Digital Marketing for Contractors

Effective CRM Solutions - Streamlining Your Digital Marketing Campaigns

• FatCat Strategies • Season 2 • Episode 4

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In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, Janet and Caitlyn break down one of the most important systems in any home improvement business: the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform. Whether you're still running your company from a whiteboard and a spreadsheet or already using a CRM, this episode is packed with practical insight on how the right system can transform your operations, marketing, and growth potential.

They cover:

  • What a CRM actually does (and why it matters)
  • Signs you're outgrowing your spreadsheet setup
  • Their favorite CRMs for contractors (MarketSharp, Lead Perfection, AccuLynx, Jobber, ClientTether, and more)
  • Real-world examples of how CRMs streamline follow-up, improve reporting, and automate marketing
  • How to choose the right CRM based on your company's size and service type

The takeaway? If you want to grow, you need a CRM. It's not just software—it’s a business upgrade.

Want to find out how we can create a custom digital marketing game plan for your contractor business? Schedule a call with us at fatcatstrategies.com.

Janet:

Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors. This podcast is brought to you by Fat Cat Strategies, a full-service digital marketing agency based in Raleigh, North Carolina. We specialize in helping home improvement contractors just like you grow their businesses. Today, you're listening to a series called Build, Grow, Dominate, marketing strategies for every stage of your home improvement business. Every Wednesday, we take a deep dive into the lessons that we've learned from supporting some amazing business owners in the home improvement industry. In part one, we'll cover the essentials from startup to your first five million. In part two, we're shifting gears to focus on what it takes to scale your business to a successful exit and or how to dominate your market. Now let's get into it. Hello, I am Janet. I am the founder here at Fat Cat Strategies. And today I'm joined by one of the co-owners of the business and really the heartbeat that makes Fat Cat work. Who were we talking about? We're talking about, hold on, let me do a drum roll. The wonderful and talented Caitlin Noble, my friend and business partner. Caitlin, tell us who you are, what you do.

Caitlyn:

Well, it's hard to top that intro. But in case you didn't hear, I'm Caitlin. I am the head of client services. proud partner here at Fat Cat Strategy. He's been working with Janet for eight years now, which has been such an amazing journey. Today is a topic that we are very passionate about. It is, to your point, it is a heartbeat behind our home improvement clients. Janet, what is it?

Janet:

What are we talking about? We're talking about CRMs. What is a CRM? It's an acronym that stands for Customer Relationship Management. It's software. Yes. It is the beating heart, or it should be, the beating heart of your business.

Caitlyn:

And please listen, because whether you have a CRM solution in your business or not, this episode is going to be totally worth it for you. If you're still using spreadsheets, sticky notes, have... some sort of memory bank where you're managing leads and customers, it's not going to get you to the next level. So the good news is we're going to talk today about why CRMs matter for contractors and why you should care. So Janet, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit more about just what a CRM is.

Janet:

In the simplest way to put it, it's just software.

Caitlyn:

It is.

Janet:

These days, it's web-based. Back in the day, it used to be installed on your computer. But these days, it's all in a browser. It's software.

Caitlyn:

It's your brain. And

Janet:

it is the software that you use to log... Every single homeowner that has ever contacted your business, every lead, every quote you've ever given, every estimate you've ever given, and it's what your call center uses. In the last episode, we talked about call centers. It's what your call center uses to stay on track. It's what your salespeople use to know who they're talking to. It's the hub. of all of the spokes on the wheel of

Caitlyn:

your business. Of the customer journey.

Janet:

Yes. So what does it do? It centralizes your data. That means no more phone numbers written down on a piece of paper. It helps you improve customer service. That means you can know the full history of of the homeowners that contact your business, their preferences, the questions that they asked, when they called you. You can see those conversations at a glance. It helps you streamline your communication. That means emails in and out, calls in and out, quotes that you've provided. And it helps you manage your leads, manage your entire sales process. And it gives you powerful insights into your entire company. What's working, what's not working, your CRM is going to give you the answers to those questions. So bottom line, if you want to stop guessing and start growing, you have to get a CRM in place.

