Digital Marketing for Contractors

Send us Fan Mail Somewhere between 30 and 50% of the leads a typical replacement contractor pays for never turn into a real opportunity — and it's usually not because the leads were bad. In this episode, Caitlyn and Meredith break down exactly where leads quietly leak out of the sales funnel, why most owners never see it happening, and what to do about it. They walk through the standard repla...

Send us Fan Mail Most replacement contractors already have a brand. They have a logo, a truck wrap, and a website that looks reasonably professional. What most of them do not have is a brand that actually does anything: pulling leads in, shortening the sale cycle, and letting them charge what they are worth. On a recent episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, hosts Caitlyn Noble and Meredith...

Send us Fan Mail Hosts Caitlyn Noble and Meredith Medlin tackle the least flashy and highest-leverage change a replacement contractor can make: how fast you respond to a lead. Homeowners shopping for roofing, windows, siding, or baths are reaching out to three or four companies at once and booking with whoever responds first and seems competent. This episode breaks down exactly where speed dies in...

Send us Fan Mail Everyone tells you to "get more reviews" and "post more photos," but that advice is too vague to act on. In this episode, Meredith and Caitlyn go a layer deeper into the three content types that drive local search performance, reviews, photos, and posts, and break down exactly what works versus what's a waste of time. All three answer the same question Goo...

Send us Fan Mail Your Google Business Profile is probably the highest ROI digital channel you have, and it is free, so why isn't it generating calls? In this episode, Meredith and Caitlyn break down the five reasons a GBP underperforms for most replacement contractors, and the exact fixes for each. They start with why the local map pack matters more than your website or your ads for capturing...

Send us Fan Mail Season 4 kicks off with the episode we've been wanting to do for a long time. Meredith and Caitlyn walk through four real horror stories from contractors who came to FatCat after getting burned by other agencies — names left out, lessons left in. From the agency that held a contractor's website, ad accounts, and Google Business Profile hostage, to the "lead inflatio...

Send us Fan Mail The way homeowners find contractors has changed more in the last 18 months than it did in the previous decade. Search has become recommendations. Websites have become trusted platforms. Clicking has become asking. And one name keeps showing up in the AI results: Yelp. In this special-format episode, Caitlyn Noble sits down with Phil and Ryan from Yelp's partner team to break...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Caitlyn and Meredith wrap up a stretch of AI-focused conversations with a practical question every contractor needs to answer: what should you actually automate, and what should never leave a human's hands? They share a simple framework for thinking about it (operational vs. relational moments), then walk through six things you should automate this week, five...

Send us Fan Mail Most contractors are sitting on leads that should have closed but didn't, and the reason is almost always the same: follow-up. In this episode, Caitlyn and Meredith break down how AI can make your sales follow-up faster, smarter, and more consistent without taking over your life. You'll hear the five highest-leverage ways to use AI in your follow-up process: speeding up...

Send us Fan Mail No theory, no hype, just 10 specific ways home improvement and remodeling contractors can start saving hours every week, starting today. Whether you've never touched an AI tool or you use one every day, there's something in this episode you can put to work this week. In this episode, you'll learn how to use AI to: Write and polish your estimates and proposals Respon...

Send us Fan Mail Your reputation is your marketing. In home improvement, where trust is everything and a single project can cost tens of thousands of dollars, reviews and referrals are probably the most underestimated growth lever you've got. Yet most contractors treat them as something that just happens in the background. In this episode, Caitlyn and Meredith break down how to actually manag...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode, Caitlyn and Meredith break down the current state of paid advertising for home improvement contractors and separate myth from reality. They cover four key platforms—Google Search, Local Service Ads, Meta (Facebook & Instagram), and YouTube—highlighting what’s changed, what still works, and where contractors should focus their budgets in 2026. Listeners will le...

Send us Fan Mail AI is everywhere right now — and for contractors, it can feel overwhelming. In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors , Caitlyn Noble and Meredith Medlin cut through the noise and focus on what actually matters: real-world AI applications that contractors can use today to improve marketing, lead response, and visibility online . We break down three high-impact use cases...

