tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41402816167908685582024-03-18T22:46:47.336-07:00RoofPalRoofPal offers professional marketing, research, business writing, and creative services to the commercial and residential roofing industry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger60125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-64573734977889071692012-12-31T13:55:00.002-08:002012-12-31T13:55:49.941-08:00Personalized and targeted marketing for roofing contractors in 2013<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghSc82wOawtTZTGmiNvB3fXA6Z5ynUoN1FLqyt8CCKHdP7VVi0ItN9XmM8SkAU32DczDvzaLg27YaSJQMDH7OI3DSJYmpZH6HJvcs5Hk3VyMbUdkzbmjGYzqoWiXCPvf1n33axXUJXeEE/s1600/RoofPal+-+Personalized+and+targeted+marketing+for+roofing+contractors+in+2013.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghSc82wOawtTZTGmiNvB3fXA6Z5ynUoN1FLqyt8CCKHdP7VVi0ItN9XmM8SkAU32DczDvzaLg27YaSJQMDH7OI3DSJYmpZH6HJvcs5Hk3VyMbUdkzbmjGYzqoWiXCPvf1n33axXUJXeEE/s200/RoofPal+-+Personalized+and+targeted+marketing+for+roofing+contractors+in+2013.png" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let's say you get two emails today from companies soliciting a product or service you may in fact need or buy in the coming year.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">The first is obviously a standard lead generation marketing email with a huge CONTACT US or CLICK TO BUY button that you can safely assume was already sent exactly the same way to hundreds if not thousands of other potential purchasing decision makers. You are likely <span style="background-color: black;">also Bcc:'d (blind carbon</span>-copied) as part of a mass distribution list. </span><span style="color: yellow;">How inclined are you to respond to this email, call them or even visit their website?</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: lime;"><strong>NOTE:</strong></span> If you have ever done email marketing for your roofing company, this is likely the route you have taken and you probably saw a bit of a spike in website traffic, maybe got a handful of folks to email you back and a couple to even call you. It is quick, cheap and easy - especially on a large scale. But what about commercial roofing companies who deal with 1,000 or less building owners or property or facility managers?</span></span></blockquote>
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</span></span><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">The second email you receive today is sent directly to you (i.e., your email address is in the To: line). Your name is in the subject line and in the salutation. The body of the email references your company specifically as well as why the sender feels your particular company could benefit from doing business with him or her. And to top it off, to save you the time and hassle of reading through a bunch of boring literature, there is a link to a short video (addressed t</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">o you) that succinctly explains the product or service, its benefits, etc. <span style="color: yellow;">How inclined are you to watch, then respond to <em>this</em> email?</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: lime; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><strong>EXAMPLE personalized roofing company introduction video:</strong></span><br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NEdxj1hXKQk" width="420"></iframe><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It would appear the sender of the second email really wants the opportunity to earn not just whoever's business, but precisely <em>your</em> business. He or she has gone out of their way to identify you as an individual, assess the fit </span>of their product or service to your company, and reach out personally to introduce themselves. This is not the typical approach by marketers because it seems like it would take time, would be expensive and is difficult.</span></span></span><br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can I afford this?</span></strong><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your question should really be "Can I afford <em>not</em> to do this?" Commercial roofing companies typically don't deal with tens of thousands of potential customers. In your service area, there are likely few enough potential customers that this personalized approach would not only be feasible financially, but could be done within a 12 month period. This may be simplest, most inexpensive way to differentiate yourself from all of your competitors (at least those who haven't read this blog post yet).</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have discovered a method for researching contacts and developing personalized introduction and overview videos for roofing contractors that really works, and would like to share with you the basics of how to do it.</span><br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: lime;"><strong>NOTE:</strong></span> If instead you would like my help I charge $100 per lead (minimum 20 leads), which includes identifying the contacts, qualifying them, collecting all available contact information, and developing & posting the personalized videos to your YouTube channel. Please email </span></span></span><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-small;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: x-small;"> for more information.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>How do I do this?</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">First, develop a </span><a href="http://roofpal.blogspot.com/2012/07/grow-your-roofing-business-with-video.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">short video about your roofing company</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, the services you offer, a particular type of roofing (like cool roofing systems, metal roofing, roof cleaning & maintenance, etc.), or any message you would like to get out.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Second, </span><a href="http://roofpal.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-find-potential-roofing-customer.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">identify potential roofing customers</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> (<em>please click to read my previous blog post or watch the podcast episode on this topic</em>).</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Third, develop individual slides or frames for each of the contacts on your list. It is particularly effective to incorporate their picture from the company's website or their </span><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/chris-walker/33/713/845/" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">LinkedIn profile</span></span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;"> page. I use Microsoft PowerPoint and save each of the slides as a .png image file.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Fourth, compile a list of all of the unique first names on your list (for example, there may be 6 men named Jim, 8 women named Mary, 3 men named Tom, etc.) and record yourself offering a very short personalized greeting, using the first name. Repeat this for every unique name and save each as its own video file, as these can be reused for every person with that same first name.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">Fifth, in the video editing software of your choice (I use Windows Live Movie Maker) import </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the video about your roofing company along with the first name greeting video associated with the person's first name, as well as the individual slide for that specific person. Burn it as one single video file and upload it to YouTube.</span></span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="color: lime;"><strong>NOTE:</strong></span> I recommend uploading these videos to YouTube as Unlisted, which means only those with the link can view the video. Otherwise when someone visits your channel, does a Google search, or finishes watching the video you send them, they'll see all the other one's you have put together and the whole process won't feel as personalized as it originally did, basically killing your strategy.</span></span></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sixth, send an email directly to that contact usi</span>ng their name, title, company name, etc. in your introduction and include the link to the video on YouTube. The idea is to make this very personal (without being creepy) to convey to the recipient that you really would like to earn his or her business and are not simply doing a mass email blast.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial;"><strong>Would you like help doing this?</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Again, I charge $100 per lead to develop these videos (minimum 20 leads). This includes developing the company overview video, identifying potential customers, collecting all available contact information I can find online (including links to social media profiles, email address, phone number, mailing address, etc.), as well as developing and posting each personalized video to your YouTube channel. I would ask that you record the personalized greetings though to keep it authentic (I provide you with the list of names and a recommended script). </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">If you would like to discuss more or get started, please email </span><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">If you do put some of these together, I'd like to see an example and hear how it worked for you. If you have any other ideas, comments or suggestions, feel free to leave a comment below. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Best of luck!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-44745664625382442702012-12-29T11:59:00.000-08:002012-12-29T11:59:06.125-08:00Roofing Article and Video Special Offer!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMshCGllNGM9zNacA-_kApEeKNSeD_fuaiFz8hx7Nmx0V5cko8ViXwASyRwrQvBraTU8PTD1PW6sZ1H8VhDrCoyonLz30M5jOKfoe6c2OCR8N-OCrMOC149BdXSD28aDjEE7e9EgQVWFo/s1600/RoofPal+Roofing+Article+and+Video+Special+Offer.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMshCGllNGM9zNacA-_kApEeKNSeD_fuaiFz8hx7Nmx0V5cko8ViXwASyRwrQvBraTU8PTD1PW6sZ1H8VhDrCoyonLz30M5jOKfoe6c2OCR8N-OCrMOC149BdXSD28aDjEE7e9EgQVWFo/s200/RoofPal+Roofing+Article+and+Video+Special+Offer.png" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you are a roofing contractor looking for dynamic, reusable, custom content to promote your company in 2013 I have a special offer for you. For a limited time I am offering a 1-page article with an associated video on the topic of your choice for just $750 (this is 25% off the normal $1,000 price).</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The article and associated <a href="http://youtu.be/Jzyb4avfNWg" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">video version</span></a> can be about your company, a type of roofing system you install, a specific service such as storm damage restoration, etc. - any topic you desire. Provided you make yourself available for feedback on drafts through completion, these can be completed within just 2 weeks.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Your article can be posted to your website, shared on social media, submitted to local and national publications, emailed as a .pdf to prospective customers, and more. Your video will be uploaded to YouTube where you can share it on social media, embed it on your website, send it to prospective customers, have potential customers launch it on their smart phones via a <a href="http://youtu.be/BKDiML-_7to" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">QR Code</span></a> from your brochures or business cards, and so much more.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For examples of videos, please visit </span><a href="http://youtube.com/RoofPal"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">YouTube.com/RoofPal</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> or email </span><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to get started or to request additional information, examples of videos and articles, or references. Payment in full is due upfront.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-72445894232947665632012-10-23T06:54:00.001-07:002012-10-23T06:54:18.936-07:00How to find potential roofing customer contact information online (Part 2)<div style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAnN9oB9H1zMpY213uxCNlS9OVkwmEssD1lHrkHfmkU9WjC3w35TqB6fQvRN9XCiVjtiMlWA9wPPQBYOXlvfKY5_GXb7bzJiz0thiW_MlTcGhi5DhYcBIqAHHzhDaSDAMr0foo_5SGTnU/s1600/RoofPal+-+How+to+find+potential+roofing+customer+contact+information+online+(Part+2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAnN9oB9H1zMpY213uxCNlS9OVkwmEssD1lHrkHfmkU9WjC3w35TqB6fQvRN9XCiVjtiMlWA9wPPQBYOXlvfKY5_GXb7bzJiz0thiW_MlTcGhi5DhYcBIqAHHzhDaSDAMr0foo_5SGTnU/s200/RoofPal+-+How+to+find+potential+roofing+customer+contact+information+online+(Part+2).jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you reach out via email to a potential new commercial roofing customer such as a property or facility <span style="color: white;">manager and get an Out of Office AutoReply email message response from them... EUREKA! - you</span> may have just struck customer contact information prospecting gold!</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Why Out of Office AutoReplies are so valuable</strong></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When someone is on vacation or out of the office for an extended period of time, they often leave one or more alternate names in the company (with contact information) who are supporting their customers during that time to people who email them during their absence.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> </div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those alternate contacts often have a similar or supporting role (i.e., they manage other commercial properties or are otherwise involved in the process) and are likely another person worth reaching out and introducing your roofing company to.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> </div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you are interested in building a list of potential roofing customers and gathering contact information so you can create awareness of your roofing company and request to be contacted for opportunities to bid roofing work, please also see: </span><a href="http://roofpal.blogspot.com/2012/06/how-to-find-potential-roofing-customer.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How to find potential roofing customer contact information online (Part 1)</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><b><span style="color: yellow;">If you have any questions</span></b><span style="color: white;"> about finding potential roofing customers in your service
