Home Improvement Marketing 101

If you’re in the home improvement business, you know how challenging it is to build a customer base. 

You have to maintain a solid presence in the world with too many marketing options, and if that wasn't enough, this industry is quite diverse so each business has its niche they have to target.

The problems are plenty. 

That doesn’t mean you should abandon home improvement marketing altogether, though - just that you have to shake up your approach.

Before showing you how, let’s first explore what you can achieve through marketing and how to start.

How important is home improvement marketing?

There is an established roadmap that many home improvement businesses are pursuing - relying on referrals and word of mouth to drive sales. It’s still a viable way to find new customers who’ve probably already seen the results of your work in the homes of their friends or acquaintances. 

The problem with this approach is that it’s limited in its reach and can’t generate enough leads to grow your business. 

Digital marketing is a good remedy. However, a lot of business owners are usually overwhelmed by the information out there as marketing isn’t easy for newbie marketers either. 

Most businesses also avoid marketing because they think they don’t have time. While that might be true, we believe you can at least try incorporating some of the techniques we present once a week. You can then build on them gradually until you’ve got a comprehensive program.

See how your efforts are performing, and if it all fails, you might need to invest more time or hire an agency that knows a thing or two about home marketing.

Where do you start?

Every effective marketing strategy starts with knowing who your target audience is. 

You can define your target market by first starting with location. Depending on your main area of expertise, you’ll have better success in certain areas. For instance, if you’re specialized in roofing, it would be better to target suburban areas instead of wasting time on apartment dwellers. 

It’s also helpful to know the age range of your target audience, as well as their gender. 

Those are the basics. Once you have a general idea of your target demographic, you need to identify their habits. 

For example, you might want to attract first-time homeowners, maybe even people with vacation homes. Or maybe, your perfect audience includes people who are buying fixer-uppers in order to flip them later. 

The same goes for their financial habits. Do you want to work with budget-conscious people or people who are more frivolous?

All this helps figure out what your perfect audience might be searching for online. 

Lastly, you need to find the best time to promote your business, depending on your area of expertise.

Since most home improvement projects are seasonal, you should keep that in mind when creating content. For instance, if you’re doing insulation projects, most of these happen in the fall as people prepare for winter. 

This means it would be better to double down on your marketing when people are actually looking for services you’re offering.

Now that you’re aware of your perfect audience, we can officially start with the home improvement marketing strategies necessary for the growth of your business.

Best online marketing strategies

All of the following strategies are aimed at making your business a part of your customers’ research process. Your main goal here is making your business visible to your audience when they’re learning about home improvement-related topics.

The integral home improvement marketing strategies are:

1. Improving your website

A website can have a huge impact on your customers’ first impression. If it’s well designed, professional, intuitive, and runs properly, it has the potential to convert visitors into customers. 

Your piece of online real estate has to provide all information necessary for an informed purchasing decision in an organized manner. In other words, your visitors shouldn’t have any trouble finding pages that are relevant to their needs.

The same goes for your contact information. You have to make it easy for customers to reach you if they choose to work with your business.

2. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Having the best website won’t help you attract customers if no one can find it. This is why SEO should be at the top of your priority list when doing home improvement marketing. 

Anything beyond the top 5 results on the first page can be considered internet invisibility. Why? Because most people, when looking for a service or answers to their questions will visit only the first few sites that pop up in the results.

SEO involves using keywords that people are searching for in your content to improve your rankings for those keywords.

However, it's not just about repeating a bunch of keywords. SEO is also about acquiring links to your websites on third-party sites to increase your ranking and technical SEO, which is a topic on its own.

Depending on the level of competition in your area, SEO could be easy or hard. Read this article to learn if you should hire an agency or if it is possible to do SEO solo. 

3. Publishing engaging content

You could post fun DIY tutorials, answer common questions about your area of expertise, and share ideas for exciting new home improvement projects.

With content marketing, you can organically attract new visitors to your site while they’re looking for answers to their questions. 

This not only improves SEO but also strengthens your brand. If your target audience keeps running into your site when browsing anything related to home improvement, you will seem like a leader in your industry.

Even if they’re not ready to start a new project, they’ll most likely remember your brand and choose you when they’re ready.

4. Pay-per-click ads

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a home improvement marketing tool to get quick results and drive traffic to your website. While it’s not a replacement for a good SEO or content marketing strategy, it can work well to supplant them.

With PPC, you can run ads in search engine results for keywords that link to a page on your website. 

What’s even better is you won’t bust the bank running these as you’ll pay only for ads that get clicks. Hence the name.

5. Email marketing

Even if a potential customer is hyped about working with you, they might want to continue their research before they’re ready to proceed. This is where a home improvement marketing strategy such as email marketing can help. 

You can start by adding a signup form to your website and encourage visitors to sign up for a free newsletter. You can then use this as an opportunity to engage with them while they’re still weighing their options. 

Through the newsletter, you can send them tips, news, and general information about home improvement to make sure you stay top of mind.

Home improvement marketing made easy

We believe anyone can be good at home improvement marketing if they dedicate enough time to learning the proper practices. While you might get discouraged in the beginning when the results aren’t tangible, your efforts will translate into more projects if you remain at it.

The key here is consistency, which might not be possible depending on your workload. You can hire a staff member, but the effort needed to do a proper SEO strategy alone will take a lot of manpower and hours.

If that’s the case and the competitors in your area keep outranking you, contact Oamii. 

We can provide you with the best home improvement marketing service money can buy and help you beat the competition to grow your business. Call 561-228-4111 or fill out our online contact form and we’ll be ready to discuss the needs of your business ASAP.