Houzz for Contractors, Home Builders, and Remodelers

Is your contracting, home building, or remodeling company on Houzz? If not, I'm sure you're considering it! We have all of the information that you need in this blog including whether or not you should join, how to optimize your profile, and much more! For more tips from us about Houzz, read our blog about common Houzz mistakes and how to avoid them. 

What Is Houzz?

Houzz is a community social media platform that allows home builders, remodelers, and general contractors to connect with people who are looking for those respective services. The consumers can browse images and research companies and the construction companies can earn leads and win projects.

Houzz provides a place for matchmaking between consumers can home improvement professionals. To earn leads, you can optimize your profile in many ways like populating it with a portfolio of photos or ideabooks. 

How Does Houzz Work?

Houzz is basically a combination of social media and a search engine for people searching for inspiration for their home project or searching for services such as remodeling, home building, or specialized contractor services. When people are looking for the right contractor, they can head to Houzz to compare companies and get ideas to bring their vision to life.

The social media aspect comes into play with those customers becoming potential leads and messaging your company if they are impressed by your profile. To get seen by users, make sure to use the right keywords, provide ideabooks, photos, encourage past clients to leave reviews, and respond to messages quickly and effectively. Check out the link below to review our Houzz plan in our social media checklist. 

What Are the Pros Being on Houzz?

• It is free! You can have a basic profile without any cost.
• It is where the customers are! There are over 40 million monthly customers on Houzz. 
• You can build relationships and a reputation by providing resources for users like photos and answers in the Q&A thread. 

What are the Cons of Being on Houzz?

• There is a lot of competition with over 2.3 million remodelers, contractors, and home builders on Houzz.
• If you don't have high-quality photos, your company might get overlooked easily. 
• Houzz prioritizes those who pay for the highest subscription which can make it expensive to stay competitive.

If you want to read more about some recent changes that Houzz made, and our stance on them, check out our open letter to Houzz. 

Should Contractors, Remodelers, and Home Builders Be on Houzz?

In general, we recommend that you should be on Houzz. With so many customers actively searching for construction services on Houzz, you are missing out on a lot of potential leads if your company is not utilizing Houzz.

On the contrary, if you do not have adequate time to optimize your profile, you might now gain much of a benefit from Houzz. Thus, if you don't put the proper effort into Houzz with things like slow responses to customers, you could risk getting a low ranking on Houzz which may negatively impact your reputation. 

Is Houzz Worth it for Contractors, Remodelers, and Home Builders?

Overall, we think Houzz is worth it for your construction company as long as you can invest time into it. Since a basic business profile is free, you have minimal to lose, and a lot of potential customers to gain. Since Houzz gives preferred placement on their platform to companies who subscribe to their highest tier, it might make it more difficult to land projects with a free profile depending on the competition in your market. 

How to Join Houzz

It is pretty easy to join Houzz. Here are some steps to follow:

• Head to this page 
• Click "Create Free Professional Profile"
• Submit your email and a password
• Enter your company's name, phone number, and professional category
• Add descriptions of your company and services, photos,  keywords

How Much Does Houzz Cost?

We've seen a lot of you ask, "Is Houzz free?" The answer is yes - to an extent. Having a basic business account on Houzz is completely free. In order to gain more traction on Houzz, you can upgrade to a Houzz Pro subscription which is a marketing software that also offers different levels of marketing and advertising benefits depending on the subscription. Houzz Pro costs $55 - $999+ as of May 2021!

Houzz Profile Tips

Optimizing your profile on Houzz is going to be a great contributor to your success with the platform. Here are some tips for optimizing your Houzz profile:

• Write a thorough business description
• Choose a good profile picture and banner image
• Upload a lot of high-quality photos
• Upload ideabooks and projects 
• Make sure to answer questions and messages quickly and effectively 
• Utilize relevant keywords

For more detailed tips, check out our Houzz Tips blog. 

How to Get Clients from Houzz

If you're looking to earn clients and sell your business on Houzz, you'll need to make a good impression on other users. Here are some tips:

• Ask clients to leave reviews and respond to those reviews
• Provide ideabooks, project galleries, and high quality photos
• Offer your professional knowledge and insights in discussion threads
• Follow and engage with relevant users and other companies 
• Win "Best of Houzz" awards

How to Use Houzz for Marketing

If you're looking for some Houzz marketing tips, remember that Houzz is ultimately a social media platforms specifically for home builders, remodelers, and general contractors to connect with and provide content for individuals looking for those respective services. With that said, your main focus should be creating content for users to find and connect with you. This content can include the aforementioned ideabooks, project galleries, photos, and discussion responses. 

You should also inform your clients and prospects that you are on Houzz by linking your profile on your website, in emails, and sharing any Houzz awards that you win on other platforms. Encourage all of your clients to leave reviews on Houzz, even if they connected with you in other ways. Having a nearly 5-star rating on Houzz with a lot of reviews is a great way to catch the eye of browsers. 

How to Earn a Best of Houzz Award

The criteria for winning Best of Houzz awards comes down to your client reviews and how well your photos perform. There are a few awards that Houzz gives out annually. The three Best of Houzz awards are:

• Best of Houzz Service
• Best of Houzz Design
• Best of Houzz Photography

Winning a Best of Houzz award is a great way to gain exposure and further promote your remodeling, contracting, or home building company. When you win one of these awards, a badge will automatically get added to your Houzz profile, and you will be able to post images with these awards on your website and other social media pages. 

How to Advertise on Houzz

If you want additionally advertising on Houzz, you will need to upgrade to Houzz Pro. With Houzz Pro, you will have access to the following marketing and advertising benefits:

• Targeted local advertising
• A premium Houzz profile
• Website services
• Insights and analytics

The different tiers of Houzz Pro come with additional benefits. You can find out more about those benefits and subscription levels here. 

How Do I Delete My Houzz Account?

If you decide that you no longer want your company to be listed on Houzz, you can delete or deactivate your account to remove it from their platform. To do so, head to Houzz's contact support page and select the proper information. Make sure to use the email address that is associated with your Houzz business profile in this form.

Houzz on Social Media

If you want to follow Houzz to engage to stay up to date with their featured content and updates, you can find them on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. If you have work that you are proud of, you can try to get featured in one of Houzz's blogs that they often share on social media. 

Final Thoughts on Houzz

Overall, Houzz is a unique social media platform that can benefit your remodeling, contracting, or home building website if you have enough time to invest in your profile. We definitely recommend giving it a try, if you haven't already. Since a basic profile is completely free, the main cost is just the time while there could be a huge benefit with potential leads from the 40 million monthly users searching for home improvement services.