area online or would like assistance doing so, please </span></span><a href="http://roofpal.com/connect/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"><span style="background-color: black;">contact RoofPal</span></span></a><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: black;"> any
time.</span></span></span></span></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-74013033309752261872012-10-20T10:38:00.000-07:002012-10-20T10:38:12.169-07:00Are people hiding your roofing company's Facebook posts?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmzT7soqc52vohw-P_c8KDb9zKXME3tSS-l9UMHsjg9jMxHQJuNXpM6F6qamq4nPjomr3-kR66EY9Jo7DuL0VRE37-9dPvXozfl_SDDFm4M25g66hdt2qrcO1MBcAF5HiQWYGjNKVYMR4/s1600/RoofPal+-+Are+people+hiding+your+roofing+company's+Facebook+posts.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmzT7soqc52vohw-P_c8KDb9zKXME3tSS-l9UMHsjg9jMxHQJuNXpM6F6qamq4nPjomr3-kR66EY9Jo7DuL0VRE37-9dPvXozfl_SDDFm4M25g66hdt2qrcO1MBcAF5HiQWYGjNKVYMR4/s200/RoofPal+-+Are+people+hiding+your+roofing+company's+Facebook+posts.png" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most roofing companies focus on how many people 'Like' or are friends with their <a href="http://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Facebook page</span></a> instead of focusing on what is important like what they post, how often they post, and actually engaging with those they are already connected to. Now they are paying the price: people are blocking or hiding their posts.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>4 types of negative feedback on Facebook</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Outside of bad reviews or comments, there are four types of negative feedback your roofing company's page can receive on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Facebook</span></a>:</span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hiding a single post from their newsfeed</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hiding all of your posts from their newsfeed (also called “unsubscribing”)</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Unliking or unfriending your page</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reporting your post as spam</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If any of this has ever happened with your roofing company's Facebook page, it doesn’t mean what you are posting is bad - it could just mean you are posting to the wrong audience or maybe you are posting too frequently (overwhelming your connections).</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.pagelever.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">PageLever</span></a> is a Facebook analytics tool that measures more than 1 billion Facebook fans across thousands of fan pages. They have found that approximately 2% of post views (1 out of 50) generate some form of negative feedback.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your connections are most likely to hide or block ALL of your posts when they take a negative feedback action (60 times more likely than unliking or unfriending your page), which means that just because your roofing company has a lot of connections doesn’t mean they are all seeing what you post. Also, they are more likely to report one of your posts as spam than they are to unlike or unfriend your page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Why are some people hiding or blocking your posts?</span></strong></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: black;">It is most likely because you aren't engaging and interacting with them, or they find out after connecting with you that they don't like what you are posting.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>What can you do?</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The best advice I can give you is to both ensure what you post is relevant and on topic with your service offerings, and that you post at a reasonable frequency (and at an optimal time of the day and days of the week).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't be afraid to ask some of your connections what they would be interested in seeing posted by your roofing company. Track your page metrics to see which posts get the most engagement and the most organic virality.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Periodically try new content and new formats of content like text only, pictures of your work or team members, videos of your work or <a href="http://roofpal.com/video" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">roofing video brochures</span></a>, links to <a href="http://roofpal.com/articles/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">roofing articles</span></a> or pages on your website, polls/questions, etc. Try new things and measure the results so you can make quick adjustments when necessary.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One other thing I would recommend is to focus more on quality connections than quantity of connections. Define your ideal customer and target people who match that profile.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow;">Want
to discuss or need some help?</span></strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">If you would like to discuss this in more detail or would
like assistance developing a Facebook content or engagement strategy, please email </span><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a><span style="color: white;"> any time.</span></span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-3983883438487071322012-08-13T15:40:00.000-07:002012-08-13T15:40:05.903-07:00Choose your roofing customers - outbound vs. inbound marketing<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLKkR6ADuEu-kBTxaixpXJ5qJmNWYgJ1BSnGzgec2e-Tp0jccztywUPsSlzCOD-7TT4EcAPluTt40xEH0QY94KWYCO52FLFwBWOfvv0v7NNMPRFVlCz41oFvBooDtTeAUVXJ1Yuxtq-mI/s1600/RoofPal+-+Choose+your+roofing+customers+-+outbound+vs.+inbound+marketing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLKkR6ADuEu-kBTxaixpXJ5qJmNWYgJ1BSnGzgec2e-Tp0jccztywUPsSlzCOD-7TT4EcAPluTt40xEH0QY94KWYCO52FLFwBWOfvv0v7NNMPRFVlCz41oFvBooDtTeAUVXJ1Yuxtq-mI/s200/RoofPal+-+Choose+your+roofing+customers+-+outbound+vs.+inbound+marketing.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Regardless if you install residential or commercial roofing systems, creating the opportunity to choose your customers instead of hoping the phone rings or getting an email from your website's "Contact Us" form will ultimately lead to greater financial success and much fewer headaches.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">Too often we practically beg for work - any work, as long as it helps to keep our crews busy and pay the bills. But over time that leads to diluted service offerings and a splintered work force. Your marketing efforts suffer as well, as it becomes increasingly difficult to differentiate yourself from the competition.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="background-color: black;">Choosing Your Customers</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This can mean several things, including differentiating potential customers based on personality, geography, credit worthiness, financial solvency, existing roof size, existing roof system, existing roof age, their reason for needing roofing work, their preferred roof system, their level of environmental consciousness, and more.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Disqualifying certain potential roofing customers helps to streamline your operations, materials purchasing and your advertising, which ultimately improves your profit margins or enables you to compete more aggressively with low-bid contractors. It also enables your company to focus, to truly become an expert, and to develop a strong reputation as "the company" for the specific work you bid.</span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="background-color: black;">'Spray and Pray' vs. 'Ready, Aim, Fire!'</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Inbound marketing in essence is the reliance that people will find you and contact you when they need work. It is the "spray and pray" approach. Outbound marketing is the opposite - it is the aggressive pursuit of work, and can more easily be targeted to a defined customer profile. It is the "ready, aim, fire!" approach.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the right marketing, content development and search engine optimization over time, inbound marketing can have a similar eventual outcome. But by clearly articulating your "perfect customer" (e.g., government buildings, new construction, manufacturing facilities with asphalt roofs looking to reduce energy consumption, residential homes after a hail storm, etc.), you can laser-focus your advertising, sales pitch, inspection and bidding processes, materials acquisition, installation methods, and more.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b style="background-color: black;">How Do I Target Customers?</b></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Researching customer contact information online is easier than ever. Once you have profiled your target customer you can get specific names, titles, email addresses, mailing addresses, social media profiles, and so much more with a few clicks u</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">sing resources such as Google, LinkedIn, Spokeo, and others</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">Creating a simple Excel spreadsheet with all of this information arms your sales and marketing team to aggressively pursue work that fits your company's expertise.</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bottom line is that it is better to define your customer and aggressively pursue him or her than to wait for someone to contact you and do the best you can with what they need.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<b style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Want to Discuss or Need Some Help?</b><br />
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">If you would like to discuss this in more detail or would like assistance implementing an outbound marketing strategy so you can better pick your roofing company's customers, please email </span><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a><span style="color: white;"> any time.</span></span><br />
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-61743551643172195022012-07-04T09:06:00.000-07:002012-07-04T12:12:33.605-07:00Viral marketing for roofing companies<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhymBQ6foWvGr3TruYBa4dPGJbSAt57QbLA4r3IPC79775bwwxNe_Zh5D9vkLXJ-ihe8FDOovM87017BECiLQ_Kf3SlZ4VkZYpSX2z5Ymg48msilYDDZUzijzTiItOfryUAlSJR7a80obA/s1600/RoofPal+Marketing+blog+-+Lamons+Gasket+Co+01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhymBQ6foWvGr3TruYBa4dPGJbSAt57QbLA4r3IPC79775bwwxNe_Zh5D9vkLXJ-ihe8FDOovM87017BECiLQ_Kf3SlZ4VkZYpSX2z5Ymg48msilYDDZUzijzTiItOfryUAlSJR7a80obA/s1600/RoofPal+Marketing+blog+-+Lamons+Gasket+Co+01.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"></span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YJy3s7QdTF4GxYvouXTsGSOt690NF8gYsUUAZsSN3-2mgnhw5v9sjgIlo0K3mp1CWINVvih4z6X7AH2bdPEDBS57bPrXKbe3IoBcYziN2m4IXTZIzFRdC5RRnfRlGGiXKtTRFndvu6E/s1600/RoofPal+Marketing+blog+-+Lamons+Gasket+Co+03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7YJy3s7QdTF4GxYvouXTsGSOt690NF8gYsUUAZsSN3-2mgnhw5v9sjgIlo0K3mp1CWINVvih4z6X7AH2bdPEDBS57bPrXKbe3IoBcYziN2m4IXTZIzFRdC5RRnfRlGGiXKtTRFndvu6E/s200/RoofPal+Marketing+blog+-+Lamons+Gasket+Co+03.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">In 2006, New York City artist </span><a href="http://www.scottlobaido.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Scott LoBaido</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> 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 </span><a href="http://www.lamons.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Lamons Gasket Co.</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> 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.</span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkU4r6aOMFu6R5CidlZSG9CGWo-DwryTRZp_AnvTYXvkXTWv8Br__1KAU6ZY17B5uHwINkMXetu7CfZoziwYLHjqcJAZL8V_aj_JdtqWSXG9tHtk9p5ihE20v6ht8T6oUMpbJKhs4RS2w/s1600/RoofPal+Marketing+blog+-+Lamons+Gasket+Co+02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkU4r6aOMFu6R5CidlZSG9CGWo-DwryTRZp_AnvTYXvkXTWv8Br__1KAU6ZY17B5uHwINkMXetu7CfZoziwYLHjqcJAZL8V_aj_JdtqWSXG9tHtk9p5ihE20v6ht8T6oUMpbJKhs4RS2w/s200/RoofPal+Marketing+blog+-+Lamons+Gasket+Co+02.jpg" width="200" /></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Although the project cost nearly $50,000, the free publicity </span><a href="http://www.scottlobaido.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">LoBaido</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> and </span><a href="http://www.lamons.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Lamons Gasket</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> 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.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Similarly, in June 2011 the tile roofing crew of <a href="http://www.istuetaroofing.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Istueta Roofing</span></a> 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!