16 min read
Background
McLennan Contracting was founded in 2003 by Tim and Alison McLennan. Since then they have grown their company to become an admired and trusted remodeling business in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Specializing in bathroom, kitchen, and basement remodeling in the Lancaster area, McLennan Contracting adheres to the design-build remodeling model providing excellent remodeling services to their clients!
At the end of 2021, McLennan Contracting partnered with Builder Funnel to achieve their goals for 2022. They went through our Remodeler Marketing Blueprint which helps remodelers increase traffic, leads, and sales with a focus on maximizing revenue and profit.
We are very excited to present this case study as a testament to McLennan Contracting's dedication to growing their company utilizing the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint by Builder Funnel. Let's dive in!
Goals, Challenges, objectives
As part of the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint process, we worked with McLennan Contracting to define their revenue and profit goals. In addition, we identified three main challenges we would face on the path to these goals as well as three main objectives we could pursue that would contribute to overall increases in profit and revenue.
2022 Goals
- Increase Total Revenue by 15-22%
- Increase Net Profit from 10.28% to 10.5%
Main Challenges
- Staffing to Handle Growth - McLennan Contracting will need to invest in staff before they have the revenue to cover it.
- Small Projects - McLennan Contracting will be determining the value of doing small projects vs. design-build projects.
- Lead Generation - McLennan will attempt to even out lead generation efforts to avoid seasons with too many leads or with not enough leads.
Main Objectives
- Hire New Staff to Handle Company Growth
- Determine If Small Projects Will Continue and How
- Generate Leads Consistently to Achieve Revenue & Profit Goals
In addition to these goals, challenges, and objectives, McLennan Contracting also desired to...
- Implement a holistic marketing strategy
- Improve results across all marketing channels
- Enable their internal team to handle marketing
- Increase overall website traffic
- Increase overall lead generation
- Generate more qualified leads
- Improve search engine rankings
- Improve brand recognition locally
- And increase the average size of projects
We had a lot to think about moving into the Blueprint process. But with careful planning by our marketing team and the utilization of our successful marketing strategies for remodelers, we identified the ideal plan that would allow McLennan Contracting to achieve their goals.
Our Strategy
Our strategy took shape in the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint, a one-year strategic marketing plan specifically designed to help remodelers (or custom home builders) achieve their revenue and profit goals and other objectives!
The Remodeler Marketing Blueprint
The Blueprint included the following elements:
Company Profile & Current Performance
In this section, we dived deep into the question "Who is McLennan Contracting?" What is their mission? Where do they work? What is the remodeling industry like in their area? What do they do? What opportunities are available (down to the exact neighborhoods)? Who are their top buyer personas (who wants to buy from them the most)?
These and many other questions were explored to gain a better understanding of McLennan Contracting and to maximize the performance recommendations and strategies the blueprint would contain.
To finish off this section, we evaluated McLennan Contracting's current performance including:
- Email List Size
- Marketing & Advertising Budgets
- Remodeling Project Value by Type
- Annual Website Traffic, Leads, and Customers
- Current Revenue & Profit
Goals/Objectives/Challenges
We never create a marketing strategy before learning as much as possible about the remodeler we are working with. After this deep dive into the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How that is McLennan Contracting, we took their profit and revenue goals and identified three main challenges with associated objectives.
Builder Funnel
In this section, we familiarized McLennan Contracting with who we are at Builder Funnel, what we do, and how we do it. We explain our process in detail as well as our methodology for achieving marketing results. We also go through the exact steps required to utilize our Blueprint and its associated project management dashboard to its full potential!
Remodeler Marketing Audits
If you ever wondered how your remodeling company's marketing performs, there is no mystery left after we go through our auditing process. The goal of the audits is to discover what's going well and what's not going well. That way we can spend time fixing what will have the greatest impact on your marketing results. Our marketing audits include:
- Marketing Analysis and Key Findings - We discovered the top opportunities in McLennan Contracting's market by finding the exact neighborhoods that had the largest number of potential customers that fit McLennan's buyer personas!
- UX/UI Audit - From design, colors, and typography to navigation, images, and forms, we identified exactly what McLennan Contracting needed to do to improve their user experience and the user interface on their website.
- Website Audit - We provided the top recommendations for improving website accessibility, speed, images, and mobile effectiveness
- Content Audit - In our remodeler content audit, we identified that McLennan Contracting was already doing a great job representing its brand to its audience. We also found a few key opportunities to help them rank higher for more local searches and improve the effectiveness of their careers page to attract more candidates interested in working for their company.
