We are going to talk about which is better for your remodeling business, referrals or generating leads. That’s going to be the whole topic of this.
We’re going to talk about both. We’re going to talk about how to maximize both, and we’re going to have an honest discussion about referrals versus leads. Okay. So a little bit about me. I’m the owner of a digital marketing agency for home remodelers called Remodel Reach Marketing, and we focus on just home remodeling contractors. That’s what we do. That’s what our plan.
Our marketing plan is centered around, we have a published book you can see right behind me called The Most Known Remodeler. And so one question that we have and one thing that I see consistently in speaking with remodelers and learning about their business and talking to our clients about what they did before they joined on with us is this conversation of which is better.
referrals or lead generation? So we’ll just say unique leads. We’re going to define both, but we’ll say unique leads versus referrals. Which one is better? Which one should you focus on? And so let’s go ahead and just dive right in here. And so quick table of contents here. We’re going to first take an honest look at which one…
we should prioritize. Okay. Have an honest discussion about referrals versus lead gen. Then we’re going to talk about how to maximize both, how to get started with lead generation and which you should focus on. Okay. Kind of going by, you know, each business is different. Each business has their own, you know, people, their own style, you know, their own message that they’re trying to bring forth. And so that is really what we are
Brooks Burnette (02:38.638)
going to talk about here today. So let’s dive in here, but before we do dive in, I want to talk about a very quick disclaimer here. So, you know, I don’t want you to come away from this as saying I am against referrals in any way. That is not the case. That is not the case at all. I support businesses of all industries.
using referrals. Referrals are unbelievably important, especially to remodeling contractors. But there, as we’re going to see and as we’re going to talk about, there is a limit to the referrals. Okay. There is a limit to them. And so when it comes to referrals versus leads, we’re going to talk about which one is better, which one, but…
I’m not saying you should not get referrals or I’m not saying you should not do lead gen. Okay? So if you are happy with where you are in your business and you just focus on referrals, then great. Then great. That’s what you should keep doing. But if you want to grow, if you are interested in asking yourself, how can we get more leads? How can I get more business?
Focusing on referrals is not going to be the way. Okay? Now again My point is that you should maximize both Okay, that is my point. I’m just gonna come out and say it you should maximize both All right, the businesses that we work with that we see grow to an exponential height to an exponential level
are the businesses or the contractors that are maximizing both. I speak to all the time, I speak to contractors that just focus on referrals and they’re hesitant about about we gen. But at the same time, they’re stuck and they tell me they’ve been stuck for years in the same spot. But when I ask them what kind of marketing are they doing? Well, we don’t really do anything or I post occasionally on my social media, you know, I
Brooks Burnette (04:56.111)
I had someone post on my social media or something like that. So they’re not taking that initiative to learn how to generate more leads. They’re just focusing on the referrals that they’re getting. Okay. And so they’ve hit a wall. They’ve hit a wall in their growth and in their business. And so what is it going to take to push them over the edge, to push them into the new …
into that growth zone or whatever you want to call it, that area where they can start to grow, generating leads. So we’re going to be talking about maximizing both. So let’s have, we kind of already started that here, but let’s talk about, let’s just have an honest discussion here. So referrals, everyone knows what referrals are, but in case you don’t know, this is just a dictionary definition here.
It’s the act of referring or the state of being referred. So you are being referred from a previous client to a new prospect, to a new prospective client. Okay, so someone is telling you, hey, they did my kitchen, they did my bathroom, and they did a great job. All right? So a person recommended to someone for something. Okay, so they’re recommending you, hey, you want a new basement?
I recommend this guy because he did hours and he did a great job. So that’s a referral, right? Now the other side, these are unique leads. So these are people who come to your business that have never heard of you before.
but they are interested in your services. Okay, so if you are in a certain city in your city and you have someone who is looking for a, you know, a home addition, they come to you because they found you on Facebook, they found you on Google, they saw your advertisement, and so they’re interested in your services, but they’ve never heard of you before. Okay, and so…
Brooks Burnette (07:04.526)
We’re talking, these are really the two camps that people fall under. They’re a referral or they’re a unique lead. Now, the leads, the type of leads can vary, you know, cold leads and warm leads, you know, if they’ve seen your stuff before. You could argue that referrals are very warm leads, but we’re focusing on unique leads. People who have never heard of you before, but they’re looking for the service that you offer.
