Home Remodelers: Free Yourself from the HomeAdvisor, Angie's List Trap

Home services lead referral websites such as Angie's List, Home Advisor, Yelp, and now, Amazon Home Services, have become the unfortunate norm in contractor "marketing" today. 

I know, I know. Turn on the service and the inexpensive leads come flooding in right to your iPhone. Trust me, I understand. I remember receiving leads from HomeAdvisor— called ServiceMagic.com back then—while I was in a sales/project management role. And once the service was turned on, my calendar would almost instantly book up with late evening appointments with homeowners that were less than ready to buy. That is if the meeting even took place. More often than not, these homeowners wouldn't be available or wouldn't show up because that weren't really interested in the first place. It was just "super easy," they would say, to submit the request online and that they didn't realize what was happening when they hit submit. 

For home remodelers that have been in business for a few years or more, you've probably considered why ServiceMagic changed their name in the first place? With so much SEO and website optimization at stake, to call their re-brand risky would be a HUGE understatement. 

These types of lead referral services are billed as services that increase leads for custom home builders, landscape contractors, architects, and kitchen and bath designers—and increase leads they very well may do. But at what cost to your business?

Related Blog Content: Contractors: Create a Website that Drives Leads for Your Business

What worries me most is that business owners don't realize the long term effects of signing up to, and relying on, these services for lead generation and their core construction marketing strategy. Essentially, companies like Amazon Home Services and Home Advisor are really just SEO companies, or search engine optimization, that you are renting online equity from. Any business owner that's used the service will tell you: their company's search engine results have been trumped by the 'Home Advisors' of the world. I remember homeowners telling me all the time, "I thought I was calling your company directly." Nope. They'd called the lead service result in Google without even knowing it, and the landscaping company was paying for the lead.

Inbound marketing for home improvement contractors is the marketing methodology that will free you from the trap of lead referral services. 

Investing in your company's 'web equity' today will turn your website into a lead generating machine tomorrow—plain and simple. Digital marketing that is based on the way homeowners shop today, inbound marketing—consisting of blogging, content offers, and calls-to-action—increases website traffic, drives qualified leads, and wins home services businesses more business. 

Perhaps it's time to take a good look at how much those leads from the lead referral services are really costing your business.

Marketing for contractors today is Inbound.

Download this FREE GUIDE and stop "renting" your company's website space and start owning it. 

- image Huffington Post

This post was written by Corey Halstead.