Home improvement companies often face the same marketing problem. They invest in television, connected TV, direct mail, paid search, social media, or another new channel and expect the market to respond right away. If leads do not appear fast enough, the campaign gets cut. The next idea takes its place, and the company starts over again.
For Senja Spelman, CEO and Founder of Sisu Synergy, that pattern can keep a good brand from ever becoming familiar. As a home improvement brand strategist and home services performance marketing leader, Spelman helps contractors look beyond a single campaign and consider what happens when homeowners see the same trusted company over time. Her view is simple. A strong message gives people something worth noticing. Consistency gives them enough time to remember it.
During a featured PowerChat conversation with Greg Cummings, CEO of Power100, Spelman explored why long-term brand growth requires patience, clear messaging, and a plan a company can afford to sustain.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry. The conversation examined brand frequency, customer memory, long buying cycles, lead conversion, marketing budgets, and why companies should judge brand growth across the entire business rather than asking a single ad to prove everything.
One of the hardest parts of home improvement marketing is patience.
A contractor may launch a television campaign and watch the phones closely. Another may send a large direct mail piece and expect appointments within days. A company may test connected TV for a few weeks, look at the early numbers, and decide the channel did not work.
When the return does not come fast enough, the campaign stops.
Spelman believes that is where many companies can misunderstand what brand marketing is meant to do.
Homeowners are surrounded by messages every day. They see emails, videos, social posts, streaming ads, mailers, search results, offers, and competing contractor names. Even a strong advertisement can be forgotten when it appears once and then disappears.
That is why Spelman separates the two parts of brand building.
Messaging earns attention.
Frequency creates longevity.
“What I will say is when it comes to telling the story from a branding perspective, frequency is the most important for longevity,” Spelman said.
The message still has to be good. Spelman pointed to Super Bowl commercials as an example. A creative commercial can be seen once and still become something people remember and talk about. That shows how powerful a strong idea can be.
But most home improvement companies are not buying one of the biggest advertising moments of the year. They are trying to become known inside a local market where people may not need a roof, new windows, siding, or a bathroom remodel today.
That changes the brand’s job.
The company has to stay present long enough for the homeowner to see it more than once. The first message may earn a quick glance. The next one may create recognition. After several months, the homeowner may begin to know the company before ever needing its service.
Senja Spelman, marketing strategist, brand strategist, and fractional CMO for home improvement companies and CEO/Founder of Sisu Synergy
Spelman tells leaders to think carefully before making that investment.
“Anytime that someone wants to invest in a brand perspective in any capacity, I always tell them, do not make that decision unless you are ready to stick to it and be able to see it through six months, nine months, a year,” Spelman said.
Her point is not that every contractor must spend heavily for a full year. It is important that a company chooses a plan it can keep.
That may include television. It may include direct mail. It may be branded vehicles, door hangers, online video, employee apparel, or a mix of several touchpoints. The size of the plan can change. The need for consistency does not.
Spelman compares the idea to working out. One great run does not create lasting fitness. One hard workout does not finish the job. Progress comes from returning to the work again and again.
Brand building works in much the same way.
For a contractor using connected TV marketing, direct mail, or another long-term channel, the first question should not be only “Did this create a lead today?”
A better question may be, “Are more homeowners beginning to know who we are?”
That shift matters because home improvement has long buying cycles. A homeowner may see a roofing company for years before the roof needs to be replaced. They may pass the same branded truck, receive the same mailer, see the same owner on television, and find the same company online before the need becomes urgent.
When that day comes, familiarity has value.
The company is no longer introducing itself.
The homeowner has already been learning its name.
For Spelman, consistency cannot be treated as the boring part of marketing. It is the part that gives a strong story enough time to stay.
The PowerChat conversation between Greg Cummings and Senja Spelman moved beyond the usual question of which marketing channel works best. Instead, it focused on a harder question for home improvement leaders: how long are you willing to keep showing up before the market truly knows you?
Spelman explained that brand growth rarely comes from one big moment. A strong commercial can earn attention. A smart direct mail piece can create interest. A digital campaign can put the company in front of the right people. But lasting familiarity comes when those moments connect over time.
That makes consistency a business decision, not just a marketing habit.
For leaders thinking about home improvement lead generation, the lesson is important. A homeowner may not be ready to buy when they first see the brand. They may not be ready the second or third time either. But every clear, useful interaction can make the company easier to remember when the need finally arises.
The conversation showed that brand growth works best when message quality, frequency, customer trust, and measurement are viewed as one system. The goal is not to flood the market with more advertising. It is to stay present long enough for a good story to become a familiar one.
Many campaigns are stopped before they have enough time to create a memory.
A contractor may test a new channel for a short period, see fewer leads than expected, and decide to reallocate the budget elsewhere. Spelman warned that this can make it hard for the market to ever become familiar with the company.
