Remodeling is different from other home service businesses. It’s a special industry that needs its own strategies and approach for creating a marketing plan. While other service businesses need a lot of leads, remodelers don’t. How can remodelers create an effective marketing plan without needing so many leads?

In this episode, I have Brooks Burnette, Founder of Remodel Reach Marketing. His company specializes in serving residential remodeling contractors. Brooks shares his strategies for working with contractors, generating and converting leads, and building effective websites. He also emphasizes the importance of listening to and understanding clients’ needs.

Tune in and learn more!

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Lead Generation for Remodeling Contractors with Brooks Burnette

Welcome to Action’s Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Today, I want to talk to you about contracting, specifically remodeling contracting, but contracting in general is a kind of topic that’s gotten a little bit more attention lately. I know we just lived through a few decades where a lot of that type of work was looked down upon by some segments of the population, and now, amongst the new generation that’s seeing kind of a greater amount of security in that, there’s a renewed interest, as well as the clear impact that you see with your work right away as opposed to some of the jobs that a lot of people feel stuck in. But, of course, there’s a lot of considerations when contracting or starting any business that you need to get your business off the ground. An important one and a topic that I’ve covered before is also getting noticed, getting your business out there, getting it marketed. To talk about his business around remodeling contractors, how they get their digital marketing done, is the founder of Remodel Reach Marketing, Brooks Burnette.

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Brooks, welcome to the program.

 

Hey, Stephen, thanks for having me. I appreciate it, man.

 

Oh, well, thank you so much. And I like to start a lot of my episodes by getting people oriented. So we know you’re talking about Remodel Reach Marketing so you’re obviously not the contractor yourself, you’re the one handling the marketing for the contractor.

 

Right, exactly. So we’re a full-service digital marketing agency for remodeling contractors. Typically, that’s just residential. There’s not very many remodeling contractors who are solely commercial versus residential, most of them are residential and those are the guys that we like to talk we like to target. The commercial, they typically have their own client base and they go to the same people over and over, like in one industry, like restaurants or like hotels and things like that so they typically don’t need a lot of help. But the residential guys, they’re the ones that we really go after. 

 

Now, when you talk about the residential versus the commercial, can we think of this as kind of similar to the difference between a B2B and a B2C play, where the commercial contractors or commercial remodelers are doing B2B and B2B is going to have a very different method of marketing than B2C, the residential, where you’re talking about the individual person who’s looking to do a remodel in their home? 

 

Yes, yes, absolutely. So, one thing that we find is B2C, there’s a few different strategies that really work well for them with lead generation and SEO and all those things that you kind of mentioned a little bit earlier, and the B2B, it’s pretty much all about relationships and just building relationships with those other industries and getting their name recognized within those industries, going to shows for those industries, like restaurants, again, for example, and just really focusing in on those individuals rather than trying to build their brand like a residential contractor would have to do in their local area. 

 

Now, that makes sense. So you’re helping residential contractors build a brand. Now, one of the things that I think some people are wondering is that there are a lot of people out there who are contractors and do a lot of different type of work. Do remodeling contractors tend to be contractors that only do room remodeling type of thing or do they tend to be contractors that dip into some other types of projects, such as building a new home?

 

So most of them, at least, most of the people we go after, like most of my ideal clients, are mainly the remodeling contractors. General contracting is kind of the catch-all term but that splits off, like you were saying, that splits off into the residential remodels, the commercial remodelers, the home builders, even house flippers and people like that and so we find that the right target for our market is really, again, just those residential remodelers because they can typically handle the workload that home builders really can’t. If they’re a certain size, obviously, huge companies can be building multiple homes at a time, but most remodelers, they want to have a steady flow of jobs and jobs that provide a good income for them and so that’s really a good sweet spot is just trying to focus in on the residential remodeling contractors.

 

And do residential remodeling contractors operate in a similar fashion as general contractors building a home where they’re kind of the project coordinator and then they’ll bring on people such as an electrician, a plumber, etc.?