- SEO Audit - We identify the baselines for McLennan Contracting's page rankings, local directory listings, website speed, and other factors. This allowed us to identify some high-traffic, low-competition local remodeling keywords McLennan could rank for! In addition, we did a technical SEO audit that turned up a significant opportunity to decrease site load time through image optimization!
- Competitor Analysis - Possibly one of the most valuable segments of our marketing audits, the remodeler competitor analysis allows us to see not only how you match up against your perceived competitors but also against your online competitors. We could easily understand how McLennan Contracting measured up when it comes to backlinks, referring domains, organic keywords, traffic, and other key factors! This section alone gave us tons of opportunities to get a leg up on our competitors in the Lancaster area.
- Social Media Audits - When we audit remodeler social media profiles, we evaluate branding, tone & voice, engagement, page flow, imagery, reviews, call-to-actions, and many other factors. We did this for the most important social networks for remodelers and made key recommendations so that McLennan could represent their brand well across social media and improve engagement, website traffic, and lead generation from these sources.
The Remodeler Marketing Plan
This is the core of the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint - exactly what McLennan Contracting needed to do in 2022 from a marketing perspective to realize its goals. In this section, we provided the exact recommendations for SEO, content, social media, email marketing, lead conversion offers, technology, and advertising to achieve the desired results. The following was included:
- SEO Plan - The SEO Plan defined the exact page titles, header 1s (H1s), meta descriptions, URLs, and on-page keywords they needed to use on each page of their website to rank for their location + remodeling terms in the search engine results.
- Content Plan - The Content Plan gave them 1 year of the exact blog posts, content pages, and content updates they needed to make in 2022 to maximize website traffic, improve local keyword rankings, and accelerate lead generation on their website. The plan included all on-page keyword research, internal linking recommendations, and creation instructions.
- Email Plan - The Email Plan defined exactly what emails they should send when to capitalize on reaching their existing audience and keep their company top of mind for people at every stage of the buyer's journey.
- Social Media Calendar - The Social Media Calendar defined what they would need to post on social media and what networks they would need to utilize to increase organic social reach, drive additional traffic to their website, engage with their audience, and gain incredible benefits from social media.
- Premium Content Plan - The Premium Content Plan designated the best lead conversion opportunities on their website that they could easily implement to generate more leads and more qualified leads.
- Technology Recommendations - The Technology Recommendations gave them the ideal "tech stack" or software combinations that would allow McLennan to automate, manage, and systematize as many of their marketing and sales processes as possible.
- Advertising Plan - The Advertising Plan provided the best methods and exact recommendations for promoting their website through Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
Project Management
The Remodeler Marketing Blueprint takes marketing strategy for remodelers to the next level. In addition to the Blueprint document itself, we provide a fully built-out project management board that identifies every marketing task that needs to be done, when it should be completed, and exactly how these tasks can be done easily. Think of it like the control center for every action a remodeling company should take in 1 year to actually get real marketing results that will directly impact revenue and profit!
Implementing the Strategy
Any remodeling company that goes through the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint process has two options for implementation:
- DIY (You implement the plan yourself) - The remodeler has a marketer, intern, or other individual in-house that will implement the blueprint. This person ideally would have a background in digital marketing, website management, content writing, etc. This option is fantastic if you already have an existing team member doing marketing, but you need a strategy that will get you the results you desire and help propel growth.
- Builder Funnel (We implement the entire plan for you) - In this scenario, the remodeler wants to save time and have our team of experts implement the plan. This option works great if you want to know your marketing strategy is being executed properly by the best marketers around! [Additional monthly cost applies]
McLennan Contracting decided to go with option 1 and self-implement the plan. They had a phenomenal employee already on staff with a marketing background that was able to take the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint and associated Project Management Board and work through the plan step-by-step, month-by-month to implement!
The Results
By utilizing The Remodeler Marketing Blueprint by Builder Funnel, McLennan Contracting achieved astounding marketing results in 2022. In this section of the case study, we'll dive deep into the marketing results achieved. We'll discuss how McLennan Contracting hit its revenue goal and how a business pivot affected its overall profit this year. In addition, we'll cover how they overcame their business challenges to achieve their top 3 objectives set in the Blueprint.
We are SO EXCITED to celebrate McLennan Contracting's 2022 success with you today! Now, here are the results.
đĨ McLennan Contracting Video Testimonial
As we get into the results, watch this video to hear directly from Alison at McLennan Contracting about her experience with the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint by Builder Funnel!
đ Remodeler Marketing Results
From traffic, leads, and customers to social engagement, email performance, and Google rankings to lead qualification, revenue, and project size, McLennan Contracting saw increases across almost every single metric for success in the first 10 months of implementing the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint.
