The #1 marketing challenge for custom builders and remodelers, in fact any builder, is generating high-quality leads. Custom builders and remodelers have the unique challenge of attracting leads without model homes and neighborhoods where they control the land. Because of this their websites need to deliver a much higher percentage of leads than a production or semi-custom builder.

This program will break down the specific website content that is needed to Attract high-quality leads (and the type of content that causes leads to look elsewhere), how to Capture them and Convert them into phone appointments.

 

Builder Lead Converter ATTRACTS, CAPTURES & CONVERTS high-quality leads for builders so they can pick & choose their clients & jobs. Find out how at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.builderleadconverter.com

 

Transcript:

 Appreciate everyone coming out. We’ve got a great webinar with Rick Storley from Builder Lead Converter. He’s going to talk about how to attract, capture, and convert high quality digital leads for custom builders and remodelers. So yeah, really excited to to have Rick here today. We’ve, we’ve got a pretty cool story on how we got connected, but before we get into it, I want to go ahead and just kind of couple, couple housekeeping things get out of the way as usual.

Want to make sure everyone is aware of our Job Tread Pros Facebook group. It’s a great place to connect, network with other job tread users, you know, learn best practices, tips, ask questions. You know, my, my team is in there as well. So we love being able to interact with all of you and kind of learn, you know, firsthand about the things that, you know, that you love, the things you’re working on, trying to learn.

It’s a great place to get connected and we also put out a lot of updates. So typically you can hear firsthand about all the product updates and things coming out. So it’s a great place to hop in. If you’re not already part of the group also wanted to again, highlight builder stories. It’s a podcast that.

You know, I’ve been working on for I guess a couple of months now, got some really awesome episodes that have come out recently, you know, if you’re not following along and listening to those, you know, you can catch us on you know, Apple podcast, Spotify, or just go to builder stories. com, you know, we’d also love to, to know if you’ve got a story that you’d like to share, you know, you can reach out to us directly on builder stories.

com as well. But yeah, definitely you know, Bob Turner’s, you know, sweat. The small stuff episode is awesome. Jason Varney, you know, keep moving forward. He’s got a really unique story about how he’s built both the dock and deck business and Tennessee pool and spa. And he’s got his, his two sons running those, you know, a lot of great insight there, Aaron Hershaw, just you know, taken down the house with with, with his, all, all of his experience.

And then as of I think it was yesterday we had, laurel Winkle from SheBuilds, you know, really great perspective that, that we just published a couple of days ago. So definitely check these out. I’d love to see in the chat, you know, anyone if, if, if you’re listening to builder stories and follow along, you know, love to love, love to know what your favorite episode is as well as anything you know, if there’s anything you’d love for us to try to try to focus on or find people to, to, to join, to share, you know, their perspective, you know, happy, happy to do that as well.

All right. Also one more shout out to to the job tread connect user conference coming up in January. We’re just ramping up. We’ve got, you know, tons of sponsors in place. We’re about to put out the full schedule update. So stay tuned for more of that. Again, January 17th to the 19th, you know, we’re expecting four to 500 people to be here this year.

Super excited about it’s going to be a great opportunity for you to not only learn a lot of job tread skills But also business skills and other professional development as well as being able to network with other similar type companies You know, it’s just a really great opportunity for everyone to take a couple days to come together And you know, just just learn and grow together.

So Really hope to see everyone there do grab your tickets as soon as you can. It’s going to help us with, you know, headcount as well as making sure that the hotel has got enough rooms for us. You know, we’ve got a room block, but you know, basically we need to, we need to fill that up so that we can take additional rooms and make sure that they don’t start selling those to the public.

You know, we definitely want to take over the whole hotel. So to the extent that you can, you know, be sure to get your ticket as soon as possible. That would be very helpful. And we’ve also got a webinar coming up next week that Anna and I are going to go through kind of everything job tread connect what to expect.

So be sure to tune into that as well. So without further ado, I want to introduce Rick here from builder lead converter. He’s again, got a really great system in place, you know, to help you attract capture and convert high quality leads. So builders can pick and choose their clients and their jobs.

We have now added them to the job trade marketplace. You can learn more about them there, reach out to them through, through the marketplace, but obviously he’s going to share a lot more today about what he can do for you. So, you know, again, really happy to have you on Rick, and I’m going to go ahead and turn it over to you.

Thanks very much. Appreciate it. Excited to be here too and welcome everyone. Appreciate you attending here today. I hoped that I can deliver. And one more plug for Connect, Eric, I guess I’m going to be there as well. So and I think I get to actually put on a class. So if you like what you see here, there’s going to be more to come at the Connect conference.

Little background on me. My name is Rick Storley. I started in the trades. I was started as a framer back in the 80s and worked my way through designing, building new homes, custom homes and also remodeling projects. Always worked for builders and I started my own company here in about 2005 and started out as a coach and then we’ve moved into really more software development.

And since about 2020, we developed builder lead converter. We, we plug it as your perfect sales assistant. But what we do is exactly that attract, capture and convert high quality leads. So builders can pick and choose their clients and jobs. And so I’m going to walk you through how we do that today.

I’ve been talking with a lot of you already from the from the marketplace, which has been great. And you know, from all over the country, but a quick story about how we met or how I met Eric for a lot of years building, trying to co construct, you know, owned the project management software space.

And so I would meet with those guys consistently almost every year at the builder show saying, Hey, guys, you know what we should really build an interaction or what we call an API and open source. So we could push our lead information into your software. And and then they are, you know, our clients can seamlessly start an estimate and, you know, and sell the job.

And it kind of fell on deaf ears over and over again. And so one of my clients here now said, Hey, you know what? There’s this new software out there called job tread in there. You know, we switched from builder from build a trend to job tread. And so I reached out to Eric and talk to him and we actually did a a podcast on my show.

