Surefire Social for Contractors increases contractor lead generation by providing education, tools and services to dominate the local market.

Reston, VA (PRWEB) May 7, 2010 — Reston, Va., May 3, 2010 — Home services contractors seeking quality contractor leads often find themselves paying for leads that go nowhere or competing for the same leads as other contractors. GenNext Media LLC is launching Surefire Social for Contractors , helping local home services contractors to increase contractor leads

Chris Marentis, owner of GenNext Media LLC and creator of Surefire Social, small business and contractor online lead generation.

by achieving the top positions in Google local and other search engines.

Surefire Social for Contractors provides online resources and a learning center designed to connect home services contractors with the knowledge and tools necessary to obtain quality leads for their businesses. The system includes social media, website development and local search engine optimization (SEO) specifically for contractors who want to dominate the local search for contractor leads.

“Surefire Social for Contractors has gone through a six-month beta period in which we have worked with 30 different contractor businesses, allowing us to see how effective the learning tools and done-for-you services are for bringing in quality leads,” explained Chris Marentis, Founder and CEO of GenNext Media LLC.

According to Marentis, typical lead generation tactics are no longer effective. Contractors are finding that newspaper advertising, radio, direct mail and even purchasing leads are providing few profitable leads. Reports reveal that one-third of Internet searches are for local businesses, which is why home services contractors who leverage Internet marketing are the ones obtaining the contractor leads.

“Using the Surefire Social System, contractors will dominate their local search for contractor leads, beating out the competition and winning the lead generation game,” said Marentis.

Because contractors understand the unique needs of home services contractors, Surefire Social has developed partnerships with premiere contractor education organizations,

David Yoho Associates and Certified Contractor Network, launching the  system as the first lead generation program designed for contractors, by contractors.

“We are pleased to announce a partnership between and Surefire Social,” said David Yoho, President of David Yoho Associates. “Great ideas emerge when strategic partners share information and implement their findings.”

Marentis will speak on contractor lead generation and Surefire Social case studies at the David Yoho Associates Home Improvement Profitability Summit (HIPSummit) May 5-6 in Chicago and at the Certified Contractor Network Owners Conference (CCN) June 14-16 in Park City, UT.

About GenNext Media LLC and Surefire Social for Contractors:

Founded in October of 2008, GenNext Media LLC is revolutionary interactive media and marketing services company founded by Chris Marentis, former CEO of Clearspring Technologies and SVP of America Online. GenNext Media’s system, Surefire Social for Contractors, guides home services contractors to increase profitable lead generation by leveraging next generation distributed web platform technologies and applications like social media to dominate niche markets.

Surefire Social will launch additional systems in 2010 for insurance agents, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers. For more information about Surefire Social for Contractors, call 703.896.7688 or visit www.surefiresocial.com/contractor-leads.

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Leads for your contractor business are just a few clicks away and knowing what works best can help you dominate your local market.

If you’re interested in inexpensive methods of generating contractor leads, be aware that you’ll need to have a way that people can easily find you and become your clients. The lines of communication should be completely seamless and easy to use for your future business interests.

A website is a great way, and maybe the best way, to attract contractor leads and achieve the back-and-forth lines of communication that you’re looking for. When it comes to local prospects, you want to know that they can visit your site at any time during the day or night to learn about your services and to become clearer on what you have to offer.

The days of 9 to 5 in the current environment of doing business are over. In order to compete, especially locally, you need to be available for potential business at all times. In the past, an office worker would be hired to deal with incoming calls and setting appointments. Maintaining that level of administrative support is costly and not nearly as effective as using the internet to gather contractor leads and deliver the information these leads desire prior to having an actual phone conversation.

A fully optimized website is becoming increasingly important. Your website should not only be an accurate and aesthetically pleasing representation of your business, but also positioned well in the search engines. Statistics show that 1 out of every 3 searches are local searches. This means that people are looking for you. Are these leads able to find you? Another fact is that 63% of consumers who conduct product searches online buy the same items offline. In other words, people are using the internet, and primarily Google, to do their initial searches for services. This equates to an enormous quantity of contractor leads for businesses equipped to gather them.

The internet marketing business has grown fast and is constantly changing. The rules are never steady as to how you’ll bring in potential traffic to your website. It’s almost impossible to absorb what you need to know and apply it all while trying to run your business. To dominate your local market and capture the maximum contractor leads available to you, you’ll need content created and distributed in as many places as possible. Your site will need to be SEO optimized locally and you can even use Pay Per Click to increase visitors to your business.

