Lessons in Lead Generation
Wouldn’t you be surprised to walk into your front yard and discover a mature watermelon plant loaded with shiny, ripe fruit?
Gardening is a meticulous yet rewarding project. To reap a harvest, a gardener must carefully cultivate the soil, plant seeds, and nurture the fledgling plants through various stages of growth to bear fruit.
Do you expect customers to automatically walk through your showroom doors or instinctively call to schedule work with your company?
Just like gardening, generating business leads is demanding yet rewarding. Successful businesses must cultivate the soil of their target market. They must sow the seeds of interest through strategic marketing and nurture potential clients through a carefully crafted sales funnel.
Just as the skilled gardener knows that different plants require specific conditions to thrive, the experienced businessman will tailor his lead generation strategy to cultivate a verdant garden of engaged and loyal customers.
The following case study highlights lessons Aspire is gaining from the lead generation efforts.
How Aspire Generates Leads
Aspire is a high-end renovation company primarily serving Virginia’s Smith Mountain Lake and Roanoke regions. It began as DF Building, a deck building and handyman company, and evolved slowly into its high-end niche. In 2022, it was rebranded as Aspire to reflect that shift.
Since the company’s owners are part of a church community that avoids websites and digital advertising, all of their marketing is done through print ads and postcard mailings.
Typically, an Aspire postcard features one type of remodeling project on the front, perhaps a beautiful new deck, kitchen, or bathroom. On the back, photos and text show their other services: garages, whole home renovations, basements, etc. The ad designs match the postcards with a brief listing of their other services. These ads appear in Roanoke’s Home Magazine.
I talked to Bradley, one of Aspire’s talented owners, to find out what Aspire is learning through their marketing campaigns.
Lesson 1: Work toward tracking results.
Call tracking is a system that creates phone numbers for advertisements. When an interested person calls the number on the marketing piece, the business can see whether they are calling because of a billboard, ad, or postcard. This helps a company understand which messages, designs, and locations people respond most to.
Aspire has been tracking their postcards this way; however, since they don’t use a new number for every single postcard, “it’s been hard to pin down which postcard is triggering the calls,” Bradley says. “At this point, it’s mostly guesswork.”
It is possible to observe some general trends with call tracking. Bradley says, “We have seen a trend of a few that have not worked. We experimented with some stock lifestyle pictures, which were not as effective for us, but maybe there was a combination of factors. My vision down the road is to do some deeper research, maybe surveying clients.”
When analyzing results, you must also consider what else may be affecting your campaign. For example, the renovation market is strong right now. Bradley says, “Realistically, this needs to be considered. It’s easy to market renovation in general right now.”
Marketing guided by accurate results will always be more focused, efficient, and effective. As Bradley demonstrates, you should continue to hone your knowledge of what’s working and why.
Lesson 2: Play the long game.
“Results don’t always come immediately,” Bradley says. “It took a year of pretty dedicated postcard campaigning for us to start being sure that it was generating leads.
“Some of these projects take a significant amount of time, but in the end, they’re worth it even if you don’t feel it in the same marketing year. Even from a budgeting standpoint, you’re not always realizing that gain in the same year.”
Clients considering renovation also need time to decide who is the right fit for them. It’s quite common for Bradley to meet a prospective client in their home and notice a stack of Aspire postcards sitting there. Bradley feels they’ve saved multiple postcards because they like the photography or a certain photo sparked an idea for their own home. When Bradley asks customers if a certain postcard is responsible for their interest, most customers point instead to the fact that they have been receiving Aspire’s postcards every other week. It was the consistent reminder that made an impression.
Last year, their postcard campaign sold a $575K project, their highest-ticketed project to date. Playing the long game is worth it!
Lesson 3: Timing is key.
Part of learning to know your audience is understanding what factors might affect their response at a given moment. Bradley says, “We have noticed a trend that certain seasons, like summer vacation and holidays, are not effective marketing times for us. Our intent is to avoid advertising during those popular national holidays by a week or two.”
Bradley says, “The timing is really important for postcards because once you’ve sent them, you’ve spent the money.” Send it the week of July 4th, and your postcard might end up in the trash without much of a glance. Send it in the middle of February after people have recovered from the holidays, and they might stick your postcard to the refrigerator and talk about a remodeling project over dinner that night.
Lesson 4: Don’t underestimate photography.
In Aspire’s industry, high-quality photography relays the feeling that Aspire is a competent company. Photography that highlights the beauty of their work draws people to look a little bit longer rather than trashing it or turning the magazine page.
Bradley says, “People comment on the really nice, eye-catching photography. It grabs their attention, especially when it’s consistently well done. A continual stream of different, high-end photography seems to draw people in.”
Lesson 5: Know the risks and strive to mitigate them.
Bradley and the team at Rosewood are researching ways to target his ideal customers even more precisely. “With print media, particularly postcards, there is a risk that it won’t get to the right person. We’ve tried targeting with mailing lists, although even that strategy hasn’t always captured someone we know is an ideal client.”
Sending postcards is expensive, so it’s important to make sure they reach the right people. Aspire plans to send fewer postcards this next marketing year, focusing on a few key Roanoke neighborhoods with great potential.
Lesson 6: Support your marketing with good relationships.
I have written several case studies for Aspire. Their customers have always been delighted with Aspire and have nothing but glowing praise for their communication, workmanship, and professionalism. How does Aspire do it?
Bradley says, “We don’t do anything really robust. I’ve talked to some other companies, and they have these amazing touchpoints. They do an extremely measured job of communicating with the client. We’ve made an attempt in that direction and we’re still trying to improve, but we don’t really do anything amazing.”
Bradley says, “I do think communication and the relationship are the most important things. . . showing people that you really care. Obviously, you can’t leave out the workmanship and actually solve the problem, but I think the relationship comes first. You can do a poor job of communicating and relating, and the customer is still not quite happy, even if you do awesome, flawless work. I think it’s a shift from past generations. People now expect that personableness and relationship more than they did in the past. An authentic desire to communicate and build relationships with people means more to people.”
When your brand has built a good reputation in the community, people will also pay more attention to your marketing.
Wrapping it up
By providing a rich soil of market research, employing the right communication tools, and consistently tending to the personalized needs of potential leads, businesses can grow a sustainable and abundant garden of leads.
Need help generating effective leads for your business? Learn more about Rosewood and the Marketing Guide Path™ at www.rosewood.us.com.