 

Yeah, and that’s really what separates remodeling from a lot of the other home services, like painters, like plumbers, and guys like that. They’re kind of the managers of the whole thing, because in one job, if they do a bathroom remodel, let’s just say, they’re hiring plumbers, they’re hiring painters, they’re hiring electricians, they’re hiring all these different people and managing them. That’s what really works for them when they want to get those bigger jobs, that pay like sometimes $50,000 for a bathroom remodel or a kitchen and that’s kind of what it takes, because you’re having to hire and manage all these different people. So it’s really a unique industry within home services and within the contracting industry as a whole. 

 

And now, just in case anyone out there listening is exploring different career paths, in the people that you’ve worked with, these contractors for residential remodels, what kind of person do you feel like you encounter the most and what kind of person do you feel like would be a person that’s a good fit for that type of a career as a residential remodel contractor?

’For remodeling, the number one thing is professionalism in home services as a whole. Share on X

You really have two different groups of individuals – of owners, I should say. You have what we call or what I call the guy in the truck so it’s typically like your handyman type guy, nothing against these guys, these guys are awesome and they’re really good at what they do and they’re typically a little bit more focused in on one specific skill set so like carpentry and things like that, but you’ve got like the guy in the truck type workers, it’s just them and maybe a couple other people. And then you have the design build firms on the other side and those are just the big companies, the companies with a lot of money. Not to say, again, not to say the guy in the truck doesn’t have a lot of money. Typically, they do, believe it or not, you’ve just got two different types of workers or of owners in that space. And so what I hear most of the time, the big separator between the two is that professionalism, showing up with your brand, branded merchandise, branded shirt, having a branded truck, and just being professional, being courteous, and things like that. That’s the number one thing that I’ve heard separates our clients and separates other remodeling professionals and just general contracting professionals from the rest. And so if you have an eye for that thing, if you have an eye for being professional and presenting yourself well to your potential customer, that’s going to set yourself apart from a lot of the other competition in your area, because most guys, they just come in and they just say, “Well, you know, we can give you a new bathroom for this much,” and they don’t really help you or answer your questions and they might be late, they might not take off their shoes when they come into the house, and just little things like that, so if you can really hone in on that and hone in on those specifics like that and those little things, then it will really set yourself apart from anybody else, really. 

 

That’s good for people who are thinking about building businesses, like a lot of the clients you work with. Now, let’s talk a little bit about your story, how you came to start Remodel Reach Marketing. Where does your story begin though? Is the home services industry a place you’ve always been?

 

Well, believe it or not, my story starts in a high school classroom. I used to be a high school teacher. 

 

Oh, wow.

 

Yeah, yeah, used to be a high school teacher and after I got my first paycheck, I realized that teaching might not be all it’s cracked up to be, even though it doesn’t really have much of a good reputation anyway. And so I started looking for, this was back in 2019, I believe, so about five years ago or so, started looking at other ways to – just other career opportunities and stumbled across marketing and just learned how to do Facebook ads and a couple things like that and really worked behind the scenes while I was teaching and just learned a skill of online marketing. And I spoke to a lot of people who were like, “If we didn’t have you here or if we didn’t have help with this, I don’t know what I would do,” kind of thing for their business, whether it’s getting their ads going or building a website for them or whatever it is. But, to me, at the time, it was no big deal, because I had worked and learned that skill and so – but that’s kind of going off a little bit. For about three years in high school and enjoyed it, but, again, just needed some additional income and then started doing marketing and niching down and trying to find the right niche, which was a big trial and error process, which I guess we can get into, if you would like, but then, for about two years now, I’ve been going full time doing this marketing thing and just transitioned fully away from education to owning my own business. 

 

So, yeah, so first, let’s cover that period of time when you were doing a little bit of both. So, you were teaching but you were also learning the skill. Now, did you learn the skill on your own? Did you go to some kind of a boot camp that a lot of these things have? How did you skill up and how exhausting was it to be doing the full-time job while also learning the new skill and then some of the other stuff you did around the trial and error?

 

Getting started in teaching, education is one of those jobs, if anyone out there has a job where you kind of have to be hands on all the time. It’s a lot more difficult. I would get up at like four in the morning, I would go into my classroom like three to four hours before students would come in and I would just bring my work laptop, my other laptop and just work on my business stuff until students came in. And so that time in the morning, I really tried to separate to either skills or outreach or building my own website, just kind of everything that that goes into running your business and so that was hard, that was hard at that time. It was definitely worth it, because, again, you learn the skill, you learn how to do everything, you learn the platforms, depending on whatever you want to do, whatever industry you want to maybe transition into, but once you know how to do it, you’re pretty much good to go and you can start to say, “Okay, how do I get clients? How do I – what’s the best way to do it?” and things like that.