In this section, we'll be covering a bunch of relevant metrics! This is to showcase the power of a holistic marketing strategy that can revolutionize the future and direction of your remodeling business. If you are interested in achieving similar results as you discover below, book a meeting with us. We'll discuss your goals and vision for your company and see if the Blueprint is a good fit for you!
Traffic, leads, and customers
During the first 10 months of implementing the Blueprint, McLennan Contracting increased website traffic from the previous period by 226% and new contacts (raw leads) by 117%.
The screenshot you see above showcases the website sessions (traffic) increases over time. You can see an obvious jump in website traffic starting in January 2022 - this was the start of McLennan's implementation of the Blueprint.
However, I'd also draw your attention to the January 2020 traffic highlighted to the left on the screenshot. That month, 110 website visitors came from organic search, 19 from referrals, 51 from organic social, 1 from email marketing, and 305 from direct traffic.
Now, let's compare those numbers to the most recent month of website traffic at the time this case study was written.
In September 2022...
- 1094 website visitors came from organic search
- 37 came from referrals
- 603 from organic social
- 84 from email marketing
- 175 from paid search
- 472 from paid social
- 450 from direct traffic
This wasn't even the most successful month for website traffic for McLennan in 2022, and we're easily seeing 10x organic search traffic and 12x organic social media traffic not to mention paid search and paid social as 2 entirely new sources of traffic vs. 2 years ago!
The screenshot above represents the top blog posts that have performed well for us in 2022. They have been blurred out for privacy reasons, but you can see that the top blog got 1594 views with the others hovering the high 100s. Most remodelers can't even boast these numbers for their core pages (home, about, services, etc.) let alone for blog posts. At Builder Funnel, we utilize blogging to drive relevant website traffic, increase search engine rankings, and of course generate more qualified leads!
Let's talk about new contacts (raw leads). In March 2021, McLennan Contracting received 18 leads from organic search, 1 from organic social, and 7 from direct traffic.
In March 2022 (a pure year-over-year comparison of the same month), they received...
- 31 leads from organic search
- 3 leads from referrals
- 8 from organic social
- and 17 from direct traffic
This month is not a significant outlier either. January and February also had similar lead generation results, and lead generation every month in 2022 has been higher than the same months in 2021.
Now, let's talk about lead conversion offers. The above graphic represents the results from one downloadable guide that McLennan uses to convert leads on their website. This guide also allows them to educate their audience on cost leading to more qualified leads in the long run!
As you can see...
This one offer had 99 form submissions, generated
66 new contacts, and 2 customers in 2022.
McLennan Contracting has two other lead conversion offers just like this one working around the clock to convert normal website visitors into leads that can then be nurtured over time. This way they are capturing leads at every stage of the buyers journey from "just researching" to "I'm ready to buy!"
The majority of their traffic came from 3 main sources - organic search, organic social, and direct traffic. The most significant sources of leads and associated customers were organic search and direct traffic.
As part of the Blueprint recommendations, Builder Funnel suggests certain lead conversion offers that will maximize conversion from qualified leads.
At least 5 customers Filled out a form for one of these offers
as their first conversion point on the website.
The above graphic does not represent the full amount of revenue that McLennan may book in 2022 and certain details have been left out for privacy. But even without the full company revenue data for this year...
McLennan Contracting Grew Their Marketing Investment at Least 10x
The Remodeler Marketing Blueprint starts at $20,000 as a one-time fee. So in the first 10 months,
$200,000+ in revenue resulted from the Blueprint
leading to 10x the initial investment
And this is just the beginning. Inbound marketing is like investing. You build authority in your site, and it will grow exponentially over time. McLennan Contracting will certainly continue to reep the benefits of the initial blueprint for years to come (not even accounting for continued marketing and progress)!
Organic Traffic, Organic Keywords, and AHREFS Ranking
At Builder Funnel, we leave no stone unturned with it comes to tracking the most valuable analytics for our clients. For McLennan Contracting, we can see some valuable data when it comes to organic traffic, organic keywords, and Ahrefs ranking (Ahrefs is an SEO tool).
The above screenshot shows their increases in organic traffic and organic keywords over time according to Ahrefs. (We look at multiple tools including Google Analytics, HubSpot Analytics, Ahrefs, and others to track search engine metrics)
According to Aherfs, McLennan received 255 visitors from organic traffic and ranked for a total of 770 organic keywords (only 14 in the top 3 search results) in December 2021.
Now, let's look at the same screenshot but see October 2022!
They now average 1530/month from organic traffic, and...