I said, Eric, do you have an API where we can actually just push our leads right into your software? He goes, yeah, we do. It’s open source. And so like what a week or two ago, we actually hooked up our first client. And we, I met with them the other day. They had 5 leads that they had actually signed into a design agreement.

All 5 of them got pushed into job tread. They’re now, you know, at finishing the estimates and going to contract on those leads. And he’s like, it’s just absolutely seamless. They just literally click of a button and everything goes in there. So it’s been really fun to see that. And a lot of our, our clients are excited about it.

And you should be too where it’s just 1 last step for you. But let’s jump into it here today and talk a little bit more about attracting, capturing and converting high quality leads. Now, this whole presentation is really based on this annual report. I’m going to hold it up right here. It’s on the screen as well.

The Association of Professional Builders every single year, they survey about 1000 builders and remodelers. And they asked them, you know, series of questions and when it comes to marketing, the number one challenge is generating high quality leads. And I say high quality because there’s a big difference between generating a lead versus a high quality lead.

And that’s what we’re going to focus on more here today. But what you should know right now, actually, is that the, the survey for 2024 for Association of Professional Builders is open and if you provide your information, they’ll give you a free copy of the report as well. So some of you may be aware of Association of Professional Builders, but if you’re not they do this survey every single year between Canada, U.

S., Australia, and New Zealand, and they take all this information, put it into a beautiful report, and then you get an electronic copy of it, or you can actually buy the print version like you see right here. So this was the number one marketing challenge. I think that’s actually increased from when the survey came out for 2023.

I think going into 2024 with interest rates above eight percent. I’m seeing remodeling. I’m seeing custom homes and seeing everything slow down across the board. There’s a few areas of the country that are probably still doing pretty good. Florida and Texas being, being two of them. A lot of other markets that were hot, hot, hot have definitely cooled off.

So who are the builders that are going to rise up in 2024 and actually take market share? It’s the ones that know how to attract, capture and convert to those high quality leads. So let’s jump into that and talk, first of all, about a roadmap. When I have a conversation with a builder, the typical answer I get when I ask them where do the leads come from goes something like this.

It says, well, it starts out, well, most of our leads come from referrals. Then we have a mishmash of other sources, like we get a few from our website, maybe we get some signed calls. We tried some ads, but they weren’t successful, and so we stopped them or paused them because we really don’t know what we’re doing.

Or we hired some company that said they were going to give us a bunch of leads, and they were all crap leads. And so that’s just the, kind of the standard conversation that I, That I have with builder and and the common theme is they know there’s a problem, but they really don’t know how to fix it.

So, and after I learn more about their business, the issues that I uncover are typically these number 1, we have a lack of a road map and I’m going to talk a little bit more about what is in a road map right now. But a road map is simply a conversion plan. In other words, once you get an opportunity for a custom home, or say remotely in front of you, do you have a road map or a conversion plan?

To bring that lead to an appointment where then you can finish qualifying them and decide if you want to pursue that lead or if you’re going to say next. And so this is what a a roadmap would contain. First of all, it has it has an offer. So in other words, what is your offer and just saying that, Hey, are you interested in building a home or remodeling a home?

That’s not a good enough offer because what happens then is you only get the cream on the top, but you don’t get everything else below that, that whole segment of leads that are actually trying to find a custom home builder and remodeler. And I have stories I can tell you, I’ve been doing this a long time, of clients that have sold leads after three, four, five plus years they’ve been following that particular client.

So you’ve got to come up with a compelling offer to take that lead, to take the first step and actually start that relationship with you. We’ll talk more about that going forward. The second thing is a follow up plan. You have to have a specific plan of how you’re going to follow up with that. And then the third one is what I would call an if then plan.

An if then plan is simply… If the lead does this, then I will do this, or if the lead does not do this, then I will do this. So it’s just understanding what path they’re taking and then being able to follow up appropriately. And then the the last part of the plan would be database management. So database management is all about managing leads who engage versus who do not engage.

Managing sole clients, or customers, work in process. Managing past customers and then a combination of management plans can be a combination of the salesperson and automation. Most of the things in a in a road map or a conversion plan here can be automated, which is really important. You understand this because you’re thinking I don’t have any more time in the day.

I don’t have enough staff to do this. The good news is you don’t have to. And actually, once you put a road map in place or lead conversion plan in place, it will take time off of your Transcribed Off of your calendar right now, where you can focus on getting in front of more leads face to face phone conversations working on the business versus spending so much time working in the business.

So we’re going to take a look today at some of the unique challenges that you have. But the first thing you know, we need to look at is asking the question is, do you have a roadmap? If you don’t have a roadmap, this is where you want to to start. All right. I’m curious if you wouldn’t mind putting in a chat box.

Are you a homebuilder, say custom homebuilder or are you a remodeler? If you’re a homebuilder, would you just type one? And if you’re a remodeler, would you type two? Just curious to see, you know, what we’ve got here. It looks like a decent mix. Okay. Three. That’s fine for both. Yeah, so it looks like maybe a few more remodelers versus homebuilders but you know, what we’re going to talk about here is really based on design and build.

And there’s some unique challenges for design build versus what I would call a specialty remodeler. So that would be somebody that’s maybe focusing on smaller, more single tasks, such as window, siding doors, roofing versus a production homebuilder that’s building off of a plan. Maybe they’re building a lot of spec homes, that sort of thing.

There’s some unique challenges there. And so these unique challenges really come from again, having product to show versus not show. So that’s number one challenge. The next challenge you’re going to run into is the sales process. Obviously, how do you sell design, which is essentially what you have to do in order to create an estimate in order to sell the job.

So that’s a huge challenge, whereas obviously a production builder, especially for a modeler, they don’t have that. So the sales cycle is much shorter. It’s much more of an immediate what’s what I’m looking for. It’s an immediate call to action or immediate position to take for a, a potential home buyer or remodeling buyer because it’s a, it’s a, it’s a project and get my arms around.

