You’re spending money on marketing, following all the advice, posting regularly.
Maybe you even hired a company to “get you leads.”
So why are you only attracting tyre kickers or worse, complete silence?
The Marketing Trap Costing You Quality Clients
You’ve been told more marketing equals more work. So you’re posting finished projects, paying for lead generation promising 50 or 100 leads, watching your follower count grow.
But you’re getting the wrong enquiries from the wrong clients, or no response at all. The leads don’t convert. They’re shopping on price, questioning everything, or ghosting after the first conversation.
And you’re burning time and money on a strategy that’s fundamentally broken.
The residential construction industry has a massive trust problem. Homeowners are terrified of dodgy builders, and the media constantly feeds that fear. When you compete by trying to out-volume everyone else, you’re fighting uphill.
You’re one voice in a sea of polished Instagram feeds showing finished homes with perfect landscaping. That’s not building trust. It’s setting expectations you can’t meet and creating the disconnect that leads to conflict.
What if instead of chasing quantity, you focused on quality?
The solution isn’t more leads. It’s the right leads. Attract them by being real. Show what actually happens on your sites. Share your processes. Talk about the decisions you make and why. Let potential clients see how you operate, the rainy days and sunny days, challenges and wins.
When you do this consistently, clients reach out already knowing you, already trusting you, already aligned with how you work.
Our ELEVATE members are living proof. They show up authentically on social media, sharing processes, site meetings, quality standards.
Members tell us clients reach out saying, “Mate, I already know you. I feel like we’ve met before.” Why? Because they’ve been watching for months, sometimes years. The trust is already there.
Watch the video now, or read the transcript below. Be sure to also subscribe to the Live Life Build YouTube channel.
Amelia
So you’re doing all this marketing as a custom residential builder, because apparently, that’s the solution to all of your problems. If you just keep marketing, you’ll be able to bring in more work.
However, you’re finding that it’s not actually bringing in any good quality leads. You’re getting a bunch of tyre kickers, or you’re just actually not getting any contact at all.
Duayne
I find marketing a funny one. I’m definitely no expert in it, but personally, I want to buy things off people that I guess feel genuine – who I feel aren’t trying to just flog me something that they’re not going to be able to deliver.
All we see in our industry, and there’s so many of them now. These companies that are coming to me, saying “We’ll get you 50 leads,” or “We’ll get you 100 leads.” “We’ll get you this, we’ll get you that.” And that is just a recipe for disaster.
Because number one, if you’re a small builder, have a count of how many jobs you actually do in a year. If you’re only doing two or three projects a year, why would you need hundreds of leads?
I see so many builders spending lots of money on marketing companies that might be increasing their followers or getting them lots of leads, but they’re the wrong leads.
You don’t need that many. You need quality ones, and you need the ones who actually trust what you’re going to deliver.
Amelia
And that’s the thing, the residential construction industry has a massive reputation problem where homeowners get very nervous about whether they can trust a builder.
We don’t have to look far to see the stories of the dodgy operators. They get pushed in the media all the time.
There’s always the bad news about builders going into liquidation and leaving homeowners with empty pockets and half built homes.
And then, a custom residential builder is stepping into that same marketplace and trying to compete on volume.
They’re just trying to get as much coming in as they can, without understanding the things that will actually differentiate them in the marketplace – and those are:
- your ability to build a trusting connection with your potential clients,
- to demonstrate that you can be trusted,
- to have a reputation that shows you’re a trustworthy operator, and
- to have a process in place when you start working with clients that helps them feel connected with you.
The clients can feel that you’re operating with integrity, that you do what you say you’re going to do. You’re consistently demonstrating in small, incremental ways that you can be their trusted partner in bringing this project to life.
I see so many builders spending lots of money on marketing companies that might be increasing their followers or getting them lots of leads, but they’re the wrong leads. You don’t need that many. You need quality ones,
and you need the ones who actually trust what you’re going to deliver.Duayne
Duayne
It’s just the world we live in these days. Everything is so false and you see so much content from builders on social media that is all finished, all the fluffy pillows, and all the beautiful facades and the landscaping. Everything looks perfect.
We all know that that’s not how things operate throughout the build. I feel that stuff like that really sets the wrong expectations for those clients that are contacting those builders.