 

Let’s back up a little bit, what made you pick marketing, digital marketing specifically? So you’re teaching and you’re like, “Okay, I need some more income,” and I think we all know how much teachers are paid and why it’s becoming harder and harder for districts to find teachers, to be 100 percent honest.

 

Right.

 

You picked marketing as like of all the things you could have like looked into as far as what I want to do next.

 

Yeah. Yeah, so the main thing was certifications. So, marketing was something that allowed me to learn on my own. You don’t have to go to college, you don’t have to get a degree. I was actually looking up personal training as a possible career path. I was looking at, I can’t even remember, it’s been like five years, but I know personal training was a big one that I was looking into, but there were all these certifications and all these different courses that I was going to have to take and do all that and I was just kind of weighing my options and marketing was something, digital marketing, specifically, was something that I saw just everyone needed, everybody, every industry I could think of and I was just kind of weighing the positives and negatives of a marketing business versus a personal training business versus starting a gym, I considered that, I like weightlifting so starting a gym and just weighing the positives and negatives of everything. And just – I never left marketing.

’Marketing was always the better option. Share on X

The other question I had originally asked was whether or not you went to some kind of a boot camp, because, nowadays, there’s a lot of data science, user experience, UI/UX, all these types of technical boot camps that people go and do these rigorous programs or if you kind of did the learning on your own through like kind of self-directed coursework?

 

Especially today, there’s a ton of different resources, but back then, I did have to join a couple of classes. I got scammed a couple times. I mean, just people who claimed that they knew what they were doing but actually didn’t really, they just had very generalized information. But joined a couple classes and learned how to do Facebook ads, especially, and then just kind of learned as I went, because I would get one to two clients doing Facebook ads for them and then they would say, “Well, we need a new website,” or, “Well, what about Google? Have you ever tried Google?” and I’m just like, “Uh, no,” and so I just had to learn how to do it as I went. And so again, that really, I feel like that boils down to the industry that you’re interested in. And so if it’s not marketing, if it’s whatever other industry you’re looking at, just really trying to find what those skills are and just learning them whenever you can and just trying to develop them whenever you can. 

 

And then, got hard for a little while, because I think these transitions often get hard, especially when you have to keep the lights on, as in like keep your full-time job while also trying to get something else up and off the ground, situation a lot of us have found ourselves in. What kind of kept you going? Were there ever times when you’re waking up at 4 a.m. every morning and still doing the full workload of a teacher, you were tempted to just quit or run away or do whatever, like a lot of people feel?

 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was honestly just the ROI, just the return that I was looking for, so just the bigger paycheck. And working from home and things like that that I really wanted to work towards. The school that I was driving to was probably about 45 to 50 minutes away from where I was, so I was driving for like two hours a day. Every time when I would drive to work, I would be listening to marketing podcasts and marketing shows and things like that. It was pretty much like a reminder every day when I was driving in the car, when I was driving that, like I don’t want to do this for the rest of my life, I need to work hard, I need to figure it out basically so it was like a reminder every day, which I guess is good. 

 

So even if you’re really, really tired, you still had like just built into your schedule that daily reminder or some sort of regular reminder that people can say, anytime anyone’s trying to change habits or build something else and going through that kind of real hurdle is what it kind of is. So, you decided on marketing. It sounds like you decided on marketing first. What made you decide that remodeling contractors was going to be the industry you served? How did that niching kind of work?

 

Well, I started out as a generalist, so that’s a that’s a term in marketing that we use for just someone who serves everybody. So you serve any business who needs help you go to and that’s pretty much how everyone starts. It’s very rare to find someone who doesn’t start that way, which is good.