Okay. I know what my rough is going to cost. Let’s pick a shingle. Let’s go versus actually designing and building. In addition to my home or perhaps a very luxury custom home, so we’re going to what we’re going to do is we’re going to look at first and foremost, your website content because you don’t really build product that people can see, such as a model home or a spec home, your website really becomes your number one source of lead.

So if it’s not your number one source of leads right now. I’m going to tell you how to do that. And after this webinar is done, you’re gonna be able to jump right in and make some immediate updates. Also how you capture leads is quite different because if I’m a production builder, I can capture a lead just based on having a home for sale.

Somebody needs a home for sale. It’s built. Hey, come, come buy it. If I’m a specialty remodeler, obviously a storm comes through. I got to get my roof fixed or my siding fixed so on and so forth. So. It’s a easier sale, but website content actually becomes your 24 7 showroom. It is your model home. It is your everything.

So from a marketing budgeting standpoint, your website should be on top because really that is your primary tool you’re going to use to attract that high quality lead. And that’s where we’ll start here. Then we’ll move on to lead capture. And then we’re going to end up with lead conversion. So this is not three separate things.

These are really all go together and the conversion process obviously is what I’m talking about is going from a lead from a website or even a lead that calls in and leaves a message or sends an email. To a phone appointment. So that’s what we’re talking about from a conversion standpoint, getting them into where you can have a conversation with them.

You can qualify them in roughly 3 to 5 minutes. You’ll know. Hey, I want to pursue this. This is a viable lead or I’m going to say no next and move on to the next one. And really, that’s the goal here. Is to be able to generate more opportunities than you can handle. So you can either create a backlog for yourself, you know, talking to a client today, and he’s at eight months backlog right now, he wants to get back to 12 months, you know, I’m talking to a lot of other builders and they’re like, they have like a one month backlog.

They’re, they’re starting to get a little nervous. So you want to be able to create a backlog or you want to be able to say, you know what, I want to start building larger homes or larger projects. And so I’m gonna start saying no to these smaller projects because now I have opportunities to build larger projects.

So, however that looks to you we just want to give you as many opportunities as possible to say no, so you can say yes to the right opportunities.

All right, so attracting high quality leads. Why are they so elusive? You know, to generate a lead right now, it’s really not that hard. Okay, you can go on Thumbtack. You can go on Angie’s List. You can go Facebook lead ads. You can generate a whole lot of leads out there, but they’re all such low quality and they’re typically for very small projects and they’re typically very price sensitive and they’re usually very how?

What’s the best word for it? Elusive. I think that’s what I have on the screen here. But you know, they’re, they, they talk to you one day, then it goes to the next. They’re just very, very poor quality. So the question I usually get asked is, well, okay, Rick, how do I get more high quality ads? Should I just start running ads?

Is there some magical? Platform out there where I can sign up and get ads and get high quality leads or is it social media? Should I be posting more content or less content or should I be on instagram versus facebook or or maybe it’s pinterest? You know, or there’s something else that I that I’m missing And so let me give you an analogy here, which I think is is is really important is that if you’ve ever hired an employee There’s two types of people that you can attract or go after.

So most of the time when you’re new to hiring somebody, you’re thinking, you know what, I want to get someone with experience because that way I don’t have to train them and I can get them right in and up and running and they’re going to make a huge impact immediately. And so you go out and you look for that person that’s got this experience.

You hire them. And then after about three months, you realize that, man, this person’s got a lot of bad habits. They got a lot of baggage they brought with them. So now. You are tasked with untraining them from those bad habits, and now you’ve got to retrain them the way you want things done. Now, once you hire a few employees and maybe you learn that way, now you look at it a little bit differently.

Now you’re looking at, I want to get, I want to hire someone that has the right skill set, has the right attitude, and then I can coach them and train them with my in house program and get them up and running. And now I’ve got a loyal employee that I can, you know, raise up in my organization. So think of high quality leads as the same way.

Is that… A high quality lead is developed over time. It’s not something that falls in your lap right away. It’s developed over time. And the reason is because this is design build. So the design process takes a long time. People take a long time to decide that they want to do a renovation. They take a long time to decide they want to build a custom home.

It doesn’t happen overnight. So what we’re really looking for Is we’re looking to get to these people early before they’re ready to talk to you because you’re always going to have a certain percentage that are willing to pick up the phone and call you. They’re willing to fill out a form on your website, and they’re willing to stay start a conversation immediately.

But there’s a much greater percentage that are in the marketplace. They’re on your website right now, and they’re coming and leaving without ever Starting a relationship with you because they’re not ready to talk. So that’s the type of people we’re going after because those people, if we can get to them first, we can establish value for your services.

We can get them to trust you. By the time you have that phone call with them, all you’re doing is confirming that trust and value. And they’re saying, great. What’s the next step. You know, and you got it. And that’s and that’s the what we’re talking a little bit about next is, is, you know, what this looks like from not only a capturing standpoint, but also conversion standpoint.

So there is no magic formula out. There are no magic, you know, platform to run ads most. I always tell my builders look. Run ads last do that last because it’s the highest cost and it’s the lowest conversion So what you want to do is you want to? Employ a practice called inbound marketing and we’ll talk more about that next.

All right, so we talked about the employee and Here’s where I see the big disconnect between builders and and I would say they’re their leads So builders are very process oriented. And so what that what that means is they think from a process standpoint, that’s what my customer is buying because I have to follow this very specific process in order to get them the Remodeling project they’re after, or perhaps the custom home that they’re after.

And if I don’t follow that process, it’s going to be a disaster. And so that’s what they’re buying. So builders are very hyper focused on that. And let’s face it, you guys have to really, you work years at developing this process in order to deliver just the perfect product at the end. You know, that great new home or that great renovation project.

The lead doesn’t think that way. The lead thinks about product, price, and place. So let me break this down a little bit more. The first question your lead has is, what will my project look like? The second question that they have is, how much will it cost? And the third question they have is, where can I build my new home or do you remodel in my area?