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Here is the original full-length video:</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/sj0_42COHRc" width="560"></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Amazingly, this is <strong>not</strong> prominently featured on their website. Truly a lost opportunity to capitalize on a viral video.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">The bottom line is that viral marketing isn't just about making a funny video to upload to </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">YouTube</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">. 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 </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/articles/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">articles</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, blogging, </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/video/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">video blogs</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, social media, local news stations, and more. It doesn't always happen overnight, but in the end it can really pay off.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>What ideas do you have to virally market a roofing business?</strong></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-53739800487045481832012-07-03T07:10:00.003-07:002012-07-03T07:10:36.708-07:00Grow your roofing business with video blogs and video brochures<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Jzyb4avfNWg" width="420"></iframe><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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?</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Video blogs can serve multiple purposes for your roofing company:</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They enable you to more effectively, efficiently and consistently communicate information to your customers.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In just 3-5 minutes you can communicate all of the benefits of a particular roof system you are bidding.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can highlight the qualifications and accomplishments of your roofing company that otherwise get lost in your proposals or website.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With the proper title, description and tags, potential customers in your service area have a better chance of <a href="http://youtu.be/0GjW3Sze1_I" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">finding your company online</span></a> when <a href="http://youtu.be/C6qQJJ2dm-w" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">performing a Google search</span></a>, since videos (especially those uploaded to YouTube) are now ranking higher than many older, established web pages and online documents.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">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 <a href="http://youtu.be/BKDiML-_7to" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">QR Code</span></a> that launches your </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/video/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">video blog</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They are ideal for sharing on social media and expanding on messages in email newsletters without the addition of pages of unwanted text.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can play them on a loop from a DVD in your reception area or at trade shows.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And the best part is that customers can watch them anywhere, any time at their convenience.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Video blogs can be a huge time saver for your sales staff:</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">By incorporating </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/video/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">video blogs</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> 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.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><b><span style="color: yellow;">RoofPal produces video blogs</span></b> 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 </span></span><a href="http://roofpal.com/video/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">completely personalized for your roofing company</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">We can also develop </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/video/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">custom video blogs</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> on any roof system you need, for a large bid you are preparing, or a short video brochure or commercial for your roofing company.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">If you have any questions about creating or putting video blogs to work for your roofing company, please feel free to </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/connect/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">contact RoofPal</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> any time.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: x-small;">This episode of the </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/4-free-stuff/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-small;">RoofPal Marketing Podcast</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: x-small;"> is brought to you by </span><a href="http://www.thecontractorsalliance.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-small;">The Contractors Alliance</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: x-small;">. 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 </span><a href="mailto:Info@TheContractorsAlliance.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-small;">Info@TheContractorsAlliance.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: x-small;">, or by visiting them online at </span><a href="http://www.thecontractorsalliance.com/"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-small;">TheContractorsAlliance.com</span></a></span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">.</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/m_cjaIG0Yn8" width="420"></iframe><br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-77442413976523234482012-06-24T14:06:00.003-07:002012-06-24T14:06:32.443-07:00Stop selling! Social media is for creating awareness and developing relationships<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/LTvyd5B0l-0" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Social media marketing is very different than traditional marketing. You shouldn't login with the </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">intent to sell your roofing services. Instead, look to create relationships. If people feel you are </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">part of their community they will support you and recommend your company to their colleagues, family </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">and friends.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: yellow;"><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Here are 5 tips for getting started on creating relationships with existing and potential roofing </strong></span><span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>customers using social media:</strong></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Dedicate Resources</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Building relationships in social media requires both time AND people. At least one person needs to be </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">responsible for communicating with those you are connected to, including reading status updates, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tweets, and blog posts; writing comments, joining groups, uploading photos and videos, participating in </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">discussion forums, writing and sharing blog posts, responding to questions, etc.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Be Real</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Building relationships in social media is predicated on trust and familiarity. Be yourself, and let </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">your employees be themselves as representatives of your roofing company. Creating a stale, robotic </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">profile and only posting sales messages and links to your website or blog are pointless activities, and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">honestly a complete waste of time. You want to discover a suitable mix of personality and </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">professionalism.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Communicate Early & Often</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It doesn't matter if you send email newsletters, write blog posts, update your status, send Tweets, or </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">post to a group discussion - just be sure you are actively communicating. Get a jump start on topics </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">that are hot in the industry and respond to them earlier than your competitors. Communicating often </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">helps to build relationships with your audience so they can trust you will be there and will inform </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">them of the valuable information they need or are looking for.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Get Involved</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Engage your connections with questions and provide relevant context to what you post. People will start </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">to ignore you if what you post isn't a two-way conversation. Get involved - if people are looking for </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">assistance, point them in the right direction when you can or introduce them to someone who can. If </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">someone posts something funny, interesting or personal, "Like" it, comment on it, re-Tweet it, etc. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Show them you are interested in what they have to say as well.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Remember to Listen</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Building a relationship requires that you listen more and talk less. As much as you want to spend time </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">promoting your roofing services, that is actually the last thing you should do on social media. It is </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">amazing what you can learn just by listening to what your customers are saying. Take the time to read </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">their posts, the comments they leave on your blog, their Tweets, what they say in reviews, etc. This </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">will help you understand their needs, concerns and interests.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you have any questions about creating relationships with roofing customers on social media or would like help coming up </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">with a social media strategy for your roofing company, please feel free to <a href="http://roofpal.com/connect/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">contact RoofPal</span></a> any time.</span></span></span><br />
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<em><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial;">This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by <a href="http://www.thecontractorsalliance.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">The Contractors Alliance</span></a>. Diversify your service </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">offerings by integrating <a href="http://www.thecontractorsalliance.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Conklin reflective cool roof coatings</span></a>, foam, single-ply and other systems into </span><span style="font-family: Arial;">your roofing business. For more information please contact <a href="http://www.thecontractorsalliance.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Stan Volkman</span></a> at (612) 750-6639, via email at </span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><a href="mailto:Info@TheContractorsAlliance.com"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Info@TheContractorsAlliance.com</span></a>, or by visiting them online at <a href="http://thecontractorsalliance.com/"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">TheContractorsAlliance.com</span></a>.</span></span></span></em><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/m_cjaIG0Yn8" width="420"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-8405745025846803012012-06-11T11:40:00.001-07:002012-06-20T05:21:45.145-07:00How to find potential roofing customer contact information online (Part 1)<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Mgaa8sH7O_I" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next, I do a Google search for "commercial property management" plus each city name in their service area. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I copy and paste the company name, website URL, address, and general phone and fax number into the spreadsheet as I find them. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sometimes you can also find aggregation sites or directories that have many of these companies listed in one document or page.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>You now have enough direct contact information to execute an extremely targeted cold call and/or direct mail campaign.</b></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">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.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: yellow;">In future podcast episodes</span></b><span style="color: white;"> (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.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><span style="color: yellow;">If you have any questions</span></b><span style="color: white;"> about finding potential roofing customers in your service area online or would like assistance doing so, please </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/connect/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">contact RoofPal</span></a><span style="color: white;"> any time.</span></span><br />
