When savvy homeowners make purchases to improve or repair a part of their homes, they want the best information they can get.
Whether it’s a matter of helpful details on products offered by a specific dealer, or facts about a local installer’s track record and areas of expertise, you should strive to put useful info at your customers’ fingertips at the earliest opportunity.
Fortunately, as a modern building materials manufacturer, you can accomplish this with ease through a high-quality dealer locator. Beyond just listing local dealers and installers, your locator page can give consumers the few essential facts and figures they need to make confident purchasing and contractor hiring decisions.
In terms of the convenience factor, that kind of great customer experience can put your brand well ahead of the competition.
Here’s more about the 4 things homeowners want the most from a building material manufacturer’s dealer locator:
1. A Quick, Easy Way to Find Local Contractors and Retailers
Whether a homeowner is dealing with a nagging inconvenience or a pressing problem, they want solutions fast.
According to 2017 Google stats quoted by Invoca, mobile searches for home services have been showing a trend of substantial year-over-year growth, with numbers like a 107% growth in searches for “roofing companies” and a whopping 288% growth in searches for “plumbers near me.”
Homeowners want to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible. You can meet their needs with a high-quality locator for finding local pros and retailers fast…and Bullseye is the tried-and-true solution for creating one.
A Bullseye-built locator can list all of a building product manufacturer’s trusted local contractors, retailers, or both in mere seconds. Features like integration with Google Maps, automatic expansion of the search radius to find dealers when none are found, and geolocation detection mean your site visitor won’t have to waste time finding where they can buy, and who can install, your products.
On top of this, with Bullseye, homeowners can submit inquiries easily. Once they send over their request along with their contact info to a particular dealer, your company and that dealer can follow up with them and start building the all-important customer relationship.
By eliminating the need for homeowners to hunt for dealers on their own by providing a convenient, responsive page of dealer listings — and by giving them the ability to submit inquiries to local shops and contractors — you’ll make the whole process of purchasing products and hiring contractors much less burdensome for the homeowners that visit your site.
They’ll notice the difference.
2. Installer Reviews
Homeowners want to work with an installer they can trust.
Sometimes, trust is hard to invest up front. The best consumers can do before they make contact with local pros is to look up reviews.
According to ReviewMonitoring, 72% of consumers find online reviews helpful when making purchasing decisions. This reassurance can be even more crucial when inviting a professional into one’s home to do heavy-duty installations or repairs.
Your dealer locator can make a difference in this regard, as soon as homeowners land on it. How? By bringing installer and contractor reviews to them.
Bullseye, the industry-leading locator solution for building product manufacturers, comes to the rescue here as well. It allows you to both collect reviews natively from your web visitors, or pull reviews automatically from Google and Yelp.
That means, right as customers are searching for a dealer, you can give them even more insight: you can point them to a trusted local pro who will install the products they’re looking to buy.
The convenience factor here can’t be underestimated. Give your high-intent prospects more useful info than they’ve asked for, and they’ll reward you by purchasing your brand’s products again and again.
3. Accurate Business Information and Inventory Transparency
Having inaccurate or incomplete profiles of local dealers and installers can be a huge point of frustration for homeowners.
Think about it: a web user, looking to find your products, finally finds the right person or store…only to hear a perpetual busy signal after several frustrating phone call attempts. Another scenario? They take the time to drive over to a retail location, only to be greeted by a “Store Closed” sign as they realize the hours listed online aren’t true.
You can avoid this by having up-to-date business information for each dealer on your locator page. Bullseye shines here, too.
Through its integration with Google Business Profiles (or its support of easy XML file uploads that contain up-to-date dealer info), Bullseye helps ensure you’re always giving customers accurate business names, addresses, phone numbers, and hours for the dealers listed.
Another thing homeowners will thank you for when it comes to your dealer locator: inventory transparency. On average, retailers in the U.S. are only 63% accurate when it comes to inventory info. The last thing that anyone wants to discover when visiting a dealer is that the products they need are out of stock.
Why not list up-to-date stock info for your customers up front, right in the dealer listings? A Bullseye-powered locator lets you do this in a snap, either through XML file uploads or API integrations with your dealers’ inventory management software.
The accuracy of basic business and inventory info not only drives more sales, more consistently. It also reduces the burden on your end to respond to customer inquiries. You can save your company a lot of time and resources just by providing the kind of info upfront that homeowners would be grateful to see with each locator listing.
4. Create Tailored Locators for Every Type of Homeowner
Those who prefer a more DIY approach are on the hunt for raw materials and tools. Direct these leads to a “where to buy” locator that lists retailers, dealers, and distributors with essential information like address, directions, and business hours. For homeowners wanting a full-service approach, direct them to a contractor or installer locator. For this audience, the address isn’t important since the contractor/installer will be visiting the homeowner to conduct business. Instead, include reviews, project photos, a list of services, and an easy way for a homeowner to request a quote. This way, manufacturers can serve the explicit needs of different segments of homeowners.
A Building Materials Manufacturer’s Dealer Locator Should Give Homeowners What They Need, Right Away
A busy homeowner with an important project wants to save time and get the job done.
They might trust your brand. They might love some of the products you make. However, the dealer locator is what stands between them and the purchase they’re looking forward to. Are you ready to meet them where they are?
You can do so with a dealer locator that offers a fast, responsive way to get in touch with dealers and contractors, instantly displays reviews of local installers who can help them complete projects, and shows accurate business and stock info up front.
The #1 solution to accomplish this all out of the box is none other than Bullseye.
With a robust API that can pull reviews and inventory data, as well as native integrations with services like Google Business Profiles, Yelp, and common email marketing software to nurture leads, Bullseye makes it easy for you to please the homeowners who are getting to know, like, and trust your brand.
If you want to empower your web presence in this way, get started by scheduling a free demo today.
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