That’s the only three things that they are thinking about. And the last thing they’re thinking about is your process. So if you want to attract high quality leads, you have to make your website. Build with high resolution, clean, and clearly articulate information on following items. You want to focus on design ideas and floor plans.

Okay, so design ideas from the standpoint of this would be high resolution images and or videos of projects you’ve completed. Floor plans are very, are very, very important. And by the way, I’ve had this conversation so many times with custom, custom builders. A lot of custom builders will come to me and say, Rick.

We don’t ever build the same home twice. So I don’t want to put my floor plans on my custom designs on my website because I’m afraid that somebody will steal them and my competitor will build them. And my, my standard answer is that’s fine, but keep in mind, you’re going to lose a lot more business from people that don’t understand.

The your the ability that you have from a custom home standpoint, design standpoint, then you will ever lose from somebody trying to steal your plan and build it with somebody else. So, yes, custom home builders, you have to have floor plans on your website. And the question is, oh, well, why Rick? Why? Why do I have to do that?

Why can’t I have some on my process? Because they can’t visualize what the home will look like. And they don’t care about you or your process yet because they don’t know if you can build something that they’re interested in. So floor plans in your architectural motif and showing a wide variety of that are so imperative to actually providing context to that perspective client of what you are capable of.

And if they don’t see that, they’re going to discount you. And remember, when people are on your website, They’re not trying to include you in their list. They’re trying to cross you off the list. Very important you understand that. They, they, they don’t want to talk to 10 builders. They want to talk to maybe two or three.

So they want to try to cross you off the list. And that’s, that’s how people shop online. So you start with design ideas and floor plans. Then you have to provide pricing tools and examples will break. I’m a custom builder. You don’t have plans to go. Yeah, I know. You still have to give them a budget range.

You know, the important thing for you to understand, too, is this is that if you don’t give them a price range on your floor plan, you’re going to attract a whole lot of people that maybe are going to their budgets can be below what you can even offer both on remodeling side and the new home side. So you have to give these examples of what some of the projects cost as well as pricing tools, and we’ll show you some examples of those next.

Okay, locations and service area is number three. I, I see this all the time, too. You know, obviously, we are local for a reason, and we have a service area, a defined area where we’re going to build and remodel our homes. A lot of websites, the builders just never put anything on there. They just assume people know.

And so the person lands on there, and like, They can’t figure out if this builder serves their their territory and they leave. So you have to get very, very specific on that. And you have to show them. Yes, we do build in these areas. Yes, we do serve this area for remodeling. So there’s no question in their head whatsoever.

So this is a lead centric website, which is going to the content will focus on answering these questions. These questions, a builder centric website typically focuses on their process or their awards and that sort of thing. Now, should you have your process and your awards on your website? Sure. Yes, absolutely.

In fact, the websites we designed today, we include those things, but we make sure that they are well tucked away. What we make sure that people can find right away is the answer to these three questions, because if they can’t find the answers to these three questions in 19 seconds, and that’s how long you have is 19 seconds.

They’re going to leave. So when it boom, they land on your website. You better be able to ready to answer those questions. They better not have to dig for this information. And if they see crappy photos, no floor plans, they can’t figure out where you build. They’re gone. You’ve lost them forever.

All right. So here is an example of a home builder and this home builder is far as this will be a floor plan section. So we created what’s called an index page. Put the floor plans on here. Now, most of our clients don’t have. Floor plans, and you should have 10 to 15 floor plans on your website. So we have an independent designers design library with about 4500 plans on it that’s broken down by area of the country.

So you can actually pull plans from designers in your scale. State and your area of the country and put them on your plan. We have a license for all that. They include photos, too. So it doesn’t matter if you built the home or not, you’ve got to give them some example. So again, this is the idea here.

This is where people are going to spend the time on your, on your site. So that’s from a design standpoint from a home builder. From a remodeler, you’re going to have a service page. Oops, I think there we go. I gotta go. Here we go. From a modeler, you’re going to have a services page. So in this case, this, this client is doing kitchens, additions, bathrooms, and basements.

Again, I want to get them to the type of project they’re considering, and I want to make sure I get them as many options within that project as I can. So, obviously, kitchens have different motifs, you have different architectural styles you’re doing, you’re doing with things. You, again, want to showcase your best your best projects on here.

And high resolution photos are key, guys. Don’t take pictures with your iPhone, even though they do. Great photos. Hire a professional photographer. You’ll get your return on that investment a hundredfold.

This is an example like home packages. Okay. So you need to have three. Now, if you’re a home builder, you say, well we don’t build spec homes. I don’t have things priced out. That’s fine. Give people a range. So in this case, you see this builder showing a range from 1. 5 to about 2. 8 million homes. And so if you click through on any of these, you’ll see a sample floor plan.

You don’t get into specs or anything like that, but all I’m trying to do is convey confidence to the lead that yes, we do build in your price point. And at the same time, I’m going to disqualify people whose budget is less than I guess in this case, it’s 1. 1 million. So, if my budget is 800, 000, I say, oh, you start at 1.

1 million. Next, I’m gone. So, I’m not going to plug up your, your pipeline and waste your, and waste your time.

I think we lost the, there we go. Are we back? Okay. Thank you, Taylor.

All right, moving on. So next thing is pricing. So this is an example of a pricing tool that we built some software where a person can go through a lead for a homebuilder can go through and they can pick the type of plan that you offer. They can go through and they can pick a different plan. They can leave you notes.

They can pick. Plan options, I think they’re considering the location, any location options they need. Do they own their own lot? That sort of thing. And then they can go here to get pricey. They’ll actually book a call with one of our clients. And then that client will actually take a couple of days. Look at the scope of work that was produced for them, and they’ll have a phone call with that person and say, Hey, your poem is going to range between 1.