Caitlyn:

You really do. And the series is Build, Grow, Dominate. But to build your business, you've got to have a CRM to grow to eventually dominate. I

Janet:

want to jump in because I've talked to so many contractors that... They've been successful kind of as like a lone wolf with maybe a couple of subs. Yeah, we've

Caitlyn:

worked with them.

Janet:

And we've worked with them and we've helped them grow. Side note, we've never once helped somebody grow that didn't have a CRM. Never once in 15 years have I ever seen significant growth of a company that did not have a CRM in place. But often what happens is is we'll get a contractor contact us the business is up and running they've they're installing jobs they've got great word of mouth they've got um you know maybe even one sales rep probably a relative like a family member exactly and a lot of the business is being run off of a giant whiteboard in your office or wherever your shop is and um you know, maybe an Excel spreadsheet and a spiral bound notebook. If that's where you are right now, that is totally fine. But this episode is for you because we want to talk to you about how you can move beyond that

Caitlyn:

situation. That's correct. And I'll preface this also by saying, We have no partnership, no ties with the CRMs that we are going to mention. These are just a few of our favorites.

Janet:

Yeah, we're not being paid for

Caitlyn:

any of this. I don't know the technical. Affiliate leaks. We're not affiliates. I will say the first one I am going to speak to, we are listed on their website. As a partner. So I guess we don't get

Janet:

paid. We

Caitlyn:

don't get paid. I am just really proud and excited about the CRM. When we start to go through the sales process and we find out that we have a client using the CRM, um, we get excited because we know the opportunities that are there and that CRM is market sharp. Um, it's built specifically for home improvement contractors. It's got marketing automations already baked in. You can manage your leads. Like I said, you can do emails. campaigns it connects directly to constant contact amazing reporting in terms of sales tracking great project scheduling some of our biggest best clients do use MarketSharp and I think it's super easy in my opinion as a marketer to use and find data as well

Janet:

yeah and in our last episode we talked all about call centers if you listened to that episode and in MarketSharp what we've seen is you can set call center queues.

Speaker 01:

Yeah, that's

Janet:

right. So there's all kinds of cool settings that you can configure in your CRM, whether it's MarketShop or something else, where if you want one kind of call to be queued to one staff person or if you sell multiple products you sell maybe siding and windows and you want to set them up as different cues you know that's right it's your up to your imagination but market sharp has all of those tools for you in place um to help you pull all that information together so it makes sense for your business

Speaker 01:

and it also has a really nice um feature in terms of um getting leads into your system. So I didn't really talk about that, but we're generating leads. You've got a digital marketing agency or you're doing marketing yourself. You've now got a call center. You've got a website. So I know MarketSharp does make it super simple with their own forms as well as some pretty open web hooks, which not trying to get too in the weeds here, but MarketSharp does make it simple to get leads into your CRM for that speed to lead process. which we talked about in the last episode. Yeah, and

Janet:

that's for a call and a form. Yes. We've been able to connect our call tracking software, WhatConverts, with MarketSharp so that that call is automatically entered into the CRM. Same thing with a form that gets filled out. Yes.

Speaker 01:

Super, super easy to use. Nice interface. Totally recommend it. Another one that I recommend, Tried and True, and... Goes back to my roots when I first started managing home improvement contractors here at Fat Cat. We were logging into lead perfection. Very powerful, really great for growing companies. There's tons of customizations, especially for this industry. Good lead tracking, like I said, really, really good customer Reporting, their support team is also really nice. If you can't figure out some of the reporting there, they also have marketing automations. I would say not as, I think, easy, like one button clicks like MarketSharp, but they do have settings that make it easy to be able to connect with somebody via email. And then there's another really nice scheduling tool within Lead Perfection. And I'm, again, not gonna lie, some of our also biggest clients use Lead Perfection. So it's fantastic for lead segmenting, et cetera. You can see ROI pretty seamlessly with the right, I guess, integrations there. And the reports configured. Yeah, exactly.

