Local Business Ad Strategies: Leveraging Buying Cycles and Awareness Levels

As a local business, your ad strategy won’t be successful (or nearly as successful) if you’re not using the length of the buying cycle and awareness levels to build your ad strategy.

This is what I use to craft the types of ads that we would be shown to a local audience for any industry or any market. The most important thing to think about right off the bat is how long your customer’s buying cycle is.

Short vs Long Buying Cycles for Local Businesses

There are some businesses that have very short buying cycles.

For instance, if you are an emergency restoration and water cleanup company. That’s something that happens and you need someone right away. You’re going to be making a very quick decision about the company that you hire. The strategy that you would need to build around is going to be significantly different than something that takes a long time to think about.

Things that are the higher ticket, they naturally tend to have a longer buying cycle. That’s not always the case but that usually is a pretty good gauge. There are some statistics out there that say that it can take for any business up to two years for someone to make that buying decision.

There’s a small percentage of people that are going to make that decision within the first three months, but there is a much more significant portion that is going to make that purchase over the next two years.

If you don’t know how long it’s taking your audience to make these decisions, you’re not going to have a good plan in place that follows them through the length of the buying cycle. That’s very important if you are a business that it could take someone up to two years to decide. You can’t expect results right away or a return on investment specifically.

You may see results. You may get leads. You may get foot traffic but if you’re looking for an immediate return, you’re not being realistic.

This is a very important thing to know. If you don’t know, you absolutely need to find out. This is also something that’s gonna affect your re-targeting strategy, something that’s going to affect your email strategy and your manual follow-up.

Understanding Awareness Levels for Your Local Business

You must be crystal clear about the overall awareness levels of those making a buying decision.

You’ve got the top of the funnel, which is simply being aware of either a problem or a product.

Then you’re gonna start to develop interest.

It’s going to lead you into the decision-making process and finally, the purchase.

There is no one length of time that people make these decisions. You need to know exactly how long your ideal client is taking if you need to pull past customers. Or simply pull past data on the time that someone reached out to you versus the time that they purchased pull as many of those as you can.

You will start to see a pattern or at bare minimum an average on that. This is what I call the local buying cycle sequence.

Those awareness levels should depend on the content and ads that you’re putting out to your audience and at what time they’re seeing them.

Most businesses never consider that there are people who may need them, but they don’t even know they have a problem. That happens more often than you would think.

You’ve got the problem unaware level, where they don’t yet know there is a problem to solve.

You have the problem aware level – They know they have a problem.

You’ve got a solution aware level – They know there is a solution to their problem.

Then you’ll have YOUR solution aware, meaning they’re aware of your specific business and the solutions you provide.

Then, they’re going to make the decision to purchase.

The goal is for us to funnel people from the top to the bottom and walk them through these different levels via our content and our ads.

Utilizing Traffic Temperatures in Local Marketing

What else can impact your buying cycle sequences?

Traffic Temperatures

Different Approaches to the Traffic Temperatures:

The ads that you’re sending these people are going to be significantly different depending on their traffic temperature.

For the most part, a cold audience is either going to be a problem unaware or problem aware.

Your warm audience tends to be solution aware and your solution aware and finally your hot audience there.

They’ve either already purchased or they’re ready to buy.

Cold traffic, these are the people who don’t know who you are. They’ve never engaged with you. They’re not familiar with you. They have no trust with you.

Then you’ve got your warm audience. These are people who do know who you are. They have engaged with you. There’s already more of a relationship started there.

Your hot audience is going to be someone who has purchased from you in the past. Maybe someone who has reached out and inquired. They could be:

You could define these slightly differently based on the type of business that you have. But overall that’s how I established the different levels.

The majority of your leads are going to come from warm and hot traffic. The goal has to be to turn cold traffic into warm traffic and so on. We’ve got a much larger audience at the top. We just want to make it smaller and smaller by identifying the best prospects and people who are most interested today.

There you have it. If you simply leverage buying cycles and awareness levels in your advertising, you’ll be lightyears ahead of other local businesses and your advertising will immediately see an improvement in terms of results and ROI.

Have questions? Drop them below. Want to talk about working together? Visit alliebloydmedia.com/local-call to schedule a time to talk!

March 25, 2020March 27, 2020

4 Things Local Business Should Focus On When Using Paid Ads

Why do local business need to leverage social media and more specifically paid ads on social in 2020?

There are a variety of reasons, But number one, you need to be marketing aggressively if you want to stay relevant.