Okay, they’re looking for a new bathroom. They’re looking for a new kitchen, whatever it may be. Okay. So these are really the two camps that we’re looking at here. And so referrals are great. Leads are great. They’re both great, but they also both have limits. Okay. And so, you know, one person that focuses on just referrals or they focus on just lead generation, they’re going to be missing.
a crucial component. Again, it’s really the businesses that do both that we see have that tremendous growth. Let’s talk about this. Referrals are great. They’re high converting mostly. They have an unbelievably high conversion rate. If someone’s friend refers you to them,
then the likelihood that they’re going to become a client is very high. They are more likely to respond to your calls. They’re just more active. They’re more likely to convert. And they come to you without you really having to do anything. Without you really having to do anything that reaches out to them or takes a lot of time. They just come to you. They just call you.
So, but they are, there are limits, okay? They are limited. So how so? Well, they’re hard to track. You never really know unless you have a good system of asking people for referrals, like through email or something. They’re very hard to track, okay? You know, you can say, you can say, well, who referred you to us? But I’m not talking about in terms of, you know, it’s hard to find out where they came from. I’m saying they’re hard to track as in,
Brooks Burnette (09:32.686)
It’s hard to get on a consistent flow of referrals to your business. Okay? And so they’re hard to track as in, it’s hard to say, all right, this month we got 10 referrals, then the next month we got eight referrals, the next month we got six referrals, then next month we got 10 referrals again, the next month we got, and so and so. And so…
You know, it’s just very difficult to track for referrals. And so therefore it’s difficult to grow based off of those referrals. So if you’re growing only, if you’re trying to grow based on only referrals, then you’re going to have a hard time, you know, planning and trying to create a method to grow your business based on referrals that you don’t even know are going to come in.
Because again, you don’t know when, how often, what jobs people are going to be asking you for for your referrals. Okay, you just don’t know. And so you’re taking a reactive approach to your leads. Ultimately, if you’re focusing on referrals, you’re just sitting there waiting for your leads to your past clients. You’re putting it in their hands. Your past…
clients, excuse me, you’re relying on them to be the one to reach out and to tell people about your business. So you’re relying on them to do that work for you. Okay? So now leads are great as well. So you have multiple channels for leads. Okay? So we’re going to talk about some of those here. You have multiple different ways of getting in front of people.
you are in control of how your business is portrayed. So you may do a great job, but you know, you didn’t show up on time.
Brooks Burnette (11:40.366)
Or you showed up on time, but you couldn’t meet the expectation of your customer in some way. Whether it’s legitimate or irrational on the client’s part, but you’re still relying on them to portray your business in a positive light. And so by generating leads, by doing advertising, by doing those different things,
you are putting your best step forward. You are taking that initiative and showing how your business is portrayed. Okay? So ultimately the leads are still coming to you whenever you do LeadGen, but you have a little bit more control over it, okay, when you do LeadGen. So there are limits to LeadGen as well. And so these are, you know, money and or time, okay, or both, right? Money and or time. And so,
You know, it costs money to run advertisements. And if you’re doing it on your, on your own, it takes a lot of time to learn how to do it and learn how to do it properly. Okay. And so it’s confusing getting started. It can be confusing. You know, you, you, you have all these different methods of advertising and you don’t really know what works and you know, you might not want to waste that money or.
feel like you’re throwing money away by testing and trying things out. And they both, you know, leads require an investment of some kind, all right? A money investment, a time investment, you know, it takes resources in order to get leads going, all right? So it’s up to you to decide which one do I want to prioritize? Which one do I want to focus on, all right?
So, let’s talk about how to maximize both because you don’t really have to choose one or the other. I make it seem like, well, which one are you going to choose? This one or this one? You don’t have to do that. You can do both. You can do both. And like I’ve said before. All right. So how to maximize your referrals. I’m just going to cover this very quickly because most remodelers, they get a lot of referrals and that’s mainly what their business focuses on.
