Home improvement marketing

Marketing for home improvement firms

Most marketing advice is written for shops. A firm that fits kitchens has a different problem: not enough people, spending more each, deciding over weeks rather than minutes.

Awareness is not the problem you have

Nobody in your town is unaware that kitchens can be replaced. They are aware. They are just not thinking about it this month, and when they do start thinking about it they will ask two friends and look at three firms.

So a campaign built to be seen is solving a problem you do not have. What you need is a way of reaching the small number of people who have started thinking, at the moment they start, with something that makes getting a quote feel easy. That is a different job, and it is measured in enquiries rather than impressions.

The arithmetic is kinder than in most trades

This is the part that makes home improvement worth advertising at all. A single extension might be twenty thousand pounds of work. A bathroom is five to eight. Even a set of doors is a few thousand.

Put rough numbers on it. Say enquiries cost forty pounds each and one in five becomes a job. That is two hundred pounds of advertising for a job worth thousands. Those figures are arithmetic, not a promise: the real cost per enquiry depends on your area, your trade and your photographs, and the close rate depends entirely on how you handle the call. But it shows why the maths tends to work here and does not for a business selling twenty pound items.

It also shows what to watch. The number that decides whether advertising pays is not the cost of an enquiry. It is how many of them you turn into work.

Three things decide whether it works

Who sees it. A radius around your yard, and the kind of job you actually want. An extension lead is not a fencing lead. Firms that advertise everything to everyone get enquiries for the work they like least.

What they see. Photographs of jobs you have done, in streets that look like theirs. Stock images of American kitchens are the fastest way to be scrolled past, because everybody recognises them as an advert.

Where it sends them. A page about the one job they clicked on, with a short form and your phone number where a thumb can reach it. Sending ad traffic to a home page is where most of the budget quietly goes.

What to ask before you pay anybody

Whose ad account is it? If the agency owns it, then every pound of learning your campaigns build up belongs to them, and you start from nothing the day you leave.

What am I tied into? A twelve month contract protects the agency from being judged on the first three months. Ask why they need that.

What happens if it does not work? A retainer is paid whether or not the phone rings. Ask what they lose if it does not.

How this firm answers those

The ad account is opened in your name and stays yours. Your budget is paid straight to Meta from your own card, so nothing is marked up on the way through.

There is one setup fee to build the thing, and after that eight per cent of the work the ads actually win you. No retainer, no contract, no notice period. If it stops working you stop paying, which is the arrangement that keeps everyone honest.