You’re also in a local community where building relationships are very important and I think there’s no better way than social media. You can develop that trust, that sense of credibility and really connect with your audience on a different level.

So how does this apply to you?

Well if you’re reading this, then you are likely a local business owner. Unfortunately there is not a ton of information out there that’s been designed specifically for you.

There’s tons of information for online businesses, e-commerce businesses, coaches. But when it comes to actual local marketing strategy, there’s almost a void in the marketplace.

I want to make sure you have a very clear picture of what you can do to succeed. You also don’t want to become irrelevant in your community. If you have a local business, you’ve worked hard to build that business up.

You want to make sure that you’re going to be for years to come that you are front and center in the minds of the consumers in your community. Maybe what you’re doing right now is working just fine. But you feel like it could be working better potentially what you’re doing is working really well now. But it could stop working so well in the future.

So this is something you should always have in your arsenal when the time is right. I see no better time than right now. This is a great way to do everything your business needs to do to increase your revenue through social media marketing.

You also really have to be aware of the competition in your marketplace. Not only are there other local businesses just like yours in your community. You’re also competing against online or e-commerce businesses in many industries.

There are big corporations that have massive marketing budgets. You’ve got to find a way to stand out. A lot of those big businesses are not doing this type of marketing so it becomes an amazing way to really set yourself apart.

There are things you can focus on to improve your ROI on social, or any marketing platform for your local business.

If you can get these four things right, I can guarantee that you’re gonna see the results that you’re looking for with your paid ads on Facebook, Instagram or even other social media platforms.

Your strategy guides you at every step
Your offer gets your audience excited to convert
Your content builds your audience
Your follow-up converts your leads into customer Continue reading “4 Things Local Business Should Focus On When Using Paid Ads”

March 15, 2020March 23, 2020

Local businesses and Covid-19: How to survive or thrive in uncertain times

I hate to jump on the bandwagon here, but my clients, students, friends and referral partners are all anxious about what this “Corona lockdown” means for us.

The good news is that there are things you can do to continue business growth if you keep calm and play your cards right.

Tips for local businesses to weather the Covid-19 storm and come out on the other side:

1. If your local business is a crowded retail location or busy space, have reservation or appointment only options. This will help those who are serious buyers still come with confidence.

2. Be willing to do delivery, in-home consults, or virtual consultations. Remind your prospects that it’s crowds and very close personal contact, not human interaction of all kind, that should be limited.

3. During the Coronavirus outbreak, local businesses should take any possible product sales online for the time being. If you need help with this, let me know. You may have more options than you think.

4. Grow you email list, Nurture your current lists and take the time to develop content and engage with your audience as a group or individually.

5. If you’re hosting in-person events, switch to webinars. We’re doing this with clients of mine for the time being.

6. Showcase product options on social media and give people the opportunity to buy through messages.

7. Send out messages or emails confirming the cleanliness precautions your business is taking and letting them know that it is, in fact, safe to shop/consult/work. It has been repeatedly stated that we do not have to limit human interaction, but groups are discouraged, and social distancing in smaller groups should be observed. If you’re coming into someone’s home, offer to wear gloves and a mask if it makes them feel more comfortable and still allows you to do your job.

8. Create brand awareness by doing community outreach such as donating to food banks for those affected by not being able to work (if you can). Promote the content and build goodwill in your local area. You may get picked up by TV or News outlets and get even more free PR for doing a good deed. Win/Win.

9. Cut out wasted spending. That doesn’t mean sales, marketing, customer service or your people. It means cable in the office, Starbucks, stocked fridge full of snacks, high-end services you never use, etc. If you have UNUSED subscriptions, cancel them. Double down on the things to help you gain more clients and increase revenue. If you wouldn’t want a client to cancel their services with you due to these outside circumstances, don’t cancel on your current commitments. It all comes full circle.

10. Sell gift cards online for full or discounted price. Put together birthday, Christmas or anniversary packages to be used during the year that will be purchased regardless, but collect the cash NOW.

11. Invest your time in educating yourself in how to emergency proof your business long term if anything like this happens again. You CAN have a local business / online hybrid model or have an online marketing system that can sustain you through any tough time you may have. If you can generate an ROI whenever you need to essentially, it’s worth it.

12. Don’t panic. You will survive this. The more we panic, the less we spend. The less we spend, the worse the economy becomes. Don’t contribute to the problem. Stay safe, but support other local business owners who need you as much as you need them. Come together as the entrepreneur community to support each other in a time of uncertainty!

