• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, March 17, 2025

Home improvement firms face many hurdles when trying to attract customers, according to The State of Customer Acquisition, a new study from Porch Group Media, conducted by Ascend2. 

Of the marketers polled, 88% say acquiring new customers has become more difficult. And 49% plan to greatly adjust their acquisition strategies over the next year.

Of course, they’re not doing that badly: 58% achieve at least moderate ROI and 33% very high. But they need data. 

Case in point: 90% say their targeting would be improved by access to detailed property data — maintenance needs, recent upgrades, etc.. 

Home improvement marketers also rely on:

• Home improvement data (roof in need of repair, windows in need of replacement) — 44%
• Behavioral data (purchase history, website activity — 37%
• Property data—(e.g., homeownership, property size, home value) — 30%
• Demographics (age, income, education) — 28%
• Transactional data (order value/purchase frequency) — 28%
• Intent data (search activity, online engagement) — 27%
• Geographic data (location, zip codes) — 23%
• Psychographic data (lifestyle, values) — 15%

• Ensuring data accuracy and completeness issues — 51% 
• High cost of third-party data — 49%
• Limited access to real-time data updates — 39%
• Privacy and compliance concerns — 37%
• Difficulty integrating data with marketing systems — 33%
• Lack of internal expertise or resources — 32%

How do they identify potential customers now?

• Social media activity (e.g., likes, shares, comments) — 78%
• Online search behavior (e.g. keywords, queries, site visits) — 77%
• Content engagement (e.g., ad interactions, downloads, video watches) — 77%
• Email engagement (e.g., open rates, click-through rates) — 65%
• Purchase signals (e.g., product comparisons, cart additions) — 64%
• Other — 3%

Meanwhile, here are the channels and strategies utilized by home improvement marketers:

• Social media marketing — 75% 
• Email marketing — 71%
• Search engine optimization (SEO — 62%
• Paid ads — 60%
• Direct mail — 53%
• TV (including CTV) — 50%
• Retail and point of sale promotions — 48% 
• Purchasing leads — 40%
• Telemarketing — 39% 
• Other — 4% 
• None of the above — 1% 

Note the relatively small percentage of firms purchasing leads. This suggests a shift toward first-party data strategies. 

Ascend2 surveyed 270 industry marketing professionals. Of these, 33% provide home improvement or maintenance services, 23% sell home improvement or lifestyle products and 44% are both service providers and retailers.