Homeowners are busy. They are seeing messages from many brands every day. Even a great campaign has to compete with work, family, news, social media, email, and countless other distractions.
That is why Spelman asks companies to think about the length of the commitment before the campaign begins.
“Anytime that someone wants to invest in a brand perspective in any capacity, I always tell them, do not make that decision unless you are ready to stick to it and be able to see it through six months, nine months, a year,” Spelman said.
The point is not that every company needs the same budget or the same media plan. The point is that the plan should have enough time to do the work it was built to do.
For a company investing in contractor direct mail marketing, for example, one mail piece may introduce the name. A later piece may create recognition. Another may arrive just as the homeowner begins thinking about a project.
That steady presence can create something a short campaign cannot: familiarity.
And familiarity can become confidence.
Spelman was clear that frequency alone is not enough.
Showing a weak message many times does not suddenly make it strong.
Earlier in the PowerChat, she used Super Bowl commercials to explain the power of good creative work. Some ads are seen only once yet remain in people’s minds because the idea is funny, emotional, different, or easy to remember.
“There are so many studies that show it is not about the frequency of your spot being shown on TV or connected TV. It is about the messaging,” Spelman said.
Later in the conversation, she added the second part of the lesson. Once the message is strong, frequency becomes important for longevity.
That balance matters for home improvement TV advertising.
The first job is to give the homeowner something worth noticing. The next job is to make sure the company does not disappear before that message has time to stick.
Good branding, therefore, needs both.
The message creates meaning.
Consistency protects that meaning.
A company that gets both right does more than repeat an offer. It begins by building a clear place in the homeowner’s mind.
Branding does not begin and end with a media buy.
Spelman challenged the idea that companies need a huge monthly advertising budget to build a recognizable brand.
“Brand is really everywhere that you have a touch with the customer,” Spelman said. “Brand is your apparel, brand is your branded vehicles, brand is the door hangers that you put after you install a job.”
That widens the opportunity for smaller and growing contractors.
A branded truck parked in a neighborhood can create awareness.
A team member wearing company apparel can reinforce identity.
A door hanger left after a completed project can introduce the company to nearby homeowners.
A direct mail piece can bring the name back again.
A search result, social post, or customer review can add another layer.
This is where multi-channel contractor marketing becomes useful. The company does not need every channel to do the same job. Each touchpoint can support the others and help the homeowner build a fuller picture of the brand.
The important part is that those experiences feel connected.
If one message says the company is built on care, the next customer touch should support that idea.
If the brand promises professionalism, the vehicle, employee, phone call, and follow-up should help prove it.
Consistency is not only about how often the logo appears. It is about whether the customer continues to meet the same company each time.
Home improvement has a different buying cycle from many everyday businesses.
A customer may visit the same coffee shop several times in one month. A homeowner may go many years without needing a new roof.
That long gap changes how leaders should think about visibility.
Spelman explained that most people who see a television or connected TV message will not need the service at that exact moment. But that does not mean the contact has no value.
“As those people age into or move into the audience group that actually needs your service, then you are already going to be top of mind,” Spelman said.
This is where a roofing lead generation consultant’s thinking can move beyond the search for an immediate lead.
The homeowner who does not need a roof today may still be learning the company name.
They may see the truck in the neighborhood.
They may hear the owner on television.
They may notice a mail piece.
They may see a friend mention the company online.
Months or years later, when the roof begins to leak, that history can matter.
The company is no longer asking the homeowner to trust a name they have never seen.
The introduction already happened.
For home improvement businesses with long buying cycles, a steady brand presence may be one of the greatest values.
Brand building becomes easier to understand when several contractors are chasing the same homeowner.
Spelman used shared lead sources as an example. A homeowner may submit a request and soon receive calls, texts, and emails from several companies offering the same type of service.
At that point, every company has the lead.
But they do not all have the same relationship with the homeowner.
A contractor the customer has never heard of has to begin by explaining who they are.
A contractor that the homeowner has seen for months or years starts from a different place.
The customer may recognize the name from television, mail, company vehicles, search, or another earlier contact. That familiarity can make the first conversation feel less like a call from a stranger.
“That is how it really impacts the overall income, by having that trust preemptively be built,” Spelman said.
This is why a contractor lead-conversion consultant cannot focus solely on buying more leads.
The value of a lead also depends on what happened before the lead entered the system.
A stronger brand may help improve appointment set rates, response, conversion, and direct demand because the customer already has some idea of who is calling.
Spelman also referenced a phrase she learned from Amy Zimmerman: “High tides raise all ships.”
The meaning fits the wider marketing system. Brand strength may not belong to a single channel, but it can help lift many of them.
One of the hardest questions in brand marketing is attribution.