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<i style="background-color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by <a href="http://hail-track.com/?ap_id=roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Hail-Track</span></a>. Hail-Track combines <a href="http://hail-track.com/?ap_id=roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">real-time storm maps</span></a> 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 </span><a href="http://hail-track.com/?ap_id=roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Hail-Track.com</span></a></span><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-89641228925942798572012-06-07T14:04:00.000-07:002012-06-20T05:23:53.550-07:00Why you should share pictures and videos of roofing jobs on social media in real-time<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/XafXymC3fAw" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">There is so much great content a roofing company can share on social media beyond direct sales messages or links to their website, blog posts, manufacturer product information, or </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">miscellaneous industry-related articles.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the best ways to demonstrate your quality workmanship and scope of service offerings is to show potential customers the actual work you are doing, indirectly advertising your services by sharing pictures and short video clips of jobs you are working on.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The pictures you upload to your website are usually just the select few you are most proud of, and some may be a few years old. Most contractors don't prominently feature everyday 20-square shingle installations, routine maintenance work on a grocery store, or leak repairs at a warehouse.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For a roofing company, social media is great for updating the people you are connected to about what you are currently doing (as opposed to just sharing the best of what did in the past). It is a perfect forum to post a few pictures and even a 30-60 second video clip or two of the work you did earlier that day, or better yet - the work your company is doing right that moment.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow;">The first step</span></b><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"> is develop a habit of taking pictures and videos of the work you are doing. This can done easily with most modern digital cameras and cell phones.</span></span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow;">The second step</span></b><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"> is to determine which social media platform or platforms you will post them</span><span style="background-color: black;"> to, how often you'll do it, and how many pictures and videos you feel is appropriate to post per </span><span style="background-color: black;">day.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: yellow;">The third step</span></b><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is to decide who will post them - whether allowing someone on the crew to post on the company's behalf from a smartphone, or to have them email the pictures back to the office for review, selection, editing (if needed), and sharing online.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Regardless of who posts the pictures and videos, make sure to include brief descriptions </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">written in a way that would make sense to potential customers.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also, </span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: yellow;">don't forget</span></b><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to ask permission to tag the homeowner or company in the post. This is an excellent opportunity for virtual word-of-mouth advertising, as everyone they are connected to can see the quality work you are doing for someone they know.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Taking pictures and video clips also provides you with great content to share with the customer offline, giving them </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a first-hand look at what exactly was wrong, how you went about fixing it, and the quality of your finished work.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: yellow;">One other benefit</span></b><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to developing a habit of documenting the work you do with photos and short video clips is that, over time, you develop an extensive database of content to use for your website, blog posts, video blogs, sales presentations, brochures, and other marketing materials.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: yellow;">Something I often recommend</span></b><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is to watermark pictures with your company logo so other companies don't use them as their own. If you aren't sure how to do this, please feel free to contact me - I would be happy to show you how.</span></span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: yellow;"><span style="background-color: black;">If you have any questions</span></span></b><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> about real-time social sharing or would like assistance setting up a structured, repeatable process for your roofing company, please </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/connect/" style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">contact RoofPal</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> any time.</span><br />
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<i style="background-color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by <a href="http://hail-track.com/?ap_id=roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Hail-Track</span></a>. Hail-Track combines <a href="http://hail-track.com/?ap_id=roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">real-time storm maps</span></a> 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 </span><a href="http://hail-track.com/?ap_id=roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Hail-Track.com</span></a></span><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-27861704929033118392012-05-29T06:45:00.000-07:002012-05-29T07:02:48.885-07:00Internal links improve SEO for roofing websites and blogs [+ video]<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/8jbYu7XvaBo" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An internal link is a hyperlink in an online document, web page or blog post that, when clicked, takes the visitor to another section of that same document, page or post, or to an entirely different document, web page or blog post within the same domain.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Here are four reasons why effective use of internal links in your roofing company's website and blog is absolutely critical for </span><a href="http://roofpal.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-roofing-contractor-social-media.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">search engine optimization</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">:</span></span><br />
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<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Internal linking tells search engines that you think the document, web page or blog post you are linking to contains valuable content. Basically, if you aren't endorsing your own content, why should anyone else think it's important?</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Internal linking enhances the visitor's experience. Leading potential customers to </span><a href="http://roofpal.blogspot.com/2012/04/how-roofing-contractors-can-improve.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">other related content</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> within your website or blog will give them more of the valuable information they need to decide whether or not they should contact your company for roofing jobs.</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Internal linking reduces your bounce rates. When someone views a web page or blog post, giving them additional related pages to link to will reduce the amount of times they visit just one page and then leave your site. Low bounce rates help your web pages and blog posts rank higher with search engines.</span></li>
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<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Internal linking improves indexing. Helping search engines easily travel from one web page or blog post to the next enables indexing to happen faster than normal. Indexing web pages and online documents is a huge part of what allows search engines to display results for a search query so quickly. The better and faster they can index your website or blog, the higher your individual pages and posts will rank when people search for roofing services in your area.</span></li>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I recommend incorporating internal links into new web pages and blog posts to similar content throughout your website and blog as you create them. And as soon as you publish a page or post, your next step should be to go create at least two </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/2012/05/29/does-your-roofing-website-and-blog-make-good-use-of-internal-links/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">internal links coming in</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> to that new web page or blog post from other existing pages or posts (where it makes sense).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can you have too many internal links? Well, too much of anything is bad. Having no internal links is obviously not good, and having too many isn't good either, so you need to strike a balance.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I recommend using 1 to 5 internal links for every 500 words you type. For example, if you have a 1,500 word blog post you should have between 3 and 15 links.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't normally recommend linking more than one word or word groupings to the exact same destination page, post or document, but sometimes it is helpful if what you are linking to has multiple extremely relevant keywords.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">If you have any questions about internal linking or search engine optimization, or would like help with creating content for your roofing company's website or blog, please feel free to </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/connect/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">contact RoofPal</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> any time.</span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">This episode of the </span><a href="http://roofpal.com/4-free-stuff/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal Marketing Podcast</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> is brought to you by </span><a href="http://www.dataforma.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Dataforma</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">. With their best-in-class </span><a href="http://www.dataforma.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">web-based business management services</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, Dataforma can help you to run a more </span><a href="http://www.dataforma.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">profitable roofing business</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">. For more information, please call (866) 764-9992 or visit them online at </span></span><a href="http://www.dataforma.com/" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">www.Dataforma.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span></span></i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZIrko2f8TJToPYfq6ocjdzaOLeIr8BMdyfG1JELJtIt18HBpnOWn9CX5OGYbmC-bW_xCK3_frLAlr1zujI8vimwLz7F6Dt6f5mWtqe05OYYcJWnXfmq3GyCcCAD1s2mFN06vQo4nB8SI/s1600/Dataforma.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZIrko2f8TJToPYfq6ocjdzaOLeIr8BMdyfG1JELJtIt18HBpnOWn9CX5OGYbmC-bW_xCK3_frLAlr1zujI8vimwLz7F6Dt6f5mWtqe05OYYcJWnXfmq3GyCcCAD1s2mFN06vQo4nB8SI/s320/Dataforma.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<i><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-39097953763790661682012-05-21T12:24:00.001-07:002012-05-21T12:24:08.731-07:00How your roofing company can have a more successful direct mail and email marketing campaign<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pD_BAptQtyE" width="420"></iframe><br /><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Direct mail has the potential to reach people that are difficult to or simply cannot be reached online, but it costs money and the response rates are typically low. Email marketing is immediate and inexpensive, but open and click-through rates are often low and if done poorly can flag your domain as spam to internet service providers.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If your roofing company has experienced failure in direct mail or email marketing campaigns, it is likely a result of a combination of factors:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>You might be targeting the wrong prospects</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The most critical factor for successful email and direct mail marketing is targeting people who match the profiles of your best customers. Marketing to people who don't have a strong interest in what you have to offer (or don't have the authority to purchase) is a waste of time and money.