How to find potential roofing customer contact information online (Part 1)

When developing contact lists for commercial roofing companies, the first thing I do is create a spreadsheet with columns for Name, Title, Company, Phone, Fax, Email, Mailing Address, and website URL. You can add more columns for information such as links to their various social media profile URL's upfront, or just add them later as additional information becomes available.

Next, I do a Google search for "commercial property management" plus each city name in their service area. I copy and paste the company name, website URL, address, and general phone and fax number into the spreadsheet as I find them. Sometimes you can also find aggregation sites or directories that have many of these companies listed in one document or page.

Once I am satisfied with my company search, I start at the top of the list, insert a dozen or so rows under the first entry, and visit their website. Most companies will list all of their property managers, brokers, agents, etc. somewhere on their site. I then copy each name, direct phone number or extension, cell phone number, email address, and any other pertinent information into the spreadsheet. Repeat this for each company on the list.

For companies who do not list any or all of their property managers, you can copy the company's website domain and do a Google search for the word 'email' and the company's domain. That usually results in more contacts, especially for managers of specific properties such as onsite managers of multi-housing or apartment communities. To find more information on those people whose email address you found, one at a time do a Google search using quotes around the email address.

I target property management companies first because many commercial buildings are professionally managed, which includes filling vacancies, managing contracts, collecting lease payments, and (most importantly for your roofing company), dispatching repair work and managing capital improvements.

You now have enough direct contact information to execute an extremely targeted cold call and/or direct mail campaign.

The information you have is also helpful for planning an outdoor media campaign. By creating a heat map of the physical addresses of each property management company, you can geo-target the best areas to put up billboards, bus stop signs and more around the most populated property management buildings in the city.

You also have enough information, such as their name, location, the company they work for, their email address, etc. to begin searching for these property managers and brokers on social media and requesting to connect with them.

In future podcast episodes (and blog posts) I'll go in to more detail about finding facilities managers, building owners and even homeowners online, as well as planning outdoor advertising campaigns and connecting with potential roofing customers on various social media sites.

If you have any questions about finding potential roofing customers in your service area online or would like assistance doing so, please contact RoofPal any time.


This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Hail-Track. Hail-Track combines real-time storm maps with geo- and time-stamped pictures and videos online as well as several other powerful tools to help hyper-target your advertising after a big storm anywhere in your service area. Learn more by visiting Hail-Track.com.