They rank for 1912 organic keywords including
101 in the top 3 search engine results
Above, you'll find a small sampling of just some of the most valuable keywords that McLennan Contracting now ranks for in the search engine results. If you look closely, the orange color represents the word "Lancaster". McLennan Contracting mainly works in Lancaster County, and 100% of the words you're seeing are related to their location with 70-80% being directly related to remodeling in Lancaster!
McLennan Contracting ranks on the first page of Google for all of the keywords you see here.
This screenshot represents McLennan Contracting's Ahrefs rank as of the end of 2021. As you can see they had a rank of 27,092,332 (their ranking among all the websites out there), a UR (URL rating) of 22, a DR (Domain rating) of 6, 629 backlinks (links to their website from other sites), 414 referring domains (the number of sites linking to them), 550 organic keywords, and 43 organic traffic.
Now, let's look at their Ahrefs rank as of October 2022. They almost cut their Ahrefs rank in half (lower is better - it means they're in the top 15 million websites now vs. the top 28 million).
They have almost doubled their backlinks! I can't tell you how important this is. Backlinks are one of the most important metrics for website rankings and traffic. They are also some of the most difficult to get.
Referring domains didn't go up much, but organic keywords tripled, and organic traffic increased from a sad 43 to a very impressive 1.5k!
Email marketing and social media
The Remodeler Marketing Blueprint helps improve marketing efforts across the board. Email marketing and social media marketing are no different!
The above represents email marketing results up to this point for McLennan Contracting. As you can see, the open rate, click rate, CTR, and reply rate declined during this period, but we must account for the 364% increase in sent emails. Despite increasing the frequency dramatically, they maintained an above-average open rate for our industry (the average email open rate in the construction industry is 22.51%) and double the average click rate (the average email click rate in the construction industry is 2.51%).
*Construction Industry Email Marketing Benchmarks courtesy of Mailchimp
The above only represents a fraction of the social media results McLennan Contracting has achieved in 2022.
Just 2-3 of these high-perfomrance reels represent higher
view and engagement rates than some remodeling companies
get in an entire year.
One of these reels has 11.6k views and hundreds of likes. Many are in the thousands and high hundreds, and this is just Instagram Reels. Mclennan Contracting has also received similar results across all social networks. For the sake of brevity, we'll only go through one other example.
The screenshot you see here showcases website traffic from Pinterest alone. From 2021 to now, they have received 6,754 website visits from Pinterest. 4594 came from this year alone, and you can see the dramatic increases starting in 2021 but spiking as soon as we started Blueprint implementation in January 2022.
Real Search Engine Rankings
At Builder Funnel, we take a lot of pride in helping design-build remodelers and custom home builders get results. At the heart of many of these results is helping companies like yours rank in the search engines - our bread and butter!
In this section, we'll show you current screenshots of McLennan Contracting's first page rankings in Google for the most valuable keywords a remodeler can rank for - Location + Remodeling Keywords.
Let's not waste any time! Above you'll see how McLennan Contracting ranks #2 in Google Maps / Local Search Results for "Lancaster Remodeling" (probably the most valuable remodeling + location keyword for their location). In addition, you can see they rank #7 in the regular search results for the same term. 
In this graphic, you can see McLennan Contracting ranking #1 for "Lancaster Bathroom Remodeling", one of their top three project types for their business. In addition, they are also showing up in the local search / Google Map results ranking #2.
In this graphic, you can see McLennan Contracting ranking #1 for "Lancaster Basement Remodeling" another one of their most popular services. They rank #3 for this term in the local search engine results.
Let's not discount the fact that McLennan shows up in the top 3 of the local search results and Google maps. As you can see, they have respectable competition. That's why it's so important to not just chase the top 10 regular search engine results but also rankings locally. 
One more example when it comes to search engine rankings - McLennan Contracting ranks in the Featured Snippets for multiple terms. One of them is "Lancaster Remodeling Cost". By doing this, McLennan Contracting owns the conversation on remodeling cost in the Lancaster area. By providing accurate cost numbers, averages, details, factors, and other information, McLennan is helping local homeowners...
- define exactly how much remodeling costs in the area
- understand factors that effect remodeling costs
- and make informed decisions about their projects
Doing this allows them to be the trusted advisor
on the subject and often the first company potential
clients turn to discuss their projects.
â Revenue goal achieved
In preparation for this case study, we reached out to McLennan Contracting to ask how they were progressing toward their goals.
We are now happy to say that they achieved their revenue goal in 2022!
As you may remember, their goal outlined in the blueprint was increasing revenue from $1.8 million to $2.1-2.3 million.
they expect close at least $2.24 million by the end of 2022
This puts us right into our goal range! And not just that...
As of November 2022, they will now exceed their revenue goal!