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Your message might not stand out</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When potential customers are sorting their mail, size definitely matters. Small postcards are cheap to print and send, but they are also more likely to be dwarfed by the larger pieces of mail. To make sure your direct mail isn't thrown away without being looked at, think big. Oversized postcards are more expensive to print and send, but they are more likely to get noticed.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Your message might be all about you</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If everything you present is all about you and how great your company is, people will tune out. Instead, try focusing on benefits for the customer, what's in it for them and why they should care about your offer.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>You may have misspelled or incorrect names</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If the recipient's name is listed incorrectly, it will immediately be deleted or go into the shredder. Personalization is a great way to make messages more effective, but make sure you have the names correct.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Your message may be boring</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Being interactive isn't just for digital media. Direct mail pieces can slide, unfold and open to create an experience for the recipient. The ability to share content via social media, weigh in on a poll question, or watch an embedded video featuring bonus content in an email or via QR Code on print is rarely used but extremely effective. Interaction gives the recipient a reason to engage with your marketing piece.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Your timing might be bad</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Often, timing can be everything. Receiving your marketing piece just as there is a need can significantly impact their purchasing decision. Since you can't always predict when that is, frequency (within reason) is your best bet to keep you top-of-mind and stimulate action. If you send an email or postcard about emergency roof leak repairs two months before a storm hits, there is no urgency. If you have your campaign ready to go out two days before a massive rainstorm, monsoon, hail storm, or hurricane is forecasted, they will receive your message exactly when they have a need.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>You may be taking the "shotgun" approach</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Smart marketers know how to target who exactly gets their emails and direct mail pieces by more than just geography or location. Develop and then use real analytics with your mailing list. Everything you know about your current and potential customers should go into a searchable database that you can use to segment your list based on the message you are about to send.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>You might not be contacting them frequently enough</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It takes more than one email or postcard for your company to get noticed. Try sending out different messages with unique offers in different formats to become memorable and non-repetitive.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Your message may have no sense of urgency</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Try putting an expiration on your offer four to six weeks after they receive it in order to create a sense of urgency.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>You may be trying to say too much</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't write a novel or make the reader work to figure out exactly what your message or "ask" is. Going through the mail and reading unsolicited emails is not the highlight of anyone's day. You have an extremely limited amount of time to get someone's attention, so get to the point.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you have sent out unsuccessful direct mail or email campaigns before, here is the order of importance to figure out what went wrong and correct your mistake(s) the next time:</span><br />
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<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Improve your list.</span></strong> Make sure you are targeting the right people and that names are correct (and spelled correctly).</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Improve your content.</span></strong> Get to the point with a well-written, easy to read, relevant, compelling, time-sensitive offer that the reader quickly understands what the value is to them.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Improve the physical look.</span></strong> Make sure your email or direct mail piece looks professional, is appropriate for what you are communicating, and is well designed.</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you have any questions about direct mail or email marketing, would like feedback on a campaign you are about to launch (or have recently launched) or would like assistance planning your next campaign, please <a href="http://roofpal.com/connect/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">contact RoofPal</span></a> any time. We can help you build and <span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">improve your mailing list, actually write the content or even design and coordinate printing of the physical piece for you. For more, please visit <a href="http://www.roofpal.com/"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">www.RoofPal.com</span></a>.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by </span></em><a href="http://www.gmdgraphics.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-small;"><em>GMD Graphics</em></span></a><em><span style="font-size: x-small;"> - your one-stop solution for everything from brochures to yard signs, apparel, vehicle wraps and more. GMD Graphics designs, prints and ships directly to you anywhere nationwide. For a free quote please call (602) 774-3600, email </span></em></span><a href="mailto:Info@GMDGraphics.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>Info@GMDGraphics.com</em></span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em> or visit them online at </em></span><a href="http://www.gmdgraphics.com/"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>www.GMDGraphics.com</em></span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><em>.</em></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAA4FIFJqmIiiWiK-_1762r5432vPM_f1pEVoIJCKKtTmRSuimxP9kfIk5zN5CEdMAGHraOwVRsbO66T16rVXTKn9cjVpOepGIxiyWbSh28bIQwnRYhP3zV0gC4AJy7LV__P_sNmXkkhU/s1600/Slide1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAA4FIFJqmIiiWiK-_1762r5432vPM_f1pEVoIJCKKtTmRSuimxP9kfIk5zN5CEdMAGHraOwVRsbO66T16rVXTKn9cjVpOepGIxiyWbSh28bIQwnRYhP3zV0gC4AJy7LV__P_sNmXkkhU/s320/Slide1.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-25480252634285187272012-05-09T06:08:00.003-07:002012-05-09T06:08:49.894-07:00Simple yet effective strategy for getting quality roofing leads<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2OnIKT860Eh0ummXcJU6MJFyVIx_Dw0d5n2oPxst9-FYfyabt2cMU6xAke6i2Hg1hnKWMLhwzf7CF2Kq-Z63qOrd0V30VVZMpbzjGNN7mnFunt3AIzFogcpPo8o0b0w_9xtVzmxGR1Us/s1600/RoofPal+-+Simple+yet+effective+strategy+for+getting+quality+roofing+job+leads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2OnIKT860Eh0ummXcJU6MJFyVIx_Dw0d5n2oPxst9-FYfyabt2cMU6xAke6i2Hg1hnKWMLhwzf7CF2Kq-Z63qOrd0V30VVZMpbzjGNN7mnFunt3AIzFogcpPo8o0b0w_9xtVzmxGR1Us/s320/RoofPal+-+Simple+yet+effective+strategy+for+getting+quality+roofing+job+leads.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>MARKETING QUICK TIP</strong></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nothing is more powerful than the recommendation of someone you know and trust, right? Does your roofing company proactively ask for testimonials and referrals? This is a simple yet effective strategy for developing quality leads for roofing jobs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial;"><strong>How to do this</strong></span></div>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">After every job you do, ask the customer for a brief testimonial (hand written or typed, via email, on social media, write down what they say over the phone, - whatever works for them).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">On your website or blog, include the customer's testimonial along with a brief description of the work you did and one "before", one "during" and one "after" picture of the job. Email them a link and ask them to share it with their friends, family and co-workers (via social media or even email).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial;"><strong>Take it a step further</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Post the link to the web page or blog post to your social media profiles (<a href="http://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Facebook</span></a>, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Twitter</span></a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/chris-walker/33/713/845" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">LinkedIn</span></a>, <a href="https://plus.google.com/#105032232739933169538/posts" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Google+</span></a>, etc.). Ask the customer if it OK to tag them in the post before doing so.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial;"><strong>Questions?</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">If you have any questions about creative things to do with testimonials or referrals to get higher quality leads on roofing jobs, please email </span><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-79407002864088636032012-05-07T05:59:00.000-07:002012-05-07T07:14:42.484-07:00How roofing contractors can use QR Codes to advertise and sell more jobs<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BKDiML-_7to" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A hot trend in mobile technology is QR, or "Quick Response" Codes, which are two-dimensional bar codes that can be scanned by cameras on a web-enabled device like a smartphone or tablet to automatically pull up websites, forms, documents, photos, videos, audio, and more. QR Codes can also add calendar events, contact information and digital business cards to another person’s address book, as well as initiate phone calls and text & SMS messages.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">They were originally created by Toyota subsidiary </span><a href="http://www.denso-wave.com/qrcode/index-e.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Denso-Wave</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> in 1994 to track vehicle parts in manufacturing, but the practical uses today are nearly endless. Now, there are other similar types of codes such as </span><a href="http://tag.microsoft.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Microsoft Tags</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> and </span><a href="http://pages.jagtag.com/jagtag-barcode-marketing-kit/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">JAGTAG</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, but this post will focus specifically on QR Codes.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial;"><strong>How to create and scan QR Codes</strong></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP7HgeLbwODchE8OTvUxIMk-hUEemQcbCp-suvFx31Nhk9GrCm5lKIO08Lu1i9VmxUIpQXEyxkWyF-KRG_5eplDGQnxcj7ci84yWEibxQa5lQXgJIHhQfqyVe8Z9cMHuKq7uasJLnWZLw/s1600/RoofPal+-+How+roofing+contractors+can+use+QR+Codes+and+QR+Code+technology.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjP7HgeLbwODchE8OTvUxIMk-hUEemQcbCp-suvFx31Nhk9GrCm5lKIO08Lu1i9VmxUIpQXEyxkWyF-KRG_5eplDGQnxcj7ci84yWEibxQa5lQXgJIHhQfqyVe8Z9cMHuKq7uasJLnWZLw/s200/RoofPal+-+How+roofing+contractors+can+use+QR+Codes+and+QR+Code+technology.png" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Perform a Google search for the term “QR Code generator” or "create QR code" and you'll find hundreds of websites to create QR Codes. I recommend </span><a href="http://www.qrcode.kaywa.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Kaywa</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> because it is quick, easy and free to use. </span><a href="http://www.icandy.ricohinnovations.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">iCandy</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> is a bit more robust, helping you track scans and perform advanced analytics – but it's more involved and probably not great for those just starting out. </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Several QR Code reader apps can be downloaded for free to any smart phone or tablet. Search for "QR Code" or "barcode scanner" in the application store of your phone or tablet and you'll find several of them. I use </span><a href="http://www.redlaser.com/application/qr-codes/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">RedLaser</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> and </span><a href="http://www.google.com/mobile/goggles/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Google Goggles</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> and they both work great.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>How can a roofing contractor use QR Codes?</strong></span><br />
