Old habits die slowly, very slowly. We often hear landscapers and home builders/remodelers say that they've been doing home shows for 10, 15, and more years. And what we hear just as often is that generating business from a home show is nothing like it used to be. That's not a surprise and it shouldn't be because of one major reason: our global culture has created research junkies.

Your website is supposed to be your selling machine, right? If you find yourself often questioning why your site isn't bringing you enough calls, or when it does, it just lands you too many appointments for projects that don't drive enough revenue, then its time to look to your website. 

Home services professionals, such as architects and landscapers, aren't going to spend hundreds of hours on improving their site - they have a business to run. That's where the problem is - the website is a key part of business. 

Website analytics are not a-learn-it-overnight kind of topic. From selecting the right tools, to understanding how to use them - you can invest hundreds of hours and still be in the dark about truly understanding how well your website is doing online. There are a few that are more important than others and thankfully, we'll help you identify these top metrics to get you on the right track.

First, selecting the right tool isn't as important as always using the same tool. Every website tracking tool (e.g. Google Analytics is one) uses slightly different reasoning in their calculations. Some have more filters and some give you the raw data. So before you go on tracking a specific group of metrics, the first and most important thing you need to do is pick a source for your metrics and stick to it. 

Lets take a step back together. You've been hearing this acronym for years now. You know that you need to make sure your website is SEO'd and all that good stuff. Heck, everyone's paying a lot of money for this stuff. Maybe you're even thinking that its been a while since your website was redone so you need a new website to help with SEO. But what exactly is SEO? It's really not all that mysterious. 

SEO, Search Engine Optimization, is indeed something you need to make sure is at the top of your priority list, when it comes to driving leads. We'll help you understand why.

SEO is...

Content is king. Trust me—we eat, sleep, and breath content. Content is an amazing tool for creating meaningful connections between buyers and sellers. It is arguably the most efficient way to create emotional buy-in while simultaneously educating and influencing the reader. Enough said—we love content.

But content is only an element of the inbound marketing methodology; so be it a critical element. As a home services business, you can write amazing blogs all day everyday, resulting in a bazillion visitors every month to your company's website. Last time I checked, website traffic doesn't pay the bills for home builders, kitchen design firms, or landscape contractors. 

Tens of hours (maybe hundreds) into talking, discovering, pitching, persuading, and pouring your heart and soul into bidding for the project of the year (or project that's good enough) and... you lost. Perhaps even to the new guy or a home contracting company that doesn't even normally do this kind of job.

Ever heard the expression that potential customers don't look for reason to buy from you - they look for reasons to not buy from you? Well, in today's buyer's world, this is exactly the case, almost 100% of the time.

Now you could've lost the bid because the world just sent you bad luck that day.

Looking to increase their digital presence, Harmony Hill engaged Halstead Media to design an integrated marketing plan that would bring their offline reputation to the online world. The construction marketing specialists at Halstead Media implemented their complete Contractor's Marketing System designed to increase website traffic, drive leads, increase close rates for new projects. 

Since the beginning of time, manufacturers in the hardscape and landscape industries have offered marketing support to their dealers and retailers via an advertising co-op program. Traditionally based on volume of sales, the hardscape dealer or product retailer receives funds—commonly around 50% of the cost—towards regionally-focused, co-branded advertising placements. 

It’s no secret that across most segments of the home improvement industry—kitchen design, bathroom remodeling, and outdoor living design—it is the women who make the decisions and drive big purchases. The home construction market is no different. 

The most successful home builders today build homes with features that attract women buyers.Adapting the designs they build to include things like laundry rooms that are located next to the upstairs bathrooms and

Good landscape contractors often find themselves in a situation where they are ready to grow their businesses and make the jump to a higher revenue level. These are not new companies. They are landscape construction companies that have earned enough project experience over the course of 3, 5, or even 10 years (depending on the revenue target sought) where they now know their level of quality is superb. Regular positive referrals, possibly an award or two, and increased project detail, size, and sale price. But how do you make the jump to selling and building high-end projects for most of the season? How do you cater to more affluent clientele who award these projects soring above the $100k mark?

You built it...and no one came. Your beautiful website, that you paid for or completed yourself, is up and running. You've poured hours and hours into developing the right colors, font, messaging, everything! Perhaps you've even redesigned your logo. Everything about your site seems perfect - but why isn't anyone calling? 

Don't fret. We've got some ideas for boosting your traffic

First impressions are meaningless  - said no one ever! Your first impression of basically anything is the foundation to your relationship with that entity - whether it be a person, a business, a place, or thing. Sure, first impressions are sometimes (almost never) editable - with serious hard work. Or you can just make it right (or do everything you can to make it right!).

How does your website do with landing the best first impression with visitors? Does it push people away or make them stay? And those that stick around, are they the right people to be enticing? Or are they the ones that waste yours and their time because they misunderstood your approach and design and/or build services offered? 

Most websites average a 30-60% bounce rate (read more about how Google defines bounce rate here). That's the percentage of people who leave your website right after viewing the only page that brought them to your site. So imagine that - all that hard work on improving your search ranking results

Inbound marketing using marketing automation software like HubSpot or SharpSpring isn't cheap. Because of this, many home services companies that we speak with form the conclusion that HubSpot is only for large businesses with bigger budgets, not small business with revenues below $2.5M/year. This is an incorrect assumption due mainly to the fact that digital marketing using great content and inbound tactics is different than any other type of marketing. You see, marketing that is tracked directly to leads and revenue, with a clearly defined and transparent ROI, can never be too expensive. 

You've likely been seeing blogs for many years now. Sure, they've been set up in different ways - some that take you to what looked like a new page and some with the usual Blog tab in the menu bar. From those initial days, several years ago, you heard all the rage with this phenomenon and likely for many reasons. A way to break down the details of one or a specific group of projects, self promote a special, recap an event - to name a few of those reasons. But maybe you never heard anyone getting more leads from it - just brand recognition. So you stuffed this trend under the rug as a time sucker useless activity.

As a home services contracting business owner or a marketing executive, you don't really exist in a state of "okay, I'm not at work right now." You're always on, in someway or another (especially true if you're a small business owner!). There are times however that you really are away, or times you wish you could be away. Perhaps dinner with family, hiking, traveling, and the obvious- sleeping. During these times, what is your business doing for revenue generation? The answer is easy: its either preventing it or helping it.

The home services industry is going through an interesting time. GCs, landscape contractors, roofing and siding contractors, kitchen design firms, architects, and interior designers are all facing stiff competition and ever decreasing margins.

With the target market for these businesses doing all their research and decision making online, effective marketing for contractors and the sales process have both completely changed. Today's buyer is extremely educated and now has all the power in the sales process. That's right—ALL the power. 

So what exactly are home services professionals to do?