Meredith: Okay, let’s start with a question. Ask an owner what a Google Ads lead cost them last month, and many can give you their number to the dollar. Ask a past customer, ask what a past worth when they refer a neighbor, and you usually get a pause.

Caitlyn: That pause is the problem. Owners track their paid and purchase sources, sources closely because those invoices show up every month. The jobs they’ve already completed don’t send an invoice, so they get ignored.

Meredith: And the pay-per-lead model has a built-in trap. The moment you stop paying, the leads stop. You’re on a treadmill. A completed job works the other way. It’s a lead source you already paid for once, and the homeowner is at peak satisfaction.

Caitlyn: Think about the timing. At the end of an install, the homeowner has just seen the finished product. The crew has cleaned up. The sales rep is out of the house. The emotion is positive, and the sales effort is basically zero. Most replacement contractors have a moment like that every single day, and they let it pass.

Meredith: So we’re not gonna talk about, quote, unquote, marketing in the abstract today. We’re going to walk through the moments in a job’s life where a lead can be asked for, and map, map them to five different doors to walk through.

Caitlyn: Reading is hard.

Meredith: Hard.

Caitlyn: No, door number one is the review. Door two is the referral. Door three is the neighbor. Door four is the next project. Door five is reactivation, meaning the past customers you haven’t heard from in a while. Every completed job should walk through all five doors.

Meredith: Okay, so reviews come first because they feed everything else. A homeowner who reads a strong set of reviews is more likely to call you, and a review you ask for in the right moment is far more likely to actually be written.

Caitlyn: The right moment is usually the final walkthrough, when the crew lead has shown the homeowner the finished work and confirmed they were happy. That’s when you ask in person out loud. Then you follow up with a short window by text or email with a direct link to the review page.

Meredith: and have a script. The crew lead should not be doing improv. Something as simple as, “We’re glad this came out the way you pictured. Would you be open to sharing a few words about your experience? I’ll text you the link so it’s super simple.”

Caitlyn: Two rules matter here. First, check the platform rules before you run any review program. Most review platforms prohibit paying for reviews or rewarding customers for leaving them, so don’t build a program around incentives without checking. Second, respond to every review you receive, positive or negative. Prospects read the responses as closely as they read the reviews.

Meredith: And one more thing, keep the review ask separate from your sales follow-up. A homeowner who feels like they’re being pushed to leave a review while also being

Caitlyn: Mm

Meredith: something new will end up tuning both of those out.

Caitlyn: Definitely. Okay, so referrals are the most valuable door and the one most contractors handle the worst. Usually, the referrals usually, the referral ask is buried in a closing email, or it’s a line on a magnet that nobody remembers to hand out.

Meredith: Okay, so let’s look at a fictional website we’re gonna call Heritage Exteriors.

Caitlyn: Yeah, our favorite fictional company.

Meredith: Heritage is a siding and window company, and their owner told us their referral process was basically a line at the bottom of their final invoice. Customers got the invoice, paid, and never thought about it again.

Caitlyn: So just to be clear, we said Heritage is fictional. Okay, so many replacement contractors do have a referral program on paper and almost no referrals in place.

Meredith: So the fix Heritage put into place was simple. The referral ask moved to the walkthrough right after the review ask. The crew lead used a short, rehearsed line, something like, “Most of our work comes from people just like you. Is there anyone you know who’s been thinking about a project like this?”

Caitlyn: And the important part is that is what happens next in the CRM. Heritage created a lead source called referral past customer. Every referral that came in got tagged to it, so the team could see how the source performed alongside everything else. That’s the difference between a nice idea and a system.

Meredith: And if you offer a thank you gift or credit for referrals, keep it modest and check your state and platform rules.

Caitlyn: Mm.

Meredith: The gift should thank the homeowner for the introduction. It shouldn’t be the reason that they make it.

Caitlyn: Good reminder, Meredith.

Meredith: Mm-hmm.

Caitlyn: So here’s something most owners have seen firsthand. When a crew is parked on the street for a day or two, the neighbors will notice. They come out. They ask questions. They take a look at at the work. That’s a lead, and it’s happening for free.

Meredith: So we use a tactic called job site radius marketing here at Fat The idea is to run geo-targeted campaigns around the address of a recent project so the homes nearby see the work that was just completed down the street. It’s the same principle a good referral follows, and we’re applying it at scale.

Caitlyn: So there are some guard rails. Don’t identify the customer. Don’t publish their address or their name. If you want a sign or a social post that features the project, ask the homeowner first and get their permission in writing. Homeowners are generally glad to help, but they need to be asked.

Meredith: Also, check your radius against your service area. A neighbor who sits outside your geographic footprint is a lead that you can’t serve. Clearly defined service areas make this door easier, not harder.

Caitlyn: Definitely. I think you’re getting to do segment number five. Kick us off,

Meredith: This is, and I just realized we haven’t been naming the doors,

Caitlyn: Dang It’s okay.

Meredith: That last one was door three, which is the neighbor. This one is door four, and it’s called the next project. So a bath remodel today might mean a roof next year. Windows might lead to siding. Doors and gutters often come up in the same conversation. Replacement contractors have a built-in advantage here because the customer already trusts the company’s process.

