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. 

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. 

Today’s consumers have all the power. The sooner business owners realize that, the sooner they can begin to build lasting relationships with prospects and customers. The way to do that in today’s busy world is by providing useful content and helpful information to prospects throughout their journey. The buyer’s journey typically lasts over 100 days for large purchase like a custom home or remodel. That’s 100 days of online research, searching about potential companies to hire, how the process works, costs and budgets, and other related topics. And each year, that amount grows at a rate of almost 20%.  

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. 

From the beginning days of on-boarding to the years that proceed, inbound marketing isn't easy. Whether you've hired a marketing agency or writing your own content, it takes time, dedication, and patience. And it all pays off; the results it delivers don't compare to any other marketing approach. There is a lot that home service contractors can be thankful for with inbound marketing. So here is your list of things of the top ten reasons to say thank you to inbound marketing!

Increase revenue, grow your business, more leads - are the three top goals we hear from landscape and general contractors all the time. Lets dig one step further. The reason is often to simply get more cash. But what if that means to just change your target client? It can be! Changing your customer base can mean improvement in sales close time, reduced overhead, and higher margins. It can result in more employees. Sometimes it results in increasing your average project size and less employees, less projects, higher margins, with a lot higher net profits. 

Changing your target customer isn't always the right answer; you can determine if it is for your business, in this related article, 5 Signs You Should Change Your Target Customer. If you meet the criteria, then we have your starting line. 

Changing your target customer isn't the first thing that usually comes to mind when setting your next year's goals. Rightfully so, after all there is revenue to grow, efficiencies to improve, and many more endless and lucrative ideas to spent time on. The reality is if you're attracting the wrong target customer, you won't reach any, or at least most of your objectives.

What exactly does changing your target customer mean? Perhaps it's changing to a lower income client or the opposite, much higher. It could mean going from targeting couples with small children to no children. Read more about targeting here. Whatever the end result is, here are the top five signs that you should sit down and re-target a new type of customer now. 

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.

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?