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There's a good chance you have this ad in your account right now.
A nice photo of a kitchen. "Get your free estimate today." A button that says Learn More.
Here's the problem. Every other remodeler in your city is running the same ad, and homeowners walk right past it.
In this post I'll show you how to get leads without running another free estimate ad. So homeowners call you already knowing who you are, and you stop getting pushed on price. I'll also show you the exact video that got 6.6 million views without a single dollar of ad spend.
Who I am
I'm Temi. I run Lead Phoenix AI, and I own a renovation company in Calgary called Dream Home Renovations. Now I help remodeling companies own their lead flow instead of renting it.
In the last video, I told you about the 97% of homeowners nobody's talking to. Today I'll show you the first thing you can build to reach them.
Why free estimate ads cost so much
Most remodelers believe free estimate ads, lead sites and paid leads on Google are how you get jobs. And I get it. For a long time, that's what worked. A homeowner needed a kitchen, she looked for a contractor, and whoever showed up first with a free quote had a shot.
Remember Renter Ron from my earlier video? He wants to reach these homeowners, so he runs free estimate ads. His lead aggregator runs them. His marketing agency runs them.
The problem is, these ads make you look just like everyone else. It's not an offer. It's what everybody expects. It's beige. You walk right past it and don't even notice.
Here's what that does. Three things:
1. It only speaks to the 3% who are ready to buy right now. And those people are already getting three, four, five quotes.
2. Homeowners scroll past ads that look like ads. So you pay more to get seen in the auction. Most free estimate ads in this trade cost between $100 and $200 a lead.
3. The leads you do get know nothing about you. Your rep walks in cold, sits at a kitchen table with a stranger for two hours, and gets pushed on price.
So you pay top price for the most-shopped homeowners, and then sometimes you have to discount to close.
Here's the logic. If every company in your city offers a free estimate, a free estimate can't be the reason anyone picks you. You need to zig while everyone else zags. You need to be different before you ever get to the estimate.
Artisan Roofing, a $6.6 million company, dropped the whole "contact us for pricing" approach. Their view is that kind of marketing doesn't work on the internet the way it used to.
The Trojan Horse
Owner Owen does something different. He borrows a strategy the Greeks used about 3,000 years ago. You've probably heard of it. It's called the Trojan Horse.
The army couldn't get through the gates of Troy. So they built a huge horse and left it outside the gates as a gift. The people of Troy didn't know there's no such thing as a free lunch, so they brought the horse inside. It was full of soldiers. They came out, sacked the city, and you know how that ended.
I know, it's a morbid story. But it teaches a lesson. You can't push your way in with a free quote. The gates are shut. Show up with something useful, and the homeowner lets you in.
Think about how a good doctor works. They don't open with the bill. They do the diagnosis. They tell you what's wrong and explain your options.
Here's the truth. The only lead source that gets cheaper with time is the one where you're teaching. Answer the questions homeowners really ask at 11pm, when they're lying awake, and they already trust you by the time they're ready.
All you have to do is make a short video, one to three minutes long, answering one question a homeowner actually has.
The video that got 6.6 million views
Here's an example of one we did. It's a walkthrough of a finished project, or even a project in progress. The title is Four Renovations That Add Zero Value.
That video has been seen 6.6 million times. No ad spend behind it. No film crew. No studio.
Why did it work? Because every homeowner thinking about a renovation has the exact same worry: am I about to waste my money? This video answers it. And it doesn't ask for anything.
The ad we ran for this one got 767 leads at $18 each.
In my own company, one of the first videos we made answered a single question: how much does it cost to build a basement? And it broke the answer down line by line, which most contractors won't do. People in the city wanted that answer badly.
Why teaching gets cheaper
A lot of contractors worry about this. Won't I be helping my competitors? What happens if I put my prices out there?
But a competitor learning your prices costs you far less than losing the homeowner who wants a $100,000 kitchen and is trying to find out what it's going to cost.
I was watching a podcast with Ryan Shutt at Southwest Exteriors. They started publishing their prices, and their close rates jumped from the low 30s to 41 to 42 percent. Most of that came just from publishing prices.
So here's the difference between that video and a free estimate ad. You give value first, before asking for anything.
And the best part: the video keeps answering questions for the 97% long after the ad is gone. That's what makes it an asset. A free estimate ad is gone the day you stop paying for it. This one keeps giving, because people share it and comment on it.
You probably already know this from your own jobs. The homeowner who did their homework before calling you is the easiest client you'll ever have. They know what things cost, and they know why. I always say an educated buyer is the best buyer any day. And you manufacture educated buyers by teaching them.
Artisan Roofing found the same thing. Their best email is "10 questions to ask your roofing contractor," and it converts at about 40% for them. Their reason: "Even if you're not choosing us, we want you to be informed."
It's also how the design-build remodeler I told you about in the last video turned $57,000 in ad spend into over $1.8 million in signed work. Those weren't free estimate ads. They were short videos answering what homeowners ask before they call anyone.
Where to start
One video isn't enough, though. What happens after someone watches that first video is where everything pays off. We have a whole system behind it for turning viewers into educated leads, from the Trojan Horse to everything we set up after it. And if you'd rather we come into your company and build it for you, there's a link to book a call in the playbook.
If you want the whole system in one place, grab the free $1.8 million remodeling playbook.
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