How to Handle Too Many Leads: Marketing Strategies for Busy Contractors | Energy Circle

How to Handle Too Many Leads: Marketing Strategies for Busy Contractors

If you’re like most contractors, you focus your marketing efforts on growing leads. You want to bring in more customers, sell more jobs, and make more money. But what happens when you have too many leads? 

That’s the reality for contractors across the country right now. With interest in home improvement services growing while supply chain issues and hiring challenges persist, contractors are drowning in more leads than they can handle. 

So how do you slow the flow and manage customer expectations when you’re booked out for months? You may think you need to put your marketing efforts on pause while you catch up. But marketing can play a key role in managing an overflowing pipeline. Here’s how: 

Use Your Marketing Budget to Strengthen Your Foundation 

A good portion of your monthly marketing budget probably goes towards active lead generation, like Google ads and paid Facebook ads. But during times of plenty, you don’t need to be spending as much on lead generation. This frees up a significant portion of your budget which you can use to strengthen the foundational aspects of your brand, website, and online presence. Focus on: chart of lead flow-producing marketing channels for contractors

But don’t want to stop your paid advertising entirely. Active lead generation tactics, like PPC, allow you to focus on hyper-specific search terms, unlike organic tactics, which bring in a broader audience. A smart paid search strategy can help you target quality leads.  

Shift Your Focus from Lead Quantity to Lead Quality 

When times are tough, your sales funnel should be wide open, ready to catch as many leads as possible. But during times of plenty, you only want to bring in quality leads—more impactful, more comprehensive, and bigger-ticket jobs. To do that, you need to narrow your sales funnel. 

Define Your “Ideal Fit” Clients 

Defining your ideal client is the first step in targeting the right audience. For most contractors, an older customer in their last home is the ideal fit. This person cares about home health and efficiency, has the money to spend on a bigger job, and wants to get it done right. 

Adjust Your Service Pages 

If you’re only getting calls for simple, single-measure jobs, your website might be setting the wrong expectations. To bring in comprehensive, whole-home jobs, you need to show your customers that you specialize in that kind of work. 

Building out long-form landing pages, like this heat pump landing page, is a great way to accomplish this. You may also want to consider pruning single-measure pages and adjusting your calls to action (CTAs) to set proper expectations. Instead of encouraging a customer to “schedule insulation installation”, prompt them to “improve whole-home health and performance with a comprehensive insulation overhaul”. 

Increase Energy Audit Pricing 

If you’re a home performance contractor, increasing your energy audit pricing is one of the best ways to weed out low-quality leads. Homeowners who are willing to put up money for an audit are serious about making upgrades and will likely be more willing to invest in a bigger, more impactful job. We’ve seen a lot of success with tiered energy audit pricing that offers good, better, and best options. 

Show Your Customers You’re Worth the Wait 

Putting out “worth the wait” messaging is a great tactic when you’re booked out for months. Showcase positive reviews on your website and leverage trust symbols, like awards and certifications, to show your customers why you’re in such high demand. They’ll be happy to wait if it means getting the best for their home! 

Communicate with Your Customers! 

Setting clear expectations about project timelines from the very beginning is crucial when you’re booking jobs out months in advance. You want your customers to know exactly what to expect so that they’re not disappointed and disgruntled. 

To help ease the stress of a long wait time, set up a drip email campaign to keep in touch with your customers and let them know you haven’t forgotten about them. Regular communication puts people at ease when there’s a long wait and speaks volumes for your customer service. 

Get expert help managing your contracting company’s lead flow. Contact Energy Circle today for a free website analysis

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