How To Grow Your Contracting Business FASTER In 2025 | Home Service Business Growth Accelerators

How You Can Grow Your Business FASTER In 2025

 Home Service Business Growth Accelerators
Chris Lonergan
Chris Lonergan January 29, 2025

Running a business is not just doing the work - day in and day out. Aside from taking care of today’s customers, you need to have active plans and processes that grow your business to be bigger.

We have four proven strategies that can help you boost revenue, lock down more leads, and create long-term success. Let’s talk about a few simple tactics you can start today so you can grow your business FASTER in 2025

“When you stop growing, you start dying.” — William S. Burroughs

Even if your business goals are to stay roughly the same size and you want to make no other business changes, you still need to grow your business slowly to account for customer attrition, increases in costs, and maintaining operational budgets.

If you stick around through the end of this article, you’ll have some actionable steps to start immediately to grow your business faster this year.

These practical tips don’t require massive overhauls—just small tweaks to how you’re running your business. So you can take any one or all four of these points and start using them today to actively build and grow your business.

1. Answer Your Emails And Phone Calls Faster

This may seem like a no-brainer, but if you’re not Johnny-on-the-spot, you can miss out on a lot of money.

Your schedule includes job site visits, running all the jobs yourself or managing your crew, and a million other things.

When you run a business, and you are your sales team, the speed of your response can make or break your ability to close a deal.

When a potential customer contacts you, they’re also reaching out to a few other contractors. If you’re the first one to reply—or better yet, the first one to answer the phone— you’re in prime position to get the job.

According to a study by the Harvard Business Review, if you respond to a prospect within one hour of receiving an inquiry, you are 7 times more likely to land the job.

The same study also showed that many businesses had a response time of less than five minutes.

The shelf life of a business lead is short. You absolutely must prioritize addressing leads as quickly as possible.

For owner-operators, that may mean politely excusing yourself from a conversation to answer your call, text message, or email quickly to capture a potential customer when they are most likely to hire you.

Faster responses will mean more jobs on your schedule.

Showing Social Proof Instead Of Promises

Homeowners are more savvy now. They know they are being sold pretty much all the time.

A lot of contractors like to have content that brags about their years of industry experience, local roots, work ethic, and trustworthiness.

Don’t just say, “We’re the best in town.” Showing some tangible proof is much more compelling.

Social proof includes online reviews and project photos on your website, social media, and Google Business Profile.

A bunch of 5-star Google reviews from happy customers is better at selling your business than having the phrase “We work hard on all jobs, big and small” on your website.

When your project posts show a good before-and-after photo reveal of your services and expertise, that does more to put a customer at ease than saying “locally owned and operated business.”

You need to actively pursue and create this social proof. It doesn’t happen overnight or easily. It takes active communication to earn more reviews and forethought to capture project photos.

You need to actively ask for the review, both in person and through your follow-up digital communication. Make it easier for customers to leave reviews by sending follow-up emails or text messages with direct web links to where you want more reviews.

You need to document your projects, shoot pictures on your smartphone, and jot down some notes so that you can compile an individual project page - a case study for that job to be featured on your website.

Showing prospective clients social proof of people you’ve previously satisfied will help reassure them that you are the right choice. It will break down barriers and establish you as the right expert for their needs.

Develop And Promote Your Referral Program

Referrals are one of the cheapest and most effective ways to grow your business. When someone gets a glowing recommendation from a friend or family member, they’re way more likely to trust you before you even pick up the phone.

Saying “Tell a friend about us” is not an effective referral program.

You need to give people a reason to talk.

Create an incentivized referral program that pays your current customers to refer new business your way.

Depending on your industry, sales and marketing costs, and ticket averages, giving a referrer a $50 gift card or $100 cash may make sense to help you hook a new customer.

When you monetize word-of-mouth business, you get more business than just leaving referrals up to chance.

Your referral program should be set up so that you only pay when a new customer actually completes a job with you. This way, there is zero risk for you aside from taking the time to promote the program or prepare marketing materials to support your referral program.

Nurture Past And Potential Clients For Future Business

Just because a customer said no once or didn’t reply doesn’t mean they’ll never use you. And just because a customer used you once before doesn’t mean they’ll never use you again.

“Lead nurturing” refers to maintaining relationships and communication with potential customers who have expressed interest but have yet to purchase.

You should also nurture your relationships with past clients who may use your service again in the future or otherwise refer you.

If you’ve got the marketing budget for it, using mailers, thank you cards, holiday cards, social media, and email newsletters are all great ways to continue to stay in front of past and potential clients to maintain those relationships and top-of-mind awareness.

If you’re short on marketing cash, it costs you almost nothing to email or text customers you serviced a few months ago to thank them for their past business and try to spark a conversation about how else you can help them.


So, if you want to grow your business faster in 2025, try those four actionable tips.

  • Respond to emails and phone calls faster to beat your competition to the punch.
  • Use social proof like reviews and project pages to back up your promises.
  • Create referral programs to turn your happy customers into your best salespeople.
  • Nurture your past and potential customers for future business opportunities.

Now it’s your turn. Which of these strategies will you start with?

If you need help developing your marketing plans for your business, the pros here at Footbridge Media are always ready to help.

We specialize in helping contractors and home service businesses like yours grow and thrive. You can learn more about exactly how we do by checking out our contractor marketing program.

"Contractor Marketing Tips And Tricks" - The Footbridge Media Podcast

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