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<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You could include a QR Code on your brochures, door hangers, yard signs, or even on your service vehicles that, when scanned, launches a 30-second commercial, a customer's video or audio testimonial, or even an online form to request a roof inspection or repair work.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">You can put QR Codes on printed proposals, in articles, or on trade show materials that launch a video blog explaining the benefits of a certain product or roof system, how warranties work, or the importance of roof cleaning and maintenance to help communicate more effectively than you could in print. Please visit </span><a href="http://youtube.com/RoofPal"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">YouTube.com/RoofPal</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> for examples of video blogs.</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A QR Code could be printed on a sticker that you place on a roof hatch so the building's maintenance professional contacts you directly when there is a leak, when the roof requires cleaning or maintenance, when it might be time to evaluate re-roofing, or even so they can access basic information about the roof warranty. The same can be done with refrigerator or garage door magnets for residential roofs.</span></li>
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<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Try putting a QR Code on your business cards to make it easy for people to upload your contact information into their phone.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">At trade shows or networking events, you could put one on your name tag that takes them directly to your </span><a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/chris-walker/33/713/845" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">LinkedIn</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, </span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Facebook</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, </span><a href="https://plus.google.com/#105032232739933169538/posts" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Google+</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> or </span><a href="http://www.twitter.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Twitter</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> profile to make it really simple to connect online right there while you are talking to them.</span></span></li>
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</span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></ul>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I do NOT recommend creating QR Codes that simply take someone to the home page of your website. And in most cases, don't post them online either - that's what hyperlinks are for. If the person is already online, don't make them pull out a smartphone to scan their computer screen.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The bottom line is that QR Codes are still new enough that not everyone is using them... yet. If you begin integrating them now to engage with customers and make contacting and dealing with your roofing company easier, you will be ahead of the curve and will have the opportunity to generate additional revenue in a very inexpensive - if not completely free way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">If you have any questions about using </span><a href="http://youtu.be/BKDiML-_7to" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">QR Codes in the roofing industry</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, or would like help developing and implementing a QR Code strategy, please contact me any time at <a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"></a><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com."><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a>.</span></span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: x-small;">The RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by </span><a href="http://www.gmdgraphics.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-size: x-small;">GMD Graphics</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-size: x-small;"> - your one-stop solution for graphic design, business cards, brochures, door hangers, yard signs, apparel, vehicle wraps, promotional items, and more. GMD Graphics can design, print and ship directly to you anywhere nationwide. For a free quote on your advertising needs, please call (602) 774-3600, email </span></span></em><a href="mailto:Info@GMDGraphics.com"><em><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Info@GMDGraphics.com</span></em></a><em><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> or visit them online at </span></em><a href="http://www.gmdgraphics.com/"><em><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">www.GMDGraphics.com</span></em></a><em><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">.</span></em><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3MhCeR-6X6nki8j1oW165gdLgbjxSSq-3KfO_i9RBiulAh30ogHDC8nFd3jra7wEG0jI4XBcVDJNEWoa6IWgZwn-eFbZWNcqgHfdK1g1IeIKEXc1Q_5eI7BaQi16Co43f9yqR41ahl3s/s1600/RoofPal+Marketing+Podcast+-+Episode+006+-+GMD+Graphics+slide.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3MhCeR-6X6nki8j1oW165gdLgbjxSSq-3KfO_i9RBiulAh30ogHDC8nFd3jra7wEG0jI4XBcVDJNEWoa6IWgZwn-eFbZWNcqgHfdK1g1IeIKEXc1Q_5eI7BaQi16Co43f9yqR41ahl3s/s320/RoofPal+Marketing+Podcast+-+Episode+006+-+GMD+Graphics+slide.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-11758241900905996402012-04-28T13:25:00.001-07:002012-05-01T16:36:22.350-07:00How roofing contractors can improve their social search rankings [+video]<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0GjW3Sze1_I" width="420"></iframe>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Search engine optimization (SEO) has been rapidly evolving over the past few years. For example, in October 2009 Google first introduced its social search strategy, and have since introduced the +1 button and the Google+ social media platform. These three things alone have to some degree minimalized the value of traditional SEO practices.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With more than a 60% market share in web search, Google remains king so like them or not, you need to play by their rules. How does a roofing contractor like yourself get the search rankings you need at a time when the rules are evolving so rapidly? Here are five things you can do right now:</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Content</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first is content. Despite the rapid pace of change, one thing that has remained constant and is actually now more true than ever before is that good, relevant content is still the most important thing when it comes to SEO. Your roofing company should be committed to regularly producing high quality content.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Content Diversity</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The second is content diversity. A traditionally optimized website is no longer enough to rank well for top industry keywords. In addition to text, you also need to produce video and photo content that is also optimized with proper tags and descriptions. Downloadable content like eBooks, slideshows and white papers can also be indexed, and help tell search engines that you are a producer of good, relevant, diverse content for the roofing industry.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Google's +1 Button</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The third is Google's +1 button, which when clicked is a signal to Google that someone thinks your content is valuable. Just having this button on your website's home page isn't enough. Every piece of content you produce, including every page of your roofing website should have social sharing buttons, and especially the +1 button.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Social Sharing</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fourth is social sharing. Sharing content across various social media platforms has become extremely influential in rankings for all search engines, who now track how much your content is shared by others. Social sharing buttons on everything you produce (even in your email newsletters) is incredibly important to make it easy for people to do so.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Everyone Works in Marketing</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fifth is your marketing department. Content sharing is so important that everyone who works for your roofing company needs to pitch in. If all of your employees share your company's blog posts, YouTube videos, Tweets, and Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn posts across their own social networks, it turns the entire company into a marketing department.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The takeaway is that social search is here to stay. Producing good, quality, diverse content that is shared frequently <span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">by different people across social media is how you will get found online b<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">efore your competitors when people in your area search for roofing services.</span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you would like to discuss this further, need </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">help getting started, or want to get your company to the next level, please feel free to email <a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a> any tim<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">e.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>This edition of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by <a href="http://www.kmcoatingsmfg.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">KM Coatings</span></a> - the last roof you'll ever need! KM Coatings has been manufacturing high quality, energy efficient reflective roof coatings since 1986. For more information or learn how to become a certified installer, please visit </em></span><a href="http://www.kmcoatingsmfg.com/"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>http://www.KMCoatingsMfg.com</em></span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>.</em></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-55941308270589876742012-04-26T07:42:00.000-07:002012-04-26T11:08:08.102-07:00Use your roofing competitor's own marketing materials against them to win jobs<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As I was scrolling through my </span><a href="http://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Facebook</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> news feed this morning, I came across this instructional video from Firestone that a roofing contractor posted to his customers to educate them as to how they install the RubberGard EPDM rubber roofing membrane systems they sell:</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QmuJIL1vj0o" width="420"></iframe>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Full disclosure before I proceed:</span></strong> quite a few of my clients (roofing contractors and roofing material manufacturers) are involved with roof coatings and foam roof systems, so I am a bit predisposed to the benefits those systems tout. I also have a professional background in industrial engineering and process optimization, so I tend to look for even the smallest inefficiencies, rework, potential for process/system failures, labor and material waste, etc.</span></span></span></em></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Honestly, I was blown away that a roofing contractor would share a video like this, or that the manufacturer would put it on YouTube. Here's why...</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">To the naked eye, this video seems like something I would absolutely want to show my potential roofing customers. Professionally shot and edited by the manufacturer, it features two well-groomed, clean-cut, seemingly caucasion roofers installing a complex yet waterproof roofing system that will last for years to come. This helps my customers to validate their decision to hire a professional roofing contractor, right? Well, yes... and no.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white; font-family: Arial;">T</span><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">here are always two sides to every coin. If I am your competitor and am alternatively recommending </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">a seamless, energy efficient low-slope roofing system such as </span></span></span><a href="http://youtu.be/aW7bzQtlNYw" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">reflective roof coatings</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (including </span><a href="http://youtu.be/-_iWy6I7xZ0" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">restoration coating systems</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) and/or a </span><a href="http://youtu.be/7vro6Xy9LJQ" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">spray polyurethane foam</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (SPF) roof system, I would be equally if not <em>more</em> motivated to show the customer we are each competing for work from this same video. Why? Because the flaws of your system and the selling points of my system become even more obvious when they are compared side-by-side.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">After watching the video above and considering the opportunities for failure (leaks), how labor intensive it is, the cost of the materials, lack of energy efficiency benefits, the need for tear-off (landfill impact, additional cost), etc., what happens when that same customer we are competing for hears all of this while watching that video, then watches something like this, which is even amateurly shot...</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"></span></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/fzltjjuwIXA" width="420"></iframe><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">
</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">... followed up by a video that explains all the other benefits such as energy efficiency, no tear-off or landfill impact, less labor costs, less expensive material costs, etc. like this one:</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5k5nmLNJeXc" width="420"></iframe><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">