I hope these tips help. Feel free to reach out if you need someone to explain how to take parts of your business online. I’m happy to help.

If you want to schedule a call to learn how we can help you ensure you’re put in this position moving forward, and that your online marketing is as effective as possible when this is all over, visit alliebloydmedia.com/local-call

All the best,

Allie Bloyd

Need help marketing or taking your business online? Schedule a call with me or my team!

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April 8, 2019November 10, 2019

Allie Bloyd Featured on Digital Marketer’s Perpetual Traffic!

“You are a Complete Powerhouse. What a Wealth of Knowledge you just shared!” – Molly Pittman

On Tuesday, I checked something major off of my bucket list. I was a featured guest on my very favorite podcast, which happens to be one of the top Facebook Ads Podcasts in the WORLD!

One of the hosts, Molly Pittman, is someone I’ve looked up to in marketing for years, so to hear that from someone I respect so much in this industry was the coolest thing ever!

Apart from that, I’ve been overwhelmed by the response of listeners this week!

Digital Marketer’s Podcast, Perpetual Traffic, focuses a lot on e-commerce and national businesses, but I got an opportunity to educate listeners on the local business strategies I’ve used to generate 7+ figures in sales.

Just knowing that this has already impacted business owners and marketers across the world makes my heart really smile.

While I shared SO much in our 45 minute session, I tried to do it in a way that is easy to understand and that can give businesses of all sizes and types some great ideas on how they can level up their digital marketing and truly start to see a trackable ROI.

So the big question…how can you check it out?

>> https://www.digitalmarketer.com/podcast/perpetual-traffic/facebook-ads-for-local-business/

So give it a listen, and then please reply back and let me know what you thought!

I’d love to hear from you and clarify any questions you had about the episode!

If you need help with marketing your local business, I want to work with you! You can schedule your free call at alliebloydmedia.com/breakthrough!

April 3, 2019April 8, 2019

The 3 Key Things I Learned from Funnel Hacking Live 2019

This year, I was blessed enough to be able to attend Funnel Hacker Live, one of the country’s biggest and most exciting marketing conferences for online marketers & business owners.

To sweeten the pot, I decided to go down a day early to to attend a 15 hour Mastermind hosted by 3 of the industry’s top marketers & entrepreneurs.

It. Was. Awesome!

After I got back, I’ve had several clients, friends and business contacts ask me if it was worth it, and what the major takeaways were from the event.

While I had SO many AHA moments, there were a few things that really stood out that I wanted to share, in an effort to help you benefit!

1. Content is more important than ever.

If you’re trying to market in 2019, you better be producing high quality content, and often.

High quality doesn’t mean you need a video production team following you around, or a staff of writers pumping out content 24/7, but you do need a plan, a system, and the right content that your audience will respond to.

It encouraged me to refine my system to develop over a years worth of content in one sitting, allowing myself, my team and my clients to feel as if they never have a content block.

2. Diversify Your Marketing

I’ll be honest, it’s not something I love to hear. I help clients with several marketing mediums and platforms, but I LOVE facebook advertising, and it’s working so well that why would I spend a lot of time seeking other options?

But It’s necessary. Facebook may not be around forever, and if that day comes, you better not have all your eggs in one basket.

That’s why you need video.
You need blogs,
You need an email list that you can market to.

So make sure this year you sticking with what’s working, but you’re building your assets and your presence in other areas in the event that one option becomes obsolete.

3. It’s not always about getting more clients, it’s about selling more to your existing clients.

This can apply to any business. There are a few ways that any business can increase revenue. You can sell to more people, you can increase your prices, you can increase your margins, or you can sell more to the people who are already buying from you.

Typically, the easiest route is to offer more to the people who already know, like, and trust you.

You’ve already done the work to win them over as a client. It’s so much cheaper to sell to an existing client than to acquire a new one.

You can do this by creating new offers, new products or services, and improving your follow up marketing through email or messenger to remain top of mind.

While I learned a million incredible things at FHL 2019, these were the 3 that really stood out.

If you feel like you need help with implementing these systems in your business this year, I’d be happy to jump on a quick call and see if we might be a good fit to help you out.

It’s really easy, just click here: alliebloydmedia.com/breakthrough

February 24, 2019February 24, 2019

How Do I Create an Online Quiz for My Business?

Quizzes are one of the best ways that home improvement or remodeling businesses can grow their email lists, engage their audience, and add a little fun to their social media or web assets!