Brooks Burnette (14:06.414)
And so we’re just going to blaze through this. So obviously you want to do high quality work, work that people want to talk about, right? And then number two, you want to ask, you want to ask your customers, Hey, do you know of anyone who might be looking for a service similar to, to yours or, you know, something like that, or give incentives like a gift card, like, I don’t know, like giving them a financial incentive, like a hundred dollars if,
If you refer someone that becomes a customer, you know, I don’t know, just think of something that you can do or give if someone gives you a referral. Okay. So get high quality media. Okay. So videos or pictures, interviews, different things like that. So that way, you know, your referrals, your reviews, because reviews are like mini referrals, right? But your referrals are backed up.
by something. So people say, hey, they did a great job on my kitchen. They did a great job on my bathroom and they want to learn more about you. So they go to your website. They want to see good high quality pictures or videos of your, your kitchens, your bathrooms and different things like that. All right. So build strong relationships. So you, you know, as well as I do that remodeling is a very long process. And so being professional, building a good working relationship,
with your customers is going to be a great way to have them want to support you. Okay. They’re going to want to recommend you to, to their neighbors, to their friends, to their family, and so on. And so those are really some of the easiest ways to maximize referrals, but we’re going to skip on to talk about advertising. So now the best way to maximize your lead flow and your lead gin,
is through advertising, okay? And so we’re talking about online advertising and we’ll talk about local advertising here in a second. So, but we’re mainly going to be talking about Google ads, excuse me, Google ads and Facebook ads. And we’re gonna take a look at both of those here in a second. Then we’re gonna talk about local ads and so advertisements that you can run in your local area.
Brooks Burnette (16:32.942)
as well as we’re going to talk for a second on paid leads. Okay. So, very quickly here, let’s dive in and let’s talk about the different ways to advertise. So I’m going to close that down here and we’re going to talk about, we’re going to talk about Google ads. And so I just came to Google and just typed in a very generic keyword. So I typed in remodeler Atlanta.
to see what would come up here. And so you can see here that there are a few different types of ads. So you’ve got these things that say sponsored by it. If you see the word sponsored, then that means it is an advertisement, obviously, right? And so these businesses here are advertising. And so the way that advertising on Google works is that you are targeting keywords, okay? You are targeting keywords that people are typing in.
So if someone types in remodeler Atlanta, kitchen remodel Atlanta, bathroom remodel Atlanta, and you can get very specific to target only those words. So if you want to grow your kitchen remodeling and you want, you want to get more kitchen remodeling jobs, then you can focus only on those, those keywords to be very specific. But if you’re trying to do just general ads, you know, just typing in remodeler Atlanta and targeting those big words like that.
that is, that is what you’re doing. And so you’re targeting and paying Google to show up in the first position or so in the first position or so for those keywords. You’re telling Google, Hey, we offer kitchen remodeling. When someone types in kitchen remodeling near me, when they type in kitchen remodeling, Atlanta or the city that you live in, we want to come up.
We want to come up when someone is looking for this service. Okay. And so that’s essentially what running ads on Google is. Now there’s a lot to it. We’re not going to go into detail in this video, but that is essentially what Google ads are. All right. Now another form of Google ads is something called Google display ads. And so display ads are these ads that you see on the border of,
Brooks Burnette (19:00.014)
all around the internet. Okay, so when you go to a different website and you see these ads, like you see here on the sides, they’re kind of scrolling. These are actually a form of Google ad. Okay, and so if we scroll down, we can see these are ads right here. We’ve got some more ads.
And so they’re just the typical ads that you see on a website. And so these are another type of advertisement. These are another way to get in front of your customers. And so there’s a few different ways to advertise on Google, but we’re not going to go into super long detail here. But in general, you’re paying Google to show up for specific keywords. Okay. And so, you know, there are a few limits to these, you know, you can’t, you can’t,
put a lot of information into these ads. You know, they are pretty costly.
But for the most part, this is what we recommend. This is the first step towards getting good leads and good lead flow. So Google Ads are definitely recommended. So the other advertising platform is on Facebook. And so we always recommend Google Ads first. Google Ads are always are very consistent. So let me scroll down here.