5 and 2. Does that fit into your price range? Yes or no? If yes, okay, what’s the next step? They move them into their sales pipeline. If it doesn’t, no, they go on to, they go on to the next one. But literally 3 to 5 minutes, you know, if you’re going to be able to work for that, that prospective client or not.

And the beautiful thing is here is that it’s not just a cold phone call. You actually have a scope of work and people love this thing. I mean, I’ve talked to them all. They love it because they get excited to talk to you because guess what? You, they just put together their dream home you know, in, in six steps.

So very, very powerful tool that it’s an interactive tool that people love to use. All right. So this is an example for a remodeler. So I can go through here. I can pick a remodeling project. I can scroll through different projects that you’ve done. This is the Miranda residence from this client here.

Oh, I love that particular, you know, color scheme. I love what you did. The skylights. Great. I want to, you know, price out a kitchen similar to that. Then go through here again, book a call, get a budget from their, their build from that builder. That builder can quickly determine. Yes, I’m going to move you forward into our, do a site visit in this case.

And here’s the next steps in the, in the process. Thank you. This is location. So this is very something very specific with location. So you need to make sure you have a map. You need to make sure you have pin drops and you have specific cities within those areas that you serve. You can create maps too that have borders around them if you want to go by county, if you want to go by municipality, whatever it takes.

But there should be absolutely clear of where your service area is and if you have land options to to have land in those areas. You need to be showcasing those as well. So if you have communities here. Now, one thing I recommend, if you do have access to lots, is don’t give them too many specifics on it.

Just say you have home packages from in this particular area, unless you’re actually selling lots too, but home packages from in this particular community. Give them just enough information to get them excited, but not enough where they can, they get all the information, they don’t need to talk to you.

All right, so when we move into when we move into what does your homepage look like? This is an example of something that I would recommend. This is one of our client sites. We just launched a couple of a couple of weeks ago. I guess is that I land on the page. I want to make sure I can get my questions answered in 19 seconds, or they’re gone.

So you see here right on top of this, and this is the app, this is a scrolling masthead as well. So what that means is when I scroll down the page, those links right there are going to stay with me. And you notice everything else is tucked away in a hamburger menu. It’s very clean. We’re going to have more call to actions right before this.

We want to get those people to the information that they’re after. So design library is going to be floor plans. Home packages, just that. Those are my homes that are give a price range. My photo gallery again, I can divide, I can put galleries together by room. If I’m a modeler, I can do it for a custom home builder as well.

I can do it by project, or I can just create a general gallery and then obviously where we build. So I’m going to answer all these questions, all 3 questions right away as soon as they land on that homepage. One click and they’re where they’re at. And that’s what we look for is one clicked to, to connect.

And you see very nice, beautiful, high resolution image here. And you know, we’re off, we’re off to the races. So that’s essentially the content that you need to attract those high quality leads. And the, the beautiful thing guys, is that. It also is going to disqualify those low quality leads, those leads that are not a good fit for you.

So again, more, and it’s all about confidence too. We’ll talk a little bit more about that, but I’ve got to create confidence that you can build in my type of project in my price point. And I had this conversation, I think earlier today with another, with another client I was talking to, and I said, you know, if you’re showing one of your prospective clients a million and a half dollar home, And their budgets to the question in the back of their mind is always, well, can you build a 2 million home?

I said, but if you’re showing them a 2 million home and their budget is one and a half million dollar homes, they automatically assume you can build a one and a half million dollar home because you’re showing them a 2 million home. So your website is no different. The projects on your website. Should really be higher than maybe what your normal project is.

You’re not going to only show higher projects, but you want to be able to sell down because confidence is established when people see you can do a nicer project. That means they realize that, hey, you could do my project too, even though we’re not going to go quite as fancy or luxurious as that. All right, let’s switch gears a little bit and let’s go on to hopefully here.

There we go. Let’s go on to capturing high quality leads. So we’ve attracted them now. The information again, build a lead centric site is answers those three questions. What can I build? Where can I build? How much? What will turn them off is your process, your awards about you. Don’t have a builder centric site, have a lead centric site.

Okay, so now we want to capture those. So this is all about creating a Compelling reason to get them to opt in. Now, the, your lead’s favorite radio station is W-I-I-F-M. Anybody know what that means? W-I-I-F-M. You heard that before? W-I-I-F-M stands for? What’s in it for me? What’s in it for me? Thank you, Kelsey.

Congratulations. You get the prize? Yeah. What’s in it for me? So it’s your least favorite radio station. And the the mistake that I see a lot of builders make is that they are getting before they give. So what I mean by that is, is that they’ll have their phone number on the website and they’ll have a form.

That’s it. So in other words, they’re asking for something they’re getting. Before they give anything in return, so it’s not really a fair relationship. And as far as your leads are concerned, they’re saying, Hey, I’m not getting anything out of this. I’m not going to call. I’m not going to fill out this form.

I’m just going to keep looking until I find what I’m looking for. So, if you are only getting, you are losing leads. We call those opportunity leaks. So you have people on your website every single day that are leaving, never starting a relationship with you. So about 2 percent builders. Typical conversion rate is about 2 percent of unique visitors.

So you have 100 visitors on your website. You get about 2 leads and they’ll either call you or they’ll fill out that form. The typical time on site for a home builder or remodeler is about 30 seconds. That’s very difficult to capture lead in 30 seconds. And, and yeah, Matt, good question. We’re getting to that.

Matt says, what do we need to give them? Yeah, it’s coming. So about 30 seconds is the, is the time on site. The people typically take, it’s very difficult to capture, which is why the conversion rates are so low. You’re going to have a certain, like I said, the cream of the crop leads will come to your website.

They’re willing to fill out a form. They’re willing to pick up the phone and call you the vast majority or not. That’s why your, your conversions are lower. Your capture rate is low. Now let’s talk a little bit more about what is your goal? So your goal is to give them something of value. So there’s the answer to your question, man, give them something of value.

