Home Remodeler Grows 62% with Inbound Marketing Plan

Case Study Overview

Tilghman Builders, a family-owned home renovation company contacted LAIRE to reach a new target market and increase revenue. We implemented an aggressive content strategy, inbound marketing, website redesign, and digital advertising to help them reach their goals.

• 32% Revenue Growth in 1 Year
• Tripled Website Leads in 2 Years

Background

Family Owned Custom Home Builder

Tilghman Builders is a family-owned and operated home renovation company. The owners, along with their employee-based team (not subcontractors), deliver high-quality residential projects, from second-story additions and in-law suites to kitchen renovations and remodels. When we first met them in 2015, they were handling all of their marketing themselves, which was limited to direct postcards and a self-made website. They were paying an SEO firm a large monthly retainer to “keep them ranking.”

The Problem

Lacking True Marketing Strategy and Consistent Branding to Target High-Quality Leads 

In 2015, the company was up to $1.5 million in annual sales. They were making an impact in their community, with raving clients and beautiful results, but mainly only getting new business from referrals. Their average job size was just under $100,000, which is representative of a large kitchen remodel. The team was also working on higher priced additions, however, their schedule was still mostly filled with smaller projects that took their crew away from larger money-makers. 

While they were truly a Mom & Pop operation, the look of their outdated website did not convey the superior quality and beauty of their HGTV-worthy projects that they were designing and building. Their portfolio and featured projects were not representative of their capabilities, nor helping them land the larger, more modern projects. Their direct mail marketing postcards that had been making the rounds used outdated images, with no conversion opportunities for the reader, other than picking up the phone to call. Their social media presence was minimal, channels laying empty except for a few posts a year.

The other issue was that a home remodel is a large expense with a long lead time. It can take a potential client a year or more to do the research and feel comfortable with spending or financing roughly $150,000 for their project. The owners had no communication channels set up to stay in touch with website visitors or interested clients who weren’t ready to pull out their wallet.

Our Strategy 

Custom Inbound Marketing for our Custom Home Builder

Tilghman Builders wanted to increase their revenue, increase the average job size, and stay focused on the larger projects to keep their crews busy. They contracted our firm to first start work minimally with a social media management retainer and minor website updates, so we could build the foundation for improving their image and presence. After 6 months of pure social media efforts, we developed an inbound marketing strategy for the custom home builder. This included:

• Full website redesign
• Rebranding
• HubSpot website integration
• Content marketing plan
• Paid ads strategy

We kept the direct marketing campaign, but with a facelift.

We updated the postcards to show their most welcoming and stunning remodels, and invited readers to check out their new eBooks to learn more about the process of remodeling their home. Direct mail was still a great way to reach their non-digital clients, with mailings targeted to areas around a recently completed renovation.

A custom website that truly represented their custom home builder brand and increased organic sessions by 106% in 2 years.

For Tilghman’s website, we completed in-depth research of their brand and their buyer personas, to ensure our messaging, imagery and content resonated with the right audience and felt helpful, not salesy. We worked closely with them to capture their warm, family feel, coupled with their eye for clean, beautiful design and skilled craftsmanship. 

Our content plan centered around local and industry keywords and frequently asked home improvement questions so we had a strong foundation of blogs and resources to share with the builder's growing contact list. 

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Received over 5,000 website visitors through targeted digital advertising.

For digital advertising, we used Facebook’s ad targeting to reach homeowners in very specific zip codes, by their interests, to drive traffic to the website portfolio and conversion offers. We could now nurture the new contacts, with educational tools that followed them along their journey of deciding if a home renovation was the right solution for them (it was), and who they could trust to complete it with quality and style (aka our client).

YOY Results of our Custom Home Builder Inbound Marketing Plan

2019 RESULTS

• $2,674,310 (10% growth over 2018)
• Leads = 196
• Job size = $157,312
• Web traffic = 1,342 visits/mo
• HubSpot conversion visits to contacts = 1.22%

2018 RESULTS 

• $2,414,310 (14% growth over 2017)
• Leads = 180
• Job size = $165,349 avg
• Web traffic = 1,324 visits/mo
• HubSpot conversion visits to contacts = 1.13%

2017 RESULTS 

• $2,109,000 (6% growth over 2016)
• Leads = 66
• Job size = $191,739 avg
• Web traffic = 605 visits/mo
• HubSpot conversion visits to contacts = 1.07%

2016 RESULTS

• $1,980,000 (32% growth over 2015)
• Leads = 52
• Job size = $114,840 avg
• Web Traffic = 450 visits/mo
• HubSpot conversion visits to contacts = .95%

Now that leads are more qualified, the average job size has increased by $77,000, and their crews can focus more time on larger jobs, instead of fractured, smaller projects.