How to Get Garage Door Leads: 16 Tested Ways [2024]

Why is Garage Door Lead Generation Important?

Garage door companies survive for as long as their lead pipeline is active.

Liz Soto, senior account manager at Proximo Marketing, supports this point by saying, “Lead generation is so important in the [garage door] industry, and customer demand often drives a lot of the success of these businesses.”

Other key benefits of garage door lead generation are:

Increased sales: It’s a no-brainer: quality garage door repair leads become new customers, which generates sales.

Greater trust from prospects: lead generation provides prospects with valuable information and resources. This can help build trust, making you the first company they consider for garage door services. 

Competitive advantage: lead generation increases visibility, reach, and perceived expertise. This differentiates your company and upstages competitors.

How to Get Garage Door Leads

Before proceeding, we'd like you to know that lead generation strategies, calls, and traffic are vanity metrics. Generating conversions and revenue should be the end goal.

That's why you should implement only lead generation strategies that generate high-quality leads—calls and messages—that are more likely to convert. As Liz Soto rightly points out, “Why optimize toward calls when you can optimize toward revenue?”

Also, you'll notice that we cover both digital and traditional marketing strategies. With good reason.

It’s best practice to combine the two strategies, to reach potential customers using Google to find local businesses and those who avoid digital advertisements or stay off the internet entirely.

Here’s a breakdown of the strategies we are covering:

Let's explain each in more detail.

1. Invest in local SEO

Local SEO involves implementing strategies that ensure you appear on result pages for local-intent keyphrases such as ‘garage door companies near me.’

For example, a prospect Googling ‘garage door companies near me’ in Florida gets this: 

However, a homeowner Googling the same phrase in Wisconsin gets this:

Notice that the search engine result pages are tailored to the respective areas—Florida and Wisconsin. That makes local SEO the perfect match for garage companies, as customers are likelier to hire local service providers because they:

• Are likely to have shorter response times than others far away.

• Are easier to trust since prospective customers may be familiar with the employees.

Local search results have two sections: the organic blue links you’re familiar with, a map pack comprising three garage companies, and a map insert.

To appear in the map pack, a garage company must score high on Google’s three local search ranking criteria: 

• Prominence: The online popularity of a garage company determined by its citations, search rankings, reviews, and ratings.

• Distance: The distance between the searcher and the company’s physical location.

• Relevance: The correlation between the query and the information on the company’s Google Business Profile (GBP).

Here’s how you satisfy these criteria and earn a place in the map pack.

Optimize your GBP

Formerly Google My Business, GBP is a free business listing platform that gives companies control over how they appear on search results.

Companies can update their GBP with their phone number, address, and photos.

To optimize your GBP, consider the following:

• Upload photos and videos

• Add a local phone number

• Link to your social media handles

Always monitor your listings, as incorrect information can be costly.

In the words of Elizabeth Rule, an account manager and local SEO analyst at Sterling Sky, “Sometimes Google or users will change info on the listings, and it's important to catch these changes and correct them as quickly as possible”. 

“For instance, I have seen cases where Google updates important information like a phone number or the link to the website. If that’s not corrected immediately, they could miss some quality leads.”

Finally, filling up your GBP with real customer reviews is key, as Google uses them to determine prominence.

You can encourage technicians to request customer reviews or leave postcards with a Google review step-by-step tutorial.

Or better still, consider using ServiceTitan's Reputation Management platform that sends automated customer review requests once a technician concludes a job.

This ensures customers leave authentic reviews while the experience is still fresh in their minds.

ServiceTitan's Reputation Management platform also consolidates reviews from various listing platforms into a single dashboard and lets you set customer review alerts.

With these features, you can reply to customer reviews easily and resolve complaints before they worsen.

Pro tip: Always encourage customers to add photos to their reviews to rank higher.

Create local landing pages

If you serve more than one area, consider creating separate landing pages for each one to increase your Google relevance score.

Optimize your local landing pages with local keywords you find using Google’s related searches section, keyword planner, and auto-complete feature.

Search engine optimization (SEO) tools such as Semrush and Ahrefs are another great source of local keywords.

2. Use Facebook lead ads.

Facebook lead ads are special ads that let prospects submit their contact information in preset text fields without leaving Facebook. The contact information automatically goes into the CRM integrated with your Facebook Ad Manager.

