The General Contractor

It’s that time of the year, when every general contractor from HVAC to gutter protection begins to sign up for home shows. But simply signing up for them is not going to guarantee that you will get leads and sales simply by showing up.

Successful home show marketing can be divided into three marketing categories:

1. The Preemptive Strike – Before The Show
2. Shock & Awe Show Marketing – During The Show
3. Follow Up – After The Show

The Preemptive Strike is everything you do to attract the people you want to attend the home show. This could includes:

Mailing invitations to previous clients, people around current jobs, and people who have requested information from your company in the past year.

Contact your manufacturers and gather any potential marketing materials they may provide you

Writing a press release announcing that your company will attend the show, not only helps getting your name out there, but it also helps with the optimization of your website. Your marketing consultant can help you with this, simply send them the dates of the show, location, name and your booth number and who is sponsoring the show they will handle the press release.

Shock & Awe – During the show, remember you are not there to sit and look pretty and hope that someone may stop by. You need to go to everyone in the room and approach them. Get out of your booth and hand people who walk by a postcard, along with your business card. On this postcard should be a special offer, only for people who attend the home show. Offering a SPECIAL REPORT, or consumer guide is also beneficial in this strategy.

Follow Up –Follow up is critical to a successful show! As soon as the show is completed, mail out a direct mail piece, your special report, another postcard to every lead that you received! Timeliness is everything! Home show leads tend to get stale very quickly, so don’t delay on your follow-up! A few days later, personally follow up with a phone call to make sure they received your special offer. All leads from the show should be added to not only your direct mail campaigns, but also your newsletter list.

Planning for your home show is important, because simply signing up for them is not going to guarantee the results that you would like.