Helping the home improvement industry catch more leads

The home improvement industry is notoriously labor intensive. With long hours and backbreaking work, you have hardly any time (not to mention energy) left to find leads and grow your business.

That’s where HelpSquad can save the day. While you focus on your job and put just a little work into gaining leads, HelpSquad can do the heavy lifting. HelpSquad helps you identify, communicate with, and gain customers all day, every day.

Step 1: Segment and Target

If you’re going to find leads, you need to narrow your focus. You can do this by segmenting and targeting your efforts to your precise demographic.

Why segment and target? When you try to reach everyone, you end up with a watered-down, generalized message that doesn’t appeal to anyone. If you sell high-end swimming pools, for example, you’re not going to have success if you try to appeal to young families, single professionals, and retired traveling couples all at once—those demographics are part of different segments and need different messages. Segmenting and targeting enable you to meet need better and apply your resources more effectively.

Segment your market into groups with common wants and needs. Let’s use carpentry as an example. This market may include

• People who already own woodwork and need restoration help
• People who don’t really care for carpentry work but want to purchase a handcrafted gift occasionally
• People who frequently order ornate custom pieces
• Commercial sellers who buy in bulk
• Families who update their furniture every year

Then target one of these segments by asking yourself questions: “Who will actually buy my specific product or service?” “How often do they need my service?” “What specific customer need does my product or service address?”

Step 2: Identify and Describe Your Ideal Customer

From appliances to wall work, home improvement professionals each have specific clientele within their specific targets that need their specific service. Even if you provide a similar service to someone in your area, everything from your personality to your scheduling software creates a unique experience for your customers.

So the second step for catching leads is to figure out who your ideal customer is. Who in your target wants the unique experience you have to offer?

“The process of identifying your ideal customer will help you solve tons of business challenges from marketing, to promotion, to effective speaking, to networking,” said Betsy Kent, founder of Be Visible, a digital marketing and content creation company. “It takes some time at the beginning but it keeps on giving!”

Here are ten questions you can ask yourself as you create your ideal buyer persona:

1. What does my product or service accomplish from my customers’ point of view?
2. What type of neighborhood do my best customers live in?
3. What are the demographics of my best customers?
4. When do my customers buy my product or service?
5. What buying strategy do my customers use the most?
6. What are my customers’ pain points?
7. What keeps them up at night?
8. If my customers had objections to buying my product or service, what would they be?
9. Where do my ideal customers get their information?
10. What prompts my customers to research my product or service?

Let’s practice this: If you’re in the business of additions and remodels, ask yourself what specifically your service accomplishes for your ideal customer? Is it added comfort? Increased functionality? Bragging rights to neighbors? Each of those angles lends itself to a slightly different buyer persona.

What if you’re in the business of windows and doors? Ask yourself this: “What keeps my ideal customer up at night?” This can go beyond just having a secure home. You want to understand your customers beyond how they interact with your business. Do your ideal customers worry about finances? Raising their kids right? Staying ahead in a competitive workplace? Identifying your ideal customers’ worries will help you delve deeper as you construct a buyer persona.

An additional help in constructing a buyer persona is HelpSquad. HelpSquad agents specifically deal with customers’ questions and concerns. With HelpSquad, you can better answer the buyer persona questions and learn who your ideal customer is. Written transcripts of each chat session are available to you to see what your customers are asking, what they need, and how they respond to your business.

Step 3: Talk to Your Target Customers in Their Language

Once you’ve created your ideal buyer persona, it’s time to make sure you’re speaking in their language, as it were. You need to figure out how they prefer to communicate, how often they want to hear from you, and what sort of tone they prefer you take.

If you have a plumbing business, for example, you might have spent your whole career marketing to men. But after constructing your ideal buyer persona, you may have discovered that women are more likely to set up appointments than men.

How could you change your communications to target this demographic you didn’t realize you had? Perhaps you could start using Pinterest, since 41 percent of women use that social platform as opposed to 16 percent of men. This could mean putting some helpful infographics that link back to your site on Pinterest. Perhaps you could change the photos you use in your marketing to include more women so your potential female customers feel they can relate to your business better.

There are lots of options. The good news is that these days “with digital marketing, you have the luxury of trying a couple different kinds of bait at the same time to see which works best. Whether you offer a compelling discount, educational white papers, free trial periods, or some other kind of incentive, A/B testing allows you to see what’s working and what’s not, and continue to optimize.” So don’t worry if you don’t know how to hit your target yet! You can experiment and see what works for you and your target.

Lucky for you, HelpSquad is a “bait” that works every time. Customers love to be heard in the personalized way our live chat allows. Plus, HelpSquad helps you figure out what’s working and what’s not. We can use this information to help you reach your target buyers.

Step 4: Turn Prospects into Customers

Okay, so you’ve tailored your communication to reach your ideal buyers. Now what? These golden prospects turn into immediate, lifelong customers, right?

Unfortunately, that doesn’t often happen.

“Sometimes (most of the time) people just aren’t ready to convert, to purchase your product or become a bona fide lead, after your first interactions,” says Allen Finn, an online marketing expert. “Depending on your industry, it could take minutes or months to close a prospect. In that time, there’s very little you can do to stop a prospect from being swayed by your competition. That very little is called nurture.”

Nurturing is a term that refers to whatever funnels a business has in place to turn prospects into customers. As we discussed in step 3, this funnel will look very different depending on who your target is.

One great way to nurture your prospects is to use HelpSquad. HelpSquad is convenient and useful for your customers. And importantly, it’s a no-pressure way for your potential customers to learn about your business.

Let’s say you have a landscaping business. A potential customer likes what she’s seen so far, but is still hesitant to choose you.

Enter HelpSquad. Rose uses the live chat function on your website to ask more about how your service works. The HelpSquad live chat agents are trained to use the specific tone that best represents your interests, and they know how you want them to answer questions. Rose likes what she hears and enjoys the personal attention and down-to-earth tone of the agent who helps her. Her online chat experience convinces her to choose your business.

Finding leads requires time and energy that you may simply not have to spare. HelpSquad multiplies your efforts to find leads, helping you identify, communicate with, and gain customers. Let HelpSquad do the heavy lifting while you sit back with some lemonade. You deserve it.