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How to Get More Contractor Leads

by | Last updated Dec 7, 2023

How to Get More Contractor Leads

Lead generation services can be important no matter which business you operate, but contractors need a consistent stream of new leads if their business wants to survive.

Leading generation can be an important part of keeping yourself supplied with new potential customers, no matter what kind of construction business you run – or whatever other niche you might be in.

if you are looking ‘how to Get More Contractor Leads’, we may be able to help.

What are Leads?

A lead is any potential customer with a high chance of becoming a paying customer.

Contractor and construction lead generation is all about finding new leads within your target audiences – people with an interest in your construction projects and services.

Most leads come from visitors that leave some indication that they are interested – contact info, account sign-ups, that kind of thing.

Good lead generation services focus mostly on ensuring that you are gathering the right kind of contractor leads and that these contractor leads are turning into paying customers.

Why Do Leads Matter?

Lead generation is an important part of marketing, regardless of your services.

Contractor services use leads to find more clients and market their commercial construction services to more people while also providing an overview of how well their lead generation work is going.

A solid lead generation strategy ensures that any contractor marketing can receive the business they need. Creating marketing materials is pointless if they do not result in your company’s potential customers.

Contractor leads can be anything from an individual person to the representative of an entire business. Regardless of scale, the most important part of the lead process is ensuring that commercial construction leads eventually convert.

Exclusive Leads

Exclusive leads are leads specifically for your company. They are hard to earn and mostly happen when your contractor lead generation efforts manage to draw some contractor leads to your business specifically.

These might be leads for your company, but they are not always “free leads.” You still have to work to turn those potential customers into happy customers, and more contractor leads mean less time to spend on any individual lead.

Shared Leads

Shared leads are any lead that is not specific to your business. Most of the leads you get when you generate contractor leads – the customers are interested in contractor jobs in general.

This means that your contractor marketing efforts have to be good enough to pull those leads towards your business and away from competitors, which naturally means that many leads end up going to other companies.

If you want to capture leads, you must accept that you can’t get all incoming leads unless you are lucky. Your advertising efforts can only go so far and appeal to so many people.

Basic Strategies for Generating Leads

Lead generation is a complex process that covers a huge range of different techniques and strategies. Contractor lead generation is more than just a simple set of steps to follow – it is an entire niche of expertise.

This means that contractors have a lot of flexibility, forcing them to rely on multiple methods of getting construction leads. High-quality leads do not all come from the same place; even if they did, you would still need to use varied methods to secure them as customers.

With so many strategies to try out, it is hard to know where to begin with construction leads. Some methods have become far more prominent than others, but almost every lead generation option can have its own benefits and particular uses within the marketing world.

Here are some of the most direct and practical ways to build a contractor lead generation plan. Remember that this covers all general contractor types – residential contractors will want something inherently different from industrial contractors, and so on.

Paid Search Ads

Construction company leads often come from advertising, and most contract business owners rely on ads as their main source of marketing and lead generation.

Search platform ads are some of the most powerful tools in your lead generation arsenal, and they have easily become one of the best kinds of paid advertising on the internet.

The construction industry is full of companies that advertise themselves via paid searches. As one of the core digital strategies for marketing in the modern age, it is easy to see why a contractor business might rely on it over other marketing options.

Search engines can make your construction lead generation far more effective and give you more targeting options for choosing a certain target audience. You have much more control over who and what you target.

However, a construction firm must also factor in its budgetary limits. The costs of construction industry ads can be quite high, and the bid costs for certain keywords can become much higher if you start facing competition.

However, if you get paid ads right, they can be incredibly powerful and become the core of your new construction industry marketing tactics. It is no surprise that most construction companies already use search engine ads quite extensively.

Paid Social Media Ads

Social media platforms generally have at least one paid promotion or boost system that allows you to promote certain posts, spreading them to more people.

This can become a powerful way to spread yourself to a new target audience on certain social media sites. This can dramatically increase your fresh lead flow if you target the right audiences and groups, but it can become expensive for large-scale use.

The systems can be a great way to promote your business and gather more leads, but they are different for every platform.

For example, promoting a Facebook business page will be very different from promoting a tweet on Twitter. Not only are the costs different, but the entire system itself will operate under new rules.

If done well, you will have more leads and less reliance on platforms like Google Ads. This can complement your existing strategies well.

Search Engine Optimization

Platforms like Google have an incredibly complex algorithm for judging how search rankings work for each website. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of using that algorithm to boost your own online presence.

SEO can get incredibly in-depth if you allow it, making it an incredibly versatile and powerful tool for meeting your contractor’s marketing goals.

Good SEO can rank you in higher search results, meaning more potential leads will show themselves.

Commercial construction leads can come from almost anywhere, and SEO allows you to pinpoint and capitalize on the most effective sources of traffic you are getting.

SEO covers all online aspects of your construction projects, from your ads and targeted site keywords to the overall design of your website and landing pages.

Using SEO correctly, you can successfully promote your business to an entirely new target audience.

Good SEO can earn you quality leads, but bad SEO can damage your overall ranking if you do not have any safety net.

Email Marketing

Marketing to somebody through their email inbox can be risky, but it can also sometimes work out if you are careful.

