gen and am constantly looking for new ways as well, so I'll offer my humble opinion on your question from a customer perspective:
What makes you think you can do lead gen for renovations on Facebook? In your case, the thing you're looking for mostly is intent. You don't just wanna reach homeowners, you wanna reach homeowners who are looking for a contractor at that moment. So I would ask myself, what does a Canadian do when they need such services?
I imagine it must be similar to what people do in the US:
- I google what I'm looking for (so think Adwords and pay per call ads)
- I check sites like angieslist (Put reviews about your friend's business and maybe sponsored listings)
- I call Lowe's or Home Depot (Get listed with them as a contractor and they send you referrals)
- Run ads on Bing (a lot of old people use Bing)
- Think outside the box and check out sites like houzz.com, it's become one of the biggest sites about renovations, 20M users per month, I'd def run ads there
Most of the time, I just call Home Depot. They have a service where they can connect you with contractors for whatever work you need. I do this for peace of mind. They've already vetted the contractors, so I know I'm getting quality work, and I don't mind paying a little extra for it.
So based on my experience, I'd check out those sources above. Maybe you can make Facebook work as well, give it a try and see.
One last piece of advice I try to give this to everyone I talk to, set up tracking! For every customer your friend interacts with, slip in this question, casually, "Hey, so how did you hear about us?" Offline tracking is still tracking, and will tell them where to invest their advertising dollars.
I agree with mcr, this is a highly intent-related product and search is the best place for that, as well as sites that such users would likely browse to find solutions to their problems.
You could get an agency account and use whitelisted partner categories on FB related to homeowners but the data applicable to Canada may be quite limited vs the US.
Firstly thanks guys for the helpful responses!
I agree 100%, most people will use those options to find a contractor and lots of people will ask friends if they have a recommendation. But there's a high percentage of people who are lazy and let overdue renovations drag on forever, I think those would be best to try and target. How many people do you know who always complain how crappy their kitchen looks or who have had an unfinished basement for years even though they have money to fix it. I figure if I could think of the right targeting and angle to create a sense of urgency I could get them as a lead. From there they would get an email series and the phone sales team would follow up with them.
For the first test I was planning on trying to lure people in with a before and after renovations landing page "Most Stunning Ontario Kitchen Renovations of 2014" which is actually just a promotion for the company. I can use stock photos of the nicest kitchens on earth, how could they resist 
I'm kind of stumped on Facebooks targeting though. I'm not sure how I would go about targeting homeowners. Also there's no way I can really know if they need renovations besides through interests but that cuts down reach significantly.
With Google Ad Network I think I can display banners based on keywords? That would be much more targeted maybe I should try that since we already have an adwords campaign going.
So many possibilities around this. I just thought of another one. I know a roofing contractor who drives around personally and looks at people's roofs and stops by those houses that have old roofs, tells them he had a job nearby and happened to be passing by their house and saw their roof is 20+ years old, asks if they're having problems or are thinking about repairs, offers them a discount on the spot, shows them samples of shingles etc, and seals the deal on the spot. If he can't, he gives them a flyer/coupon and they call him back.
How is that for lead gen!
Another thing you can do: Here in the US you can look at public listings of all renovations because they have to get a permit to renovate, so you can see which houses renovated what, when, and for how much. Find a way to scrape that data, filter by houses that spend a lot of money, find out which areas they haven't renovated, and direct-mail them about it. Filter by houses that don't renovate often, call them about those areas they haven't done.
So many juicy possibilities!
^^ awesome tips!
I especially like the second one. I'm going to see if we have those kinds of public records in Canada.. that's such a bad ass idea!
I tried to get the client to implement "the referral wave system". It's a way to get a nonstop funnel of referrals but he decided to modify it in a way that makes it much less effective. How it's supposed to work is when you first meet the client you let them know that you will require 3 referrals from them upon completion of the work (as well as payment of course). In the book it gives you very effective scripts to use to explain why giving referrals will benefit the client. The entire system seems really well done but he decided to offer gift cards for referrals instead mainly because he didn't want to re-train his sales team. IMO if you're doing top quality work clients should be happy to give you referrals for free. A couple weeks later once they've forgotten about you can write them a personal thank you note and attach a gift card so they can go out for a free dinner at a nice restaurant. Since they weren't expecting it really leaves a solid impression and they will probably never forget you after that.
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