Kept on track

Marketing has always been vital for Leads 2 Trade as a provider of double qualified sales leads in the home improvement industry, says co-founder and director Andy Royle, especially during the last 12 months.

Marketing plays a huge part in our business, to not only help produce the thousands of enquiries we generate every week but to also keep our members informed of any changes to the business and the way they can obtain leads.

It was important to communicate with our members during lockdown through our marketing channels, so they knew how we were tackling the crisis, how we were operating, and how they could keep in touch with us.

Thanks to continuing SEO, during lockdown Leads 2 Trade’s network of home improvement websites were continuing to generate high volumes of enquiries a week, with over 1,000 quote requests from homeowners received in just one week alone.

With installers having grave concerns that inbound leads would dry up, Leads 2 Trade acted quickly to ensure our members were able to access enquiries in that period and act on them immediately after the lockdown.

Having launched a Lead Vault at the beginning of the year for any overspill of double qualified leads for members to access, we gave every member access to it in the first lockdown so those that wanted to still receive leads could take advantage.

And, as there was no way to double qualify the leads as normal due to its contact centre being temporarily shut, each enquiry was priced at just £5.

It was important to us to help our members as much as we possibly could remotely during lockdown and, as our network of websites were still generating a healthy number of leads, we thought the Lead Vault would be the perfect place to put them for members to access.

We were explicit that the leads were ‘raw’ due to our call centre not being able to double qualify them, which was why we were able to price them at minimal cost, and this allowed members to take advantage of the spike in consumer searches and build up a quote bank ready for the return to work.

On reopening after the first lockdown, we looked at the industry and consumer environment post-Covid and decided to adapt our business model to suit, launching a new ‘no pitch, no fee’ with confirmed appointment service for members that only sees them pay for a lead if they sit and pitch it.

And, to make things easier, not only will the lead come with a fixed appointment, but installers will only be competing against one other company for the job.

Instead of our traditional, pre-Covid, model of providing the consumer with up to four no obligation quotes from installers, with a requirement for the consumer to co-ordinate visits from the referred installers from their local area, we now provide just two.

And for the consumer, it means only two appointments in a much more controlled environment to alleviate any nervousness around arranging appointments themselves with multiple companies.

Leads 2 Trade has found email marketing and press advertising as vital to keeping customers informed of the new service.

Marketing was crucial not only in relaying that message to our members, but throughout the change in restriction during the last six months.

With restrictions on in-house selling being tightened by the government towards the end of last year, and then relaxed for the beginning of 2021, we’ve had to adapt the service to suit and make sure all our appointments are undertaken in a Covid-secure way.

Marketing has helped provide our members with everything they have needed to know, every step of the way.