’It’s good to get experience and to learn what industries work and what industries you have success in. Share on X

But so I started out as generalist. I still have some of those clients, actually, like a wedding venue and I’ve got like a campground that’s a part of my clients so I didn’t leave them, but, yeah, just really started to look at just home service professionals. And so I, at first, I niched down into landscaping. There’s probably like 30 digital marketing agencies that are landscaping specific so the competition is just, it’s crazy, it’s crazy, but there’s a lot of landscaping companies out there so that’s kind of – that’s the thing. But so I started out as landscaping and then just didn’t really like it, just didn’t really like the industry, nothing against the guys, they were all great, I loved working with them but just wasn’t a big fan of the industry and with all the competition, it really seemed like I was fighting an uphill battle. So then I looked at painting contractors, not to get specific or anything, but the clients that I had just were not the best. They were always looking for discounts and I always trying to say, “Well, can we do it for this much?” and I would tell them my programs and tell them my plan and all of that and they would just not respect it and just be asking for things that we didn’t do. I was like, okay, let me do painting and remodeling. Those go hand in hand, painters do remodeling and remodelers do painting sometimes so I really tried to do both and that did not work at all. That did not work at all, because, like I said earlier, remodeling is an extremely unique home service industry and that’s something I learned just through working with them and speaking with them. And so, after I spoke with and started working with a few remodelers, I really learned that these guys are serious and they’re the ones that will respect my programs and when I say it’s this much, they pay it, and so just the rest is history there. it’s just a real trial and error process. 

 

And I think a lot of people out there experience some similar things. I’ve had other people I interviewed talk about whether it’s to themselves or clients that they work with, having somewhat similar processes where even you have an idea of who your target customer is going to be when you start out but then, through experience, you just learn and sometimes the best way to learn things is through experience and through that trial and error. I think you’ve probably heard that commonly used phrase that a toddler learning to walk is not learning by like having verbal instruction. They try to walk and then they fall. They try to walk, and then they fall. And, eventually, find that right finesse of how the steps work.

 

Right. Yeah, I mean, that’s what it looks like too. You’re trying things and falling and failing, whatever you want to say, but that’s kind of what it looks like. That’s a good analogy there. 

 

As you tried out all these different industries, was a big component of it just, it sounds like, from what you’re saying, what made you feel good, what felt comfortable, what felt like you were, first of all, gaining respect that you deserve and desire but also just, as anyone out there listening explores, say, different jobs, different target markets, different business ideas, to really pay attention to how you’re feeling as you’re doing it and which particular component of it is making you feel better, which one’s making you feel worse?

 

Yeah. One of those things was just talking with the remodelers in the industry, not just going to places where they were, where they are so like I’m a part of a couple of associations and we have meetings and I’ll just go and ask them questions about what they needed, tell them up front and just say, like, “Hey, I own a marketing agency and what kind of things do you need?” Rarely did they ever say we need leads, which is people coming in who say they’re interested. Most of them have a lot of leads. What most of them don’t have is a way to convert those leads so convert them into paying customers and that was really a bottleneck that I found a lot of similarity between a lot of contractors. So whenever I discovered that and whenever I learned that from them, I was able to then say, okay, well, what can I do to help them? What can I do in the digital marketing world that can help them to not only bring in people, but help them through the steps and ultimately become a paying customer? And so whenever I learned that and started toying with that, that’s really when I knew and kind of got that good feeling, like you were mentioning, of like this is the right path. Sitting in those meetings with painters and some other industries where they’re trying to trying to lower my prices and things like that and they’re just like, “We need leads now, now, now, now, now,” that’s not a good feeling. And so speaking with the guys and being in the industry, where they say, “Hey, we really need help in this area,” and I was able to provide help in those areas, that’s kind of what you were talking about with that good feeling and figuring it out. 

 

And it also sounds like a big component to figuring out where you were going to land and where you were going to be content was kind of listening and actually being present in a lot of these conversations. Because one of the things that I work hard on a lot is how often people are not present and constantly distracted and, of course, I have my business around how much time people spend glued to their phones or on the TVs and doing all sorts of like distracting, time wasting stuff and one of the things I’m worried about is, of course, how many people are missing out on that exact aha moment that you’ve had, and it might not be an aha moment but that moment when you said, like, “Oh, I realize that I can really help these people on this specific need because I was listening and I was present what these people were actually saying to me,” as opposed to having my phone out or having 15 other things on my mind because I had just spent 15 hours watching videos.

