How to Create a Remodeler Marketing Plan for 2023

Creating a marketing plan for your remodeling company is not a difficult task. But, it is a task that requires some thought and planning in order to execute it properly. We have all heard the old saw “if you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

This certainly applies to a remodeling company. So, let’s look at where you want to go in order to build the right marketing road to get you there successfully. To do that, answer the following questions:

1. Who do you want to be when you grow up?

Most of us get into remodeling because it is a way to put food on the table and utilizes skills that we have developed over a number of years. But, at some point, we need to stop looking at our remodeling work as a “job” and look at it as a “business.”

It is there to assist us in meeting our long term personal and family goals. Establishing these goals first is paramount.

• When do you want to retire?
• What kind of net worth do you need to have to do that?
• What kind of yearly income do you need to meet your desired lifestyle?
• Do you need to put kids through college?
• Are there other activities and interests you would like to pursue besides remodeling?

Take 30 minutes to quickly jot down your answers to these questions (as well as others that come to you) as you look into your future. Don’t belabor your answers – typically what is top of mind to you is pretty close to the mark.

2. What is it going to take to get you there? 

Ask yourself, based on your answers above, what sort of revenue and, more importantly, what profitability would you need to meet those goals?

Do you need to be at $1 million, $3 million, $5 million in revenue?

Does your profitability need to be at 5%, 10%, 15%?

3. Where are you now? (establish your baseline)

My guess is that your current actual revenue and profitability doesn’t quite match your “needed” revenue and profitability. This discrepancy will be the basis of your marketing plan - you now know where you are and where you need to go.

4. Filling the Gap

Let’s say you are currently at $1 million is sales and your profitability is at 5%. After analyzing your long term financial and personal goals, you can see that you need to be at $2.5 million and 8% profitability. (I’m assuming that you are taking a reasonable salary and that is included in your monthly expenses – it is not your profit).

This means you need to develop an additional $1.5 million in sales and drive down your costs from 95% to 92%. These become your benchmarks.

Efficiency of your operation (reducing cost as a percentage of sales) is a topic for another blog. Let’s just concentrate on the increase of sales and the marketing plan to get there.

5. What size are your jobs?

Look at your average job size over the last 2 years. Take your revenue and divide it by the number of jobs your performed. Jot down the size of your smallest and largest jobs as well.

This gives you an idea as to how focused and efficient your operation is. An operation that has a smallest job of $1,500 and biggest job of $400,000 is a lot less focused than an operation that has a range of $15,000 to $75,000.

6. How many more jobs do you need?

If your average job size is $75,000 and you need $1.5 million more in sales, then you need 20 more jobs per year or 5 more per quarter.

7. How many more prospects do I need to talk to?

Think back over the last year (hopefully, you have prospect data to refer to). How many face to face conversations did you need to have to land one job? 5 to land 1? 10 to land 1?

If you needed to talk to 5 prospects to land a job, you would need to have 100 more conversations in a year, or 25 more in a quarter, to land 20 more jobs per year.

8. Where can I find them?

Now that you have a target number of conversations, you can finally develop a strategy to reach that goal of 100 additional conversations.

Identify where your conversations or prospects come from now: word of mouth, website, content marketing, SEO, social media, Google and Facebook ads, home shows, direct mail, etc. Write down the number and percentage from each source.

For instance:

Word of Mouth                               176                       80%

Website                                             11                        5%                      

Google and Facebook ads             11                        5%

Home Shows                                    22                        10%

TOTALS                                              220                       100%

Ask yourself, in which sources can I increase my raw numbers? For instance, can I find a way to increase my word-of-mouth conversations? Typically, while word of mouth can have some of your highest conversion rates, it is notoriously difficult to proactively increase this number.

Can you increase the number of home shows? If you are just doing a few shows and there are others available to you, this is a number you can control.

Can you increase your web traffic and conversion rates through blogging and SEO? Can you increase your Google and Facebook ads? These are also numbers that you can control.

9. Develop an action plan around your controllable lead sources

Once you’ve determined your best controllable lead sources, whether its home shows, website leads or direct mail, develop an action plan to increase your leads. This might entail running more Google Ads to drive prospects to a landing page where they can download a valuable resource guide. It might be signing up for two more home shows.

Or it might be developing a strategic content and SEO plan. These are simply tactics and will be unique to your remodeling business. But your tactics will now be more effective because you have taken the time to identify your best controllable lead sources. These tactics form your plan.

Conclusion

Creating an effective marketing plan starts with the end in mind. That means taking time to reflect on your long-term goals, identifying the revenue and profitability targets to get there, determining your job size, and backing into the number of jobs, conversations, and leads required, and where they come from, to hit those targets.

Only then can you develop an action plan with specific tactics to boost your leads from your controllable lead sources.

Obviously, there is much more detail that one could explore on each of these points. Hopefully though, this 30,000-foot view helps you start moving forward on your marketing plan.  

Need help developing your marketing plan?  Apply to work with Builder Funnel today!