A quiz will allow to do 2 things:

Allow your audience to self identify as a potential customer by simply taking the quiz
Allow you to diagnose and prescribe a solution for your prospects problem on a personal level.

Both of these help your online marketing efforts substantially.

The question I often get asked is, HOW would I go about writing a quiz? It seems complicated and time consuming. Is it really that difficult?

The answer is NO! It’s not that hard if you have a plan going in. Quizzes are hugely beneficial, but if done the wrong way, you’ll waste your time, so I’ll cover the 6 easy steps you can take to create an engaging quiz in no time at all!

How To Create A Quiz

Step 1: Deciding on your topic

This is the single most important step in the quiz creation process. A quiz won’t help your online marketing efforts if no one wants to take it. There are three types of quizzes that perform the best:

The “Killer” Quiz – What’s your downfall, what’s your worst quality, etc.
The Graded Quiz – Ex: How Good of a DIYer are you? Get your score!
The Identity Quiz – What’s your bathroom design style, what HGTV personality are you?

Putting your quiz in one of those 3 categories is usually a good idea. These have been proven to be the most clicked on and most popular.

Then, you want to decide what what product or service your quiz will be about. I would always choose the option with the highest potential, highest interest and/or highest margin. You want to sell people something via your quiz. You want to make it as easy as possible to do that.

If you’re a kitchen remodeler, you could do it about kitchen remodeling as a whole, or about kitchen cabinets specifically. The choice is yours. You can always create more over time, so no pressure!

The final step in picking your topic is to make a list of your customers most asked questions. Try and find a question that you could “answer” or address with your quiz.

Step 2: Picking your platform

The second step is which quiz maker will you use for your online quizzes. I have two favorites:

InteractQuiz
Thrive Quiz Builder

Both of these quiz building tools are easy to use and will give you a great end result. Creating a quiz can be easy, you just need the right tool to start you off on the right foot.

Step 3: Creating Your Offers

Your quiz needs to be designed to SELL YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES! Do not forget this. So the question is, what can you offer your your audience related to your quiz topic. Now, don’t forget, your product or service is NOT your offer (see my last blog if you need to read up on this!).

For instance, if you’re doing a quiz on kitchen remodeling, you could have a loss leader: Free sink base cabinet, you could have a gated content offer: A step by step kitchen remodeling video series, kitchen remodeling webinar or live event, or a product preview offer such as free kitchen design or a free estimate. Map these out first.

Step 4: Crafting Your Outcomes

Now that you know what you want to offer your audience, you need to create your outcomes. You do this before ever deciding on your questions.

If we’re using the offers above:

Kitchen remodeling video series
Free Sink Base Cabinet
Free Kitchen Design or Installation Quote

What types of outcomes could we create to fit within these offers?

If your quiz is a scored quiz on Kitchen Remodeling DIY skills “Are you Ready For a DIY kitchen remodel? Get Your Readiness Score Here!”, then, you need to build levels of readiness as your outcomes.

“You’re READY to take on a DIY Kitchen Remodel!” This could be an offer for a free sink base cabinet. Because they can install the products themselves, they just need to buy the products. People never just need 1 sink base cabinet. It needs to match the rest of your cabinets, so getting this free sink base can lead to an entire cabinet and/or countertop purchase. This offer will vary depending on if you sell products or just install, but you get the idea.
“You’re not quite ready for a DIY remodel, you need some more info!” This offer would be your event, webinar or training series. This could get you an email subscriber to continue to market to, or build a strong trust and connection so that they use your products or services.
“You’re not a good fit for a DIY Remodel” This could be free design services or install quote. They are NOT a good fit to do it themselves, so an obvious next step is for you to do it for them!

See how that works?

Step 5: Building Your Questions

Now that you have your offers and your outcomes, you need to build questions that will address each of the outcomes. I suggest that for people just starting out, you have the same number of answer options per answer question as you do outcomes, so for this example, 3 options.

Then, you need to lump your topic into “buckets”. Anything that you find important in this topic or category should be included.

Examples of “Buckets” for DIY Kitchen Remodeling:

Power Tools
Design and Layout
Project Management
Budgeting
Working with Pros such as electric and plumbing
Knowledge of Building Codes

You can break a few of them down into one or two sub categories if you feel it will have a big impact on determining the outcome. A good quiz is usually 8-15 questions max. You don’t want it to be too long or short, just enough to give you the outcome that is most accurate.

Example Question:

How much experience do you have with power tools?