</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">There are even more egregious examples such as this one on torch applied roofing systems, which show the customer you are using a lit blowtorch on their roof:</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/YKkqAtkdczs" width="420"></iframe><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">
</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">or even this one on installing an EPDM ballasted system, which shows all the complexities and potential failures of the first video, but this one adds river rock (i.e., landscaping) on their roof:</span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/g4Ha7EVyxfw" width="420"></iframe><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>The marketing message here is two-fold:</strong></span><br />
<ol><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">
</span>
<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Use your competitors' marketing materials against them</span></li>
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<li><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Make sure you have a rebuttal for any negatives your competitors could point out about the roof system you are proposing, and proactively address them</span></li>
</ol>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't let your competition have the final word with your customer about the pro's and con's of the roofing systems being bid. Make sure you are being proactive with great content to share, specific selling points, well thought-out rebuttals, and an explanation of the benefits, pricing, and more for any system you propose.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">If you have any questions or would like some assistance developing marketing packages that address these points for the roofing systems you install, please comment below or feel free to email me at </span><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-15473633155662688232012-04-22T18:14:00.001-07:002012-04-22T22:12:42.796-07:00How roofing contractor social media connections affect search results<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/C6qQJJ2dm-w" width="420"></iframe><br />
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;">Everyone's search results in Google, Yahoo! and Bing are different based on not only where they are searching, but also by who they are connected to on social media. </span><span style="background-color: black;">This is because search engine algorithms assume that because you and I are connected, my content should be more influential to your search results than the content of people you aren't connected to.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For example, if you follow <a href="http://www.twitter.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">@RoofPal</span></a> on Twitter or are friends with '<a href="http://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal Chris</span></a>' on Facebook and do a Google search for 'roofing article writing', several articles I have written for roofing contractors will come up in the first few pages.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;">Using Conklin Roofing Systems Independent Business Owner <a href="http://www.worksmarternotharder.info/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Randy Patton</span></a> as as example, the first three listings in his Google search results are RoofPal articles because we are connected on multiple social media networks. </span><span style="background-color: black;">But if you are not connected to RoofPal in any way and do a Google search for '<a href="http://roofpal.com/articles/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">roofing article writing</span></a>', some of my articles will come up, but not nearly as many.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow;"><strong>So what does this mean for your roofing company?</strong></span></span><br />
<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Roofing contractors can now directly influence the search engine results of the people they are connected to, even when they aren't looking for your company.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Traditional SEO practices are no longer as important as they used to be. My top results for a search term will be different than yours even if we are in the same geographic area because we are connected to different people online.</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">There is now a greater incentive to grow your social networks as large as </span>possible. By simply connecting with a prospective roofing customer, you are effectively getting free targeted advertising because your content often will rank higher than your competitors who aren't connected to them.</span></span></span></li>
</ol>
<span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;">The takeaway is to connect with as many of your existing and prospective customers as you can on all the social media platforms you participate on. </span><span style="background-color: black;">To make this work even better, put a link to your profile page for each social network you participate on in the footer of your emails, on your blog and website, and anywhere else it makes sense.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em><span style="color: white;">This edition of the <a href="http://www.roofpal.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal Marketing Podcast</span></a> is brought you by <a href="http://www.monkeyrackproductsllc.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Monkeyrack</span></a> - the ultimate <a href="http://www.monkeyrackproductsllc.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">extension ladder stabilization</span></a> tool. The Monkeyrack improves ladder safety practices by securing any 1A industrial grade extension ladder through to a standard 2” receiver hitch. For more information and for pricing, please visi</span>t </em></span></span><a href="http://www.monkeyrackproductsllc.com/"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>www.MonkeyrackProductsLLC.com</em></span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">-</span><br /><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QzredhLtOc0" width="420"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-87634507192590106522012-04-18T04:52:00.000-07:002012-04-18T04:52:54.603-07:00What should roofing companies blog about?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlj_WT-gcXeLjGW5JjPe1GKnzWVcy9zRprlbWYn8V9bF0We9LgHe620f8padI4xLe50iEqMUUsuuyoP_3QoA0Rk4z04Uv3JPT1cOX1-BkB2-raCZAHCvYxvPrIa1gWnjSUSkLxw7_DXDg/s1600/RoofPal+-+What+should+roofing+companies+blog+about.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlj_WT-gcXeLjGW5JjPe1GKnzWVcy9zRprlbWYn8V9bF0We9LgHe620f8padI4xLe50iEqMUUsuuyoP_3QoA0Rk4z04Uv3JPT1cOX1-BkB2-raCZAHCvYxvPrIa1gWnjSUSkLxw7_DXDg/s200/RoofPal+-+What+should+roofing+companies+blog+about.png" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here are five things to keep in mind when writing posts for your roofing company's blog:</span><br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. Know who you are you writing for</span></strong><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't try to make a blog post appealing to everyone. Each blog post you write should be targeting a very specific demographic, such as "commercial facilities managers who may be looking for alternatives to re-roofing", or "homeowners who don't know what to do after a hail storm", etc. Try selecting 10 of your existing customers that most represent your target audience, then write blog posts with them in mind.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. Write about what your customers care about</span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">Your blog posts should be focused on answering questions that you believe your existing or potential roofing customers have, or solving problems they may be experiencing. For more on this, please also see my blog post titled '</span><a href="http://roofpal.blogspot.com/2012/03/is-your-roofing-website-optimized-for.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Is your roofing website optimized for the wrong things?</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">'. Start by writing down 20 common problems your customers have with their roofs and write about those (service work, new construction, re-roofing, etc.).</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>3. Write like a real person</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your blog posts should be your perspective on a particular topic, and in your voice. People don't connect with mass amounts of information - they connect with you, the author of the blog. Have a personality. Make an occassional joke. Don't be afraid to be yourself.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>4. Allow and encourage interaction</strong></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Offer your blog post readers an easy way to contact you, enable them to comment on your blog post and encourage them to do so. Also make sure there is a way they can share your blog posts with their connections on social media.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: yellow;"><strong>5.Don't hoard information</strong></span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't be afraid of your competitors stealing your ideas. Provide your honest insights on roofing issues and how to resolve them. Let your customers understand your thought process in recommending solutions for them using real-world examples.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Blogging is an investment</strong></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't be fooled - blogging is hard, time-consuming work but if you think of it as a long-term investment and are patient for the results to come it will really pay off. I recommend posting 1 or 2 blog posts per week. Trust me, there is no shortage of things to talk about if you really think about your customers' problems, how you met them, the last 20 jobs you did, etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">If you have any questions about blogging for your roofing company, please feel free to email me at </span><a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">. And if you have a blog already, please feel free to leave a link to it in the comments below.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com32tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-61680197551936677392012-04-16T05:32:00.000-07:002012-04-16T05:32:01.512-07:00Social media helps test email subject lines to improve open and click rates<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFr4pbpXThzSmfr_l3zjAI4NCPHQIgYwQ2v6bGj6EnKnfnu0O_zrvmTpnUCqsLCvcfx8gM9qTx8nxWiATeGcDQSujBnJXD5SV1FVnuEPep4B_ad71OkAK0XsX9BgOpFjhhiQwFlIGDqHc/s1600/RoofPal+-+How+social+media+can+help+to+test+email+subject+lines+and+improve+open+rate.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" nda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFr4pbpXThzSmfr_l3zjAI4NCPHQIgYwQ2v6bGj6EnKnfnu0O_zrvmTpnUCqsLCvcfx8gM9qTx8nxWiATeGcDQSujBnJXD5SV1FVnuEPep4B_ad71OkAK0XsX9BgOpFjhhiQwFlIGDqHc/s200/RoofPal+-+How+social+media+can+help+to+test+email+subject+lines+and+improve+open+rate.png" width="145" /></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you are looking to improve the open and click-through rates of emails your roofing company sends to out, one idea to increase the likelihood of success is to use social media to test out potential subject lines.</span><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Email subject lines are a major influence on whether or not someone even opens an email in the first place. They can either entice someone to click it or prompt them to delete it completely unread - or even worse, clicking the <span style="color: red;">dreaded SPAM button</span> (for more on preventing people from flagging your emails as SPAM, please see my blog post titled "</span><a href="http://www.roofpal.blogspot.com/.../reduce-spam-reports-of-your-marketing.html" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reduce Spam Reports of your Marketing Emails</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">").</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">I recommend <em>before</em> you send out a mass email or newsletter, test potential subject lines with your connections on social media. Using a URL shortening service like </span><a href="https://bitly.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">bitly</span></a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, </span><a href="http://goo.gl/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Google</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> or </span><a href="http://tinyurl.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">TinyURL</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, post multiple times in a close period of time to the exact same page but each time have a different description or "title" to the link, and have each one use its own unique shortened URL to the destination page so you can track in your analytics which one got you the most clicks.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial;"><strong>For example, here are Tweets for one of my own recent blog posts:</strong></span></div><ul><li><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">5 specific things to do that will help you get new #roofing customers from your social media accounts: </span><a href="http://t.co/kLDg3dNQ"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">http://t.co/kLDg3dNQ</span></a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">How you can get new #roofing customers from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn: </span><a href="http://t.co/kLDg3dNQ"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">http://t.co/kLDg3dNQ</span></a></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">5 specific ways to get new #roofing customers from social media: </span><a href="http://t.co/4FSs68cN"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">http://t.co/4FSs68cN</span></a><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"> [blog post]<span id="goog_1460875411"></span></span></span></span></li>