Send us Fan Mail Referrals are every contractor’s most valuable — and most underutilized — lead source. In this episode, we sit down with Jamey Vumback, founder of Get The Referral, to break down how contractors can transform their customer base into a scalable, predictable referral engine. We cover why most referral programs fail (hint: lack of process), how to systemize referrals across your tea...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, Caitlyn Noble and Meredith Medlin dive into one of the biggest hidden profit killers for home improvement businesses: the follow-up gap. Many contractors assume their marketing isn’t working when leads don’t convert—but the real problem often lies in what happens after the lead comes in. Slow response times, inconsistent follow...

Send us Fan Mail Local SEO isn’t disappearing — but it is evolving faster than many contractors realize. In this episode, Caitlyn Noble and Meredith Medlin break down how artificial intelligence, voice search, and Google’s new AI-powered search experiences are transforming how homeowners find local contractors. Instead of focusing solely on rankings, today’s search landscape prioritizes trust, aut...

Send us Fan Mail In this special episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors , hosts Caitlyn Noble and Meredith Medlin share a replay of their recent FastSite webinar , where they break down a problem many contractors face: websites that get traffic but fail to generate leads. If you're investing in SEO, Google Ads, or Local Service Ads but not seeing the phone ring or forms come in, the iss...

Send us Fan Mail In this Winter 2025–2026 Industry & Digital Marketing News Roundup, Caitlyn and Meredith break down the biggest trends impacting home improvement contractors heading into spring. From roofing supplier mega-mergers and dropping consumer confidence to SEO vanity metrics, Google crackdowns, speed-to-lead expectations, and OpenAI testing ads inside ChatGPT — this episode covers wh...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, Caitlyn Noble and Meredith break down one of the biggest growth challenges home improvement companies face: the owner bottleneck. If you're the one handling sales, overseeing operations, approving marketing, managing follow-ups, and solving daily fires — growth eventually stalls. Or worse, it turns chaotic. This episode co...

Send us Fan Mail Google isn’t gone — but it’s no longer the only way homeowners are finding contractors. In this episode, Caitlyn and Meredith break down how search behavior has dramatically changed and why relying on Google rankings alone is no longer enough to drive consistent leads. From AI Overviews and zero-click searches to ChatGPT, social media, YouTube, and neighborhood groups — discovery...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors , Caitlyn and Meredith break down what’s actually driving website conversions in 2026 — and what contractors need to prioritize to turn traffic into booked jobs. They explain how the definition of a “conversion” has evolved beyond just form fills and phone calls to include meaningful actions like chat interactions, scheduled app...

Send us Fan Mail Not all leads are created equal — and cheap leads often come with the highest price tag. In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors , hosts Caitlyn Noble and Meredith Medlin break down the hidden costs of low-quality leads and how they quietly drain your time, your team’s energy, and your company’s growth. From shared leads and lead aggregators to poor qualification and...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors , we sit down with Bryan Shankman, co-founder & CEO of LeadTruffle, an AI-powered platform built specifically for home-service contractors to capture every lead, respond instantly, and route qualified jobs into your CRM. Bryan walks through the origin story, how LeadTruffle works (website widgets, missed-call text-back, AI q...

Send us Fan Mail In the final episode of our Rewind Series , Caitlyn and Meredith revisit the most-listened-to episode in Digital Marketing for Contractors history: SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore — and update it for 2026. When the original episode aired, Google had just rolled out more than 5,000 algorithm updates in a single year , and the industry was bracing for massive change. Now, two years late...

Send us Fan Mail Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) has evolved from a simple listing into one of the most powerful — and fragile — digital assets a contractor owns. In this Rewind Series episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors , Caitlyn and Meredith revisit one of the podcast’s earliest and most popular episodes, originally recorded in 2023, and break down what still matte...