And you want to go ahead and give them something of value. Keep them on the site longer. So I equate this to say, working a showroom or working a model home. I, I started my career selling. I worked out a model homes. I learned something really quick. The longer I could keep that lead in the model home, the better my chances were of capturing them as a lead and booking an appointment with them.

If they came and went really quickly, it was, I mean, I would, I, nothing I can do. Same thing working in a showroom. If you’ve ever done a retail showroom, the longer they’re there, the higher the percentage of capturing them. So you want to keep on your site about a minute and 30 seconds. And anything more than that and it’s, it’s golden.

You want to build confidence. So important that you understand confidence confidence comes in a number of forms, and I don’t have time to get into them here today. But if you have more questions on this, ask me about this, but confidence is going to give somebody the little extra push that they need to actually.

Up opt in. So we call that a permission based opt in relationship. In other words, they’re looking for a builder. You give them something of value. They’re confident enough where they want to take the next step with you, which is to fill out a form and hit submit. Essentially, what they’re doing is just saying, I would like this, whatever you’re going to give me of something of value.

And in exchange for that, I will give you my contact information and I will hit submit, giving you permission to follow up with me. That’s how the relationship starts. Thanks. Now what we can get is we take that 2 percent conversion rate. We will get 3 to 8 percent plus conversion rates just by using this technique here.

We give before we before we get. Here’s what’s so so important. I need you guys to understand this is a lead will stop looking when they find a local resource that answers their questions. They’re done. They, they will opt in. They will listen to you. They will let you follow up with them. They’re done because they found they got their questions answered.

And if they’re looking like, say, they’re going to build in North Carolina, as an example, say they’re finding information in different states. They’ll keep looking. But as soon as they find a builder in North Carolina. That will show them what they can build, how much it costs, and where they can build it, and it fits into where they’re looking, they stop.

So that’s what the goal is here, is to give them everything they’re looking for and stop. So there’s something out there we call lead magnets, maybe you’ve heard of it, maybe you haven’t, but what is a lead magnet? So a lead magnet is an interactive, compelling offer. And this offer is something that they value.

So Matt, going back to your question, it’s like, yeah, something interactive on your website. compelling and it’s an offer that I really can’t say no to because what do I have to lose? Nothing. Okay, so what should lead magnets revolve around? Design. Pricing. Location. Sound familiar? Right? I’m, I’m, it’s the same three questions they’re coming with.

So the content I have on my website, it tracks them there. Now, when I want to capture them, I’m going to continue to use that same three content, but I’m going to dangle a carrot in front of them. And the technique that I’m going to use is called the controlled release of information. And what this means is, I will give them just enough to be interested in me, but not too much where they don’t have to take the next step.

So what is the next step? I need them to fill out a form and give me permission to follow up with them. So that’s called an inbound permission based relationship. What they’re saying is, You have something of value that I want. I’m willing to do this. Let’s start the dance. And as soon as they hit submit, the dance begins.

So let’s look at some different ideas here. So this is a design remodeling lead magnet. So this is an idea book. Again, people can’t, they can’t picture what their renovation will look like. They don’t know what are the hot colors right now. They’re not sure what products are good. Architecturally, they’re really not sure what motif they want, you know, for the remodeling project.

So this is something here where we say, Hey, you know what? We will send you this. Interactive design flip book, digital flip book. You can see what’s hottest in custom home and design build renovations. Just by filling out this information and click the send me the idea book button. Okay. Instant gratification.

And so that’s what we’ll start the process there. Homebuilding, you know, you put five to 15 floor plans on your website, but hold, but guess how have I got an offer for you? You can search our enhanced design library and I’ll give you access to over 4, 000 plans. Count me in. I’m done design is always your number one lead magnet.

More people are after design than anything else. So we always start with and focus on design. Okay. The next thing for remodeling pricing. So this is an example of a client’s remodeling section for me. So I’m in a whole house remodeling and they’re showing some of their whole house remodeling projects.

And now I have. My call to action button. Hey, get instant pricing here on your remodeling project. And it looks just like what I showed you before on the attraction section. So again, I get they want to know how much I’m going to give them the ability to figure that out right now. And they get to scope out their project.

But the beautiful thing for you is, is that you have a call. You’ve already got the project scope. So it’s like, you know, really quickly. And I have one client that tells me, he goes, Rick, before I even have the call with them, I know if I’m going to, if I’m going to do this job or not. I already know it before even, even talking to them.

So you get that such great information. This is an example on pricing for home building. So now I’m looking at floor plans. I give them, you see right there, request pricing on this home. So, oh, I like this floor plan. How much does it cost? Okay, click a button, start filling out the information, start personalizing that or adding things that you want to have in your home, so when you have a call with them, you can give them a fairly accurate budget because you’ve got a preliminary scope of work.

Location, I’m a home builder, let’s say I have access to some land, or maybe you own some land, or you develop your own land. Okay, so here I can put together a lot report. Now, this particular example here, you know, I have custom builders. They never owned a single lot, but they knew they had access to land in different parts of their service area.

So they would just put together a very generic report that showed that they knew about lots in this area, and people always had to schedule a call in order to get more information on that, on that land. So again, they would run interference there. So I’m not giving them everything. I’m giving them just enough to have them take the next step.

So, of course, now once I get the lot report and I see, oh, you have land where I want to build. What’s the next step? Oh, I need to call you. Okay, let’s set up a time to call and then we’ll, we’ll have that conversation. All right, so some more options to schedule more options here. You can schedule a call.

So I just a general idea. This works great for high value projects, people that are going to spend lots and lots of money. And they’re very, very busy and they have a book schedule. They can go ahead and they can pick an exact time when they know that they have a free free opening in their schedule.

When you know that you will call them schedule a tour, you know, I do this with like all of our clients, even though they’re all their floor plans, even the ones they don’t have built or they don’t build the specs whatsoever. Let’s put schedule a tour on there. And then when someone schedules a tour to say, well, we don’t have that one really available.