Running Facebook lead ads generates quality leads, as almost 31 percent of customers say they used a local business after viewing a Facebook ad. 

Facebook lead ads have a frictionless conversion process since prospects submit their information without leaving the platform or waiting for a landing page to load.

When setting up Facebook lead ads, use the following tips to increase conversions:

• Target the right demographics

• Obey Facebook's ad specifications for videos, images, and texts

• Optimize for mobile

• Limit the form fields

• Add click-to-call buttons

• Integrate your CRM with your Facebook Ads Manager platform

3. Run PPC campaigns

Pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns involve advertisers (garage companies) paying for clicks and impressions on ads displayed on digital platforms, such as websites, applications, and search engines.

Although other search engines, such as Bing, facilitate PPC campaigns, Google PPC is the most popular, as nearly all online searches occur on Google. This means several garage door companies are constantly jostling for a position in Google’s sponsored section. 

And since Google can’t display all of them simultaneously, it uses an algorithm that picks a maximum of four garage door companies to feature in the sponsored section for each results page.

How can you ensure you make it to the sponsored section?

• Pair your PPC campaigns with compelling landing page copy

• Ensure your ad copy highlights the benefits of booking a job with you

• Include appealing visuals—images and videos

• Always measure and iterate

To track your PPC campaign’s performance, consider using ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing platform, which ranks every marketing campaign according to its revenue generated instead of just responses.

The platform lets you create and assign unique toll-free phone numbers to marketing campaigns. ServiceTitan then uses the unique phone numbers to match every inbound call to the originating campaign and display its exact ROI in real time.

You can use these insights to consistently tweak your campaign budget, allotting more resources to the campaigns bringing in the most revenue. 

Or better yet, to automatically reallocate your resources to revenue-generating ad campaigns, consider using ServiceTitan’s Ads Optimizer software.

The software uses Titan intelligence—ServiceTitan’s artificial intelligence for the trades—to automatically reallocate your ad budget, dedicating more to revenue-generating campaigns.

Once activated, the software analyzes campaign revenue and conversion data from Google and ServiceTitan. It then optimizes your campaign budget, dedicating more to digital ad campaigns generating the most sales and revenue.

Over time, the AI-powered software learns what qualified leads look like and feeds that insight to Google, which displays your ads to only searchers likely to book your services. This sort of next-level precision increases lead quality and conversions.

For example, Proximo Marketing, which has been using Ads Optimizer for its clients, recently ran an ad campaign for a plumbing company using the software. The result?

• A 16 percent increase in lead quality (from 44 to 60 percent)

• Almost a 100 percent return on investment

“Ads Optimizer solves one of the biggest pain points in marketing—tying digital marketing performance to revenue without creating internal solutions,” says senior account manager Liz Soto. 

“Instead, that work is done automatically within ServiceTitan and Marketing Pro.”

To take advantage of this, watch the video below to learn how to connect your PPC ads to ServiceTitan.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3S7Mbk4OiY&ab_channel=ServiceTitan

4. Use Local Services ads

Local Services ads (LSAs) are a special Google ad offering that empowers prospects to message or call local businesses directly from search engine results.

They are always visible at the top of local search result pages, containing some selected garage door companies and their essential information—ratings, reviews, phone numbers, names, and physical addresses.

A considerable advantage of LSAs is that you pay per lead—dollars only flow out of your ad budget when someone calls or messages you.

However, you can only enjoy the benefits of LSAs if your ad gets selected by Google’s algorithm. To increase the chances of that happening, you should:

• Always respond to both positive and negative reviews

• Optimize your GBP and verify it to earn Google’s guaranteed badge

• Use high-quality images and compelling company descriptions

• Include all your service offerings

Lastly, promptly pick up calls and include forms in your ads. According to Tommy Mello, CEO and founder of A1 Garage Door Service, Google prioritizes companies that pick up calls early and use form fills.

“You’ve got to have form fills turned on if you want to win,” Mello says. “Google will serve you up way more leads.”

Pro tip: Consider using ServiceTitan’s Local Services ads integration so you don’t lose track of the leads your LSAs generate.

The integration gathers the jobs generated by your LSAs alongside the contact information of the customers who booked them directly into your ServiceTitan dashboard. This reduces human errors associated with manually copying contact information and prevents data redundancy.