 

Right, right, exactly.

like, say, I want to just start a remodeling company, and just really listening and asking useful questions, not just like the weather and talking about sports or whatever, that’s all good and you need to do that but also you need to ask actual questions and open-ended questions and that’s really something that I went in to these meetings, which are typically lighthearted for the associations that I’m a part of, they’re easy going, but just really going in with a plan and just saying, like, hey, I’m going to try to figure out where they’re struggling and why they’re struggling, what have they tried in the past and things like that to try and make it constructive. 

 

And one thing I learned actually from hosting this podcast, if you ask them questions about who they are, what they do, people are oftentimes more than willing to share. There are a few exceptions but, in most settings, if you ask people about their business, they’re more than happy to talk about it.

 

Yes, exactly, exactly. I mean, oh my gosh, man, they’ll just go on. I mean, kind of like me, they’ll just go on forever and ever and you just kind of have to interject here and there with the questions on, like, “Oh, well, tell me more about that,” you know how some of the conversations would go, they would say, like, “Yeah, I’ve been doing remodeling for 30 years, but, recently, we’ve kind of slowed down a little bit,” and so then I would just be like, “Oh, why do you think that is?” and then that would start a whole another tangent but give me information about what they’re trying, what hasn’t worked for them, where they want to go by just listening and asking those questions and interjecting at those moments whenever it’s like, okay, well, I can get more info off of that, and interjecting that can just open it up to a lot more information.

 

And that’s wonderful and it’s wonderful how you kind of went about this process of discovering what you really wanted to do. And now it sounds like also there’s a difference between digital marketing for lead generation and digital marketing for lead conversion. Based on the conversations that you’ve had, you decided that lead conversion was going to be the thing that resonated with you a little bit more. Now, if anyone out there listening is, say, dealing with either of those two issues, what is the real difference? What do people need to think about and do when they’re trying to generate leads versus convert leads?

 

So this is all in the mind frame of the remodeling industry but I always tell people digital marketing is pretty much the same, like we’re doing the same tactics like Google ads, SEO, website, all of that is generally the same but it’s trying to find those differences like that help with the sales, to preface that. But when it comes to lead generation, there’s a propensity in the marketing world to just kind of flood people with numbers, flood business owners with the numbers and say, “Hey, look, we got 50 leads for your company this month. We got 50 phone calls, 50 form requests or form submissions,” whatever it is, “but, hey, we got 50 of those for you last month,” and that’s great, that’s good, that’s definitely something to brag about but how many of those people are they actually converting? How many are actually going through and paying and becoming a paying customer? 

 

A customer, essentially, yeah.

 

Right. Well, so a lot of the other home service industry, they pretty much just rely on leads and a large influx of leads. So, for example, like a tree care business, tree service business, most people, they have a tree fall in their front yard and they need someone to come and chop it up for them. Bringing in leads like that is going to be great because those are quick. Someone who needs someone right now. With remodeling, it’s a much longer process. They may get someone who calls in or submits a form on their website but they’re not ready to pull the trigger on a new bathroom, on a new – on a home addition or a new deck. They’re not ready for that for maybe a year to two years down the road and so that’s really the difference. That’s really the difference between lead generation versus converting the leads. The lead gen is focused on the now, focused on quick. The lead conversion is more focused on, okay, how can we give them the confidence to sign the contract? How can we give their leads the tools, the wherewithal to move forward? So that’s where the difference is, if that makes sense. I know that was long winded, but…

 

Yeah, but in the larger scheme of things, it sounds like there’s a difference based on the scope of the work, right? And so we’re talking about the lead generation industry being, I don’t know, and I’m seeing about jobs that are like $500 to $1,000 where it’s not a huge commitment and it’s not a huge loss if you make the wrong decision. But then when someone’s talking about an entire room remodel, we’re talking tens of thousands of dollars, you mentioned the number 50,000 and so, in that situation, you kind of need a little bit more vetting from the customer standpoint because it is a much bigger commitment, both in time and money. And so is that a general paradigm for someone to think of any industry they may be kind of dipping themselves into to think about which of those two, which side do you want to be in? Do you want to be on the side of people that just need kind of those small scale but volume and even coaching services can have that that too as well, like are you looking for someone that’s going to do a six-session package for a couple thousand dollars or are you looking for a long-term client that’s going to be with you for years on this kind of really intense program? It’s going to be a similar spectrum, I guess.