A. I have a lot of experience – TIED TO OUTCOME 1 – YOU’RE READY!

B. I’ve used them, but I don’t feel 100% Comfortable – TIED TO OUTCOME 2, NOT QUITE READY

C. I’ve never really used them – TIED TO OUTCOME C – NOT A GOOD FIT FOR DIY

It’s that easy.

Step 6: Mapping

Now, it’s time to map your questions to your outcomes. You can do this within your quiz maker tool. Each tool will do this slightly differently, but overall its an easy process.

Your next steps

You’ve successfully found out how to create online quizzes for your home improvement business! Trust me, this could do wonders for your audience and lead generation efforts. Now, the only thing you need to worry about is…

How do you get people to your quiz?

The best ways to do this are through social media marketing and SEO. If you’re experienced in these areas, then you’re all set!

If you’d like to talk to someone who’s experienced in marketing for home improvement and remodeling businesses, I’d love to help drive traffic to your website, your quiz, and generate new leads for your business! Visit alliebloydmedia.com to learn more about how I can help!

February 9, 2019February 9, 2019

How To Choose The Right Facebook Ad Objective

CHOOSING THE RIGHT FACEBOOK AD OBJECTIVE

Hi guys Allie Boyd here, and if you’re watching this video I can only assume it’s because you want to understand Facebook ad objectives.

Facebook ad objectives are the first step in creating your Facebook Ads, so you really need to understand the differences, when you would want to use one over the other, and how they kind of work to deliver your ad to the right people, so I’m gonna go through all of these with you!

I’m going to tell you some of the do’s and don’ts and my personal experience in running Facebook Ads that have been really, really successful.

So as you can see, you’ve got three columns: awareness, consideration, and conversion. It goes back to the entire marketing funnel, which is cold traffic, warm traffic, and hot traffic.

You’ve got awareness for your cold, consideration for your warm, and conversion for your hot.

TYPES OF OBJECTIVES IN FACEBOOK ADS MANAGER

BRAND AWARENESS OBJECTIVE

So under awareness you’ve got brand awareness. The metric that’s going to be used to determine the effectiveness of brand awareness is “ad recall lift”. So this is not something that I personally believe is really easy for Facebook to track, but that is the metric they’re gonna give you. What’s cool about brand awareness for local businesses is you can actually have a “Call Now” button on your ad that will go directly to your phone number. It is the only ad objective that allows you to do that, so that’s what makes it unique.

REACH OBJECTIVE

Reach is simply going to help you get out to the most people possible.

TRAFFIC

Under consideration we’ve got traffic, so this is going to be clicks to your website, landing page views, things like that – getting someone to your external page.

ENGAGEMENT

Engagement is going to be an ad or a post looking for likes, clicks, and shares. This can be very, very powerful, even if your goal is conversions. You could end up using the engagement objective and get a better result in many instances.

APP INSTALLS

App installs. This is going to be for people trying to sell apps. I never really use it it’s not something that me or my clients will ever need, at least not at this point, so don’t know a ton about it, nor do I really think I need to.

VIDEO VIEWS

Video Views. This is another powerful consideration objective. Honestly it could go in the awareness column as well because you’re just looking to get your video out to as many people as possible who could watch it.

You can use this as your cold traffic ad. It’s gonna build your warm audiences really quickly. You can get one, two, three cent video views. What you’re then gonna do is going to create audiences based on people who have watched 25%, 50%, or 75%, so that you can target them later with offers based on what your video is about.

Video views is something I use all the time. I highly encourage it for newer advertisers to start building their warm audiences quickly, so create a really educational helpful video and get started!

LEAD GENERATION

Lead generation is going to be for lead forms. This is a form that they click on and it opens directly in facebook. It’s going to auto populate with their personal information and you can add some custom questions. It’s really great for a lot of local businesses, however the downfall is that sometimes your quality of lead could be lower because if the email address that Facebook has on file for you is not the email you currently use, if you don’t manually change that, you’re goint to be giving the advertiser a bad email address. That is really kind of the only thing that I’ve seen with that is that the leads can sometimes be a little bit lower quality. But it really depends, so you just need to test it out.

MESSAGES

Messages is one of my favorite objectives! I love using messenger marketing .Connecting my ads directly to messenger is really powerful. This is going to be for a JSON ad, this could be a click to message ad, so you are just looking for people who want to communicate with your business.

Only do this if you have an action for them once they get to messenger, don’t just let them click to messenger and decide what they want to say. You want to prompt them, you want to tell them what they need to message or comment or click on. There’s a lot that goes into that, but it’s a great objective to use.