A homeowner may see a television commercial, receive a direct mail piece, search the company online, read reviews, and then fill out a form.
Which channel deserves the lead?
Spelman is open about the fact that traditional brand marketing does not always offer a clean one-to-one answer.
That does not mean leaders should stop measuring.
It means they may need to measure more.
They can look at branded search.
They can study appointment set rates.
They can watch the conversion.
They can compare paid search performance.
They can track how many leads come directly to the company.
They can study customer acquisition cost and whether the business is becoming more profitable as the brand becomes stronger.
This makes marketing ROI consulting work less about finding a single perfect attribution model and more about understanding how the full system is changing.
Spelman also made an important point about budget discipline.
“Look at your marketing budget, determine what you want your cost of marketing to be, and whatever threshold you have between where you are now and what you are comfortable with spending and investing to grow your business, take that and put it in the brand,” she said.
Cummings added another layer to that thinking. Rather than focusing solely on cost per lead, leaders can analyze customer acquisition cost, margins, job count, and overall profitability.
Together, those ideas create a more useful test.
Consistency should not mean spending without a plan.
It means choosing an investment that the company can support, allowing enough time for the strategy to work, and then asking whether the business as a whole is becoming stronger.
One campaign can never prove the value of an entire brand.
The market, the customer journey, and the business results can tell a much bigger story.
For Senja Spelman, consistency is not only about how often a company appears in an advertisement. Her work outside traditional campaigns shows what can happen when a brand keeps showing up around causes, people, and communities that matter.
Senja Spelman, CEO and Founder of Sisu Synergy
That approach is evident in her work with Baths for the Brave and in how she has helped connect home improvement brands with sports, civic groups, and local community partners. These efforts add another layer to her message about long term brand growth. Familiarity becomes more meaningful when people remember not only seeing the company, but also seeing what it chose to stand behind.
One of the clearest examples is Baths for the Brave, a nationwide movement that brings home improvement companies together to provide safer shower systems for veterans who struggle with mobility. The participating contractors complete the work in their own local markets, turning one national mission into direct help inside individual homes and communities.
Spelman has spent the past two years helping bring more contractors into the program and has participated in Baths for the Brave projects for six years. Her role has gone beyond helping spread the word. She has helped create the systems, guidance, and best practices that make it easier for companies of all sizes to participate.
That work gained fresh momentum in 2026. In one public update, Spelman shared that 15 companies representing 36 locations had already expressed interest in participating. The larger goal for the year is to bring the movement into all 50 states.
What stands out is how the program reaches beyond the bathroom itself. Spelman has described families, employees, fire departments, marching bands, and local community members becoming part of the experience. She has also spoken about how people across the company, from contact center staff to sales teams and installers, can share in the impact.
That gives community work a different kind of staying power. The company is not only asking people to remember an advertisement. It is creating an experience that employees, families, and neighbors may remember for years.
For a PowerChat built around consistency, that matters. A brand becomes stronger when it keeps showing up with the same care it promises in its marketing.
Spelman has also worked at the intersection of large-brand partnerships and local visibility. In past home service leadership roles, she served as a point of contact for partnerships and sponsorships involving professional sports organizations, including the Green Bay Packers, Milwaukee Brewers, and Florida Panthers.
The important lesson is not simply that those names bring attention. Spelman’s wider PR work has focused on turning visibility into something people can experience close to home.
In a discussion on systemizing authentic PR, her approach centred on community-driven storytelling, local partnerships, and consistent community engagement. The conversation also explored how companies can build repeatable systems around local action instead of treating public relations as a one-time announcement.
That approach fits the same idea she shared with Cummings about brand frequency.
A sponsorship logo can be seen.
A press release can be read.
But when a company connects those larger opportunities to local people, local causes, and real experiences, the brand has a greater chance of becoming part of the community rather than simply advertising to it.
Spelman’s work shows that long-term visibility does not have to mean saying the same thing louder. It can mean showing the same values in more places and proving them through action.
That is where consistency becomes more than media frequency.
It becomes a reputation.
Senja Spelman compares brand building to getting into shape. One strong workout can feel good, but it does not create lasting results. Progress comes from returning to the work, staying with it, and giving it enough time to make a difference.
The same is true for a home improvement brand.
A homeowner may not pay much attention to the first time they see a commercial. A mail piece may sit on the counter and disappear. A branded vehicle may pass through the neighborhood many times before the company name starts to feel familiar.
Then the need changes everything.
A roof begins to leak. Windows start to fail. A bathroom no longer works for the family. At that moment, the companies that stayed visible have an advantage because the homeowner is not starting from zero. They already know the name. They may already know the face behind it. They may already have a sense of what the company stands for.
That is the value of consistency.
