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. 

It's hard for many folks to switch over from display advertising (magazine, billboards, etc.) to inbound marketing (content king). The new can be scary. Here is the secret: it doesn't have to be a switchover. There are reasons to maintaining both approaches without sacrificing efficacy of either. The trick is to make sure that each approach is designed to complement the other. 

You've successfully made it through to this second full chat with your prospect about their home improvement plans - whether its about landscaping, general contracting, a remodel, or anything in between. If you've asked the right questions to help you understand your prospects real needs (a must read before you continue further in this post: 10 Questions to Ask Your Prospect on The First Call) then you know that this next chat, which is most likely in-person, is worth the trip. You've qualified them in terms of budget and service and you know when they'd like it all completed. The second chat isn't your proposal conversation because you haven't yet filled in all of the details in between. So here are the questions you absolutely must get to in this meeting to make sure your proposal is a winner.

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.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 9/30/15

HALSTEAD MEDIA GROUP LLC BECOMES A HUBSPOT CERTIFIED AGENCY PARTNER

Westchester, NY: Today, Halstead Media announced that it has joined HubSpot as a Certified Agency Partner. HubSpot, the world’s leading inbound marketing and sales platform, works hand-in-hand with Agency Partners to deliver inbound marketing software, services, and support.

Today we celebrate officially becoming HubSpot Certified! This means we have demonstrated our knowledge and implementation of Inbound Marketing's best practices. We are your experts in achieving measurable results from the most effective digital marketing out there today.

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? 

The community of 40 million monthly users on Houzz.com makes the site worth considering for landscape contractors. The popular site is frequently visited by homeowners in search of inspiration for their next home improvement project, and professionals showcasing their work are there to be found and for their services to be seen.

When thinking about winning bids with prospects, many home services professionals find themselves thinking about how to be more effective in the sales process; first do a little connecting, asking, and so forth. You don’t design a service just because you like it (without consideration about the buyer), so why would you use a selling process without the consideration of the buyer? We challenge you to start thinking about selling – from the buyer's perspective (essential foundation to inbound marketing).

How exactly does the buyer think?