CONVERSIONS

Then you’ve got conversions. Conversions are going to be something like someone’s signing up for an estimate, signing up for an appointment, a webinar, an event, making a purchase, etc. These are all conversions. Facebook needs about 50 conversions per week to really optimize for this, so if you don’t have the budget for that or if this is a higher dollar product and you’re not going to get 50 conversions a week, it’s probably best to use something like traffic or even engagement (even potentially reach). Even though your goal is conversion, you can use other objectives to still achieve that goal. It all depends on your business, your budget, your product, and your audience at the end of the day.

CATALOG SALES

Catalog sales is going to be used for retailers or e-commerce businesses. This is going to be for dynamic product ads. It’s gonna pull in your product catalog and show the offerings to people and allow them to buy.

STORE VISITS

Store visits is something that’s really exciting! It’s not rolled out worldwide yet, only select advertisers have access to it. Unfortunately I don’t have access to it yet, so I’m just patiently waiting until that day. It’s basically going to allow you to do what you can do with AdWords, which is track people who’ve engaged with your ad that come into your physical location. This is insanely powerful for bricks and mortar locations and businesses. I will be definitely using that a lot when I’m able to really track it.

CONCLUSION

So that is an overview of marketing objectives and Facebook Ads! Ultimately, you always want to begin with the end in mind. If your goal is to get sales, you need to start testing with conversions, traffic, engagement, and reach. You don’t know which one’s gonna perform better, so test them out!

You can easily a/b test, so just don’t assume that you’re using the right one. However, you can still plan it from the beginning so that you have a better shot of actually achieving your goal.

That’s all I have for today! If you liked this article and video, please comment, share, and subscribe to get a lot more information on Facebook ads, messenger marketing, email marketing, and online marketing as a whole.

I specialize in the home improvement and real estate industry and I’m passionate about sharing my information and I’m glad I was able to help you here today!

January 21, 2019

QUIZ: How Ready is Your Home Improvement Business For Digital Marketing?

January 11, 2019January 12, 2019

Creating Entry Point Offers For Home Improvement Businesses

Today, we’ll discuss creating marketing offers for home improvement businesses. An issue I see with many home improvement retailers, dealers or businesses is the lack of creating entry point offers for their clients. This makes it very difficult to gain traction with social media or online marketing.

Do you know the difference between your product or service and your offer? Most businesses don’t. They think “I’ll promote what I sell, that’s what I offer.” Yet that’s completely off base, and an ineffective way to market your business in the online world.

What is an offer?

Your product or service is what your business creates or provides. So for you, it would be your remodeling services or your kitchen cabinets, countertops, or tile, for example.

Your offer is the way that you package it.

One of the most overlooked type of offers is the entry point offer. Many businesses go straight from the “introduction” (awareness) to “asking for a major commitment” (a big sale), and that’s not how human relationships work. You need to build familiarity and trust.

Your audience needs to know more about you, what you do, and feel confident in what you’re selling. They need to be able to take the relationship at a pace that makes sense.

So how do you do that in your online or offline marketing?

With the 3️⃣ key entry point offers! The main types of offers are:

➕Gated content
➕Loss leaders
➕Product previews

What does that REALLY mean to you? Lets look at some examples.

Gated Content Offers for Home Improvement Businesses

Gated Content offers are ways to get the initial relationship started with typically free content. Gated means that you’re asking for their basic info, such as name and email, in return for content that they would need or want.

Many home improvement businesses see this as a strategy that only “online businesses” would employ, but its for all types of businesses. The strategy behind gated content is to identify what the consumer is interested in, deliver content that builds trust, and to follow it up with quality emails related to that topic, and how you can help.

In some forms of online advertising, you don’t need to collect contact info, such as with a blog. But it only works well if you’re retargeting with advertising to that customer based on the content they read. If that’s the last communication you have with them, it won’t work so well.

Examples of Gated Content:

Templates
Lists or Checklists
Buyers Guides
E-books
White Papers
Blogs (with retargeting, such as facebook ads)
Gated Promotions

So how does that translate to home improvement businesses or retailers?

Kitchen Design Templates
Bathroom Remodel Checklist
List of all tools and materials you’ll need for a bathroom remodel
Kitchen Countertop Buyers Guide
Your Guide To Windows E-book
The top 10 bathroom styles of the year blog
Remodeling Budget Guide
A coupon after you enter your email
A contest you sign up for via email
A sale that you can only shop after entering your email

It’s easy to create quality content for your audience. They’ll get a feel for what you do, who you are, and why you’re a great choice for their needs!

