Solved: Getting Quality Cabinet Industry Leads

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I've had a look at your situation, and it’s a really common problem. A lot of businesses, especially in competitive trades like cabinetry, end up feeling like they're just pouring money into Google with very little to show for it. It's frustrating, I know.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance. The issue probably isn't just about finding better keywords. It's more likely a deeper issue with how you're thinking about your customer, your offer, and the message you're putting in front of them. We need to shift the focus from just 'selling cabinets' to solving a very specific, urgent problem for a very specific type of person. That’s how you stop burning cash and start getting quality leads that actually turn into profitable jobs.

Your Ideal Customer is a Nightmare, Not a Keyword List

Right, let's get straight to the point. The reason you're burning cash is almost certainly because you're thinking about your customer in terms of what they're typing into Google. "Keywords" are the last step in the process, not the first. Before you spend another pound on ads, you have to get obsessively clear on who you're actually selling to. Forget demographics for a minute. You need to define them by their pain, their specific, urgent, expensive nightmare.

Your "flat pack cabinets" are not a one-size-fits-all product. You're likely serving at least two or three completely different types of customers, and each one has a completely different set of problems. Lumping them all together with generic ads is a recipe for disaster. Let's break down who they might be:

1. The DIY Homeowner on a Budget

• Their Nightmare: They've been quoted £15,000 for a new kitchen and they just don't have it. Their biggest fear is starting a project that goes massively over budget and over schedule, leaving them with a half-finished mess. They're terrified of making a costly mistake, ordering the wrong parts, or ending up with something that looks cheap and falls apart in a year. They're not just buying cabinets; they're buying the dream of a beautiful kitchen without the financial terror.

2. The Small Contractor or Kitchen Fitter

• Their Nightmare: An unreliable supplier. Their worst-case scenario is their main supplier telling them there's a 6-week lead time on the cabinets they need for a job that starts next Monday. Every day a job is delayed, they're losing money and damaging their reputation with their client. They don't care about fancy showrooms; they care about reliability, availability, and speed. They need to know the stock is there and it'll be on-site, correct, and undamaged, exactly when they need it. They're not buying cabinets; they're buying certainty and a smooth-running project.

3. The Landlord or Property Developer

• Their Nightmare: Eroding yields. Every penny they spend on a refurb for a buy-to-let property eats into their profit. Their fear is installing a cheap kitchen that looks terrible and gets destroyed by tenants in two years, forcing another expensive refit. They need something that is durable, looks presentable, is cost-effective, and can be installed quickly between tenancies. They're not buying cabinets; they're buying a return on investment (ROI).

Do you see the difference? You're not in the business of selling wood boxes. You're in the business of solving these nightmares. Until you decide which of these people (or another specific type) is your absolute ideal customer, your ads will remain generic and ineffective. Trying to talk to all three at once with an ad for "Quality Flat Pack Cabinets" is like shouting into a crowded room and hoping the right person hears you. It's expensive and it doesn't work.

Your Offer Needs to be Rebuilt to Solve Their Pain

Once you've identified the nightmare, you need to reframe your product as the express solution. "Flat pack cabinets which are easy to assemble" is a feature, not a compelling offer. A powerful offer makes the customer feel understood and provides a clear path out of their personal hell. This is less about changing your actual product and more about changing how you package and present it.

The #1 reason advertising campaigns fail is because the offer is weak. There’s a lack of demand because it’s not solving a real, urgent problem. You need to create a high-value offer that has clear demand from one of the ICPs we just discussed.

Let's turn your features into irresistible offers for each ICP:

Offer for the DIY Homeowner:

• Old Offer: "Easy to assemble flat pack cabinets."
• New, Powerful Offer: "The Complete DIY Dream Kitchen Kit. Get a designer look for a fraction of the price. We provide everything you need in one box, with step-by-step video guides for every single cabinet. Our foolproof system guarantees you can't mess it up. Get a free 3D design and quote today."
• Why it Works: It directly addresses their fear of failure and budget blowouts. It sells confidence, support, and a guaranteed outcome. The words "complete kit," "video guides," and "foolproof" are music to their ears.

Offer for the Contractor:

• Old Offer: "Flat pack cabinets."
• New, Powerful Offer: "TradePro Cabinets: In Stock & On Site Tomorrow. Stop letting unreliable suppliers delay your jobs. Order online in 5 minutes from our trade-only portal with transparent pricing. Guaranteed next-day delivery to your site. Open a trade account and get 15% off your first order."
• Why it Works: It speaks their language. It's all about speed, reliability, and efficiency. "In Stock," "On Site Tomorrow," and "Trade-only portal" show that you understand their business and are built to solve their biggest frustration. This makes you the dependable partner, not just another supplier.

