I recently returned from my annual trip to LeadsCon in Las Vegas. LeadsCon is the preeminent conference for companies generating online leads across a variety of industries.
While I focus this blog on topics of online marketing and lead generation for home improvement companies, I gleaned a number of points from LeadsCon that are relevant for you.
Compared to other industries, the extent of online lead generation in home improvement is way behind the pack. By contrast, the industries that have most embraced online lead generation are:
– Online education (e.g. Universities of Phoenix, Devry & Capella)
– Mortgage & Finance (e.g. Lending Tree, Quicken Loan & LowerMyBills)
– Insurance (e.g. Progressive & GEICO)
As a testament to that, of the 3,500 conference attendees, perhaps 50 were involved in generating home improvement leads.
Thomas Evans, the CEO of Bankrate.com, commented on this during his session at the conference. When asked what the next hot markets for online lead generation are, Mr. Evans said (and I’m paraphrasing) “no one has been able to crack the code or build a sizable business in the home improvement space.” While this is a dagger to my heart—and the folks at ServiceMagic might disagree—his comment was interesting because it neatly captures a conundrum in the home improvement industry.
Why is home improvement behind? Two reasons, in my view. The first is that there are only a couple of national companies that leads can be sold to. Two examples are Home Depot and Sears—and that’s only if they feel like buying. There are many fewer national home improvement players willing to buy leads than in other industries. Hence, there are fewer lead generators available to serve them.
There are of course networks of dealers selling national brands. But selling and supporting countless local dealers is a major undertaking, one that most online marketing companies don’t have the personnel—or patience—for.
The second reason that home improvement lags other industries in online lead gen is that home improvement leads must represent actual homeowners who really want to speak with a dealer or remodeler about their project. I know that sounds rather obvious, but this is actually a scary prospect for many online lead generators focused on other markets.
That’s because the thirst for leads in those markets is so intense that lead buyers will tolerate an enormous level of fraud from their lead sellers. Buyers typically don’t challenge sellers when sellers use shady methods to generate long lists of names (i.e. “leads”) that may or may not refer to actual human beings interested in the buyer’s product.
In short, to meet their volume needs, clients in those other industries tolerate a significantly lower bar on lead quality. But that simply doesn’t fly with most home improvement companies, the most successful of which know their numbers and make decisions accordingly.
The online world just doesn’t understand the world that home improvement companies live in. When you ask insurance lead generators what the phone contact rates are on their leads, you get a blank stare.
When you ask about the rate at which insurance agents receiving their leads can actually set in-home sales appointments, they start to slowly back away.
And when you ask what the close ratio is on sales appointments set from their leads, they turn and run away.
When it comes to leads, home improvement companies focus, in my view, on quality over quantity. Quality that’s measurable in terms of demos and sales.
If I learned nothing else at LeadsCon, that’s indeed a high bar. And rightfully so.
Homeowner Connections Through Performance Online Advertising