Janet:

What's funny to me is like, and you know, we're an agency. We are obviously not on the staff of a home improvement company, but we've worked with some really successful companies and watched them grow. And I mean, it's a question that I have that I don't have the answer to. So maybe somebody can provide the answer. We've seen some companies love MarketSharp and Stay. Yep. But we've also seen them leave MarketSharp and go to Lead Perfection. And then we've seen them leave Lead Perfection and go to MarketSharp.

Speaker 01:

Yes. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Janet:

Back and forth, back and forth. So in our experience, those are the two that I think we encounter the most.

Speaker 01:

Absolutely. Another one. So these are our three that we, I mean... Those are the two that I think we use the most day-to-day in terms of pulling reports, making sure the leads we're generating for our clients are going into those CRM systems. The third most used is Acculinks. Really based around roofing at the beginning and for roofing contractors, it is almost like... It's almost like a fun version of both of those.

Janet:

In my opinion, like this is just my version. I think AccuLynx has the best interface. Interface, yes. It's the most modern looking user interface that I've logged

Speaker 01:

into. Absolutely. And I can safely say mobile friendly. I mean, I...

Janet:

And I don't think, I don't know if I can say that about MarketSharp or LeadPerfection.

Speaker 01:

LP, unless there's an app or something out there, but Acculink's so easy to use on your phone. It looks like an actual cloud-based

Janet:

piece of software where, to be honest, like MarketSharp and LeadPerfection can look

Speaker 01:

a little dated. But there's a lot of power

Janet:

behind

Speaker 01:

them. A lot of power. Acculink's, I just, I think it's, again, good for a growing company. You can... There are integrations with that in terms of pushing leads into that system as well. I'm trying to think of other things that are important. I think like for roofing, it has some pretty niche aerial measurement and estimating tools that you can add on, which is nice. Again, really nice reports. We've played in all of them. They're all gonna, of course, CRMs should have a reporting tool. That's a nice one. And then... And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Acculinks versus the other ones also has a way to process payments. So just a few one-stop shop

Janet:

features. In our experience, and Caitlin, you actually are logged into these things more often than I am. Daily. Acculinks does... I think a really good job of managing photos connected to jobs.

Speaker 01:

That's a good point. And so does another one that we're going to talk about. Yes. So

Janet:

talk a

Speaker 01:

little bit about why we care about photos. Sure, sure, sure, sure. So kind of segmenting. Lead perfection, as far as I know, I think you can do like some custom emails. I don't think there's anywhere where you can capture photos. MarketSharp, you can capture project photos in terms of, a customer and or a lead, you can do the same for Acculinks. So once you've got a prospect, so they convert from a lead to a prospect and then a prospect onto a customer, you can capture when you're out there, here's the door that's going to have to be replaced. Here's a picture of the siding that's bad. Here's some

Janet:

rotten wood in the fascia or the soffit

Speaker 01:

area. Yes. And, um, MarketSharp does have that feature. I would say it's easier to find and access those within Acculinks. And then as an agency, we've logged in and we've downloaded those photos once the project is completed to share before and after pictures. Yeah, to

Janet:

use in online marketing. We use these pictures that are just so easy for us to log in to our clients' Acculinks account, find these really great job site photos, and then... Recycle them into marketing to generate

Speaker 01:

more business. Absolutely. Um, so those three, I mean, like I could definitely speak the most to, um, and if you don't use one of those and you use another one, we're going to like quickly, I've talked a lot, but Janet's going to talk about a couple of other, um, of our favorites. And

Janet:

yeah, there's, there's a handful of names that we tend to hear a lot. Um, within the home improvement industry. So if you're riding in your car and you're listening to this and you're that owner that's still working out of a spreadsheet and a spiral bound notebook, check out MarketSharp, check out Lead Perfection, especially if you're a roofing contractor, check out AccuLynx, A-C-C-U-L-Y-N-X. Some other CRMs that we have seen our clients use, Client Tether, Jobber, builder trend. We've even seen some clients use Zoho, which is not specific to the home improvement industry. All of these others that we're mentioning are You know, they have their DNA in home improvement. Improve It 360, also called i360, is a software that kind of sits on top of Salesforce. Yes. And Service Titan. Before we move on to the next part of this particular episode about, you know, what you can do with a CRM, I just wanted to tell a short story about... Jobber. About Jobber. Yeah. So... This is not from an agency's perspective. This is from my perspective as a homeowner. So I got my house painted. Like every homeowner, I didn't know a local painter, so I Googled residential painters near me. I probably clicked on a PPC ad. And then I went to a website. I made an assessment. This looks like an established company. It doesn't look like it's just two people with a truck. You know, this is a real company that's got, you know, multiple crews, multiple project managers. Reviews. Yes, I absolutely looked at reviews, looked at their, you know, photo gallery, et cetera. Then I filled out a form. Within minutes, somebody was calling me. And it's been a while since we finished this painting project. But I think it was either later that day or the next day. An estimator was out at my house. It was an exterior painting job and an interior painting job. He walked around the house. He took measurements. He took pictures. Very soon after that, maybe a day or two, I got an email with the estimate. And because, you know, We work with contractors all the time. I poked around to figure out like, where did this estimate come from and what system are they using? And I was able to figure out that this painting company here in Raleigh, North Carolina was using Jobber. And so as the customer, I was able to log in to Jobber. I was able to track multiple estimates. There was a separate estimate for the interior work because we asked them, you know, quote separately on interior versus exterior. I was able to give feedback like, no, we don't, you know, we decided not to paint this room or we decided not to do this. So we went through a couple of rounds of this estimate before we approved it and before they started the project. All of that happened through Jobber I didn't have to call anybody. I didn't have to talk to anybody. It was electronic. We approved the estimate electronically. We made the deposit electronically. The job started, and then we were updated throughout the job through Jobber. It was just a really good experience from a customer

Speaker 01:

standpoint. Were you on your phone or a laptop or a tablet? Both. Yeah, awesome. That's great. That's great news.

Janet:

So for those service companies, especially HVAC contractors, pest management. Yes. painting. I'm pretty sure it would work for like baths and roofing and siding. I don't see why it wouldn't. But for whatever reason, we don't see those exterior contractors and bath contractors using Jobber. I don't know why not. But as a customer hiring a painting contractor, it was a seamless experience.

Speaker 01:

So this actually might be a good transition to why or why not some of those, you know, some of y'all listening may not be using Jobber. How did you feel like, sure, it was, okay, seamless to receive your invoice, seamless to watch the progress of the job and to pay the invoice. Did you feel like there was any marketing that was coming through? Like, this is the next portion of the episode is we're going to talk about, like, why CRMs do make your marketing better.

Janet:

Yeah, I mean, they hit me for a review instantly. Great. And, you know, I mean, I'm kind of expanding the conversation here. Yeah. Yes, Fat Cat is a marketing company. We do quote-unquote, you know, air quote, capital M marketing and marketing campaigns. But I also believe that every experience that your customer has interacting with your company is part of your brand and is also part of your marketing. So if I have a good experience... interacting with your CRM to approve my estimate, to see job photos, to maybe, you know, on the fly say, Hey, can you guys power wash this thing? Or I want to add to the job. Can you put an extra coat of paint on this one section of the side of my house? That's great. You know, I did all that through jobber and I actually consider that it's not exactly marketing, but it's such a great experience. It, it, it, compliments marketing

Speaker 01:

okay well good yes good question though no no that's a good point i mean and that's what we love a lot about these crms and the ones we um have mentioned and uh the ones that we didn't talk too much about i mean i know builder trend does the same thing there's a client portal which is just as sexy as it can be oh yeah i mean

Janet:

for a while i was on the um local wake county hba remodelers council

Caitlyn:

yeah

Janet:

and all of those really high-end custom remodeling guys you know they're doing in these... beautiful 150,000 200,000 kitchen remodels yeah all of those guys that were doing these longer term projects with lots of subs they're having to pull permits they're having to you know get the electrical inspection and the plumbing inspection and all that they're all using builder trend and it is also a beautiful experience yeah for the customer to see project photos and the progress of the job it's a really nice experience for the contractor to manage multiple subs manage budgets, manage job costing. So BuilderTrend, very, very strong feature list. Unless it's changed, my biggest beef with BuilderTrend is there isn't an open API.