ServiceTitan’s Local Services ads integration also keeps you informed about your LSAs’ performance, ensuring you dedicate marketing resources to only lead-generating campaigns.

Some ServiceTitan customers who use the integration have reported:

• 80%conversion rate on leads booked with GLSA and ServiceTitan.

• 93% of their LSA leads are new customers.

• 76 new bookings in just six months, at a cost that’s 50% lower than other lead generation channels. 

5. Leverage referral marketing

Referral marketing is rewarding people who recommend your services to others with perks such as discounts on future bookings and tickets to exclusive events.

Setting up referral marketing programs is advisable, as even happy customers may still need reminders to recommend your services.

Running referral marketing programs is also a great way to get high-quality leads since 40 percent of referred leads convert—far exceeding other channels. Plus, most customers prefer to hear about your brand from people they know and trust.

After creating a referral marketing program, ensure you promote it by:

• Encouraging techs to request referrals from customers subtly

• Providing customers with referral message templates

• Including referral requests beneath invoices.

Finally, always strive to exceed customer expectations, as satisfied customers are more likely to recommend your services.

To exceed customer expectations, consider using a tool like ServiceTitan’s Customer Experience platform, which helps you manage customer interactions efficiently.

With the platform, you can send appointment reminders and brief technician descriptions to limit no-shows and help customers know who to expect.

The platform also lets customers track the real-time location of technicians on the way to their location using GPS tracking technology. This assures customers that technicians are on the way and prevents techs from taking unnecessary detours so they arrive on time.

6. Create lead magnets

Lead magnets are free assets or resources, such as discount codes and e-books, offered to prospective customers in exchange for their contact information.

Using educational and promotional messages, companies use the prospects’ contact information to nurture them into becoming customers.

The basic rule of creating lead magnets is to build it around a prospect’s pressing needs, so you create a resource so valuable they submit their contact details without hesitation.

Let's say your customers—small businesses operating out of their homes—find it hard to pick the right garage door.

You can create a How to Pick a Quality Garage Door e-book that prospects download after submitting their email addresses. Then, send educational and occasional promotional emails to nudge them into booking a job.

If you want to create email campaigns without spending extra on designers or design platforms, consider using ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro Email software.

The platform’s easy-to-understand interface and several pre-built templates make it easy to create email campaigns yourself. Pick a template, customize it with your copy and logo, and launch. That’s all it takes.

A performance dashboard also shows how each email is performing and the revenue it is generating.

These analytics provide valuable insights to improve your campaigns consistently. You can also use them to discover content that resonates with subscribers.

7. Get involved in the local community

Participating in your local community builds trust with residents, who are either potential or current customers. In the long run, that trust can translate into leads, help increase brand awareness, and generate revenue.

Community participation also showcases your garage door expertise, which can generate door repair leads.

Several community engagement strategies exist. Some examples include sponsoring local events, hosting free educational workshops, setting up garage door mentorship programs, and donating to local nonprofits.

But in some cases, community engagement opportunities may come through support requests—the school team may need a sponsor, some nonprofits may request donations, etc. Managing these requests can be challenging, as you still have your bottom line to consider.

We recently chatted with Chris Hunter, who participated in an employee-led community drive at Hunter Super Techs and is currently ServiceTitan’s director of customer relations. His tips for effectively managing charity giving requests include:

• Lay aside a charitable giving budget.

• Create an application process for support requests: Inform every applicant of  the process.

• Determine an application review time frame: Hunter Super Techs informs applicants that they’ll review all applications at annual planning meetings and offer support the following year. 

• Set up an application review committee: The committee can spread the charitable giving budget across several initiatives or allocate it to just one or two, providing larger donations to each one.

• Notify the organizations chosen for support: Designate an employee to serve as a liaison, design graphics, and support materials, and coordinate the money distribution.

• Have an annual planning meeting to take stock of the program’s success and to determine if it's worth continuing.

• Support employees interested in a charity or cause: And, when possible, participate with them.

8. Create a membership program

A membership program (aka service contact or membership club) is a contract with guidelines for frequent maintenance, repair, and service of the customer’s garage door.

Prospects may prefer to use your services when there’s a membership program in place, as proactive maintenance keeps their garage doors in shape and prevents expensive problems.

Service contracts also create more opportunities for customer engagement, which can help you build trust and earn valuable referrals—a great lead source.

