Deserts were once vast sea beds teeming, I imagine, with boundless plant life and creatures so massive and fantastic that our modern species can’t even grasp their strangeness. But now, deserts are deserts. They have dried up, and in place of ancient whales and seaweed forests, a much more diminutive ecosystem lives off what little moisture and sustenance remains. For contractors across the country, New Construction feels like a desert where steady work and profit have gone the way of the dodo.

In desert-like conditions, contractors are looking to small remodels to stay afloat. There’s little speculation in the building industry, but there are aging homes, low-cost materials and energy efficiency incentives, which are a ray of light in a trade otherwise rife with downsizing and bankruptcy protection.

A recent article in The Tennessean tells the story of Capitol Homes. The construction company was booming with everybody else for much of the last decade, building 850 homes in eight years, including a high-profile showcase on ABC’s Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. Now, things have changed. Owner David Luecke filed for bankruptcy protection and downsized his business to become a home remodeler. Where once Capitol Homes was banging out new home after new home, they are now refinishing basements. (more…)

Google-searching your company name may bring a smile to your face as you watch it move closer to the top search result. But most homeowners don’t search by company name, says Replacement Contractor Magazine. Instead, they are far more likely to enter a generic term like “window replacement” into the search field. Such broad searches are bound to knock your company down the Google ladder, leaving you far from generating crucial internet leads. And that’s where lead-generation companies are useful and why they tend to dominate broad topic search results.

A search for “replacement windows” by Replacement Contractor yielded three top results: Window Replacement Center, the Replacement Window Site, and Calfinder. All three sites collect information from homeowners set on remodeling and then sell that information to contractors. Lead-generation companies have become a powerful force in the Internet age. Calfinder, for example, offers homeowners information, resources, a daily blog and free estimates on a variety of home improvement projects.

Contractors, on the other hand, gain access to a vast coffer of internet leads. These leads are exceptionally valuable because homeowners feel safer using a company referred by the lead-generation site. In other words, lead-gen companies are to contractors today what word-of-mouth referrals were before the age of Google.

Not every remodeling contractor is happy with lead-generation services. Some complain that too many companies receive the same lead or that leads are not well-qualified. Yet those who are successful with internet leads are often very successful. George Faerber, owner of Bee Window in Indianapolis, estimated that 8-10% of his leads come from lead-generation companies – among them Calfinder – and that about one-third of all his business volume comes through the Internet in some form or another. (more…)