Don’t Freeze Your Leads This Winter:

5 Marketing Tips To Implement for Winter 2024

(and 3 Mistakes to Avoid during the Slower Season)

5 Marketing Strategies to Implement Now

As colder weather rolls in, many contractors put the brakes on their marketing efforts. However, winter is a great time to capitalize on opportunities and retarget your campaigns to give you the biggest bang for a lean winter budget. While the demand for many services slows between November and February, refining your marketing strategy will help you reap rewards and set the stage for plenty of growth in the spring.

1. Beef up your SEO

Adding fresh content to your website will help it rank higher when warmer weather returns, making it easier for potential customers to find you. Here are a few worthwhile enhancements you can make:

• Add photos of your recent work. Before and after pictures or photos of your team in action help build consumer confidence in your services.
• Now is the time to create or optimize your YouTube channel Start recording short videos while you perform your jobs. Add links to the videos to your site and your listings. People are far more likely to consume video content than written content.
• Think about your service offerings. Are they all listed and described? Take the time to add relevant content that helps to explain why you are the best option for consumers.
• Do you provide special touches or advanced processes that you can explain? This will help improve page ranking and increase conversions by presenting you as an expert in your field.
• Add social proof to all pages. Add boxes with great testimonials you’ve received from your happy customers.
• Do your pages describe what you do and where you do it? These are key ranking factors. Take the time to read through your pages and improve their clarity.

2. Get Your GBP in Order

• Is your Google Business Profile optimized? Check your service offerings, add photos, and run a fall promotion to capture more attention.
• Get more reviews! Send a link to your GBP to happy customers and keep the 5-star reviews coming in all winter long.

3. Run Targeted Google Ads for Winter or Indoor Services & Plan for 2025

• Running a Google Ads campaign for your most profitable winter services is a great way to generate additional leads during your “off” season.
• This is also a great time to develop a game plan for your Google ads campaign for the upcoming year.
• Think about your marketing budget, what services you want to target, and what areas you want to focus your marketing on.

4. Add a Local Services Ads Campaign

• If you are not yet utilizing Google’s Local Services Ads (LSA), using your downtime to build your profile and complete the verification process is a great use of your time. LSA is a pay-per-lead program that tends to be less expensive than Google’s pay-per-click ads but requires a more extensive verification process.
• If you begin now, your campaign will be fully optimized and ready to scale during your busier months!

5. Convert Old Leads with a database reactivation campaign

• If you have a database of “old” leads that you aren’t engaging with, you’re missing out on potential revenue! Reactivation campaigns are a great, low-cost way to book more jobs at a fraction of the price of a new lead.
• DBR campaigns can be used to reengage stale leads that never converted, as well as to energize current and former clients to utilize your services for their next project. It’s important to find the right balance between staying “top of mind” and not becoming a nuisance. We recommend running these campaigns no more than quarterly.

Get ahead of your competitors and utilize your winter months wisely by focusing on your marketing efforts while you have the time. Using multiple methods of lead generation may seem daunting. Luckily, companies like 99 Calls can help you manage your marketing efforts and get a return on your investment!

3 Marketing Mistakes to Avoid this Fall

Fall marks the beginning of the slower season for many contractors. Between mid-November and mid-January, fewer consumers planning to remodel, move, upgrade, or expand. People are gearing up for the holidays and the new year ahead. Add to that the uncertainty of an election cycle, and you may be looking at a lean winter.

There are several common mistakes that contractors make when tighter times approach. It may seem smart to cut back, lay off, and lay low to avoid unnecessary expenses, but savvy contractors utilize these quieter months to build. This keeps revenue channels open and puts businesses in a prime position to enjoy exponential growth when the hot season begins.

Top Three Slow-Season Mistakes:

1. Scale way back on marketing – It might seem prudent to cut your marketing budget as the season comes to a close. However, when the number of booked jobs on the schedule begins to decrease, this is an excellent time to review your marketing strategy and trim out the efforts that aren’t yielding results.

• Now is the time to crunch the numbers and find your highest-value channels. If your Google Ads leads are becoming too expensive (demand often drops, causing click prices to climb in the fall), look into your other channels and consider running an LSA campaign, LinkedIn or Facebook Ads, or a database reactivation campaign.
• If you are paying more for leads than you are generating in revenue, it may be time to find a new lead company. There is a wide range of competence among marketing companies. What is your current conversion rate? The national average is right around 7%. The team at 99 Calls achieves a 20% average conversion rate on Google Ads campaigns. Why does this matter? The higher the conversion rate, the fewer clicks it will take to get leads, and the less you’ll spend per lead.
• Although the lead costs are higher during the fall and winter months, Google Ads may still be a viable option for increasing lead volume into the winter. Google Ads marketing allows contractors to target specific services in selected areas. Research the keywords that match your service offerings that have lower levels of competition so that you can get more leads with a smaller budget.

Although they are more challenging to find, there are plenty of opportunities to generate leads, win new jobs, and keep your team on the payroll.

2. Cut back on labor – Because there is a general shortage of qualified, motivated laborers in the workforce nationwide today, if you are lucky enough to have them on your team, now is not the time to furlough or lay them off.

• Do what you can to keep those smaller jobs coming in, even at lower profit margins to keep your valued workers gainfully employed.  
• We all prefer the big jobs and/or recurring business, but those smaller gigs often lead to larger, more valuable jobs in the future.
• Not only are you contributing to your employees’ livelihood, but you are building trust and loyalty. See #1 above for ideas on getting those smaller, one-off jobs to keep your calendar full and your people working.

3. Take it easy and chill for the winter – It may be tempting to take a long winter’s nap, but here are a few actions to take before you decide to take that much-needed vacation or rest after a busy summer.

• Take a look at your SEO efforts. Are you promoting the services that you offer in the winter months now? It takes time for new content to get indexed and start ranking on Google. Now is the time to promote the services you want to offer in February and March.
• Contact current customers and offer a discount when they book winter services.
• Plan your 2025 budget. What are your goals for the new year? How much growth in revenue or customers do you want?
• Plan your advertising budget by researching marketing and lead generation prices necessary to achieve your financial goals.
• Research marketing and lead generation firms and compare the cost of outsourcing to hiring a marketing person.
• Take time in the slower weeks ahead to review what’s working, what isn’t and see where you can trim the fat.
• Take some of your summer profits and invest them in some solid targeted online marketing. Remember, smart online marketing is an investment, not an expense!
• Once you’ve got these things in place, take a quick break – you’ll be recharged and ready to reap the rewards of your efforts!

If the thought of laser-focusing your marketing dollars and finding low-cost, high-value leads seems out of reach, consider trying the Growth Package with 99 Calls. For a $399 price tag, you’ll get set up on SEO marketing, Google Ads, and Google’s Local Services Ads for one low price, plus get access to the latest and greatest conversion tools.

Get Started Here