Caitlyn: The mistake is treating every completed job as the end of the relationship. Put the next project touchpoints on a calendar. Common checkpoints are 90 days, six months, and a year after install. Depending on the product, each one should be a useful message, not a sales blast.

Meredith: And this is also where seasonal promotions tend to earn their keep. If your company already runs a monthly or seasonal offer for new prospects, invite past customers to it first. You’re giving a warm audience early access to something that they’d want anyway.

Caitlyn: Log every next project inquiry as its own source. Past customer new project is a very different lead from a fresh web form, and it should be measured as one.

Meredith: Absolutely. Okay.

Caitlyn: Door number five.

Meredith: Door number five is the reactivation door. So some past customers will never call on their own. They’ve moved on, they’re busy, or they forgot who did their bathroom. Reactivation is a planned effort to bring them back into the conversation.

Caitlyn: The best reactivation campaigns are personal, a short, friendly message with a specific reason to get in touch, like a maintenance reminder for the product they installed or a seasonal check-in. Avoid a generic discount blast to your entire customer list. That’s the fastest way to lose the goodwill you spent years building.

Meredith: And use your CRM to segment the list. Customers from five years ago with a bathroom model have a very different need set than customers who installed windows just this last spring. A segmented list is more respectful, and it converts better when the message is actually relevant.

Caitlyn: I like that. Respectful is… That’s really good.

Meredith: Mm-hmm.

Caitlyn: And again, track it. Reactivation should show up as its own lead source so you know whether the effort is paying off.

Meredith: All right.

Caitlyn: All right. Segment four, not a door, but it’s my turn, and here’s the test we can give owners. Can your team tell you from memory or from a single report how much revenue each of these five doors generated last month? If the answer is no, the system isn’t finished yet.

Meredith: So the setup is straightforward here. Create a lead source in your CRM for each of these doors, review, referral, neighbor, next project, and reactivation. Tag every inbound inquiry to its source. Then track the funnel stages for each one, inquiry, appointment set, appointment confirmed, and sold.

Caitlyn: This matters because the completed job sources will look different from paid sources. They will have a higher close rate, a shorter sales cycle, or a lower average cost, but you won’t know any of that unless the data is tagged correctly from the start.

Meredith: And keep the reporting honest. Don’t credit a referral to a source that doesn’t deserve it. If a lead came from a neighbor who saw a yard sign, the yard sign deserves the credit. Clean attribution is what lets you put more effort where it works.

Caitlyn: All right, y’all. So we’re doing a little horror

Meredith: Yes

Caitlyn: in the spirit of other horror stories that we’ve recently done.

Meredith: Yeah, so this is called the blast that backfired. All right. So per our statement at the beginning of the show, this is a fake company that we are gonna call Ridgeline Windows.

Caitlyn: All right. So our fake company friends at Ridgeline Windows had a previous agency launch what they described as a review campaign. The agency sent one email to every past customer, regardless of the product or install date. The email offered a discount and included a template review that customers could paste in.

Meredith: Three things went wrong. Customers who had bought gutters received messages about windows that they never considered. Some people pushed back that they didn’t want promotional emails at all, and the reviews that came in were hard to trust because they all sounded alike and were tied to a discount.

Caitlyn: The owner’s bigger complaint was that nobody could tell which reviews came from real installs and which came from the blast. The data was useless for deciding what to do next.

Meredith: And the lesson here is simple. Segment your customers, personalize the ask, and never script for, never script a review for somebody else to just paste in. Your homeowners should write their own words about their own experience.

Caitlyn: All right. So if you are listening to this and it’s the evening and you need some action items for tomorrow morning, here’s what we are going to do this week.

Meredith: Okay. First, pull your last 30 completed jobs and check which ones have a review, and note the gaps.

Caitlyn: Number two, you’re gonna write a one-page walkthrough script for your crew leads that cover the review ask and the referral ask. Keep it short, and rehearse it.

Meredith: The third is create four new lead sources in your CRM if they don’t exist, review, referral, neighbor, and past customer. Tag every new inquiry to its source starting today.

Caitlyn: Four, choose one current seasonal offer and decide which past customers will get it first.

Meredith: And fifth, write a short permission request for homeowners who might agree to a yard sign or a project photo, and confirm your process for storing those approvals.

Caitlyn: love that one.

Meredith: Mm-hmm.

Caitlyn: And you can put that, like, in your contract, too.

Meredith: Yeah.

Caitlyn: Like Anyways, okay. That being said, okay, the completed job is the most reliable lead source a replacement contractor has. It’s already paid for, the homeowner already trusts you, and the only thing missing is a system to ask.

Meredith: If you want help building that system or you want to see how we track completed job leads alongside all of our paid sources, visit fatcatstrategies.com, or give us a call and we’ll have a strategy call with you.

Caitlyn: Thank y’all so much for listening. We really, really love when we get on the phone with somebody and they’ve said they’ve been listening to our podcast. It means the world to us.

Meredith: Mm-hmm.

Caitlyn: Keep listening, and we will see you next time on Digital Marketing for Contractors. Bye.

Outro: Digital marketing for contractors is created by Fat Cat Strategies. For more information, visit fatcatstrategies.com.