If you’re looking for great content ideas, click here to get 261 Home Improvement Blog Topics for FREE!

Loss Leader Offers for Home Improvement Businesses

What is a loss leader? If you’re in retail, you’ve probably heard this term before. A loss leader is an item that you offer basically at cost (or for free) that will bring customers in, in the hopes of them buying more.

Great loss leaders are useful, but incomplete. It needs to have full value as a stand alone service or offer, but allows you to try and upsell in a very natural way.

Examples of Loss Leaders:

Free gutter cleaning for a roofing company
Free design for a retailer or kitchen/bath remodeler
Free cabinet demo for a kitchen remodeler
Free flooring demo for a flooring installation company
Free Measures
Free Fertilization for Lawncare Companies
First mow for free for Lawncare companies
Free checkup for an HVAC company
Free tile trowel for tile store

I say free, but you could charge a small fee for any of these and still consider it a loss leader. You just want the price to be low enough that its a no-brainer for the customer. You know if they need these services, then they can use the other products or services that you offer. Once you’re working with the customer, it’s an ideal way to ask what else you can help them with. You DO NOT want to require a purchase for this. It needs to be a completely stand alone offer that SHOULD lead to about 80% of customers taking the offer you want them to purchase.

Product Previews for Home Improvement Businesses

A product preview is a way to give clients a taste of what you do. This is typically for a more serious prospect, as there is no perceived value if they don’t intent to buy.

Examples of product preview offers for home improvement businesses:

Design Consultation
Free estimate or quote
Product demonstration

Conclusion:

There are several ways to create entry point offers for home improvement businesses. You just need to see it as a necessary part of your marketing. Odds are, you probably have a product preview offer, but I would strongly encourage you to come up with at least 2 more from gated content and loss leader categories. These are for people lower in the buying funnel, meaning there are a lot more of them out there. This will allow you to snag a larger portion of the market than you’ve previously been able to convert.

I hope this has been helpful! If you have any other questions on offers, online marketing, or marketing your home improvement business, please let me know! I’d love to work with you.

By: Allie Bloyd

October 30, 2018October 30, 2018

Home Improvement Advertising: Educate Audiences to Drive Sales

I’ve spent many years in home improvement advertising, and there is one underlying strategy that has worked time and time again. This strategy generates consistent high value remodeling leads and sales.

The strategy I’m talking about is Education Based Marketing. Education can be used in virtually any advertising medium to help increase brand awareness, lead generation and ultimately drive sales.

I have used these exact strategies to generate 300% web traffic increases, fill up live events, generate high dollar kitchen & bath appointments every day on autopilot, and drive 7 figures in sales.

Why does Education Based Marketing Matter for Home Improvement Advertising?

For those of you who don’t know, what is education based marketing? Education based marketing is using informational content to build trust with consumers. People do business with those that they know, like and trust. This type of content can create those bonds, even if you’ve never met. You can establish yourself as a credible expert that is worthy of their time, money and loyalty.

This is so important for home improvement or home service businesses for several reasons.

Typically this is a large investment. They need to feel confident in order to give you this amount of money.
The industry can have a reputation of “disappearing contractors” taking money and running. You need to establish trust.
You’ll most likely be in this person’s home. Again, trust.
You are dealing with their most valuable asset; their home. If you don’t do a great job, they could lose money, or even be subject to injury.
Competition is fierce. Big box retailers are growing at rapid rates and independent retailers and dealers are popping up left and right. You need to be able to stand out.
Some products are becoming commodities. The right education can show the difference in products or services in order to establish it as better, and not available anywhere else.

There are 4 Key ways that I’ve used Education Based Marketing to drive a high number of leads and sales for my clients in their home improvement advertising plans.

Ways to Use Education In Home Improvement Advertising

Below are the four different ways that I’ve seen massive success using education in my content marketing. You can use all 4, or just one. The choice is up to you, but the more places that you can make this education available to your clients or audience, the better.

Educational Videos
Lead Magnets
Blog Content
Facebook Messenger

Let’s explore each one of these formats and the best ways to use them in your online (or offline) home improvement advertising.

Educational Video

I’ve used video with my clients with great success on platforms like youtube, Instagram, facebook, in sales funnels and on their website.

Videos do a few things. First, they allow you to build rapport in a way that you can’t in any other medium. You can show people your enthusiasm, your effortless knowledge and your passion for your products or services.

