As we are transitioning into a New Year and a new presidency, I thought it was time to reflect on the impact that the election has had on home improvement leads. During the election, angst and anxiety were at the highest-level I could ever remember. Did those feelings affect homeowners’ willingness to become leads for home improvement companies?
To find out, Keyword Connects did an analysis of leads among our hundreds of clients over the last four years, so that we could compare non-election years with this year. The results showed real differentiation between 2016 and the three previous years.
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Let me set up the analysis. We did a week-by-week graph of total lead flow that we generated online, across all of our clients over the course of 9 weeks. We started with the first week of October and ended during the first few days of December. This way, we were able to see the four weeks before the election, election week, and the four weeks after the election.
Then, we did the same analysis for the three previous years. Here is what the graph looked like:
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A couple of notes on this graph:
There is a small and gradual seasonal drop that every home improvement company sees from the peaks of early October to the end of October…before you see a rise in lead flow towards the end of October and into early November.
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However, in 2016, the yellow line does not make a recovery in the last week of October and election week in the first week of November. In fact, it dips significantly lower than in previous years.
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In fact, the lowest relative point on the graph occurs – you guessed it – right on election week, which was November 8.
I am no statistical expert, but I can’t see any other reason for the drop in lead flow across our hundreds of clients, except for the election. Expensive offline media, general angst, lack of focus and attention, fear and loathing of one or both of the presidential candidates…they likely all combined for a 10-15% drop in lead volume in the week before, week of and week after the election.
Luckily, we have seen strong bounce back after Thanksgiving, and a strong December, as the holiday months go. From my view, whatever reluctance there was to pursue a home improvement project during the lead-up and aftermath of the election has disappeared.
Where do we go from here? Who knows. But if you’re wondering why leads were a little light in late October and early November, I think you have your answer.