 

Those quick leads, that was just not something I was interested in, just providing those quick leads, because it’s a lot more high stress, because one month leads might be good, your ads might be running well and everything’s good, but then the next month, whether it’s the time of year, the keywords, all those different things, like a bunch of stuff goes into it and the leads will be down and you’ll have your clients calling and saying, “Hey, why are leads down?” and then you’ve got to be prepared to explain that to them and you’ve got to have an answer, right? And so not to say that we don’t do a good job with bringing in leads, we do, but remodeling is an industry that doesn’t rely on heavy lead flow. Most remodelers that I work with, they want to do maybe five to ten jobs per month, they’re happy with that, and they just want to find the right people and they want to be able to, like we said, convert the leads that they’re getting. 

 

And so when it comes to the two different types, the people who are looking for lead conversion, the people looking for those bigger projects and stuff like that, is there something that people need to be thinking about differently upfront? Because it sounds like it’s like maybe it’s less about those keywords, less about that initial getting noticed, and it even kind of dips into a halfway point between the B2B relationship building that you talked about before versus something like pure B2C and I even think about like, say, an app on an iPhone where you have, if you build an app, you have no relationship with that person, just a fake relationship. If they watch your video content and they’re one of those people like, “Oh, I feel like I know that person,” but they really don’t. Whereas in this lead generation B2C area where you are, you’re not building the same long-term relationship necessarily that a B2B business will be building but you’re still building an amount of trust for someone to spend a decent amount of money on your services.

Right, exactly. The B2C guys, the lead gen guys, those plumbers, electricians, those people who need air conditioning industry, the purchase of the customer is a lot of times based on impulse or emergency, right? And so it’s really just the first guy that comes up, the first one or two people that come up on Google, that’s who they’re going to go with because they need it now. Well, so, again, remodeling, it’s not a necessity most of the time. The guys that we work with, they’re not the handyman repair people, they’re the, “We would like a new bathroom. We would like a redesigned living room,” whatever it may be. So, yeah, that trust has to be there. And so we have our strategies in my agency, we have our strategies to help with the trust building and we understand that that is a huge part of it. If they don’t trust you, they’re not going to hire you, because remodeling, it’s sometime like a two-month project, and so they’re going to be inside your house for one to two months and so if they don’t trust you or if they’ve never seen you before, rarely are they ever going to sign that agreement.

And so part of our whole strategy is making sure people see you multiple times, multiple places, and they understand who you are through videos, through direct mail, mailing things to them as like an introduction booklet, things like that, to get them familiar with you, familiar with your team, familiar with the company so that way they’re more comfortable signing that, ultimately signing that sale or signing that contract at the end of the sale. 

So from purely digital standpoint, it sounds like, if you’re just looking at lead generation, it’s going to be a lot about keywords, at least how things stand now, it might change, but it’s going to be a lot about, I’d say, getting the algorithm to notice you.

 

Yeah, absolutely, and having the right budget.

 

Yeah. But then for this conversion, if you’re still thinking about your website and thinking about everything up front, then you’re thinking more about establishing yourself as an expert in the field, establishing yourself as that through things more akin to content, even podcast interviews, not to toot my own horn here but you know what I mean, like this content where people can like get to know you a little bit longer than just a quick Google search.

 

Yeah, right, right, absolutely. Again, videos are something that are just unbelievably good at just – like I just have to harp on my clients, the owners, record a video of some kind, get in front of the camera so people can see you, they know what you sound like, they know who they’re talking to, who they’re going to be paying before the sales meeting or anything like that and that just really sets people apart from the quick leads. Again, most of that is you have a good budget. If you’re a landscaper or you’re a plumber, have a good budget, make sure you’re spending enough on Google and on your advertising platforms, it doesn’t have to just be Google, and then have a good landing page where people can sign up and do just that. You’ll be good to go. But for a remodeling contract, the sales process can be months long, years long, even. It’s a little bit more complicated than just having a good ad campaign and a good landing page.

 

We’ve talked a bit about this general idea of lead generation versus conversion, but contracting and remodeling contracting, is there anything specific to that industry that people need to think about, such as people want to see certain types of pictures people might want to see, and I just think about those before and after pictures, like this is what the bathroom looked like then and this is what the bathroom looked like now that everyone kind of throws out there whenever they spend the money on the big remodel.

