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3 Strategies to Generate and Measure Growth in Your Remodeling Business – Part 1

Part 1 of a 3 Part Series

Recently, I wrote an article about How to Prepare for Growth in Your Remodeling Business and I reviewed some key action items for all small-medium sized businesses to consider before they start generating growth. Today, I am going to focus on exactly what you need to be implementing into your business to generate and measure growth in your business online. Remember, you have to have a mentality for growth for this to work and you have to want to be the market leader not a follower. If you successfully implement the 3 strategies below, you WILL have a clearer picture of where your leads are coming from, you WILL cut out waste in your marketing budget, you WILL get more traffic and leads, and you WILL close more deals. Doubling sales in 6-12 months with these 3 core concepts is not uncommon.

1) You Have to Track!

#1 on our list is more a measurement strategy, but before you can start driving more prospects into your sales funnel and closing more deals, you need to setup tracking systems to measure all of your marketing channels. With today’s technology, tracking every single marketing investment you make is a no-brainer. But for most remodeling companies, they are doing very little if any form of tracking. From analytics, social monitoring and measuring, call tracking and lead tracking, lets review the tracking systems you need in place to then be able to generate explosive growth:

  • Google Analytics- is #1, and having analytics setup correctly on your site(s) is extremely important. You need to setup conversion Goals for all the lead forms on your site and start paying attention to the important metrics like - New Visitors, Return Visitors, Referral Sources, Pages/Visit, Traffic Sources, and Goals. You need to find out where your prospects are coming from online and offline.There are some paid analytics tools out there that are very good as well, but at a minimum you need Google Analytics if you want to rank in the search results and measure your marketing. Google is also using your analytics data to determine where you should rank...a topic for another day.
     
  • Social Monitoring/Measuring- social media may be one of the most overly hyped marketing channels in existence for remodeling companies. Social media should never be the 1st thing a remodeling company does to generate new business or you will surely fall short, but you do need it in your mix at some point for a few key reasons. While it can bring new business and new leads, for most of my clients, we use it in our mix to stay relevant, to share our content, and to keep people up to speed with our clients brand.If you are really creative and have a lot of extra time to invest in social, you can make it a successful way to grow your business, but you need to have a solid strategy in place.

    Also, almost all the major search engines using social metrics of some kind to help determine ranking in major search engines, so this is important to know. Having a good social media monitoring software will help you listen in to what is being said about you personally, your company, what your competitors are doing socially, and give you a clear picture of how well your time in social media is paying off.  I implemented this recently and was really surprised at how many times my name was being searched online as well as how many people were sharing my content. Exciting stuff!
     

  • Call Tracking- every marketing medium you use, you should be using a unique call tracking number to determine the effectiveness of that strategy. Ideally, you should be call recording all in-bound calls as well, and this can be accomplished with the same platform as your call tracking number provider. This is extremely important for every business to implement.Use a unique call tracking number on all postcards, catalogs, print ads, display ads, radio, tv, etc. Do NOTuse multiple call tracking numbers online to track local directories. All the top local search distribution services and Google are all about consistency with your Name, Address, and Phone Number, Address (NAP). Using multiple call tracking numbers will certainly screw up your NAP online and lead to below average results. It's safe to use multiple numbers pretty much anywhere else.Lastly, you should be registering and using multiple domain names to track specific marketing campaigns offline. This is a real easy way to zero in on what is working and whats not from postcard mailings, radio and tv ads, magazine, newspapers and more.
     
  • Lead Tracking - having some type of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is key to track leads and lead sources from as much of your marketing as possible. Most CRM’s can have steep learning curves so be careful which one you choose to start. Keep it simple wherever possible and at the very minimum use something that will allow you to track your sales opportunities/prospects and the ability to automate following up with those prospects.

Read part 2 of 3, Be Everywhere Your Customers Are!

Need more help growing your remodeling business? Take advantage of all the FREE resources I have on www.RyanPaulAdams.com and my download my "3 Killer Ways to Grow Your Remodeling Business" today.