How to grow a loft conversion business

You've set up your own loft conversion business and you're getting work. What next? It could be time to look at growing your operations. This article shows you how to look and offers tips on effective growth strategies that you can use.

As an experienced tradesperson, you may already have started out on your own. If you focus on home improvement projects, you may want to know how to grow a loft conversion business.

Naturally, you'll need a good flow of leads coming through. Whether you're a builder, carpenter, or anything in between.

After you've started any new business, it is only natural that you'll want to grow. And before doing that, it's worth planning and considering your options.

When scaling up in any way, the ultimate goal is to increase your profit margins.

What is business growth?

When you hear the words 'business growth,' what do you think of? If we could hazard a guess, we'd say it's to do with getting more clients and revenue.

While this can absolutely be what business growth is about, there are many other things that these words could be referring to.

Ways of growing your business can include:

• Expanding your team

• Getting more leads

• Winning more jobs

• Increasing your profits

• Offering more services

A good place to start is by penning a business growth strategy. It should help you to outline your goals and stick to them.

Our handy free guide to creating a business development strategy can help you do this.

How to create a business development strategy - Free template included

What is a business development strategy? The business development process helps to identify, nurture, and acquire new customers and business opportunities to help grow your organisation and ensure its profitability. This may seem quite broad, but this is where your business development strategy

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Making a plan with specific aims

When you're putting your growth plans together, you might want to consider some key questions. Thinking about where your loft conversion business currently is will help shape where you want it to be.

If you're considering growth, why not think about some of these:

• Should we stay local or go regional?

• Could we find more customers?

• Do we need to offer more services?

• How can we finance growth?

• Do we need more people?

• Is there any new technology that we could use?

• Are we operating efficiently?

Having answers to all of these will therefore shape the scope of your growth. As a loft conversion business, you're operating in a niche market, but one that can prove incredibly lucrative.

Through Checkatrade, we saw over 65,000 job searches in 2024 just for loft conversion projects.* So there is already widespread interest out there. How will you respond?

Setting your growth targets

Have a think about where you want to get with your proposed growth.

You'll need to put together some measurable goals that you can reference. If you have something to compare with, it will help you understand whether you actually achieve the growth you're hoping for.

Your growth targets should be SMART. That means they should be:

• Specific

• Measurable

• Achievable

• Realistic

• Time-bound

The key is achieving managed growth. That means growing at a pace that suits you.

Once you’ve decided on why you want to grow your loft conversion business, you'll need to find ways to put that into action.

Growth strategy ideas for your business

Small business growth is the way ambitious tradespeople achieve greater profitably. There are lots of ways to grow – with plenty of challenges along the way. The starting point is to set out a small business growth strategy. A growth strategy creates a template for success. It’s a checklist of what

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Achieving your growth targets

Now's the exciting bit - putting together your strategy for achieving those growth targets you've pinpointed!

The steps you take will depend on the kind of growth you're looking to achieve.

Here are some ideas for practical steps to help grow your loft conversion business:

• Promotional activities - such as advertising

• Upskilling to offer new services

• Joining with another tradesperson in partnership

• Teaming up with estate agents

• Consider hiring another person

• Contacting previous customers about new opportunities

• Putting a referral scheme together

• Expanding into nearby areas or territories

Whatever steps you decide to take, it's important to note it all down in your written plan.

Improving customer satisfaction

This might seem obviously, but maintaining strong customer relationships is important for helping achieving solid business growth.

When people have had a great experience, they're more likely to tell people about it. That word of mouth can really work in your favour.

• You're more likely to get a great review

• People will tell their friends

• Neighbours will see your work and ask

• You'll be the first port of call for any future jobs

If your trade business has a strong reputation it can really benefit your lead count. Inadvertently, providing great customer experience can help you win a lot of new and referral jobs.

With leads, app, instant messaging and reviews tool, Checkatrade is designed to help streamline the home improvement journey - both for tradespeople and customers. Why not speak to our team about how we could help?

Marketing your loft conversion business

An effective marketing strategy opens your business up to lots of potential clients. Similarly, establishing a professional name helps boost your reputation, even more so if you create flyers and posters to place in local shops.

There are many ways to find job leads. Successful marketing often requires a number of online and offline approaches:

• Website - Have you included all key information and listed your services?

• Social Media - Are you running paid advertising along with organic posts?

• PPC - Are you running online ads for anyone searching for loft conversions?

• Print Advertising - Have you placed any ads in specific publications?

• Leaflets - Have you tried targeting the more affluent areas where you work?

• Events - How could you raise your profile even further?

• Sponsorship - Are there any local teams that would appreciate patronage?

• Directories - Are you featured on places designed for potential customers?

Prospective clients may be nervous about committing to a large project like loft conversion. So arranging viewings of lofts you’ve worked on is a great idea to showcase your reliability. This is another reason why increasing customer satisfaction is important.

Read our marketing planning guide to become a pro at marketing your business. It even has a free download to help you get started.

Want to ace your marketing? Get a free marketing plan template on us!

Over the last couple of years, demand for trades has been through the roof. Why not benefit from a marketing plan template to help you reach more customers? However, with the recent cost of living increase, homeowner demand has started coming down and work has been drying up. Marketing is absolutely

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Grow your loft conversion business with Checkatrade

In this article, we’ve given you some ideas on how to expand your loft conversion business. That's not all – there's more that Checkatrade can do to help.

For example, in 2023 alone, we saw over 45,000 job searches just for loft conversion projects.* Plus a further 118,000 general searches for extensions and conversions.* As one of our members, you can tap into that existing interest.

Whether it is through one of our directories or online, getting your name in front of potential customers is key.

There are a range of other reasons to consider joining too:

• Company profile - for highlighting your services, reviews and job photos

• Exclusive offers and discounts (with suppliers like Wickes and Selco)

• Up to 20% off Public Liability Insurance

• Guarantee for jobs when booked through us (T&Cs apply)

• Dedicated trades apps for job management and quoting/invoicing

• Boost your reputation

• Support and advice from our teams

Fixed membership from Checkatrade means you can expect a certain number of leads throughout the year.Sound good?

* Internal search results from users of the Checkatrade.com website in 2024