However, I’m sure we can probably find something similar if it looks like it’s a good fit for us to work together. So it gets it’s a conversation starter a chat, a website chat to text. Hey, I have a quick, quick question on a project. Okay. Fill out your information here. I will get back to you in a text messaging.

We’ll talk a little bit more about how important text messaging here is on the conversion. So that moves us into the final part of our webinar here today, which is converting high quality leads. Very, very it’s difficult to do. But if you follow what I’m going to tell you right now. We see roughly 40% of all of our leads captured, con converted into appointments about 40%.

The more leads you have, that might drop down to 30%. And if you’re getting less leads each particular month, that might be as high as 50%. So 40% is the average. So what is the goal here? Yep. We wanna convert 40%, normally takes about four days. That’s about the average is is four days. Can take years.

As I mentioned before, we’ve had leads have converted after multiple years in a in a nurturing program now texting or in using mobile somebody’s phone because it’s always attached to their hip by far the best tool to use for converting converting leads. Yeah. Phone calls still work. Email can work.

There’s other messaging out there, you know, obviously, Facebook, Instagram, Google, my business chat, that sort of thing, but texting is best. But what we will start is right on the website. We will get some leads that as soon as I hit submit, we’ll give them the offer right there. Hey, would you want to book a call right now?

Talk about your project. Pull up a calendar, let them book a call, and so we will get a certain percentage that will go right away. Here’s what you need to know. Timing. After somebody opts in, your follow up needs to vary based on the time of the day. Now, should you follow up with somebody that opts in at 2 in the morning?

Yes, but it’s going to vary. Okay, so will 2 in the morning? Yes. Will I send them a text message at two in the morning? Yeah, I will. You might be thinking, Rick, you’re crazy. No, I will send the text message, but I will disclose I’m an after hour service and then ask them, would you like to book a call and talk to, you know, so and so for later on this week?

So yes, I will. Because that person might, you know, whatever they got insomnia, they might, they’re working a night shift, whatever it might be, but yes, you do follow up, but it does vary based on the time of the day. Now, the follow up is a combination of text, phone, and email. I’m never going to use only one platform.

I’m going to use all three platforms. I also will use Google My Business Chat, which, by the way, that’s something you should write down. If you have a Google My Business profile, go back and check to see if you have chat enabled. Because now people can actually just send you a chat message right through Google My Business profile.

You can put the app on your phone if you want, and you can start chatting with people that way. A lot of people will call you from your Google My Business profile. Facebook or Instagram, they can message me through that as well. Something we call a VM, that’s a voicemail drop. We’ll actually drop a pre recorded voicemail right in somebody’s phone, so it looks like they missed a call.

And you know what the funny thing is? They don’t even listen to the voicemail, they just hit call, and they call our client back. Oh, hello, yeah. And so they get them on the, on the phone that way. So it’s something you should be doing. Now here’s what you also need to know. Email performs the worst.

Absolutely. Hands down the worst form of communication today. The reason is because it’s so difficult to get an email delivered today. There’s so many spam filters. You don’t have any control over that. You can get blacklisted your IP address. You don’t even know it. It’s the worst. So do we still use it?

Yes, but we’re gonna we’re gonna focus first on text messaging. That’s our primary. Phone calls will be our secondary and emails will be our third means of follow up.

Alright, so let’s jump into final thoughts here and then I guess we’ll have a Q& A if anybody has some. Please start typing them in right now. So, how do you attract, capture, and convert high quality leads? I hope you got some ideas here. I wanna, I wanna give you just some, I guess, words of wisdom, things that I’ve seen over time.

Okay, number one, stay away from ads. Ads are your last resort to driving more opportunities. They should not be your first. You want to plug your opportunity leaks first, which is you, you already have opportunities you’re missing. So start with those, then go to search engine optimization. So you’re, you’re attracting inbound people, inbound people looking for your services in your area.

Ads are last and there’s specific ads that I would work with. Some I would not, but we can get into that if you have if you have a question. Number two, again, you’re going after those organic inbound leads. Organic just means that when when someone’s searching for your services in your location. It’s the results that show up below the sponsored results.

So people skip right to the sponsor results and they go to those organic inbound listings. Because guess what? Google is very similar to getting a referral. If you show up on page one of Google for your services in that location, it’s very much like your neighbor telling your client, Hey, you know what? I worked with ABC builders.

You should check them out. They’re awesome. They can do your project for you. Okay, rebuild your website every two years. It’s like a think about a model home. You’d never have a model home around more than two years because guess what styles change designs change every two years. Your website should be should be rebuilt and make sure it’s updated regularly.

You should never have old stuff on your website. Good question here, Shane. I’ll answer that in a second here, but make sure you never have old things on your website. Make sure your best foot is always put forward on your website. So if you got old photos on there, if they’re low resolution photos, get rid of them and get high resolution photos on there.

Online reviews are gold. So Google My Business is where you start. Because the more reviews you get on there, it’s going to help with your search engine optimization. And it also builds confidence in future future leads. Because they’re going to go and look at your Google My Business profile. They’re going to check out your reviews there.

Every review, by the way, on Google My Business profile should be responded to. So if it’s negative or positive, you should be responding to it. Don’t keep testimonials on one page. I see this all the time. You got all these wonderful testimonials. You put them on one page. Guess what? Look at your Google Analytics.

None of your leads go to that page. They don’t look at them. So you move your testimonials and put them on the pages that are most viewed. Like your floor plans, like your services page, like your photo gallery, like your locations page, and your available homes page. Invest in SEO. If you’re going to have a marketing item, invest in SEO again, because that inbound lead that’s looking for you, they’re much higher quality and much higher conversions than any paid ad you can do.

All right. Automate everything. You do not have to do things manually anymore. You can automate absolutely everything and you can build logic into this. And yes, there is AI. I mean, it’s, it’s amazing what can be done today. You can simply focus on speaking with leads and determining, yes, I want to work with you.