Speaker 01:

No, but they do have forms that you can put on a website. That they'll provide to you that you can put on your website, but Those forms do not connect where you can find out the source of those leads. Boo. Yeah, yeah. And then we're not talking too much, but I don't want to, like, leave these, like, high and dry. Improve it 360, i360, and Service Titan. This portion of our podcast is really targeted towards these level one, like, you level ones. Our level twos, threes are more on I-360 and Service Titan because of those capabilities in terms of APIs and integrations and reports, et cetera. I would say if you're truly a level one and you're listening to this, try out Lead Perfection, Jobber, MarketSharp, Acculinks. Try those out. And then once you graduate, we've seen a lot of our clients graduate into i360 and ServiceTitan. Okay, so we've talked a lot about these. We've kind of already answered this. But CRMs, how are they making marketing smarter, Janet?

Janet:

So I'm going to go back to what I said at the top of the call, or the top of the podcast, the call. It's a call. You know, when I talk to contractors that they are still running their business off of a whiteboard in the shop, and they're their cell phone, maybe a spreadsheet, and a spiral-bound notebook. What you're missing is the ability to personalize communication with leads that weren't ready to buy over a long period of time.

Speaker 02:

Exactly. So

Janet:

if a homeowner is thinking about doing an addition, building a deck, remodeling their kitchen, replacing their siding, but they're not ready to do it, let's say, I mean, right now we're recording this in the spring, but let's say it's the fall, And they're like a planner type. They're type A, and they plan six months in advance. It's the fall. The holidays are coming up. And it's on their to-do list to get a couple of quotes and start their research process. But they don't really plan on pulling the trigger until the spring. For what project? Let's say it's a siding replacement. Yeah, exactly. It's a large dollar project. They don't want the disruption over the holidays. Right. but they do wanna start their research. If you have a CRM, you're capturing all of that information. You are going ahead and setting up reminder activities. You can pre-write emails, set a task for your call center people, set a task for your sales rep to follow up on a very specific day and be able to easily reference all of the notes that you took when you went out and helped them measure their job, answer all their questions in October, and you're having that conversation in March. I challenge you to do that at that level of detail out of a spiral-bound notebook. You're not going to be able to do it, and you're not going to be able to do it. You might be able to do it for one homeowner. Can you do it for 100, 200, over an 18-month period? That's what a CRM can do for you. Keep all of those little data points and then personalize that follow-up over a long period of time with the details that you've captured along the way to help that homeowner on their buying journey. Caitlin's mentioned this, but automated campaigns. Talk to us about what you do with drip campaigns.

Speaker 01:

Yeah, I mean, you nailed it. I mean, what Janet just said is what we do. I mean, if we have... not only segmented list by previous customer, by demo no sale, cancel prior to issue, we're pushing those contacts into an email marketing platform where based off of their segment and their buying journey where they may have ghosted you or they canceled their appointment or you guys demoed and they decided to not sell and we're hitting them with marketing automations about what changed your mind or for a previous customer are you ready for your next project that type of messaging and that would not be possible without a CRM it just wouldn't you were talking though Janet and I thought about something that also makes CRMs powerful and it's holding your marketing agencies accountable so the clients that we work the best with they've got solid enough reporting where we can see the leads that we've generated

Janet:

versus leads from other sources like word of mouth

Speaker 01:

correct versus leads from other sources we can see how they've set how they've sold and we're able to take that data And you, as a contractor, you're able to take that data and go back to the marketing agency, your marketing manager, whoever it may be, and say, it does not look like radio is producing any sales. Or it just doesn't look like my website is producing any sales. Your CRM can do that for you.