When creating membership programs, use these principles to protect your bottom line and offer value to customers:

• Optimize for profitability: Ensure you're operating at a profit.

• Determine the contract duration: Pick a contract duration that appeals to customers wary of long-term commitments.

• Investigate the garage door's working condition: Several repair visits will cost a lot, so investigate the garage door's working condition before offering a service contract.

• Lay out the contract terms: The contract should outline the renewal policy, the number of appointments per contract period, and the type of services it covers.

Many home service companies use ServiceTitan's Service Agreement software to create membership agreements that deliver maximum value to customers while remaining profitable.

The software lets you automatically set up recurring maintenance checkups and service tune-ups and manage recurring payments easily. 

You can also create membership discounts so technicians can confidently sell service contracts, and customers can see exactly how much they will save by signing up.

ServiceTitan’s Service Agreement software also automatically tracks labor and material costs as you create discounts, so you remain profitable.

9. Run contests on social media

Social media contests encourage prospects to engage with your company, ensuring you maintain top-of-mind awareness until they book a job. They can also be an opportunity to collect customers’ contact information.

However, social media contests are a double-edged sword, as they can attract low-quality leads when you use the wrong incentive.

For example, let’s say you set a $1,000 cash reward for a social media contest. Several people will participate in getting the cash without any interest in booking your services. After all, who hates free money?

So, you must always run contests with gifts related to your garage door services so participants return to book a job. Examples of such contest ideas are:

• Encourage followers to share pictures of their garage door repair fails. Give a free garage door installation to accounts with the most engagement—likes, shares, views, and comments.

• Post a before-and-after video or image and require users to caption it. Then, give those with the most likes a free garage door inspection.

• Encourage followers to share branded content with a hashtag. The most creative entries receive a seasonal maintenance package discount.

10. Attend trade shows and events

Trade shows and events are great places to get leads. They present the perfect opportunity to pitch your services to potential customers, forge partnerships with suppliers, and expand your network.

During trade shows, have a well-designed booth and go along with promotional materials—fliers, souvenirs, and business cards. Save prospects’ contact details so you can re-engage them later.

Check out this list of garage door trade shows.

11. Team up with other professionals

Partnering with local businesses is an excellent lead-generation strategy. 

You can co-create service bundles, cross-promote your services, or run referral exchange programs.

Any local professional or service company you collaborate with must be complementary. That is, they should have customers who are also likely to need your services.

Examples of such companies include:

• Local hardware stores

• Realtors

• Security system companies

• Car dealerships

• Home storage companies

You should also cultivate relationships with local business leaders to build a network of potential customers and referral sources.

Tommy Mello, CEO and founder of A1 Garage Door Service, restates the importance of networking with local business leaders.

“Are you guys going to BNI (Business Network International)? Are you talking to realtors? Do you remember where you started when you used to go meet people?” he asks.

“You used to go to the Chamber of Commerce meetings, used to be out there shaking hands, used to be hustling. I'll tell you what, it's going to be very, very difficult to beat someone who's still hungrier than you.”

12. Create promotional stickers

Promotional stickers are a cost-effective way to generate garage door leads. They cost little to produce, are very easy to distribute, and have several marketing applications.

You can use stickers to promote your services by:

• Placing them at local businesses and relaxation spots.

• Giving them to customers to place on their cars, turning them into a moving billboard.

• Adding them to customer appreciation packages.

You could also leave stickers near garage door remote buttons after maintenance, repair, or service runs to retain top-of-mind awareness. This is crucial since garage door repairs happen infrequently, often with years between each repair.

13. Use outdoor advertising

Outdoor advertising (or out-of-home advertising) is precisely what it says: any promotional material you display outside. It encompasses traditional (flyers, billboards, and transit ads) and digital out-of-home formats (smart signs, electronic billboards, and digital flyers).

One major advantage of outdoor advertising is its precision: it can be used to reach only people within a specific geographic area. For example, a company expanding into Texas can erect a billboard in the city’s shopping mall to generate awareness among residents and drive foot traffic.

To be clear, some types of outdoor advertising can be costly for a small-scale garage door company. However, some low-cost alternatives include:

• Placing brand assets on technician trucks

• Street pole banners

• Standing banners

• Posters

• Bench ads

• Pavement signs

• Furniture ads

It’s worth mentioning that no other outdoor marketing tactic is as important as your exterior signage. Fifty-four percent of customers say they failed to find a business because the sign was small or unclear.