"As of today, we've exceeded our revenue goal for 2022! We anticipate closing another $100-$200k by the end of the year. đ"
- Alison McLennan, McLennan Contracting
âŠī¸ Profit goal pivot
As of this time, the profit goal as set forth in the Blueprint has not been achieved. But before we discount all the results, there are a few reasons this happened:
- Some expenses that should have been booked in 2021 were booked in 2022 which affected Q1 profit.
- In Q1, they also updated how their carpenters handle project schedules. They did a great job keeping things on time and hit budgets within acceptable margins. However, the master schedule was not stacked effectively, so the team didn't produce enough volume each month to offset overhead and hit profit goals.
It was a wake-up call, but Mclennan Contracting got everything back on track and since then, they have made enough headway that it's possible they'll hit their profit goal by the end of the year.
This case study will be updated in 2023 as soon as the results are in!
â project size increased
One of the biggest changes McLennan Contracting had this year has been project size! In 2020, their average project size was $35k and now it's $99k - almost a 3x increase in 3 years! While they are still learning and growing into these larger projects, this represents a positive shift for their business allowing them to do fewer projects while hitting the same or greater revenue!
â 2022 Objectives Achieved
As outlined in the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint, we set a few objectives for this year that would best support company growth for McLennan Contracting. Builder Funnel is happy to say that McLennan Contracting has already completed or is on track to complete all 3 of these objectives this year!
âī¸ Hire new staff to handle company growth
Here is a snippet directly from an email thread between Builder Funnel and McLennan Contracting -
Achieved. We hired an Office Coordinator in February and a Design Coordinator in April. Instead of hiring additional field crew, we've been focused on training and defining our production systems so we have a solid foundation for new carpenters.
âī¸ determine if small projects will continue & how
Achieved. We decided to simplify and limit small projects to existing clients and "select" new clients, and to do everything as T&M to cut out the need to create estimates. Small project calls go straight to our Production Manager. She vets the client, explains our process and rates, sends an approval for signature, and schedules the work. And those small projects have been helpful at filling gaps in the schedule, which is our main reason for taking them.
âī¸ generate leads consistently to hit goals
On track. Leads were very strong the first half of this year, and the difference in level of qualification has been enormous. As I mentioned earlier, the size of project people are looking for has gone way up, and we're not talking to nearly as many leads who have unrealistic budget expectations (or who overemphasize budget).
Results conclusion
By utilizing Builder Funnel's Remodeler Marketing Blueprint, McLennan Contracting has made accomplishments across the board when it comes to marketing metrics, revenue, and goals in general!
Their progress won't stop here either. They will be also working with Builder Funnel for Year Two of the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint where we will identify what isn't working and what's working best. We'll make their best marketing efforts go even further and prune practices not getting results to save time.
McLennan Contracting will be continuing to grow, stay on the cutting edge of marketing and advertising, and continue to help their wonderful clients, demonstrate admirable core values, and be the best at what they do!
Takeaways & Conclusion
Wow. That was a lot. If you made it this far, congratulations!
If we had one key takeaway from this case study, it would be this -
Whether it's builder funnel or someone else, invest in a holistic marketing strategy. don't fall behind, but set your business on the path to success. don't wait - do this now, and you will benefit from this for years to come.
We hope this case study has inspired you to see how a normal remodeling company can go from average to off-the-charts in just a short period of time. Now...it's your turn.
If you are ready to stop wasting money on disjointed marketing efforts and instead incorporate a marketing strategy that actually works, Builder Funnel wants to help!
Our Remodeler Marketing Blueprint is designed specifically to help remodelers achieve their goals, grow their companies, and create marketing systems that get results year after year.
The Remodeler Marketing Blueprint has a one-time fee starting at $20,000 (with payment options available). There are additional costs for extra services or if Builder Funnel implements the plan.
This might come as sticker shock to those of you reading this case study, BUT our systems and processes have been refined over 12 years. We've written thousands of blog posts, tens of thousands of social posts, and thousands of emails. We've helped over a hundred remodelers and custom home builders find marketing success. Don't believe me? Just read our Marketing Results.
If you invest in your own marketing, if you invest in the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint, you'll set your company on the path to gaining real, tangible results from your marketing and advertising efforts. And we're not just talking vanity metrics - we have tied back traffic, leads, and sales and real revenue, project size increases, and profit to the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint! You read this case study - you know what we can do!
Thank you
We would also like to take a moment to thank McLennan Contracting for all their hard work as they committed to the Remodeler Marketing Blueprint process! McLennan Contracting loves its customers, treats its team well, and has been a fantastic company to partner with! We're excited for their future success and happy to share in their journey along the way.