No, I don’t want to work with you. And build out your pipeline, backlog your business, raise your margins, raise your average sales price, or go after bigger projects as you want to grow your business, however you want to do it. But you have to automate these things and the human element will kill you. And and we’ll talk about that here next is that you are not being compared to your builder competitor.

You know why? Because your builder competitor is horrible at following horrible is an industry. We are just notoriously bad when people inquire for us, which is Yeah, blows my mind when people are going to drop hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars or horribles. But what they’re comparing you to is their favorite place to do business.

And I put Amazon on here. Why is Amazon so successful? Because the process is consistent. People know what they’re going to get. So what happens is when, when you have everything automated and you take the human element out of it, you can, you can replicate and duplicate your process at will 24 seven, and you don’t ever lift a finger.

Follow up sets the tone. This is the most important thing to notice is that somebody calls in and leaves you a message or they send you an email. If it takes you a week to get back to them, it sets the tone where people automatically thinking like, well, I guess my I’m not like I’m not that important.

You know where it takes you that long to get back to them. Whereas if you automate everything that follow up happens, you could be on a three hour meeting and that they will get followed up with in a minute. With a text message even better so that you engage people right away The idea is is that if you follow up right away, not only does it set the tone But if they’re still on your website, they’re emotionally at their peak and that’s the best time to actually convert them into An appointment don’t be afraid of the opt out.

I get this a lot too is that people like oh I don’t want someone to unsubscribe or just say stop. It’s like no you do want that Because you need to find out who is not going to build just as much as you are as who is going to build. So it’s okay when people opt out. Some people are just, I’m just curious what stuff costs.

You know, I’ll see that in my clients all the time. They’ll opt in to do a price request. Oh, I just want to know what it costs. Okay, then they opt out. Fine. That’s all right, because the majority of people won’t opt out, and you’ll be able to sell them eventually. You have to measure everything. Absolutely measure everything.

Measure where your leads are coming from. Measure your conversion rates. Measure your opportunities to, to leads and your leads to appointments. Everything has to be measured. What are the best lead sources for you? Split test. I mean, all these things have to be, have to be done. And finally, do what your competitors won’t do.

It’s really, really important. A lot of your competitors are sitting on their hands. They don’t know what to do right now because the market’s slowing down. Do what they won’t do or perhaps can’t do. You know, get an edge on them. And this is when market share is taken. It’s when markets slow down because some people will sharpen, you know, sharpen the iron and others will just hope for the market to get better.

And so this is when you can pivot and actually make a huge difference in the future of your company. So I guess I’ll put it up to questions here. I think there were a couple. Let’s see. So Matt, what do we need to give them? I think I answered that. What if you’re a company that does not have a gallery of photos?

Yeah, good question. We do provide photos of projects for our clients, Sean. So whether it’s from our design library, sometimes we’ll even use just Shutterstock photos as well on their website, just to show some nice, high quality, high resolution images. Again, the whole thing is about, you don’t have to have built everything on your website.

You just want to convey confidence so somebody feels like you can do that. And obviously, you can build those nicer projects. Do you have a platform that manages follow up funnels, et cetera, or is that on on our end? No, we do. That’s all part of what we do. That’s the capture and conversion rate. And it also converts into a CRM as well.

So all the tools that I showed you today, the websites, as well as the follow up on the back end, all of that’s in one platform, so it’s like a one stop shop for you. And that was awesome, Rick. So much great great information. I really, really appreciate that. I certainly I’m going to go check to make sure we’ve got the the, the Google My Business chat enabled.

Sounds like something that would be super easy to, to, to, to get going and, you know, all that, all that feedback about the website. And one of the things that you’re offering all of the the, the Job Tread customers right is You want to talk about that just for a second? Yeah. So again, the, the, what’s called the API integration.

So when we set up our clients, we build them a sales pipeline. We set up a spot in the pipeline. So when that client gets to that spot, and it’s usually when they put together, put together on some sort of payment. So whether it’s for design or whether it’s for to build a initial scope of work or perhaps an estimate, when our clients move the contact, it’s just a drag and drop feature into that stage in their pipeline.

All that information from that client gets pushed into JobTrend. So then they open up their JobTrend account, and now they start to estimate. It’s seamless. So that’s something that I’ve been trying to get through Buildertrend for years. They would never do it, always ignore me. They still don’t have it, which to me just blows my mind away.

Chris, you asked a question. Well, we need to manage that as well. Are we only working in job tread? Need to manage that as well. Oh, yeah. So the booking campaigns, we manage everything. The only thing our clients do is that when somebody asks a question about location or project type, something that’s not related to an appointment.

Our clients will jump in and they’ll reply to that question. They might get into a phone call as well, and then they can just turn off the automation. So, otherwise, if they don’t, they just go right into an appointment. The first time our clients will actually interact with that lead is when they have the phone call.

Awesome. Yeah. And if people reach out to you on the job trade marketplace here, it looks like you’re you’re also offering a Like a free website, content audit valued at 1000 and a 11 hour recorded strategy session. So it seems like a great opportunity. You know, clearly you’ve got a lot of experience kind of looking at, you know, what leads to higher conversions and you know, just really appreciate you offering that up to our customers to help them make sure that they’ve got.

You know, an optimized website and can can, can convert the best leads possible. Yeah, absolutely. And, and happy to do it. I’ve had some great conversations already, Eric, with a lot of job tread clients and, and really good questions out there and people that really want to make some improvements in their company.

And, and you know, we’re happy to be a resource for you and whether you partner with us or not, you know, we want you to walk away from that strategy session with some good ideas. Awesome. All right. Well, we will go ahead and wrap it up here. And again, appreciate everyone taking taking the time to to, to, to come listen to to Rick and learn a little bit more about what they do.

If, if, you know, if you do have any additional questions you know, please do reach out through the through the job trade marketplace. Rick, we’ll get right back to you and yeah, appreciate you coming in and attending. Thanks everyone.