And so this is my normal feed here.
Brooks Burnette (20:39.726)
And so let’s scroll down until we see an advertisement.
Brooks Burnette (20:48.206)
my computer will work.
Brooks Burnette (20:53.23)
My internet’s been really slow recently.
Brooks Burnette (21:01.454)
All right, so here is an advertisement. So I’m a marketer, so obviously this is a very, so this is targeted towards myself. And so you can see here that, you can see that this is an advertisement because it says sponsored as well. And so as someone is scrolling through Facebook and they’re scrolling through their newsfeed or doing anything on Facebook, Facebook does have advertising. And so,
This is a good way to get in front of your target audience because most people who are homeowners, the older generation, they are on Facebook. And so for remodeling specifically, Facebook is a very good way to get in front of your customers. Now, what’s good about advertising on Facebook is the customization. You can have videos, you can have scrolling before and after pictures.
You can have really any type of picture as long as it falls under their terms of service, but you can be very, very creative with your advertisements. And you can change them. You can update them and change them and add pictures, add more videos, try different things. Whereas on Google, your ad just looks like any other listing. And so there’s really not much customization that you can do here.
So, you know, Facebook is good, Google is good, but we recommend Google is where you start if you’re going to advertise because you have those people who are looking for your services. Someone is actively coming to Google, typing in home remodeler near me, kitchen remodeler near me, and different things like that. And so that’s why we always recommend Google first.
for advertising. They have a little bit more of intent. They have something called buyer’s intent. They are intending to buy. Okay? So…
Brooks Burnette (23:05.23)
Coming back here, let’s go back to the slide. I hope that was clear on the differences between Facebook and Google advertising. Now, let’s talk about some local ads. So local ads are really anything that you would do in your local area, including billboards, signs at football fields, anything like that that’s a local sponsorship or ad.
These include ads in like a local magazine, just different things like that, radio ads. Those are good as well, but you really have to track them. Okay? And so how do you track them? The best way to track those is through what’s called call tracking. And so in call tracking, you basically purchase a number.
We’re not, I’m not going to show you guys how to do it here because it’s another long process. But essentially what you do is you purchase a number through an online platform. There’s a few different online platforms like CallRail or CallTrackingMetrics. And you purchase a phone number through their platform. And so any times and you put that phone number on your billboard, on your magazine ad, in your…
in your radio ad, you put that phone number for people to call specifically for that ad. And so whenever someone calls you through that ad, they save your number, they call through that ad, it will count as a call that is coming through that specific ad. And so typically most people just purchase a billboard and they say, well, I hope this works. And they don’t ever really know if it works for them, right? They don’t really know.
Unless they ask everyone that comes in and most of those are not, most people don’t remember or they say, well, I found you on, I saw your, well, they’ll say something like, I found you on Google or found your website, but they saw the ad, they saw the billboard or they heard the ad and then they called or they went to your website and then they called. And so they say, well, we went to…
Brooks Burnette (25:26.702)
Google and typed you in and so they so it’s not it’s not Cohesive okay, and so by call tracking and by having that set up for your physical ads It’s going to be way better and way easier to actually see okay We got ten calls from this billboard. We got you know fifty calls from this magazine ad or whatever it may be okay, and so then
You know, you obviously have the paid leads, you know, the Angie leads, the, you know, next door leads and, you know, those different types of leads. We typically don’t recommend those because they are, they tend to be very spotty. They’re very costly. And, you know, you want people who are just, who are people from your community who are searching and interested in your services.
We want people who are what we call organic. People who are just, well, we’ve been needing a new kitchen for a long time and now we’re ready for a new kitchen. And so we’re going to go to Google and look at who the best contractor is in our area. Those are the people who you want to target. Those are the people who you want to spend your time on. And so those paid leads, the quality is typically not good. You know, there are people who were interested.
years ago and they’ve already hired someone, their phone numbers don’t work. And so I typically recommend to just stay away from them, save that money that you would spend for that and use it on Google ads or use it to hire a marketer rather than paying for those leads. So how do you get started?