No matter how you feel you look on camera, this is an important skill to work on, as the world is moving more towards video every day. For example, I did this blog in a video form on Instagram and Linkedin. Now, I’m writing it in blog form for those who prefer to read. You want to capture all the ways that people like to consume media.

Depending on your specific business, the topics will change, but here are some quick video ideas:

Design Inspired – 10 products to get the Fixer Upper look in your home!
Product Related – How Luxury Vinyl is Made & Why It’s Important
Installation Related – The Dangers of DIY Cabinet Installation told by a Pro
Project Related – The top 10 mistakes that 90% of Homeowners make in a kitchen remodel.
Industry Related – The renovation projects that are increasing home value in today’s market
Comparisons: Engineered Hardwood vs. Solid Hardwood – What’s the difference?

I could literally go on for years with topics, because there is so much to choose from! You can do video in a few different ways as well.

Video Formats

You on camera
Voice over with animation
Whiteboard explainer video
Stock videography with text
Stock videography with voiceover
Slideshow images
Interview Style
Text on screen, Video Sales Letter Style

No matter what you decide to do in terms of format, you NEED to be investing either time or money into video. Most home improvement businesses I work with think they need someone in house to do this, but we outsource dozens of videos for our clients. So you have options.

Lead Magnets

Lead magnets are pieces of content designed to generate leads, some “hot” and some “lukewarm” depending on the type of content and who you’re sending it to. You’re trading this content for an email address and name. You’re getting them into your “ecosystem” so that they can get to know you better and will ultimately buy from you.

Lead magnets are very powerful in home improvement advertising because it allows you to identify what someone is interested in and then market those products or services to them.

Examples of home improvement lead magnets include:

Complete Guide to Windows Ebook
10 Kitchen Designs and The Products You Need to Create Them
Kitchen Remodel Checklist
Flooring Comparison Guide
Bathroom Vanity Buyers Guide
Countertop Installation Checklist
What’s your bathroom style quiz
Find your perfect flooring quiz
Are you capable of a DIY renovation? quiz

Again, the list goes on. What do customers ask the most questions about? Make a guide for it and offer it up for free in your ads and on your website to drive high level level leads.

Blogging

It’s crucial that you include blogging into your home improvement advertising strategy. If you want to increase your website traffic organically over time, this is THE way to do it. Not only that, you would want to create the content anyway for emails, lead magnets, videos, etc., so why not add it to your site and reap the benefits?

I can’t tell you how strong blog content is for home improvement companies. People are actively seeking this information online. You just need to provide it to them. In the right format of course. The key to blogging is being strategic about keywords, being consistent, and setting up the blogs themselves to actually drive conversions and turn visitors into appointments.

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The blog topics are endless. Just get my free guide and your content creation will become a breeze. Switch it up of course, because you want your keywords to fit with what your market is searching for.

Facebook Messenger

Finally, we get to Facebook Messenger. Many of you may not be familiar with this. If that’s the case, that’s a blog for another day, as I could go on about the power and ability of messenger to reach your ideal customer.

In a nutshell, this is marketing through Facebook messenger instead of using something like email. However, I choose to use them both. I don’t discriminate! There are very specific rules for getting “Messenger Subscribers”, but once you do, you can educate them in so many fun ways!

Messenger has up to 5x the open rates of email and up to 10x the click through rates of email. Subscribers will actually respond to you and you can get honest feedback like never before.

I’ve had ENORMOUS success generating leads directly through messenger in a conversation format (that is automated).

I have set up educational sequences that trigger based on specific actions that educate, showcase fun before and afters, serve up videos, and then drive the subscriber to make the appointment.

Let’s Wrap It Up

I know it’s a lot to take in, (and that’s not even all of it!) but it’s extremely important that you integrate education based marketing into your home improvement advertising plan if you want to see a huge ROI from online advertising.

For some businesses it feels overwhelming. How are they ever going to do all of this? Well, that’s where Allie Bloyd Media comes into play. I am an expert in the home improvement and renovation fields. I am educated in a way that allows me to create this content for you, which means no more scratching your head for ideas, or trying to delegate and oversee.

My business actually focuses on providing EVERY ASPECT OF YOUR MARKETING that you need. We can handle it all. You don’t have to manage the day to day, we know what needs to be done, and we do it.

I’d love to talk to you about your home improvement advertising needs and would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

If you’re ready to dive in yourself, then go for it! The best way to learn and improve is to simple try. And keep trying. Good luck!