ExteriorContractor.com |

As exterior home improvement specialists, we all understand the importance of generating new business. Leads are the lifeblood of our respective operations. But in these economic times, it is more important than ever to find the most efficient ways to spend my tight marketing budget. I need to ensure that I’m getting the biggest bang for my marketing buck.

Tracking Everything

Even before the economy really took a turn for the worse last fall, I had invested a lot of time researching various lead-tracking systems. In trying to get my arms around the seemingly enormous task of understanding which lead driver works best — and most efficiently — I knew I had to start tracking everything I was sending out to the market. At our exterior contracting company in Boston, we typically hit the pavement hard. We attend home shows, canvas areas around our jobs, send direct mail, buy radio time, hang door hangers, and try other means of getting people to pick up the phone. I wanted a way to track each of these drivers and compare them to each other based on the leads each was generating against budget. At that point, I hadn’t even gone down the road of search engine marketing and Web design yet, but I’ll get to that later.

A colleague referred me to a digital marketing firm — Conversion Associates (www.conversionassociates.com) and I tested their series of lead-tracking mechanisms. These mechanisms had worked for others in our industry, so I was willing to give them a try. And — without giving too much of a commercial — I was impressed with the resulting analysis that showed how each of my lead drivers was performing against their budgets. While some of my channels were driving a good deal of leads, I was paying a lot of money for those leads — more than I had wanted. Other drivers were underperforming overall. The analysis provided a great deal of insight; we cut back on the underperforming sectors and began exploring ways to drive qualified traffic to our Web site. It was our first move to understand the power of a business-driving Web site to boost my bottom line.

Going Digital

My marketing vendor had suggested that I install Google analytics into my Web site. This free service allowed me to understand not only how many people were coming to the our site, but also helped us understand what search terms they typed into Google to find my site. This is critically important to understand. Instead of me trying to force a message down my customers’ throats, I was allowing them to tell me what services they were looking for, and then use that message in my marketing.

Furthermore, Google Analytics allowed me to see what people were doing on my site. Were they downloading my testimonials? Were they picking up the phone? Or were they bouncing off our Web site immediately?