Offer for the Landlord:

• Old Offer: "Durable cabinets."
• New, Powerful Offer: "The Landlord's Rapid Refit Pack. Get your property back on the market faster. Our hard-wearing, easy-to-clean cabinet ranges are designed for the rental market. Bulk discounts available. Minimise void periods and maximise your ROI."
• Why it Works: It focuses entirely on their business metric: ROI. Words like "Rapid Refit," "hard-wearing," "bulk discounts," and "maximise your ROI" show that you're not just selling them a kitchen; you're selling them a more profitable asset.

This isn't just marketing fluff. This is about aligning your entire business with the customer's needs. Your website, your ads, and even your sales process should reflect the promise of these specific offers. When you do this, your ads suddenly become incredibly relevant and powerful, because they're no longer about you – they're about them and their problems.

The Math That Unlocks Growth: How Much Can You Actually Afford?

The feeling of "burning cash" comes from a lack of clarity. You don't have a benchmark for success. The most important question isn't "How low can my cost per lead be?" but "How high a cost per lead can I afford to acquire a profitable customer?" Answering this question changes everything. It turns advertising from a gamble into a predictable system for growth.

We need to do some back-of-the-envelope maths. This is based on your Average Order Value (AOV) and your Gross Margin. Let's make some assumptions for an example. Let's say your average kitchen cabinet order is around £3,000, and after the cost of the materials, your gross margin is 40%.

• Average Order Value (AOV): £3,000
• Gross Margin %: 40%
• Gross Profit per Order: £3,000 * 0.40 = £1,200

This £1,200 is the absolute maximum you could ever spend to acquire one customer and break even. But you're in business to make a profit. So, you need to decide on a healthy ratio. A common goal is a 3:1 return, meaning for every £1 you spend on ads, you want to get £3 back in gross profit. In this scenario:

• Maximum Affordable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): £1,200 / 3 = £400

Right, so you now know you can afford to spend up to £400 to get a single, paying customer. Now we work backwards. What percentage of the "quality leads" you get actually turn into a paying customer? This is your lead-to-customer conversion rate. Let's be conservative and say it's 20% (1 in 5 leads buy).

• Maximum Affordable Cost Per Lead (CPL): £400 (Max CAC) * 20% (Lead Conversion Rate) = £80

Boom. There it is. Your magic number. Your new goal isn't just to get "cheaper leads." Your goal is to get quality leads for under £80. If you're getting leads for £50 that convert at 20%, you're making a profit. If you're getting leads for £90, you're losing money. This simple calculation gives you the power to make smart decisions about your ad spend. Suddenly, a £60 lead from a Google Ad doesn't seem expensive; it looks like a bargain.

To make this easier for you, I've built a simple calculator. Play around with your own numbers – your average order value, your gross margin, and what you estimate your lead-to-customer rate is. This will give you your target CPL to aim for.

Stop Wasting Money on the Wrong Keywords and Start Targeting Intent

Now that we know who we're targeting, what their problem is, what our offer is, and what we can afford to pay, now we can finally talk about keywords. You said you tried focusing on keywords, but I'd wager you were focusing on the wrong kind. Most businesses make the mistake of bidding on broad, expensive, high-competition keywords.

Broad Match Keywords (The Cash Burners):

• "kitchen cabinets"
• "cabinetry"
• "custom cabinets"

When you bid on these, you're competing against everyone: massive national DIY stores, high-end bespoke joinery firms, local showrooms, everyone. The searcher's intent is also completely unclear. Are they looking for ideas? A job? A £50,000 handmade kitchen? You have no idea, but you're paying a premium for that click.

You need to target keywords that signal specific, commercial intent from your ideal customer profile. These are often longer phrases, known as long-tail keywords. This is how you pre-qualify your audience before they even click.

Let’s build a keyword strategy for your ICPs:

Keywords for the DIY Homeowner:

• "diy kitchen renovation kit uk"
• "how to install flat pack kitchen cabinets"
• "affordable modern kitchen units"
• "easy fit kitchen base units"

Keywords for the Contractor:

• "trade kitchen supplier next day delivery"
• "in stock kitchen cabinets for trade"
• "flat pack cabinets trade account"
• "reliable kitchen cabinet supplier"

Keywords for the Landlord:

• "buy to let kitchen suppliers"
• "durable cheap kitchen units"
• "landlord kitchen packages"
• "bulk buy kitchen cabinets uk"

Do you notice the pattern? These keywords are not just about the product; they're about the problem and the solution. The contractor isn't just searching for cabinets; they're searching for "next day delivery". The DIYer is searching for "easy fit". This is where you find your quality leads. The traffic will be lower, but the quality will be infinitely higher, and your cost per click (CPC) will often be lower too, as the competition is less fierce. You're showing the right ad, with the right offer, to the right person at the exact moment they're looking for a solution to their nightmare.

I'd say you need to look beyond Google Search

While Google Search is brilliant for capturing people with an immediate, urgent need (like a contractor whose supplier just failed them), it's not the only place your customers hang out. In fact, for some of them, it’s not even the primary place.

