Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Viral marketing for roofing companies



In 2006, New York City artist Scott LoBaido traveled nationwide to paint Old Glory on roofs in all 50 states. But four years later (2010), he accepted his biggest challenge ever: painting a Texas-sized waving American flag on the 150,000 square foot metal roof of Lamons Gasket Co. in Houston, Texas, using only 9-inch rollers to apply approximately 900 gallons of paint. Ironically, it took him from Flag Day (June 14th) until the 4th of July to complete the project.

Although the project cost nearly $50,000, the free publicity LoBaido and Lamons Gasket get every year I'm sure is well worth the original investment. Three years later, images of the roof still go viral around every patriotic holiday including Armed Forces Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Patriot Day (September 11th), Veterans Day, and others.

Similarly, in June 2011 the tile roofing crew of Istueta Roofing in Miami, Florida luckily had been video taping a residential tear-off when they came upon a very strange discovery: thousands of bats that had infested a home!

Here is the original full-length video:



Amazingly, this is not prominently featured on their website. Truly a lost opportunity to capitalize on a viral video.

The bottom line is that viral marketing isn't just about making a funny video to upload to YouTube. It can also be about discovering something unusual or doing something big, cool or even patriotic and making sure you document it well with pictures, video, testimonials, and interviews, and then getting the word out through articles, blogging, video blogs, social media, local news stations, and more. It doesn't always happen overnight, but in the end it can really pay off.

What ideas do you have to virally market a roofing business?

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Grow your roofing business with video blogs and video brochures


Let's face it, attention spans are shorter than ever. No one wants to read pages of information on your website or in your brochures or proposals about the roof system you are proposing or about the qualifications of your roofing company. So how do you make sure the customer is fully informed?

A short, scripted, edited, professionally produced video can provide enough information in just the amount of the time you are actually going to get from most prospective customers. A win-win for everyone!

Video blogs can serve multiple purposes for your roofing company:

They enable you to more effectively, efficiently and consistently communicate information to your customers.

In just 3-5 minutes you can communicate all of the benefits of a particular roof system you are bidding.

You can highlight the qualifications and accomplishments of your roofing company that otherwise get lost in your proposals or website.

With the proper title, description and tags, potential customers in your service area have a better chance of finding your company online when performing a Google search, since videos (especially those uploaded to YouTube) are now ranking higher than many older, established web pages and online documents.

Your proposals, bids and presentations can be enhanced to help you get all the pertinent information across and help you stand out from the competition.

Print marketing such as postcards, brochures, business cards, door hangers, service vehicles, yard signs, billboards, and more come to life simply by incorporating a simple QR Code that launches your video blog.

They are ideal for sharing on social media and expanding on messages in email newsletters without the addition of pages of unwanted text.

You can play them on a loop from a DVD in your reception area or at trade shows.

They bring your blog posts and articles to life - further explaining the topic you are writing about, or the script itself can become its own blog post or article.

And the best part is that customers can watch them anywhere, any time at their convenience.

Video blogs can be a huge time saver for your sales staff:

For example, if you have 5 salespeople who bid 100 jobs per year and each time they have to spend even 15 minutes explaining the roof system you are proposing, that comes out to 125 total hours per year explaining the same roof systems over-and-over.

At $20 per hour, that totals $2,500 in productivity time lost. But more importantly, that is 125 hours every year they are not out selling more roofing jobs.

Due to the conversational nature of the sales process, it likely takes more than 15 minutes to sell the customer on the roof system, and there is no guarantee your sales staff is explaining the systems as effectively and consistently as you would like them to.

By incorporating video blogs into your content and sales strategies, you streamline the most basic component of your communications processes, instantly have compelling content for marketing and social media sharing, and improve your search engine optimization all in one shot.

RoofPal produces video blogs on a variety of topics such as the benefits of elastomeric roof coatings, historical preservation of slate roof tiles, metal roof restoration, storm damage restoration, and so much more that can be completely personalized for your roofing company.

We can also develop custom video blogs on any roof system you need, for a large bid you are preparing, or a short video brochure or commercial for your roofing company.

If you have any questions about creating or putting video blogs to work for your roofing company, please feel free to contact RoofPal any time.


This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by The Contractors Alliance. Expand your roofing business by integrating Conklin reflective cool roof coatings, foam, single-ply and other systems. For more information please contact Stan Volkman at (612) 750-6639, via email at Info@TheContractorsAlliance.com, or by visiting them online at TheContractorsAlliance.com.