Hot Resources for Christmas Lights Installers
Professional Christmas lighting installation is a fast-growing segment for all types of residential and commercial contractors. Many landscapers, roofers, and pressure washing companies are installing Christmas lights in their off-season with great success. Homeowners, city municipalities, offices, and housing developments are hiring contractors to put up their lights and other holiday decorations.
In the spirit of the coming season, we have collected some great resources that some of our customers use in order to help you with some of the daily tasks of running your Christmas Lights installation business. Hope they help!
Hot Distributors
All businesses need places to buy products. Here are several places to buy the lights, clips and other decorations that you’ll need to run your business.
We Hang Christmas Lights
Provides nationwide Christmas lights installations. Really not a distributor but an amazing company who deserves a mention.
https://www.wehangchristmaslights.com
We Sell Christmas Lights
Founded in 2016, We Sell Christmas Lights has become one of the leaders in the industry providing commercial Christmas lights and accessories nationwide. From Rancho Santa Margarita, CA, they provide installers with quality products that they can ship around the country.
https://wesellchristmaslights.com
Action Lighting
Action Lighting is a popular distributor located in Bozeman, MT and has been in business since 1987. They have tons of options and a catalog you can download.
https://www.actionlighting.com
Elite Holiday Decor
Elite Holiday Decor is located in Vero Beach, FL and resells all full range of holiday lighting and accessories. They’ve been around since 2011 and have a great reputation online.
https://www.eliteholidaydecor.com
Holidynamics
Holidynamcis is an established company that’s been around for about 15 years. They have a large and varied range of seasonal lighting and accessories. They pride themselves on designing, producing and supplying high-quality products and are located in Omaha, NE.
Reinders
Reinders is a family-owned, regional distribution company headquartered in Sussex, WI. They are pretty big, with more than 200 employees, at 12 locations that serve 10 states and carry all sorts of holiday products.
https://www.reinders.com/holiday-lighting
Holiday Bright Lights
Holiday Bright Lights is a premier holiday lighting and Christmas décor wholesale supplier and has been supplying commercial grade holiday lighting products for over a decade. They have a corporate office in Omaha, NE with showrooms in Chicago, IL and Atlanta, GA.
https://www.HolidayBrightLights.com
CPS Distributors
CPS distributors supply a full range of Christmas and decorative holiday lighting products and solutions for contractors and municipalities. They also provide free holiday lighting installation training for professional holiday lighting installers. They are located in Colorado and Wyoming but can ship products anywhere in the country.
https://cpsdistributors.com/holiday-lighting-supply-cps-distributors
Wintergreen Corporation
Wintergreen (WG) is an Atlanta-based manufacturer, importer, and wholesaler with roots established in lighting and decor since 2000. They serve more than 2,000 wholesale customers ranging from large national retail stores to professional decorators/installers to small businesses.
Envirolume
Envirolume is a wholesale distributor to the event production and holiday services industry. Their product line consists of categories from everyday LED lighting products to elaborate custom-designed décor pieces. They are headquartered in Houston, TX with distribution out of San Antonio, TX.
Hot Products
Advanced Plug Protection
APlugPro makes a couple of products that help keep GFCIs from tripping where you install holiday lights. It’s made with very pliable silicon that sits between plug connections and keeps it water-tight! Buy a few of these to ensure you don’t have to go back and fix problems with lights due to rain, sleet and snow.
S4 Lights
S4 Lights is an LED lighting company with production out of China but with a showroom in Atlanta, GA. They offer a range of innovative, energy-efficient LED solutions and systems for commercial, retail, and residential use. These are very popular for professional installers because they work.
Lite-Netics
Lite-netics invented a patented magnetic holiday lighting that easily clings to any ferrous metal surface. The magnet’s power is really strong and can withstand wind tests of up to 80 mph with zero adhesion failure. The advantage to their magnetic lights is how easy and fast they are to install. These lights are gaining popularity and are worth a look!
Tuffclips
Tuffclips manufactures holiday light clips that are flexible, designed really well and are extremely durable. They hold your lights at the same angle all season long, are made of bend and break-resistant plastic and are designed to withstand harsh weather. Give these babies a try!
Canny Systems
Canny Systems manufactures a range of products to help with hanging lights such as ridge clips, plastic stakes that hold lights, gutter clips and PVC pipe adapters. They have a great reputation and you can order right off their website.
Elf Easy Light Feeder
The Elf Easy Light Feeder is a product you just have to go watch the video and see. It is a no-ladder solution for decorating tall trees with holiday lights. With your feet safely on the ground, you can decorate any type of tree with minimal effort in under 10 minutes and reach heights in excess of twenty feet.
Hot Apps
To better bid a job from the comfort of your computer or phone, some applications offer you the ability to measure the square footage of a roof from satellite images. There are a number of options to do this, some really affordable.
Google Maps/Earth
Did you know you can measure distances on Google Maps? If you open Google Maps in your Chrome browser and zoom in on a home you can right-click and use “Measure Distance” to get a pretty good idea of the square footage of a roof. This can help a ton in your bidding process. You can also use Street View.
Roofr
If you’re trying to measure the size of a roof remotely, Roofr is great for that. They have several plans but their free plan allows you to just get roof measurement reports in under 24 hours, usually for $10. Here’s a sample report.
Jolly Lights
If you’re interested in doing some holiday lighting designs this is a pretty cool app! It allows you to take a picture of a home and add lighting. You can change bulb sizes, colors, spacing, and even add text overlay to give someone a good idea of what to expect. It’s only available for iPad and here’s a YouTube video of what it can do.
https://www.wrinklefreegames.com/games/jollyLightsForiPad.html
The Customer Factor
This is a really cool scheduling application that does so much more. Originally designed to help with a window cleaning business it fits right in with holiday light installation businesses. It helps you with estimating, invoicing, credit card processing, email, text messaging, Quickbooks integration and so much more. Web-based and mobile app interfaces.
https://www.thecustomerfactor.com
Service Monster
Another application that helps run your business. The user interface on this app is pretty amazing. It helps you with estimating, scheduling, lead & client management. Definitely worth a look.
https://www.servicemonster.net
Hot Communities
CLIPA (Christmas Light Installation Pros Association)
CLIPA is an organization that provides training, certification and a forum for Christmas light installers. Their hot tips Facebook Group is one of the most popular industry forums on the internet. The connections you can make here will help you learn everything you need to know to be successful in this type of venture.
https://clipawebsite.com
https://www.facebook.com/groups/clipaprotips
Planet Christmas
Planet Christmas is a holiday lights forum that’s been around about 20 years, with a ton of archived content. They are currently talking about moving to Facebook but there’s a wealth of information there - just use the search engine.
https://www.planetchristmas.com
Reddit Christmas Lights
The Subreddit r/ChristmasLights has about 5k members and is decently active, a good place to post questions and be among like-minded holiday lights installers.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ChristmasLights
YouTube - Christmas Lights Community
This guy has a ton of really useful content on his YouTube Channel. From tips on how to run your business to how-to’s, he’s got a really good presence.
https://www.youtube.com/c/ChristmasLightsCommunity
Hot Marketing Tips
One of the most challenging parts of starting a business is getting customers! You can spend months setting your business up and be ready for action but have no customers yet. So how do you get new customers? There are a number of things to consider, here are a few resources for you.
Website
Most businesses need a website nowadays. It’s not only for getting in contact with you but for learning more about your organization and seeing some of the work you’ve done. Websites can be time-consuming and require someone to add new pictures, videos and content on a regular basis if you’d like to be found by Google. You don’t have to build a website from scratch anymore however, there are several companies that provide online platforms to do it yourself. It might require a little time and effort to learn and some preparation, but websites can help you drive and close business, especially as time goes on. These are in no particular order.
Wix
Wix is a fully hosted platform, so you will not have to pay for hosting, just the service you choose. There are hundreds of templates to choose from and each template is fully editable with an intuitive drag and drop website builder. Pricing starts at $14 a month and goes up depending on what features you choose such as SEO and e-commerce. Wix claims to have around 200 million users.
Squarespace
Squarespace is also a fully hosted platform and includes tons of website designs to get started from. All designs are completely ready for any type of content. They are fully editable with a fairly easy user interface that has a ton of features. Squarespace has around 4 million subscribers and pricing starts at $12 a month.
WordPress
WordPress runs around 455 million of the world’s websites. It is by far the most popular content management system on the web. They provide software that you can download and install on your own server or a web-based tool to build your own site. For beginners, I recommend their online tool. It has a ton of free templates and the ability to customize them. It’s a little different than the companies I’ve mentioned above because it’s not drag-n-drop but with a little patience you can build a nice website. WordPress is a little more expensive with prices for a business starting at $25 per month.
Local Directories
To start getting some action online you’ll want to list yourself in the most authoritative internet directories. Each one will help you be found when people are seeking your type of business. Make sure to fill out each one, as completely as you can, with accurate information. The more information you include the better rankings you will get in Google and other search engines. In other words, if the directory allows you to add images, video, or other media - make sure you do! Here are the most important directories to add your business listing to:
- Google My Business
- Facebook Pages
- Instagram for Business
- Apple Maps
- Yelp
- Bing Places
- Better Business Bureau
- Thumbtack
- Nextdoor
- Yahoo Local
Direct Mail
Direct mail is a pretty good starting point because it’s a really fast way to get customers and has a really high ROI. People think snail mail is dead but it’s actually the opposite. Less mail is sent due to email reigning over the last few years so marketing mail is a lot more visible in mailboxes. It’s a great way to send a local campaign and can really jump-start your business. It’s not cheap, but because it has an average ROI of 29%, especially in a service industry like holiday lights installers, it’s well worth a look.
Dope Marketing
Dope Marketing provides a complete platform to create and send targeted direct mail campaigns, flyers, yard signs, business cards, door hangers, and more. They have a great reputation, custom holiday lighting templates ready to use and can help kick start your business into full gear.
Social Media
One of the most important things you can do for your business is to post every chance you get. I could write a book about this but I’m just going to recommend you get on and use social media regularly. It’s one of the most important things you can do for your business. Make sure to get permission from your customer but take before and after photos of each job and post them to your social media accounts. This is a sure way to get new customers but you have to be consistent. The social media algorithms love video and live stuff so use it as much as possible. The more you post the more people it shows up for. Make sure you have the following social media profiles and post to them regularly if you can.
Online Ads
One way to get leads is to run ads online. There are tons of ways to do this however I’m going to cover Google Adwords and Facebook/Instagram Ads.
Google Adwords
Google makes most of its revenue off advertising and most advertising is pay-per-click advertising, also known as PPC. These are ads that appear on search engine results pages. The beauty of Google Ads is that you only pay for advertising when or if a searcher clicks on your ad however unless you have a really good website with content it’s not a very good choice. You can learn more about Google Adwords below.
Facebook/Instagram Ads
It’s hard to look past Facebook and Instagram’s reach. With nearly 3 billion active users, that’s a whole lot of people seeing your ads on a regular basis and you can really target the users you want. To really benefit from the ads you need to learn as much as you can about how to run them. Spend some time with their training resources and start in small increments until you start seeing some success.
https://www.facebook.com/business/ads
I really hope you’ve learned a thing or two about a few resources for your holiday lights installation business. Chances are you know about most of these but hopefully, there were a few that are new to you. If we missed a good one please add it to the comments below!
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