All you see on someone’s social media is the polished stuff, but throughout the build you’re having your weekly site meetings and the job sites are a mess, schedules keep getting broken, and there are constant variations.
That nice, glossy picture compared to that reality are two very different things. That alone can end up creating conflict between a builder and a client because the expectation is completely wrong.
Amelia
That’s so true. I think for so many clients who are doing this for the first time, they know that they’re going to walk on site and not necessarily understand what’s going on.
They also know that they potentially may not be aware of the problems that get hidden within the floors, the walls, and the roof of their home.
That doesn’t come home to roost until the builder is well and truly gone, finished the project, and has left the site.
All of a sudden they’re dealing with these quality issues because they were all hidden away during construction.
When custom residential builders realise what an incredibly powerful currency trust is in the marketing of their business, they’re willing to demonstrate what they do behind the scenes – to actually open up their sites on social media and show:
- this is what we do day to day,
- this is how we make decisions,
- this is where we insist on quality,
- this is what our benchmark is, and
- these are the decisions we make and the impact they have on the project incrementally.
It gives the client and their potential clients an opportunity to say, well, this builder is not trying to hide anything from me. This builder is showing me what’s in all what it takes to actually build projects.
I can see that this builder is in alignment with me in terms of my values and priorities. I can see that not only the finished homes this builder creates, but also the way these projects are delivered, align with the kind of project I want to have and the relationship I want to have with my builder.
That trust can already be there. So much of that trust-building can happen through your marketing and the conversations you have on your platforms, which then make those initial interactions with potential clients so much more straightforward and simple.
Duayne
We’ve seen it time and time again with our ELEVATE members, with the way that we teach them to do their marketing. To be genuine and put themselves out there on social media.
Show what happens on site. Show what happens at your weekly site meetings. Talk about the actual process that the clients are going to get.
The success and the trust that they build with their client to the point where, we’ve had multiple members tell us now that clients reach out to them and say things like, “It’s fine, mate – I already know you. I feel like I’ve met you before.”
Amelia
Yeah, I’ve watched you for two years on social media!
Duayne
That’s purely because you’ve been putting information out there, you’ve been telling stories. I know, that’s how I look at social media. I want to make sure I can trust the person that I’m potentially looking at working with, or buying something off, because they’ve been genuine.
They haven’t hidden anything. They’ve shown me what’s happened. They’ve shown me what’s gone wrong. They’ve shown me the wins, the losses, the rainy days, and the sunny days.
Because building a project takes a long period of time, and it isn’t all about that nice, fluffy polished photo at the end, when everything’s nice and clean and shiny. It takes a lot of other stuff to get to that.
And if you’re educating your clients on all those other things and processes, then you’re really muddying the water around the expectations you’re setting with your clients.
Amelia
Marketing isn’t complicated. You don’t need a high cost company to come in and help you make all of this happen.
If you’ve got a phone in your pocket, you can start a conversation with your potential clients, and you can start building that trust.
We have such incredible access to reach the people who might want to work with us, but they need you to show up.
A lot of builders can be scared about putting their face on camera. At the end of the day, a client is going to want to know who you are and how you operate. It’s the fastest way to be able to build connection and trust.
It’s a much stronger currency for building your reputation with potential clients and helping strengthen that relationship overall.
Duayne
So use your social media to tell stories, build your reputation so that you end up with clients that trust you before you’ve even met them.
Start Building Trust Today
You don’t need a massive marketing budget or a team of experts to attract better clients. You need to show up authentically and consistently.
Your marketing should:
- Build trust before the first conversation by showing how you actually operate.
- Set realistic expectations by sharing the real process, not just the highlight reel.
- Filter for alignment so clients who reach out already value what you deliver.
When you get this right, everything changes. Enquiries come from people who’ve been watching you, learning from you, deciding you’re the builder they want.
Sales conversations get easier. Projects run smoother. Relationships are stronger.
Your phone is already in your pocket. The platform is already there. The clients who need what you offer are already out there watching.
The question is: are you ready to show up and start building the trust that transforms your business?
Learn how to master profitability, quality, and wellbeing while creating a business that works for you. Discover ELEVATE.