 

Yeah, yeah. It’s funny, because while at the same time, those before and afters are very important and they do work, they obviously do work, I tend to tell my clients to shy away from focusing on those too much because, ultimately, they’re not hiring a before and after, they’re not hiring a photographer, they’re paying people to come into their house to do the job. And so I tell my clients, so, for example, for social media, for Facebook and wherever they’re posting material, I always tell them you need to have a 50/50, mindset.

 

So the websites that we build, we have pictures of their jobs, pictures of the team, videos of the owner, all kind of interwoven together. If you went and just typed in home remodeling contractor in your city and you just started going through the websites, they’re all going to look the same. They’re all going to have professional picture, maybe even a video if they know what they’re doing of their work, and pretty much nothing else. And so when you have a contractor who gets in front of a camera and introduces themselves and talks about their business right on the front page of their website, that just completely shoots them way further above anybody else in their market most of the time. 

 

And then I do have to also ask you, because it is 2024 and it’s on everybody’s mind, is AI as a means by which people search for things in general changing anything about what people are thinking about or how people are discovering the right contractors?

 

Believe it or not, not really right now, at least in my industry. Google has actually, they’ve started to prioritize handwritten, actual, legitimate content on websites, for example, so if they come to a website and they’re trying to figure out which business to rank over another, they’re going to prefer the businesses that have legitimate content rather than AI writing and AI content as of right now. AI is still not really a big factor. AI is good. You can use it in places. You can use it for your social media posts. If you don’t really feel like typing out a long post, you can just punch into ChatGPT and things like that but there’s really not any overarching like game changers when it comes to AI because people want to see legitimate stuff. People are still going to be able to figure out that that might not be authentic and so it’s always just best to just hire a professional photographer and just take legitimate pictures and just be authentic. 

 

Yeah, of course, like AI is changing some things but it’s not really changing everything and I guess the important thing to remember about AI is that it also only draws from existing content. AI does not create anything new, it just synthesizes what’s already out there, and I think a lot of people have also seen what AI images and AI writing looks like and we’ve learned to discern a little bit.

 

It’s very general. It won’t get into specific. If you go into ChatGPT and say write me content for my kitchen remodeling page, it’s not going to talk about specifics. It’s just going to say just the most general, basic stuff you’ll ever see.

 

For sure. Well, Brooks, thank you so much for coming on Action’s Antidotes, talking about your specific industry, giving us a good idea about the difference between a lead generation as well as a conversion and what people need to think about as well as giving some people good ideas of things to think about when it comes to what side of that you want to be on as well as just listening to people around you, listening to yourself, having good conversations and discovering what specific thing it is that you really want to be doing. 

 

Yeah, yeah, and I don’t know if you’re going to do this, but like the last thing that I would say to anyone who’s like looking at either changing careers or changing industries or whatever, just really look at what it takes to do that so like I thought about firefighting at one point, way back then, I just remembered, and so I started looking up, okay, what are the exact steps that I have to do to get there? And for personal training, what exact certifications do I need to do or do I need to have to get there?

’That’s really the most important thing is just knowing where you want to end up, outlining your path, and then just doing it. Share on X

Yep, and finding that path. And so to those out there listening, because not only do you have to think about will I be happy when I’m sitting in that chair or doing that thing but also is the path to get there one that’s reasonable.

 

Exactly. That’s what I was talking about earlier, about weighing the positives and negatives. I can only work with one person at a time. I can only – oh, but then I’ve got group training but then I’ll have to rent out a gym space and all of this stuff and you really have to think about all those different possibilities and think is it really going to be good once I get there before you start following those steps.

 

Oh, for sure. Some great things to think about. And to wrap up, I also, as always, want to thank everybody out there who’s listening, everyone for taking the time today to tune in to Action’s Antidotes, and I hope you had some inspiration as well as some ideas about what you need on your path.

 

Important Links:

• Brooks on LinkedIn
• Remodel Reach Marketing

 

About Brooks Burnette

Brooks isthe CEO and Founder of Remodel Reach Marketing. He is also a Podcast Host and an Author.