This is a new game and it’s certain that your local competitors are unaware of the rules. Generating leads for a contractor business is critical for local survival. The fact that you’re reading this article puts you ahead of the game. Chances are your competitors are using traditional offline methods alone to generate contractor leads. Imagine being able to dominate the Yellow pages before anyone even knew what the Yellow Pages were? That’s where we are in the timeline of internet marketing. It’s something that’s just not cost effective to avoid.

You might be asking yourself how you can even begin to get started and more likely you’re asking what to do after getting started? To dominate online, you’ll need to become strong in local searches, social networking, local media sites, local shopping, and online classifieds, to name a few. Sound confusing? It doesn’t have to be. Consider outsourcing to an expert and watch your business flourish.

Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.

Well-known offline methods for generating contracting business leads are quickly taking a backseat to methods that are less time consuming, more efficient, and cheaper.

As a roofer or a plumber, you realize that time equals money and that contractor leads can be worth their weight in gold. It’s important to get as many leads as possible so that you can grow your business with momentum. Finding leads can be difficult, and the time being used to find them could be taking away from what you do best, and that’s your business itself.

In order to find cheap leads for your contracting business, you’ll want to make sure you have a marketable niche. It’s likely you already do if you know your business, but are people hearing your marketing message and being exposed to your service? The ways local businesses have advertised in the past are actually becoming a thing of the past. Today, before making a purchase of any kind, 81% of all people search online for what they’re looking for. So they’re going online instead of consulting the yellow pages or hunting down advertisements they thought they remembered seeing in the Sunday newspaper. The internet is quickly becoming a major player when it comes to generating leads for contractors.

It might seem overwhelming for a heating and air conditioning business owner with little computer experience to take the plunge and go online for a majority of business generation. But it’s not hard and there are services that will help you do it. The cost of paying someone to manage your online presence and generate contractor leads for you is a mere fraction of what you spend to find business now. The yellow pages and newspapers and repeated networking meetings are costly in time and money.

You don’t have to be a computer whiz to take advantage of these new tactics. Someone good at running your website will bridge the knowledge gap for you. In fact, someone with no roofing, remodeling, or landscaping experience can generate more leads for your business that you could imagine. Tools and techniques such as SEO, social media marketing, and Web 2.0 all play a huge role in local internet searches today.

You’ve heard about the internet and know about searches, but how can it directly impact your business and generate contractor leads? First, you’ll need to at least understand that there are new rules now. Actually knowing the rules is not necessary but knowing new ones exist is critical. You know what Google search is, but do you know that when people search your market locally there are different rules in play? A website of your own that’s search engine optimized for a local market can generate leads for your contracting business faster than you ever thought possible.

Time equals money and you don’t want to bog yourself down with on and off page marketing efforts. Keep in mind where your profit centers are, and keep your focus there. Simply accept that there’s another hat to be worn in your marketing efforts and you will put your competition in the rearview mirror.

Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.

Competition for generating local contracting leads is taking away from your business that which makes it great and that’s you. There are ways to get you back to doing what you do best.

As a contractor, finding leads is obviously an important part of your business. Contractor leads are the pipeline for your business and will help ensure you can continue to work for years in the future. The right leads will help you find the clients with great project needs and projects in which you’re most interested.

Finding contractor leads is often difficult and onerous work. You’re most likely wishing you could just perform your roofing work, for example, without ever having to deal with the aspect of finding more work. One of the problematic tasks of finding contractor leads is the competition. Locally, it seems there is only so much work to go around to so many contractors.

Generating contractor leads and keeping your business far in the green doesn’t have to be drudgery. In fact, it doesn’t have to be work that you do at all. For most types of contractors, from remodeling, roofing, air conditioning, plumbing, to a combination of all of them, with a little focus, the right tools, and an investment in learning how to use them, you can easily create leads that will bring you the business that you need.

But what about the competition? The competition is always going to be there. There will always be others doing what you do. The way to dominate in a local market is to make your voice heard over the crowd. This can be done with the power of a great website, fully optimized for search engines and reaching the people that are looking for you in a local market. Let your competitors have their antiquated means of generating contracting leads like bulk mail, radio ads, and flyers. These methods are old and quickly becoming outdated.

Imagine having a website that entices people to enter their name and email address to inquire more about what you do and how you can help them. Imaging having this going on while you sleep. A website is a must-have tool for generating leads and leads are what generate long term customers who keep coming back for your services.

If someone wants their yard landscaped and types into Google the words “landscaping service” will they find you? Hopefully your local listing will come up in the first few slots in Google – or even better, take up the whole front page so they can’t help but to click on the link and see what you have to offer. Can you afford not to have a system like this in place?

