You may be saying, “Wait, what? I get tons of leads from Home Advisor! It’s KEEPING my business alive”

But I’m here to tell you otherwise.

These services are meant to keep you slashing prices until your profit margin is so small, you can barely make money.

Sure, Home Advisor may keep you busy…

Busy running all over the place giving out quotes like candy, only to be undercut by the other company Home Advisor shared the lead with!

Gasp!

You paid for that lead, didn’t you?

Well, so did they.

And maybe they are just starting out and hungry for any bone thrown their way.

=bad for you

So, only the cheapest, most desperate business is going to win that job.

I know you like to think people will fall in love with your charm or company’s values.

But 2020’s reality isn’t that, I’m sorry to report.

People don’t like parting with their hard-earned money. Especially HomeAdvsior users!

People only realize they should’ve went with the best after it’s done and falling apart. But then it’s too late for you, and they’re out of money.

So, by using services like Home Advisor, YellowPage Ads, Yelp Ads and Thumbtack, you may have amazing success (read above about the company hungry for the bone).

Or it may be costly and inconsistent.

One thing is consistent though: You are always competing for your leads.

Competition is bad for you.

Just ask Blockbuster and Sears.

So, what’s the problem with these services?

Time: Customers submit their requests and you don’t get them until later. Now they’ve already talked to 4 other companies before you call them back. My leads are transferred directly to you, in real time. They call, they get you on the phone! It’s that simple.

Price Dropping: You feel you have to beat the lowest price. When you quote a job that three other contractors already quoted and you find out one of them quoted $1000 less! But you already paid $60 for this lead. Now you feel like you have to match that price, even if it means 40% less profit. You don’t want to share leads with people willing to take almost anything for their work. Trust me.

Price Shoppers: Customers that use Home Advisor and Angie’s list are often “quote collectors”. And guess what? Home Advisor encourages it! Why, you ask? Well you guessed it! The more inquiries a customer makes, the more leads they can sell. When a customer is price shopping, they aren’t looking for the best. They are looking for the cheapest.

Numbers: Do you want to be the 5^th person to call a prospect? You have a 20% chance of getting the job. And that’s if you even want it, at 40% off the top to price match the other guy. No way!

Visibility: Google has 194 million searches per month (probably more because really that’s the amount of traffic it gets). Bing.com has 15.9 million. Yahoo has 67.7 million views.

Guess how many views Home Advisor gets? A mere 3.6 million!

If you wanted your company to be visible, where would you choose? I know where I would.

Getting charged for bad leads, clicks, or tire kickers: Home Advisor has been known to send leads that have no intention of converting. Why would you want to pay $35 for a customer that needs a new patio in 6 months? But according to Home Advisor, they wanted a patio, so they’re a good lead!

A poorly optimized Google Ads campaign is ripe for spammers, looky loos and bots. Yup, you guessed it, jealous competitors and “SEOs” from overseas love to click on those ads. You could lose thousands in a matter of days. I know what I’m doing and have still lost tons to spam clicks.

Ok, now you’ve convinced me those services may not get me the best results, so what’s the alternative?

Me! I’m Ashley and I founded Strategic Leads, a local lead generation company. Ok, local may be a bit of a misnomer. I am local to NYC, but I have clients across the United States, from Washington to Texas, and Florida to New York.

I use organic search to get leads, which are then sent directly to you. Customers calling in are (in my experience) ready to buy. They are not price shopping. They want to talk to someone who can help them right away. This is great news for you! You don’t have to slash prices. In fact, when you get so many requests, you can actually raise prices. Yup, you heard that right. Only take on the jobs that will give you a higher profit. Forget the cheapos that are just looking to save a buck. You will be the leader in the market, so the phone calls will be consistent and you can hire more staff and be booked up months in advance.

My system has been proven time and time again, from cabinet refacing leads, to carpet cleaning leads, tree service leads, stamped concrete leads, and so many more. Time and time again I hear the same thing from my clients: “Your leads are ready to buy”, and “Just got that $5,000 job from one of your leads!” I mean, don’t just take my word from it, check out what my clients have said:

A while back, I started getting nerdy and ranking websites using highly-coveted techniques for friends and family. And then a lightbulb went off! If I could do this for friends, why not help other business owners?

So, I sought out to help as many people as I could, wherever they are located.

Let’s take a look at some of the things that happen as soon as your listing is pinned to the top of Google:

When you dominate Google, you are the most visible. The number one search result is clicked on the most (33% to be exact).

“Oh I found the company by searching on page 2 of Google!”, Said No One Ever!

You need to take up first page real estate to get the calls.

The way to do that is to rank for the main keyword in your niche plus the city you’re located in.

–Cabinet Refacing Dallas

-Kitchen Cabinets Sacramento

-Cabinets Baltimore

We don’t stop there.

It is imperative to figure out ALL the keywords that searchers are using.

–Best cabinet company in Dallas TX

-Cabinet refacing near me

-Custom cabinets Baltimore.

In order to pass the competition, we find every keyword they are ranking for, and work diligently until we pass them in the search rankings.

Dominate the competition is the name of the game.

If a specific type of job is a money-maker, those are the terms we will go after aggressively.

Is your money maker cabinet replacement? We will go after cabinet repair, but cabinet replacement will be the main money-maker keyword.

Now, imagine not fighting OVER a lead, but getting a lead that has a direct line to you. In their eyes, they view you as the best. Google is viewing you as the best, so the customer trusts that Google is right and know what it’s doing.

So That’s It?

Nope!

You want to dominate the market, right?

Well the market may be a larger area than just one city.

So, you want to dominate in the affluent cities around your main city too.

Basically, kill all competition.

Competition is good for customers, not businesses.

Now For the Cool (mostly nerdy) part.

I have designed a software system to route and track every single call and form submission that comes through to you.

Each call is tagged and responsively routed to you based on their needs.

Call are recorded in case you can’t get to the phone (but don’t make a habit of that!) We’ll get into that in another post.

We can even help set up your pipeline to help keep business and leads nurtured and organized.

In Summary:

Sharing leads is bad for business.

Paid sites like Home Advisor encourage price shopping.

Dominating search engines are a way to set yourself apart from every other business begging for scraps.

Most companies don’t know how many high-quality leads they are missing out on every month.

By leveraging Google to put your site on top of others, you are really getting in front of customers.

These customers are ready to buy…then and there.

No recycled leads. All leads are live and tracked through my proprietary call software.