Let's TalkLet's TalkA six-figure decision made over months, where most enquiries cannot afford the work and the consultation costs you a day.
Send us the last hundred enquiries and what happened to each, plus access to the ad account. We will come back with how many were outside your budget range, how many never had a project, what the consultations cost you, and which campaigns produced the ones that signed. Recorded walkthrough, no call required.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
A homeowner researching a kitchen remodel frequently has a number in mind that is a third of what the work costs, and nothing in the funnel tells either party until a designer has spent a day on it. Budget mismatch is the defining waste in this trade, it is invisible in every lead report, and it is entirely fixable in the funnel rather than in the consultation.
Someone starts researching a bathroom in November and signs in March. Judged on same-month conversion the campaign that produced that contract looks like a failure for four consecutive reports, and it is frequently cut before it pays. This is the most common way a remodeling account gets broken by well-intentioned optimisation.
This is a visual purchase made largely by comparing finished work, and the difference between professional project photography and phone snaps taken at handover is the difference between a shortlist and a scroll past. Contractors will spend thousands on ads to send traffic to a gallery that undersells the work they actually do.
An in-home consultation with measurements and a concept costs a skilled person most of a day, and in most businesses it is offered to anyone who fills in a form. When a meaningful share of those are unqualified, the consultation becomes the most expensive lead-qualification step available and it is being used as the first one.
Business outcomes rather than dashboard metrics. None of these is a guaranteed number - where we do guarantee something, it is written into the offer above.
The real deliverables, not a list written to make a proposal look thicker.
Not the general agency pitch. The reasons that only apply to this kind of business.
Adding qualification to a remodeling funnel reduces the lead count, which looks like a worse month on every chart an agency normally shows a client. We would rather have that conversation and report cost per signed contract alongside it than keep a comfortable volume number while your designers spend their weeks on projects that were never going to happen.
A campaign judged monthly in a trade with a four-month decision is judged wrong, and the usual consequence is that the best campaigns get cut in month two. We report the pipeline between enquiry and contract so the lag is visible as progress rather than mistaken for underperformance.
In most trades creative is the support act. In remodeling the gallery is the product page, and a thousand spent on properly photographing three finished projects routinely outperforms the same thousand in the ad account. We will say that even though it moves budget out of the line we are paid to manage.
Last hundred leads, what happened to each, and how many consultation days went to projects that could never proceed.
Ranges, scope and timeline asked early and framed honestly, so the mismatch surfaces before a designer is dispatched.
Photograph finished projects properly and structure them as cases with scope, constraints and outcome. This is the highest-return work in the trade.
Months pass between first research and signing, and the contractor still present at the end is frequently the one who stayed useful in between.
Windows and reporting set to the actual cycle, with pipeline shown between enquiry and contract rather than only conversions in the month.
Spend follows the campaigns producing signed work at the value you want, which is a different ranking from the campaigns producing enquiries.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
Publishing realistic starting ranges filters harder than any form field and costs nothing, and the fear that it scares people off is mostly unfounded - it scares off the people who were never going to sign. Contractors who state ranges openly consistently report fewer, better enquiries, and the ones who do not state them pay for the difference in consultation days.
A kitchen, a primary bath and a whole-home addition are different budgets, different timelines and different anxieties, and they are researched with different language. Campaigns and pages built per project type convert far better than a remodeling services page, and they let you bid differently for the work you actually want.
Which projects get viewed, how long for and which precede an enquiry is trackable, and almost nobody in this trade looks at it. Knowing that your mid-range kitchens drive most enquiries while your showpiece additions drive the browsing changes both what you photograph next and what you bid on.
Research and planning happen in the months before people want work done, which means the demand curve for marketing leads the demand curve for construction by a season. Budgets aligned to the build calendar arrive late, and the contractors with full spring schedules bought those enquiries in the winter.
Our closest comparable engagement is a multi-location service network rather than a remodeling contractor, and we will not present it as one. It earns its place here because of the second number: show-rate rose 44%, and that came from the work between an enquiry and an attended appointment. In remodeling the equivalent gap is the one between a form fill and a consultation worth a designer's day, and it is where this trade loses the most money.
Read the full case studyRanges, yes, in almost every case. The fear is that it drives people away, and it does - it drives away the people whose budget is a third of the project, which is exactly the waste you are trying to remove. Contractors who state realistic starting figures get fewer enquiries and a much higher share of viable ones, and they stop spending designer days discovering the mismatch in a living room.
Months rather than weeks, and it varies by project size - a bathroom moves faster than an addition. The practical consequence is that any campaign judged on same-month conversions is being judged before it can possibly have worked, and the usual result is that good campaigns get cut in month two. We set attribution to the real cycle and report the pipeline in between so the lag reads as progress.
Photography, more often than anything in the ad account. This is a visual purchase decided by comparing finished work, and the gap between professional project photography and phone pictures taken at handover changes whether you make a shortlist at all. We would rather move a portion of the budget into photographing three completed projects properly than spend it on more traffic to a gallery that undersells you.
Not necessarily, but stop offering them as the first step. A qualifying conversation, a scope and budget discussion or a short video call before the visit protects the most expensive hour in your business without making you look unhelpful. The consultation is not the problem - using it as the qualification step is, because by the time you discover the mismatch you have already spent the day.
Yes, and it is frequently the highest-value spend of the year. People research and plan in the months before they want the work done, so the contractors with full spring schedules bought those enquiries in the winter at lower competition. Budget aligned to the construction calendar rather than the research calendar consistently arrives a season late.
By not entering that comparison, and by making the difference legible. Scope clarity, what is and is not included, how change orders are handled, and what happens when something is found behind a wall - these are the things a homeowner has been burned by or has heard about, and they are worth more than a lower number. A contractor who is specific about the unglamorous parts reads as the one who has done this before.
This is one part of a bigger service. Here is the whole of it, and the closest neighbours.
No pitch deck, no discovery call you have to sit through. Tell us the situation and we will tell you whether we can help.