How a Digital Campaign for the Home Builders Licensure Board Helped Protect Consumers from Unlicensed Contractors

By Maghen Barranco

A digital campaign created for the State of Alabama’s Home Builders Licensure Board helped educate consumers about the dangers of using unlicensed contractors and urged them to “Ask to See the Card” before hiring someone for home repair or remodeling.

How a Digital Campaign for the Home Builders Licensure Board Helped Protect Consumers from Unlicensed Contractors

Background

The mission of the State of Alabama Home Builders Licensure Board is “to provide consumer protection by safeguarding the public’s health, safety, and welfare through the regulation of the residential construction and remodeling industries while promoting industry professionalism along with home building and remodeling standards.”

They came to Stamp with a need to raise awareness about the dangers of consumers using unlicensed contractors for home repair. Insurance doesn’t cover non-licensed contractors; the State of Alabama Home Builders License is required when the cost is more than $10K. When an unlicensed builder is identified and work is ongoing, the Board will post a stop-work order.

The Board wished to remind consumers that all licensed contractors, licensed through the State of Alabama Home Builder Licensure Board, carry a license on them when they show up on-site for work and are listed in the database on their website. The campaign was to encourage consumers to ask to see that license before hiring a contractor.

Reasoning

With a limited budget and time frame for this campaign coupled with the need to reach as many people across the state of Alabama as possible and/or reach specific areas of the state in the event of a natural disaster, we executed a digital campaign using a two-fold approach.

1. We shared a general, brand awareness message using Google Pay-Per-Click.

2. A more niche audience was targeted using Facebook and Instagram ads to people in the state who

  • were most likely to be interested in or currently going through home repairs
  • or most likely to do home renovations.

Challenges

The Home Builders Licensure Board had no social media presence nor had they previously run any paid digital marketing efforts. They needed a cost-effective way to communicate general messages statewide as well as post-storm damage messages regionally to affected areas.

Solution

 

We developed a digital campaign to market the Home Builders Licensure Board with an “Ask to See the Card” theme via Google, Facebook, and Instagram advertising.

Since the Home Builders Licensure Board had done no previous digital or social media marketing, we set up social media accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube for them in addition to creating short videos and banner ads to use throughout the digital campaign.

The three-month “Ask to See the Card” awareness campaign, which aimed to protect consumers by having them only use licensed contractors, garnered more than 4.6 million impressions and more than 27,000 clicks.

Building on this success, we developed another campaign specifically for storm damage repair to run in areas of the state affected by a hurricane. That one-month campaign received more than 1.1 million impressions and more than 6,400 clicks.

Services

  • Brand Awareness
  • Campaign Development & Management
  • Copywriting
  • Digital Strategy & Marketing
  • Art Direction & Graphic Design
  • Animation & Motion Graphics
  • Marketing Strategy
  • Pay-Per-Click
  • Media Management & Planning
  • Social Media Management