So, ensure the words on your external signage are visible from afar. The design should be clear, crisp, and uncluttered.

14. Create a radio spot

Generally speaking, radio ads are an effective lead-generation channel for local businesses like yours operating within a set geographical area. 

Radio stations offer zoned broadcast options, allowing you to target specific neighborhoods where prospects reside.

Another reason radio ads are effective is that they let you target a specific audience demographic based on their interests. Simply find the hosts and shows that prospects listen to, then schedule your radio ad to air simultaneously.

Radio ads have different formats:

• Jingles: pre-recorded short radio ads accompanied by catchy tunes.

• Testimonials: a short audio snippet of a customer eulogizing your brand.

• Live reads: advertisements recited live by DJs or show hosts. They're great for leveraging the host's credibility.

• Narrations: involving voice actors who read a script that tells a story.

• Sponsorships: hosts announce brands sponsoring the show intermittently. This usually takes the form of "This show was sponsored by [insert brand and describe what it does]." 

Radio ads incur high or low costs depending on the station's audience demographics, number of listeners, and demand for ad spots. However, the leads they generate can offset the cost.

For radio ads to generate enough leads to justify the amount you spend on them, consider the following:

• Use catchy tunes that listeners can easily recall.

• Always track your radio ad's performance. You can redirect radio ad leads to a different landing page, use a dedicated phone number, or ask leads how they found you.

• Get professionals to write the script and do the voice-overs.

15. Advertise on local TV stations

You should know that TV advertising is generally cost-prohibitive, especially for small garage door businesses. However, ad spots on local TV stations are more affordable.

Advertising on local TV stations also lets you reach residents in your local service area, growing brand awareness and visibility.

Before advertising on local TV stations, find a show with many local viewers. Review this list to find local TV stations and the markets they serve.

Also, ensure your local TV ads contain:

• The name of your business.

• The services you offer.

• Reasons you're better than competitors.

• Where to find more information about your business—your website address, social media handles, or local directories.

• Directions to your physical location.

Using your website address instead of your phone number is advisable, as people find it harder to recall numbers read out quickly. Prospects can find your phone number on your website if they need it.

16. Leverage remarketing

Remarketing is an online marketing strategy targeted at audiences who previously interacted with your brand but didn’t take action. This includes people who visited your website or social media page, requested a quotation or estimate, etc.

Remarketing is essential, as most customers may not book a job the first time they see your ads, visit your website, or engage with your social media content.

They may compare prices or read online reviews to feel comfortable and confident with their choice. 

You can remarket to them during this consideration period by displaying ads on the websites and apps they frequent. Or by setting up an email drip campaign to remain top-of-mind until they’re ready to convert.

At the heart of remarketing is getting the contact details of people who have interacted with your brand in one way or the other. You can do so by:

• Installing pixels (code snippets for tracking web activity) on the backend of your website or social media ad.

• Recording the emails or addresses of prospects.

You can find out how to install pixels on your website or social media ad here. But if you already have prospects’ emails or addresses, consider using ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro Email and Direct Mail platforms to retarget them.

Both platforms let you create, run, and manage targeted campaigns containing content hyper-relevant to your audience's current needs.

For example, let's say you have the emails or addresses of prospects who requested an estimate. You can create a campaign offering a five percent discount if they book a job immediately.

This type of hyper-personalization can reactivate leads and generate conversions.

Megan Bedford of Mugyver Consulting recently generated over 120 inbound calls from three hyper-relevant email campaigns created on ServiceTitan's Email platform.

ServiceTitan’s Direct Mail platform also saves you the hassle and expenses of designing, printing, and sending mail. 

Simply upload your postcard. Add your copy. And ServiceTitan will help you print and send them out to prospects, charging you for each mail you send, which costs far less than minimum print runs.

To top it all off, ServiceTitan’s Direct Mail platform shows the deliverability and ROI of each postcard, so you can fine-tune your future campaigns and double down on what’s working.

Now Over to You

If making sales is your goal, driving quality leads is the crucial first step. Use our tips to consistently generate high-quality leads, increase revenue, and grow your business.

Also, consider using a garage door marketing tool such as ServiceTitan to automate lead generation.

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software thousands of home service companies use to streamline their business processes. Join thousands of other service providers nationwide who already use it!