A strong message gives people a reason to notice. Continued visibility gives that message time to become familiar. Every useful touch can add another small piece of trust, even when the customer is not ready to buy yet.
This is also why brand growth should not depend on one large burst of spending. A steady plan that a company can support over time can create more lasting value than a short campaign that disappears before the market has time to remember it.
Not every result will point back to a single commercial, mail piece, or digital ad. Sometimes the value appears later through stronger search activity, better lead response, easier sales conversations, or a customer saying, “I have seen you guys everywhere.”
For Spelman, the goal is not to spend more simply to be seen more.
It is to choose a message worth repeating, choose a plan the company can sustain, and stay present long enough for the market to know who you are.
Home improvement leaders cannot control the exact day a homeowner will need them.
They can control whether their company will feel familiar by the time that day comes.
And when the decision finally has to be made, the brand that kept showing up may be the one the homeowner remembers first.
Power100 does not rely on AI alone. Its proprietary five-layer ranking system combines AI-driven data with human intelligence and reviews leadership quality, company culture, customer experience, community impact, and sustainable growth. Power100 says its system has evaluated more than 7,600 home improvement organizations and strategic partners. The goal is to use technology to strengthen the research process while keeping real business performance and human review at the center.
Yes. Power100 has expanded beyond rankings through its Inner Circle Show and Inner Circle AI. The Inner Circle Show brings together patterns observed at dealer meetings, conferences, training events, and in conversations with contractors and executives across the country. Inner Circle AI then gives home improvement professionals access to curated industry knowledge, playbooks, and resources based on vetted content from the Power100 network. This gives contractors a way to turn industry insight into practical business decisions.
No. Senja Spelman’s point is not that every contractor should keep increasing its advertising budget. She says companies should choose a brand investment they can support and give it enough time to work. Sisu Synergy offers several ways to approach that problem, including project work, marketing analysis, monthly strategy support, and hourly consulting. This allows a company to choose a contractor marketing strategy level that matches its needs, rather than assuming every business needs the same media budget.
Because brand marketing may be doing work before the homeowner is ready to buy. In the PowerChat, Spelman explains that home improvement has long buying cycles. A homeowner may see a company many times before needing a roof, windows, siding, or a bathroom project. Repeated exposure can help the company become familiar with the need before it appears. That does not mean a weak campaign should run forever. Spelman’s point is that strong messaging needs sufficient consistent exposure to build memory, rather than being judged after a single short test.
No. Sisu Synergy describes itself as lead-generation-driven and designed for home improvement. Its work includes campaign design, lead generation systems, marketing analysis, channel return analysis, conversion improvement, and multi-channel campaign management. Senja Spelman’s background also includes national television, direct mail, paid social, lead partners, and contact center operations. This means home improvement, lead generation, and brand building are treated as parts of the same growth system rather than competing priorities.
No. Sisu Synergy offers different service models based on the problem a company needs to solve. Contractors can use project-based support for a specific campaign, a detailed marketing analysis, hourly consulting for a focused issue, or an ongoing retainer. Its retainer is positioned as a fractional CMO for home improvement companies that need senior marketing leadership without hiring a full-time CMO. The service includes weekly strategy sessions, reporting, and execution roadmaps to help growing teams stay focused.
Sisu Synergy does not position brand growth as an excuse to stop measuring. Its marketing analysis includes full funnel performance reviews, channel return and attribution analysis, competitive assessment, and a prioritized 90-day plan. Its ongoing retainer also uses performance reporting and custom dashboards to show what is driving growth and where performance is slipping. This approach allows a marketing ROI consultant to look beyond a single lead source and assess how the full marketing system is performing.
No. Frequency cannot make a poor message meaningful. Spelman makes an important distinction between message quality and repetition. A strong message gives people a reason to notice and remember the company. Frequency then gives that message time to stay familiar. That is why effective home improvement TV advertising or connected TV marketing should not simply repeat an offer. The message must first give homeowners something clear, useful, or memorable to connect with the company. As Spelman explained in the PowerChat, messaging creates the impact, while frequency becomes important for longevity.
Power100 is the only unbiased third-party platform that recognizes and elevates the top leaders and most impactful companies in the home improvement industry. Led by Greg Cummings, Power100 helps CEOs, contractors, and industry partners learn from proven leadership, stronger business practices, and real market experience. Through national rankings, PowerChat conversations, industry stories, and expert insights, Power100 gives leading voices a trusted place to share what is working, while helping the wider home improvement industry grow through better leadership, stronger companies, and a deeper focus on customers and community.
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Power100 is the nation's premier CEO ranking and media platform for the home improvement industry. Using a proprietary 5-layer evaluation system, Power100 identifies and celebrates the top CEOs, companies, and strategic partners driving innovation, customer satisfaction, and leadership excellence across the country.