Your website SEO optimized for the right keywords that are pertinent to your business is a no brainer. The lifetime value of customers that are looking for you before you look for them can’t be underestimated. The internet as a constant lead source will allow you to concentrate on performing good work and not worry about the competition in your local market. Performing good work causes customers to come back again and again.

A little knowledge or expert help in running a site specifically for your business is the most cost effective way to generate contracting leads bar none. That’s what it will take to have those people staring at your top Google listings. That’s money in the bank.

Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.

Your best customers now will generate your best new leads for contractors in the future as they communicate with friends online.

When just starting your contracting company, your first order of business was to generate contractor leads for jobs. Back then, advertising was an investment you were probably hesitant to spend your meager profits on. At that time you relied on good reviews and word of mouth advertising from your best customers to generate new leads. How many customers reached out to you after seeing a friend or relative’s new kitchen, freshly finished basement, or renovated bathroom? Many people today have virtual brag books online. How can you leverage this idea for more contractor leads?

Prospective clients today are doing their research online in not only traditional websites, but by using local searches like Google Local, social media sites like MySpace and online classified sites like Craigslist. Local search is a relatively new search method that has several advantages for the local business person. If you are one of the first to take advantage, you can quickly dominate some key phrase and word searches. This will put you at the top of the list for these local search engines, and drive new contractor leads to your website. The smart and profitable business person combines these new leads with word of mouth referrals. By having a presence on these sites that your customers can link to and read, you’ll build a Link Wheel that will have a synergistic effect, generating more leads for less expense than traditional methods.

It all starts with superior service and products. When customers post the pictures of their new pool, or brag about their new air conditioner or landscaping, your company should be able to turn those posts into new leads. Increased sales and increased revenue combined with decreased costs of advertising leads to increase profit and success for your contracting business.

How do you make this a reality? Start by knowing yourself and your business. Answer the questions “What is my niche?” and “What am I most proud of?” Integrate the answers to these questions into your website design. Then create and distribute content associated with your business into the right sites and in the right form to drive customers to your site. That content needs to be search engine optimized so it’s easy to find, is highly ranked, and drives contractor leads to your sales channels. Providing space and content for your customers to react to, post their own comments and reviews will also be highly effective. Once you have one keyword captured, find more. Remember that your website is your salesperson. You want it to be dynamic and constantly improving to convert your leads into contracts.

Taking the time to learn about these advanced Web 2.0 tactics and taking action on a well thought out plan are the first steps in getting this ball rolling. Then watch it snowball by teaching others in your organization to do it, and then monitor and measure the results, to optimize the effect and drive sales and profit.

Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.

As the leader of your company, you’re always looking for new ways to get contractor leads for new jobs. With the slowing of the economy, competition has heated up. How will your business stack up? Do you want to work harder for less money, or have your choice of jobs to choose from? Surely a rhetorical question, everyone wants to increase their profits and expand their business. Using the internet to generate contractor leads is one of the best ways to grow your business in any economy.

The first step must be to make sure that you website, your “home base” does a good job of describing your skills, recent jobs, the jobs you’re proud of. If you’re looking to attract contractor leads from the surrounding area, you need to have something for them to look at so they’ll realize your company is the best one for their job. Give your rates, your specialties, what your niche in your area is. Your website is as much a demonstration of your abilities as your last job; don’t be afraid to invest some time and resources in keeping it up to date. Just a short phone interview with a satisfied customer will make great quotes and sound bites to bring credibility to your site. You want to be noticed; make your website your showcase. It will make a difference to potential customers and lead them to use you as their next contractor.

Now that you have a great and masterful website, you’ll need to drive potential customers to it. There are the more traditional Web 1.0 methods of advertising and optimizing your site and content for search engines. Don’t stop with Web 1.0 though. There are plenty of methods and processes that can be used to help you “capture” a key word or phrase. And once you start to see success from that phrase, you’re not done as this is a dynamic and constantly evolving process. It’s your 24/7 sales force and you obviously don’t want a salesperson who doesn’t change their approach with a changing environment. Therefore continue to invest and re-invent your site. Make it new for your most loyal customers and they’ll keep coming back and generating more contractor leads for your business.

These are relatively passive methods that make your website accessible, but don’t really drive people there. That’s where Web 2.0 shines. Posting a video of your latest job on YouTube or an up-to-date photo shoot in Flickr or Picasa is just the first step. Drive your satisfied existing customers to comment on their own place. Everyone loves to brag and gush about their latest project, so give them a forum. Their glowing reviews of your work will give confidence to potential customers, and prompt them to consider you before they hit your website or give you a call. This is the new world’s “word of mouth advertising” but on a much larger scale.

Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.

There’s a never ending potential for generating leads for your contracting business online and there are always new places to advertise your business in cyberspace.

Contracting is a very competitive business where getting contractor leads is a major concern. In increasing numbers customers are going to the web first to research their purchases. A 2005 study (DoubleClick) found that internet searches play into at least 50% of all online purchases, and 1 out of every 3 of those searches are local (Piper Jaffray). That’s a great starting point for any sales process, and there are several ways to get your foot in the door.

In today’s world most businesses have their own web sites, but how many are truly friendly to the customer and optimized with respect to search and indexing? How many have become out-of-date, are hard to maintain and actually erode the customer’s option of your business. Remaining focused on your primary business of remodeling is a huge key, not getting wrapped up in web site administration. The good news is that it is relatively easy and inexpensive to find a service to help you manage the business’s online persona while you can concentrate your primary business. Remember that your web site is your home base, the place your new and existing customers will judge you on. While your existing customers will have the work you did as an example of your commitment to quality, new customers only have your web site.

Becoming one of the top ranked search results is no longer a hit or miss process as there are known high impact ways to drive your business to the top of the list. First, content needs to be created and published into the right channels and locations. This content needs to be written in a way that is very accessible to the search engine, a process known as SEO (search engine optimization). Focus on certain keywords and phrases. Capturing the top position in local searches, one of the fastest growing search products, will equal more contractor leads for your company. Once you have captured one top spot, don’t stop there, the more key phrases you capture the more traffic to your site to convert to sales.

Now we have content, how do we use that content to drive our contractor leads? It’s all about links. The more exposure and back links to your content from internet outlets and other sources of information will drive up the relevance of your site. This will result in more contractor leads as your business climb higher in the list of results.

Outlets and sources of information:

* Pure local search engines

* Social Networking

* Local Media

* Paid search

* Destination Vertical Search

* City.com

* IYPs

* Local Shopping

* Online Classified

Now that you have the keys, how do we really get started getting contractor leads? There are four major phases to a new marketing plan:

1- Education

2- Initiate the campaign

3- On-board your team to grow the effort

4- Monitor and measure results

Now that we have the campaign well defined, content generated, published, and linked in the right outlets we’re done right? Not quite yet, in a Web 2.0 world, there is an ongoing dialog with your customers. Good reviews and shared experiences will help build word of mouth, trust in your business, and a landslide of quality contractor leads for you to close.

Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.

Any business needs a good marketing plan and generating contractor leads is no different. Marketing online, you’ll find, has a lot of differences than the traditional methods you’re used to.

As an electrician, remodeler or general contractor, you’re witnessing some pretty dramatic changes in your market place and perhaps a reduction in the number of contractor leads you’re getting into your sales channels. America and the rest of the world are in a great period of change right now. Customers have tightened their belts and traditional methods of marketing no longer work like they used to. However, periods of great change can also be an opportunity for great wealth to be made for the savvy business person.

Generating leads for contractors in today’s environment may mean a change in the marketing plan. Success on the internet is integral to your increased profits. Today over 1 billion local searches are performed every month, and that number is just going up. Are you ready? Is your business positioned properly to take advantage of the shift away from print and traditional advertising onto the internet? Has your web site adapted to the new economy? Or is it the same as when times were better? Does it fit what your new potential customers are looking for? What they’ll be comforted and impressed by? You can’t afford to ignore this and you need a focused plan to make this transformation happen.

Thrifty is the new excess. Customers want to make good decisions about where they spend their money. They will search high and low, all sources to find someone they trust will do a good job. You know that your marketing plan must include all aspects of the internet, including social media outlets. Your company must survive and you have the drive for profit, but putting together an effective and comprehensive marking plan that covers all aspects of local shopping, paid search, internet yellow pages, social networking, local media sites and pure local search engines is overwhelming.

To conquer this challenge a transformation of your marketing plan is probably necessary. Education on all aspects of the hottest outlets and techniques is the first step. A marketing plan can’t be generated and validated without an understanding of where and what you’re doing. A blind scatter shot approach is as bad as not doing anything.

Once you get that education, take action. The market is dynamic and the best way to learn is from applying the methods you’ve learned. Once you’ve begun to master these methods, leverage existing resources by teaching others in your organization. Not only will your mastery increase by teaching, but new perspectives will have a synergistic effect and increase the outcomes. Finally once your plan is implemented, monitor and measure the results. Keep conquering new keywords, and realize when your momentum has slowed. It’s a rigorous process, where skipping a step will lead to a lessened effect. Having a seasoned guide is the Surefire way to decrease the time to implement and maximize your sales leads and profits.
Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.