Janet:

Or even dialed in a little bit more granularly. You know, when we talk about online ads, right now it's, april 2025

Speaker 01:

sure

Janet:

um you know two of the biggest platforms are going to be google and facebook we can get insights about leads that came from google paid ads versus leads that came from facebook paid ads and we can work with you and your team to see do they tend to turn into appointments at the same ratio do they tend to sell You know, for all the appointments that you go on, what's the closing ratio? If you go on 10 appointments, how many are you going to sell from a paid Google ad versus a paid Facebook ad? We can also help you figure out, you know, average total job. That's right. From, like, the dollar amount that you got per job based on the lead source. There was one other thing I wanted to kind of go back. We were talking about automated campaigns, right? And I just was remembering something that we've started doing recently with Client Tether. So Client Tether is another CRM that we haven't mentioned so far, but we have found that it has been pretty popular with some of our handymen clients. customers. So these are businesses that are doing all kinds of honeydew odd jobs. They're changing out light fixtures, they're power washing decks, they're hanging TVs, hanging TVs, swapping out garbage disposals. So what we've started doing, and it's only because there's a CRM in place. So these handyman jobs are lower ticket, lower ticket price jobs, but unlike say a siding contractor like once you replace somebody's siding with james hardy siding it's unlikely you're going to sell that same homeowner more siding not for 20 30 years not unless they buy another house yeah exactly so your your opportunity for repeat customers is different depending on what you're selling exactly but in the handyman world There's every opportunity for repeat customers. So what we've started to do with our handyman clients, using Client Tether, is we are slicing and dicing those segments and we're hitting people with a text message campaign. Like, hey, it's spring. Do you need power washing done? It's spring and it's in the south. There's pollen everywhere. So we can also set up those campaigns through automations, through the CRM, through segmenting in the CRM to hit previous customers who've hired clients you know, these guys for one kind of handyman job, hit them over a kind of a pre preformed cadence, right? Like, let's hit them every three weeks. And let's hit them every six weeks. Let's hit them every certain number of weeks with a different message. You know, hey, do you need a handyman for a day? Do you need a do you need a light fixture? swapped out. Do you need

Speaker 01:

your outdoor lights installed for Christmas? I mean, things like that. Things like that.

Janet:

You actually mentioned something to me that I had never heard of. Caitlin apparently lives in a fancier neighborhood than I do. But there's a service in her neighborhood that offers cleaning out people's trash cans. Like your city can that you have to roll to the street on Thursday. They're coming and cleaning out those trash cans and then they're sending you text messages about it, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, hey. I would bet my left foot that the only reason they're able to do that is because they have a CRM in place.

Speaker 01:

Oh, my God, yes. They know what neighborhood I live in. They know when the trash is getting picked up. They know when the trash can is available to be cleaned.

Janet:

And they know the last time you got it cleaned.

Speaker 01:

You got it. Well, all of that to be said, y'all, if you're not using a CRM yet, this is your sign. That you should. Just start simple. Just start if you haven't. You're going to close more leads. You're going to run a tighter operation. You're going to market more efficiently. And you're going to build longer-lasting relationships. So short and sweet, we could honestly talk forever about CRMs. Super important. And it's not just a tech upgrade. It's a business upgrade.

Janet:

Ooh, you sound smart saying that. It is a business upgrade. You're upgrading your business by implementing a CRM. You are. Janet? What are we getting into next week? So next week in this series, we are going to dive into a big one. How to find the right digital marketing agency for your home improvement business for where your business is right now. Because let's be honest, doing great work in the home is one thing, but getting people to the home in the first place, how do you get that done? That's where a marketing company comes in. A company like ours, like Fat Cat Strategies, there are other agencies out there. Our job is to drive leads into your business and honestly into your CRM. Yeah,

Speaker 01:

and you can use all of those other tools we've talked about too. Thank y'all for joining us for another episode. As always, we hope you got value out of it. If you found this helpful, please share it with a fellow contractor who is ready to level up. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button and we will get you more real talk strategies coming very soon coming every Wednesday for the foreseeable future. And please, please, please. We would love a review as well. So thank you guys. We will talk to y'all in a week. Thank you.

Speaker 00:

Digital marketing for contractors is created by fat cat strategies. For more information, visit fatcatstrategies.com.