An email is a great tool for remarketing your business to previous customers, securing their attention and interest again, even if they have previously forgotten about your business. It can also help build brand awareness if you have the contact details to spread it around.

It is easier to send emails to people who have already interacted with your business since you will have their contact information.

Remember that your emails might be caught by spam filters or even ignored by potential customers who are not interested in your offering. This is part of the reason that so many companies send them in bulk – at least a few recipients are likely to respond.

Direct Mail Advertising

The average member of most target audiences is much more likely to check their direct mail than email messages.

Many people expect email marketing to be spam, whereas direct mail comes across as more important. This means that sending direct mail can generate contractor leads since the recipients will be more likely to read the mail.

However, direct mail marketing is expensive, especially if you send it out in bulk and personalise each letter. This means you are paying quite a high cost for each lead, making it a risky but effective move.

Cold Calling

Cold calling is similar to email marketing in that it can be unreliable. Fortunately, it also has the bluntness of direct mail, meaning it will still generate leads quite often.

Cold calling potential clients has a very low cost and can be a cheaper (if riskier) alternative to paid advertising.

You cold call current customers to let them know about upcoming projects they might want to get involved with as an upgrade, contact new customers with exclusive offers, or even call any potential clients within your service area.

Cold calling a business with the number from their business listing can also be a good way to market yourself if you are a business-focused contractor. Most businesses will recognize cold calls and listen to them for at least a little while, especially if you offer something important.

Content Marketing

Sometimes, creating content is enough to spread your brand awareness to a larger market.

Creating decent content gives you an easy way of drawing more attention to your contractor company and allows you to earn more contractor leads on average in a lot less time.

Becoming an authority on certain kinds of services or information can ensure you get even more traffic for that niche. The more relevant your content is to your business, the better: for example, you might post content that would draw new customers to your blog to learn more about your niche’s services.

Good content can make your business more relevant and credible and will often start earning you links from other sites that use you as a resource. However, it is also a way to earn free contractor leads from users who visit your site, turning them into potential customers.

Other Contractor Lead Generation Factors to Consider

Knowing how to generate free contractor leads and paid ones gives your construction business an edge, but there is a lot to consider when it comes to leads.

Before you rush into building a digital marketing plan, you will also want to think about:

Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Word-of-mouth marketing can be one of the most unexpected ways to get more business.

You will usually find this if you offer a professional website, great service, and a unique selling point – past customers, will recommend you to others, giving you leads for free.

You can lean into this by hinting that past clients should recommend you to others – or setting up a system where customers can refer a friend for some benefit or discount.

Reviews from Past Customers

Good reviews rank your site on search engines, and bad reviews can tank your rankings.

Push for more positive reviews while trying to tackle negative reviews – talk to the people who posted them and find a compromise that satisfies them enough to remove or amend the review.

Local Search Results

Customers will use local search terms to find local contractors.

In many cases, it can be a good idea to focus on local keywords first and establish a basic customer base.

Use local SEO strategies for your local community. This might mean that you approach local SEO very differently than larger-scale SEO, but all that matters is the results that you are getting.

Local areas have less competition than the entirety of the internet since you are only competing with other local businesses in the same niche as you.

Local Businesses

Remember that local businesses are not always in direct competition with you.

You do not always have to go and spend money on pay-per-click advertising to overtake other local contractors. Look into their services first and see if you overlap.

There is no point competing against a company that offers entirely different services to you. Your audiences are completely different, and you do not need to worry until you start crossing each other’s paths more often.

Business Partnerships

A partnership can work if you want to draw in new customers from more than one market. This allows you to get ideal customers from two markets without having to do any more jobs, relying on your partner instead.

Sharing leads across two non-competing businesses can be powerful, as can contributing to each other’s social media marketing. This might even open you up to more content marketing opportunities.

Multi-Pronged Marketing

Do not be afraid to use multiple marketing tools in tandem, such as email marketing alongside a social media campaign.

The more assets you can use to promote your business, the better.

For example, pay-per-click ads and free SEO work can contribute to the number of qualified leads you get, providing two different sources of new customers.

Purchasing Leads

You can often purchase leads directly from commercial lead generation websites. These are completely legal since the site sells you the information you need.

It is not hard to find qualified leads available to purchase, but you need to decide which leads are worth it. Not all leads will fit their asking price, and there is no guarantee that you will capture a lead just because you bought the details.

Complexity

Lead generation can get incredibly complex, especially as you start adding more and more marketing methods into the mix.

Do not stress yourself too much over how convoluted your marketing is getting. As long as you plan everything out well, you should not run into any issues concerning your lead work – and having a decent plan means you have something you can follow when you are struggling to know what to do next.

What Next?

Whatever you are looking for and your goals, it is important to remember that most marketing takes time. You will not get the leads you want straight away, but eventually, they will turn up.

Take some time to plan ahead and think about what you want to do with your lead generation options. Whether you have an in-depth plan or just a vague set of ideas, it is good to have something you can use as a baseline to follow when you get into the meat of your lead marketing work.

Remember that marketing is complex. There are a lot of different strategies and tactics that you can use, but there is not a single perfect method to get all of the leads you want. Experimentation is the only way to find the perfect balance for your company.

Useful Guides

Please see some useful guides related to generating more business leads.

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