How a PE-Backed Home Services Brand Scales with Speed and Precision

02:00 - How Express Flooring evolved from a limited marketing mix to a full omnichannel strategy

06:00 - The power of feeding offline conversion data back into digital ad platforms

10:00 - Building customer profiles with 3 years of data to improve targeting and direct mail ROI

12:00 - Speed-to-lead: why Express aims to respond to new inquiries in under 43 seconds

14:00 - How the company offers same-day appointments and installs

16:00 - The value of in-home design consultations versus traditional showroom experiences

Josh is the Chief Marketing Officer at Express Flooring, a fast-growing, PE-backed flooring company now operating in nine markets across six states. He’s helped evolve the company from a traditional, TV-heavy ad model into a highly diversified marketing operation that blends traditional media, digital performance, and local experimentation.

With a focus on speed, scale, and quality, Express Flooring now offers everything from in-home design consultations to next-day installation—powered by deep customer insights and tight alignment between sales, marketing, and operations.

When Josh joined Express Flooring, the marketing mix was simple: half TV, half Google. Today, the funnel is much more complex—and intentionally so.

Express takes a test-and-learn approach to everything from media channels to messaging. Each market behaves differently, and Josh’s team customizes the spend accordingly.

That means traditional formats like direct mail may work well in one city, while social or streaming dominates in another. No assumptions—just data, iteration, and market-by-market validation.

Marketing success at Express isn’t based on clicks. It’s based on closed deals.

Josh walks through how they evaluate every campaign against down-funnel metrics:

• Response rate
• Conversion rate
• Close rate
• Final cost per sale

Every channel and creative is evaluated through this lens. And critically, campaigns are given enough time to optimize before they’re declared successful (or not). That means setting budget guardrails, giving partners time to adjust, and resisting the urge to pull the plug too early.

One of the biggest unlocks for Express Flooring came from connecting offline sales data back into digital channels.

Josh describes how feeding conversion data into ad platforms—especially Google—helped algorithms learn what types of leads actually became customers. That optimization step helped improve lead quality, lower acquisition costs, and improve targeting over time.

They also applied this logic to their direct mail efforts by conducting a full audience segmentation analysis. Using several years of sales data, they developed detailed demographic and psychographic profiles of their best customers—then used those insights to drive smarter list-building and higher-performing campaigns.

Josh emphasizes that speed to lead is only the beginning. At Express, lead response time is clocked at 43 seconds or less. Prospects get a text and a call almost immediately after submitting a form. 

But that’s just the start of a tightly choreographed system that includes:

• Lead qualification before a rep is sent
   
• Appointment confirmation the day before
   
• Same-day or next-day in-home consultations
   
• Full product inventory on hand
   

• Installation as quickly as 48–72 hours after first contact

   

Josh points out that meeting customer expectations at that level requires deep alignment between marketing, sales, call centers, and fulfillment teams. If one part of the chain breaks down, the whole process suffers.

Unlike many home improvement brands, Express Flooring doesn’t just sell materials. They guide homeowners through the selection process with in-home design consultants—trained to understand style, function, product differences, and lighting effects.

Customers aren’t expected to imagine what a 4" × 4" sample will look like across an entire living room. The team brings large-format samples into the home, next to their furniture, under their lighting, and helps match color palettes to each space.

That kind of consultative, design-first approach builds confidence—and accelerates decision-making.

Despite flooring being a major purchase, Express sees many leads come in early in the research phase. Some prospects are price-shopping. Some aren’t even sure what material they want.

But with the right digital targeting and an immediate, helpful response, Express is able to convert those early-stage leads quickly. By getting to the customer first, offering expert guidance, and removing friction, they often book and complete jobs within days.

As Josh puts it, “People want speed. We just try to get out of their way and help them move forward.”

Much of what Josh describes sounds simple on the surface—but it requires rare alignment behind the scenes.

At Express, marketing and sales operate with a shared understanding of what a good lead looks like. Lead quality is discussed openly. The calendar is synced to campaign spend. Capacity planning and media buying are connected.

There’s no finger-pointing between departments—just a shared goal of moving fast and closing the right jobs.

Josh leaves listeners with one simple takeaway: Listen to your customer.

Marketing strategies change. Channels change. Products change. But the key to doing it well is understanding what your customers actually need—and aligning your offer, your ops, and your people to deliver it quickly, clearly, and confidently.

To learn more, visit expressflooring.com. You can also reach out via the contact form on the site—or as Josh puts it, “carrier pigeon works too.”

The Smarter Building Materials Marketing podcast helps sales and marketing professionals find better ways to grow leads, sales and outperform the competition. It gives insights, examples and shares stories about how to create a results-driven digital marketing strategy for building products and construction companies of any size. SBMM is co-hosted by Venveo’s Founder, Zach Williams and Venveo’s CEO, Beth PopNikolov.

Thanks for tuning in! If you enjoyed this episode and want to catch future insights, be sure to like and subscribe to the Smarter Building Materials Marketing podcast wherever you listen. Got questions or suggestions about today’s episode? Drop us a line at podcast@venveo.com—we’d love to hear from you!