Alex Danner is the owner of Fence & Deck Marketers, a full-service digital marketing agency that helps contractors grow and dominate their markets through their proprietary digital marketing systems.
Even in 2026, there are deck contractors who are not marketing online, forgoing untold amounts of revenue by opting not to present their entities to customers actively searching online for deck experts.
There are myriad reasons why deck savants don’t make a concerted effort to brand themselves online.
“If you are into building decks, there’s a very good chance that marketing and technology is not your area of expertise,” posits Danner, who excels at pulling deck companies out from the abyss, otherwise known as the second page of Google searches, and planting them right in front of wandering eyeballs who are yearning to upgrade their outdoor living space.
See, many contractors are adept at explaining why homeowners should install a composite versus wood deck, but when it comes to navigating the nuances of their own website, they are more lost than Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
Pardon the potentially hyperbolized analogy, but if you have seen Cast Away, then you know how bad Tom Hanks wanted to exit that remote island, and if you work for Catalyst Supply, like I do, then you know just how eager deck contractors are to escape irrelevance and find themselves in the purview of financially stable, ready-to-buy suburbanites.
An aesthetically pleasing website, targeted ads, and social media posts that entertain and inform.
These are all arguably non-negotiables for deck builders in 2026.
You can’t forget SEO either.
“With SEO and learning to rank on Google, there is so much for contractors to learn,” Danner says, and for the $1 million deck contractor, familiarizing themselves with that minutiae likely takes time they don’t have.
Not when Mr. and Mrs. Johnson have properly researched and budgeted for a 400-square foot deck with TimberTech PVC and Westbury C10 railing, and they want to get on your schedule right away this spring.
“There are a lot of things that go into building and maintaining an effective website,” says Danner, whose marketing firm can alleviate all the aforementioned pain points.
“A highly functioning website is not like a deck, where you can build it and then see it with your own eyes. This stuff is complex because it’s all online, there are a million things going on at once, and things are constantly changing.”
In the decking industry, there is no shortage of marketing firms who gloat about how many unique visitors they bring to a website, or how many views an ad generates.
The problem with emphasizing these kinds of numbers though is that they’re effectively useless, devoid of the impact that would otherwise come if these same marketers tracked a deck contractor’s bottom line.
“With marketing agencies, there are all these different ways to show results, but what a business owner really cares about is, are these results translating to sales and revenue?” Danner says.
For Danner and his agency, everything revolves around his clients’ revenue.
“There are KPIs and metrics we produce that actually show a tangible difference, and that’s what we want to focus on,” he emphasizes.
“Not just surface level numbers that make it look like progress is being made, when in reality it’s not.”
Adds Danner:
“In most cases, I would never recommend that a deck company does marketing unless they are making more money as a result.”
It should be noted that Danner, for all his marketing wizardry, is not the fledgling deck company’s messiah.
He cannot rectify the bad systems and processes that are plaguing sales, production, or customer service.
“We can bring you leads, but if you are not great at sales, or if you are not following up with people, we can’t do anything about that,” he notes.
Even today, there are deck contractors who don’t answer their phones in a timely manner, and no matter how many prospective clients Danner brings in, it must be reiterated that a deck builder needs to have the capacity to effectively handle an influx of leads.
“If a deck company wants to go from $2 million to $3 million, we aren’t going to overpromise, meaning I’m not going to tell a business owner that with our system we can get there in one month,” Danner explains, because these things take time and consistency.
Growth can also require a partnership with a company like Danner’s that operates with honesty and transparency.
“Deck companies that are more established, and have the infrastructure in place to facilitate growth, that’s who we typically are best able to assist,” Danner says.
“This is important because when we partner with a company, our goal is to bring them a lot more leads. We want to work with ambitious people.”
In an industry where communication is paramount, Danner has account managers in place ready to be a resource for clients.
“We want to be utilized as an extension of a deck company as best as we can,” Danner says, yet despite having established essential systems and processes for his staff, none of Danner’s strategies are redundant, meaning each of his clients is being guided by a plan that is uniquely tailored to their business.
“We work based off what a company’s goals are. I’ve always wanted our company to be very specific and granular about getting clients what they want. When we do this, often we can open their eyes to a lot more than just what they want.”
These days, with the snow quickly melting, soon professional deck builders will become inundated with calls from homeowners.
Those who have put in the work and are ranking on SEO will benefit from an abundance of new leads, but as technology continues to innovate at a blistering speed, I would be remiss not to mention that relevance on Google is now only one part of the equation.
According to Danner, having a presence on ChatGPT searches is now equally crucial.
“That’s where the best leads go,” Danner says of the online platforms.
“If you’re not active with SEO or your Google listing, then you are not near your target customers. If you don’t have the reviews that back up the work that you do, and if you don’t have a website that is built to convert visitors into clients, then that’s what we would recommend optimizing first.”
Always testing, and always refining their approach.
That is how Danner has kept his clients in peak online shape, healthy and balanced throughout the tumult of each year’s challenges.
“I believe that whatever is making you money, keep doing that,” Danner says, vagueness at the core of this statement because his methods are proprietary, but he then punctuates our conversation with a laugh, acknowledging how success is sometimes as simple as going back to the well.
“That’s the secret, as far as I’m concerned.” QS
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