If you only focus on search, you're missing out on the opportunity to create demand, not just fulfill it. You need to think about where your ICPs are spending their time online when they're not actively looking to buy.

For the DIY Homeowner: They live on visual platforms.

• Pinterest & Instagram: This is where kitchen dreams are made. People spend hours creating boards and saving inspiration photos. This is a goldmine for you. You shouldn't be running ads saying "Buy our cabinets." You should be running beautiful, inspiring video and image ads showing stunning kitchen transformations achieved with your products. The goal here is not an immediate sale. It's to get them to your website to download a "Free Kitchen Design Guide" or to use a "Kitchen Style Quiz." You capture their email, nurture them over time, and when they're ready to buy in 3-6 months, you're the only company they trust. This is top-of-funnel marketing. I remember one campaign we ran for a women's apparel company, which is also a very visual product; we achieved a 691% return on ad spend by using this kind of inspiring visual strategy on Pinterest and Meta ads.

For the Contractor: They value community and efficiency.

• Facebook Groups: There are countless private groups for builders, kitchen fitters, and general tradespeople in the UK. While you can't run ads directly into these groups, you can use Facebook's detailed targeting to reach people with job titles like "Carpenter," "Builder," or who are admins of "Business Pages." Your ad here should be direct and to the point, promoting your TradePro offer. No fluff.
• Google Search is Still King: As we discussed, for urgent needs, this is their go-to. Make sure you have a campaign dedicated solely to your trade keywords, with a landing page built just for them.

For the Landlord: They are business-minded.

• LinkedIn: This can be effective but expensive. You can target people by job title ("Property Investor," "Landlord") or who are members of property investment groups. The ad here must be very professional and focus on the ROI aspect of your offer. For one of our B2B clients in the environmental controls sector, we managed to reduce their cost per lead by 84% using highly targeted LinkedIn campaigns once we nailed the offer.
• Facebook: A cheaper alternative is to target people with interests in "Property Investing" or who follow major landlord associations or publications. Again, the message must be about the business case, not the design.

The key here is to have different campaigns for different stages of the customer journey. One set of campaigns to find new people and inspire them (Awareness/ToFu), another to bring back people who have already visited your site (Retargeting/MoFu), and a final one to capture those ready to buy now (Conversion/BoFu). A proper structure like this is how you build a reliable lead generation machine, not just a one-off campaign.

Your website needs to do the selling for you

Let's be brutally honest for a moment. You could have the best ads in the world, targeting the perfect audience with a killer offer, but if they click through to a website that is slow, confusing, or untrustworthy, you've wasted every single penny. Your website is your 24/7 salesperson, and right now it might be the weakest link in your entire process.

Without seeing your site, I can guess some of the common mistakes that businesses in your position make:

• It tries to be everything to everyone: A visitor should know within 3 seconds if your site is for them. Do you have a clear "For Trade" section and a separate "For Homeowners" section? If a contractor lands on a page full of fluffy, inspirational content for DIYers, they'll leave. If a nervous homeowner lands on a page with nothing but product codes and trade prices, they'll be intimidated and leave.
• Poor quality images and video: You're selling a visual product. Your photos need to be professional and aspirational. You should have videos showing not just the finished product, but the assembly process. Show how easy it is. Build that confidence for the DIYer.
• Lack of trust signals: Why should anyone trust you with thousands of pounds? Where are the reviews from happy customers? Do you have case studies with before-and-after photos? Do you display trust badges, guarantees, or accreditations? Is your company address and phone number clearly visible? A lack of these things screams "risky purchase."
• A confusing purchasing process: How easy is it to get a quote or place an order? Is it a clunky form from 2005, or a modern, simple online tool? The more friction there is, the more leads you will lose. For a contractor, they should be able to log in and order what they need in under five minutes.

Your first priority, before scaling your ad spend, should be to optimise your website for conversion. Each of your ICPs should have a dedicated landing page that speaks their language and guides them to the one action you want them to take (e.g., "Get a Free DIY Design," "Open a Trade Account"). A small improvement in your website's conversion rate, say from 1% to 2%, will literally cut your cost per lead in half without changing your ads at all.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, so I've broken down my main recomendations into a clear action plan. This is the strategic framework I would use to turn your campaigns from a cash drain into a predictable source of quality leads.

Getting paid advertising right is a complex process. It’s not just about pushing a few buttons in Google Ads; it’s about deep strategic thinking, constant testing, and rigorous analysis. The steps I've outlined above are the foundation of a succesful strategy, but implementing them correctly takes time and expertise.

This is where working with a specialist can make a huge difference. Instead of spending the next six months and thousands of pounds on trial and error, you can leverage our experience of running profitable campaigns for businesses just like yours. We can help you implement this entire strategy, from defining your customer and crafting your offer to building and optimising the campaigns that will bring in a steady stream of quality leads.

If you'd like to discuss this further, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can take a look at your current campaigns and website together and give you some more specific, actionable advice on how to move forward.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh