In Part 1 of this post, I told you about one of the unwittingly smart things that we did as a new home improvement lead generation company. We chose to provide branded, exclusive leads to our home improvement clients.
The 2nd unwittingly smart thing was did was to totally and completely ignore our competitors. What? Ignore your competitors? Isn’t that the dumbest thing to do when you’re starting a new business?
Blind, Non-Exclusive Leads
Maybe. But it wasn’t in our case. Why? Because as it turned out, most of our competitors didn’t sell branded leads, or exclusive leads. They sold what I call “blind, non-exclusive leads”
For home improvement dealers, a blind, non-exclusive lead is essentially a lead that comes in through a generic web site, where a consumer indicates that they are interested in a specific product or service, say bathroom remodeling.
The lead provider then distributes that lead to whichever home improvement dealers requested bathroom remodeling leads in that area. The lead could go to one home improvement dealer. Or it could go to twelve.
Remember, we were beginning with the end in mind. Our goal was to maintain 60%-80% appointment rates and comparable closing rates to our dealers’ other media channels. Unfortunately, blind/non-exclusive leads almost never hit those numbers.
Blind Leads
Why? Because with blind leads, the consumer doesn’t know the home improvement dealers or contractors that will be calling them. Nor do they know anything about your services, your reputation or your product offerings. As a home improvement dealer, it’s up to you to contact the consumer, qualify the consumer’s need, hope their needs match your services, then sell that consumer on an in home appointment.
That’s a heavy load for any home improvement company.
Non-Exclusive Leads
The second reason that blind, non-exclusive leads wouldn’t hit our numbers is the “non-exclusive” factor. As a home improvement dealer, you’re up to your eyeballs in competitors. You don’t need anymore! Despite that, many online home improvement lead providers can sell their leads up to twelve times! If you’re the only one to get the lead, you’re going to do well. But if you have to instantly compete with three more competitors just for an appointment, your odds of an eventual sale drop through the floor.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
The numbers just didn’t work. So when one of our early clients called to tell us that a competitor was charging half as much for home improvement leads as we were, we quickly found that if you followed the numbers through to the appointment rate and closing ratio, our branded exclusive leads still performed better than the blind non-exclusive leads.
In this case, ignoring the competition worked, and we still live by the branded, exclusive mantra.
Homeowner Connections Through Performance Online Advertising