How do you get started with LeadGen? We went over a few different platforms here and a few different ways to advertise, but how do you actually get started if you have never done so before? Well, you have to first create a budget. What are you okay with spending, with investing to generate some leads? What are you okay with? And so we always tell our customers and our clients that generally,
Brooks Burnette (27:41.102)
When you’re creating a budget, you want to do about 5 to 10 % of your overall income to be used for marketing as a whole. Okay? So you don’t want to take 5 to 10 % of your income and use it just for advertising. We’re talking about hiring somebody to do your marketing for you or building a new website, anything that would involve marketing to that 5 to 10%.
Okay. And so from there, you can start to divvy it up. Right. So if your income last year was 1 million and so 5 % would be, you know, what, 5 ,000.
Right? it’ll be 50 ,000. I can’t remember. I’m not very good at math. But anyway, so if you’re…
If you’re doing a million dollars a year and you have it to yeah, so it would be it would be 50 ,000. Sorry. So $50 ,000 for the year, right? And so you’re not going to be spending that 50 ,000 on just on just you know, advertising on Google. Okay, you’re going to be doing that. You’re going to be doing these things on a consistent basis. Okay, and so.
and you’re going to be looking at things that are, you’re going to divvy up that 50 ,000 to different areas in your business. Okay? And so with that being said, five to 10 % is a good way to look at it.
Brooks Burnette (32:04.878)
Okay, so we’ve got our budget, right? So we’ve got the budget that we’ve decided on. And so now you have to figure out where you want to advertise. How do you want to spend that money? Okay, so then on top of that, you have to decide whether you want to hire someone or you want to learn how to do it on your own. Okay, so a lot of times, a lot of my clients have, they’ve tried to do it on their own.
They’ve tried to do Google ads on their own. They’ve ran Facebook ad campaigns on their own, but it just didn’t work for them and it wasted a lot of their time. And so I would recommend to just go ahead and hire someone. If you have the budget, just hire someone. Just hire someone to do it so that way they know how to do it. And you can get the results a lot faster without wasting a lot of money. And so just…
Moving on here, so to summarize here, which one is better? Which is better? Referrals or Legion? And the answer is neither is better than the other. They both have their place and they both have their value. And so, you should be able to use both. There should be no reason to not use both. All right?
So referrals are great, you need them, but they can only get you so far. And the same thing can be said for Legion, right? You know, Legion, it can be a lot harder to close those clients and to close those people because they’re looking at other businesses as well. Whereas referrals, you might be the only one that they’re looking at because they were referred, they were referred you by their…
close friend or by their family. And so you might, may be the only one who they’re talking to. And so that’s the positive and negative about each one, right? So by prioritizing both, you take a proactive approach. Again, it is the businesses that we see that do the most in revenue, the most growing, that prioritize both.
Brooks Burnette (34:27.118)
Okay, it’s not that they get referrals and they occasionally do some advertising, but they actively take an approach to make sure their website is optimized, to make sure that they have good ad campaigns, make sure they have a strong presence on Google and different things like that. And so, lead gen does take time, but it is well worth it when it is done correctly. We’ve seen it done firsthand and we’ve seen the effects of it firsthand.
And so that is it for today. This is a topic again that I see all the time that I see brought up consistently. You know, whenever I have conversations with remodeling contractors, you know, they say, well, we’ve mainly focused on referrals for the entire time that we’ve been in business, right? And sometimes it can be 15, 20 years. Okay. And so…
The businesses that grow quickly are the ones that invest into advertising and invest into weed generation quickly. And so that’s what prioritizing both is going to be a positive for you and for your business, I guarantee it. So thank you so much for watching again. My name is Brooks Burnett, owner of Remodel Reach Marketing. Thank you so much for watching this or watching the replay. And…
I hope to talk to you soon. Next month, we’re going to be talking about another topic that is specific to remodeling contractors. If you want some help with getting started with lead generation, then go ahead and give me a call from this number here, and I’m happy to answer any questions or talk with you about your business and what you’ve tried in the past. Thank you very much for your time, and I will see you guys in the next one. Thank you.