In this competitive business you know how many contractor leads you need to make a single sale. Each phase of the sales process has a success rate associated with it; not every lead is a sale. Maximizing the top of the funnel is the first step.

There’s no question that the purpose of advertising is to fill the top of the funnel with qualified contractor leads. Traditional methods, the big four of TV, newspaper, yellow pages and radio all have a place in your budget. No one will deny that you will get some portion of your sales from them. However, less people are using these outlets as their first place to look. No sense in spending your normal allocation on these declining media. Why not reallocate some or most of your print and yellow page budget to where the eyes are?

Many now turn to the internet, buying contractor leads lists from various outlets. This is a variation on the traditional cold calling method, where in addition to calling out of the blue, you can mass email. There are many services available and leads are gathered throughout the country. Contractor leads lists can be expensive, and you may have some question about the quality of the leads. In any case, for these methods to be effective, you must have compelling content in the email and have a great destination for these recipients to go to if they click through. Knowing your niche, what your specialty is, and what your vision for your company will be essential to building a strong home base.

Don’t discount the value of a good seminar or trade fair. There is no replacement for making that personal connection. These are high quality contractor leads that have a high probably of translating into contracts. Your existing infrastructure of website and advertisement will reinforce that good impression you made in person.

Some conservative estimates show that there is a 1% conversion of web site traffic to customers. Therefore you must maximize your attractiveness and constantly drive new customers to the site. Ideally, you want to have optimization around keywords, and continue to be the first search result for new keywords or phrases. The good news is that the advent of localized searches has made it easier for local contractors to dominate key phrases in their areas, and maximize lead generation. One of every 3 searches is local and over 1 billion local searches will be performed every month.

A professional well laid-out site, with glowing praise from existing customers on the work that you’ve done will help drive that conversion rate upwards. But generating contractor leads is just a start; you’ll still need to do a great job. Delighting your customers with your quality products and service is essential. Then give your loyal customers a place on your site to brag about what a good job you did, how happy they are and how they’d use you on their next job. That kind of praise will give new customers the confidence to close the deal with you.

Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.

Web 2.0 refers to interaction and that means interacting with potential customers who might be future contracting leads.

Generating contractor leads using traditional methods of newspaper, yellow pages, video and radio advertisements is expensive. There are still plenty of good contacts and sales leads to be found using these outlets. However, in today’s connected world many people look first to the internet for their real world needs. Think about your own personal information search pattern. The good news about advertising on the web is that costs per lead can be about half of advertising in the yellow pages. Why not reallocate funds from some of these waning tactics, and do what works best now?

Think about the last time you used the yellow pages, or responded to a newspaper advertisement buried in the classified section of your local newspaper. Do you even get the newspaper delivered during the week? Is your phonebook buried in a junk drawer, or gathering dust on a shelf? Your personal habits are not different from the habits of your current or future customers. Yet, most businesses still pour money into these dying print outlets. Most smart business people after examining the costs of traditional advertising will come to the conclusion that some or most of this money can be redirected to more effective, advanced internet based advertising. Maintaining presence, posting events and articles can be easily handled in a few hours per day at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising. The cost per lead will drop as your business is able to take better advantage of this new 24/7 contractor lead source.

The hottest tickets in web advertising are Web 2.0 or Social Media sites. If we look at the development of content on the Internet, the first generation of sites, and many sites today, primarily display the content of the site’s owner. News outlets, weather outlets are composed of owner generated content that people browse and view. Web 2.0 refers to sites that have more customer posted or generated content than owner content. YouTube, Facebook and MySpace are composed of almost entirely user uploaded content, and the comments of other customers, browsers and fans.

The most compelling aspect of Social Media sites is that a well placed event, video or post can generate a “buzz” within that social network. This has a cascading effect where the post takes on a life of its own, at no additional cost or time investment by the promoter. This duplicates the effect of the traditional small town word of mouth advertising, which is one of the most effective ways to generate leads for contracting work. This will have the affect of driving potential customers to your site, increasing the number of customers into your sales funnel. Your site will need to impress these new leads, and as any contractor or tradesman knows, personal endorsements and glowing reviews from your existing customers are like money in the bank.

Chris Marentis is the Founder of GenNext Media and Marketing, and is an expert in online lead generation for contractors. His Surefire Social system is becoming a well-established system for contractor lead generation and increased profits.