</ul><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Each of these links go to the exact same blog post, but in my blog analytics tool I can see exactly how many clicks came from each unique subject line/link combination. The one that ultimately performs the best will be what I base an upcoming <a href="http://roofpal.us2.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=30d9f69d2d7c57859fd4f3609&id=d933748c4a" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal eNews</span></a> email campaign subject line and podcast title on.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For your experiment, the one that resonates most with your social media connections in terms of a significantly higher amount of click-through's is going to likely be your best candidate for your actual email campaign.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">This strategy works particularly well on <a href="http://www.twitter.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Twitter</span></a> where people are used to seeing Tweets that lead them to click a link, but you can do the same thing on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Facebook</span></a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/chris-walker/33/713/845" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">LinkedIn</span></a>, <a href="https://plus.google.com/105032232739933169538" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Google+</span></a>, or any other social media platforms you participate on.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you decide to try this out, let me know how it goes for you. If you would like additional help planning this out or even executing it, please feel free to email </span><a href="mailto:Chris@RoofPal.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Chris@RoofPal.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Best of luck!</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-83920601572209816842012-04-09T06:54:00.000-07:002012-05-09T06:13:59.545-07:005 specific ways to get new roofing customers from social media<div style="text-align: center;">
<img border="0" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJavIpPIj1CulCgb9VyFTqXjpfPngZ2dHolM0vFd-MGS_WBTUTeoB1iuhOpmqz5zwIs0s8qnbwL7KsczNBWPx42VVsYd_u7G0T0YySzJzc3G4BnsmXdwKtOm6GEaEEOkrzKgGCssNNysA/s400/RoofPal+-+5+specific+ways+to+get+new+roofing+customers+from+social+media.jpg" width="400" /></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are several books and probably tens of thousands of web pages and blog posts vaguely describing concepts about converting social media connections to customers. I thought I would cut through the crap and give you 5 specific things to do that will help you get new roofing customers from your social media accounts.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Certainly there are plenty more things you can (and should) be doing to attract new business, but this is what I came up with on a Monday morning. I hope you try at least one of these today (and if you do, please leave a comment below with a link).</span></div>
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. Search for new customers</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On <a href="http://www.twitter.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Twitter</span></a>, especially when it is raining and after a big storm, do an advanced search for key terms such as "roof is leaking", "roof leak", "need a roofer", "recommend a roofer", "recommend a roofing", etc. within the appropriate radius (i.e., your service area) of the city you are based in.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reply to their Tweet with something like "Please let us know if there is anything we can do to help. Feel free to call ... or email ... to schedule a quick repair to stop the damage."</span></div>
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. Post interesting pictures</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On <a href="http://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Facebook</span></a>, posts with pictures drive twice as much engagement as text-only posts. I would recommend creating an <a href="http://instagr.am/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Instagram</span></a>, <a href="http://www.flickr.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Flickr</span></a> or similar photo sharing account, then post the best ones to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and any other social platform you are participating on. Explain what the picture is of, and why you think it is interesting.</span></div>
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. Make each social media platform different</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't post the exact same things to Facebook as you do on Twitter, <a href="https://plus.google.com/105032232739933169538" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Google+</span></a>, or <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/chris-walker/33/713/845" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">LinkedIn</span></a>. Once people begin to notice, most will only follow you on one platform since there is no difference anyway. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Define the purpose of each platform for your company and use it accordingly.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For me, LinkedIn is about finding new connections based on job title, industry, company name, etc. I use Twitter to share links and re-Tweet pictures of the work other contractors are doing that day. Facebook is a mix of pictures, blog posts, samples of work I am doing for other contractors, etc. I use Google+ purely for SEO benefits to my website and blog, so everything is about keyword optimization for sharing links to posts and pages.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I also reference what I'm doing on other platforms with a link. For example, on Twitter I posted recently: "On Facebook we have a good discussion about #roofing door hangers going on: </span><a href="http://vsb.li/R0K9mx"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://vsb.li/R0K9mx</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">" to entice people to check out the conversation, and if they aren't already connected with me on Facebook hopefully they would see there is something different going on there and send me a friend request. I do this kind of thing on all platforms periodically to attract cross-platform connections because some people are more willing to engage in certain ways and I want to make sure I have the opportunity to do so.</span></div>
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. Be personable</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Regardless of the platform, do not be robotic with your posts or responses to what others are posting. It is perfectly OK for people to visualize a real person posting updates or responding to questions.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Take the time to post originally (not from auto-posting services), Like a status, Re-Tweet, +1, and otherwise comment on things that people post (even if it has nothing to do with roofing). Social media is as much about building relationships and trust with people as it is about shouting into a megaphone "HIRE ME TO DO YOUR ROOFING!".</span></div>
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. Promote your customers</span></strong></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While your crew is working on a roofing job, do some homework on your customer. If it is a commercial job, write up a short blog post about what you did and how you helped keep that business running without the burden of roofing problems. Describe what the business does (you can get this from their website in most cases), and link to their website. Make this more about them than you.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Before you share the post, email your customer a link - both to make sure you have everything correct, and to ensure (s)he is OK with you posting it. Assuming it is fine to post, don't forget to ask him/her to share the link on their website, in their newsletter (if they have one) and with their social media connections as well. And if you can get a testimonial from them before you post it, all the better! This works really well to show potential customers that you aren't just about promoting yourself but that you go out of your way for others, and gives the connections of your customers a chance to get word-of-mouth advertising from someone they already trust.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>If you have any questions about roofing social media strategies, please email <a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a>. </strong></span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Best of luck!</strong></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-82139724920248802532012-03-30T13:20:00.000-07:002012-05-09T06:15:07.660-07:005 social media SEO strategies roofing contractors should do right now<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY7wP89wzedFOxAtGgi2T1bFWDIVdvmRUZN3xAzDh3vj0fjORxrSlnLC91s2624wL0S4u8K0AWZbnekYJ664hchiAPLfm3WDD1bQfAZA_zv4BauATnf0Jo3LlAOP8p8tA96awyTdFp8qU/s1600/RoofPal+-+5+social+media+SEO+strategies+roofing+contractors+should+do+right+now.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" dea="true" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY7wP89wzedFOxAtGgi2T1bFWDIVdvmRUZN3xAzDh3vj0fjORxrSlnLC91s2624wL0S4u8K0AWZbnekYJ664hchiAPLfm3WDD1bQfAZA_zv4BauATnf0Jo3LlAOP8p8tA96awyTdFp8qU/s200/RoofPal+-+5+social+media+SEO+strategies+roofing+contractors+should+do+right+now.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Social media should definitely be part of your roofing company's marketing strategy, and now is the time to harness the power of your accounts <em>specifically</em> to power your SEO strategy.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">Google has long relied on people to endorse relevant and useful links on the internet. Social </span>media has now magnified that tremendously, particularly now with Google Social Search becoming so important, enabling your website or blog post to jump from #50 otherwise into the top 5 in someone's search results page simply because someone they are connected to shares your link on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?ref=profile&id=100000575713024" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Facebook</span></a> or <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/chris-walker/33/713/845" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">LinkedIn</span></a>, gives it a +1 on <a href="https://plus.google.com/105032232739933169538" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Google+</span></a>, re-Tweet's it on <a href="http://twitter.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Twitter</span></a>, etc.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong>Here are 5 social media SEO strategies roofing contractors should do (or keep doing) right now:</strong></span><br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. Be more active on Google+</span></strong><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Google+ is here to stay for a while, and it is extremely useful for SEO. It's not as big as Twitter or Facebook, but it affects search results much more than the others.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. Establish even more connections online</span></strong><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Everything you write or share can be seen by those who you are connected to on social media, as well as in their search results. Although any connection is good, the biggest impact comes from people adding you to one of their Google+ circles. For more on this, please see my blog post '<a href="http://roofpal.blogspot.com/2011/06/social-media-directly-influences-search.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Social media directly influences search rankings</span></a>'.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">3. Post your articles, videos and blog posts immediately on social media</span></strong><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sharing your content on social media helps it get indexed by Google faster, so make sure you post new content you create across all platforms as soon as possible.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">4. Create sharable content</span></strong><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If someone shares a link to your website or other content, it is basically an endorsement (similar to a direct inbound link). Even if someone who isn't connected with you on social media shares a link to your content, their entire network can see the post by searching for relevant topics in Google Social Search. Again, please see my blog post '<a href="http://roofpal.blogspot.com/2011/06/social-media-directly-influences-search.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Social media directly influences search rankings</span></a>'.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">5. Add the +1 button to everything</span></strong><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The +1 button has turned into an internet-wide Facebook "Like" button. It is quick and easy for people to click, and gives your content huge benefits. Put that +1 button everywhere you can and ask people to click it.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">None of this should be considered a replacement to (or even better than) traditional SEO methods, but it is becoming increasingly important. Not everyone knows this, so the faster you do it the more of a leg-up you'll have on your competition.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you have any questions about social media SEO, please email <a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a></span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-10816968105842249392012-03-16T22:15:00.000-07:002012-05-09T06:16:13.677-07:00Is your roofing website optimized for the wrong things?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUXTFmvwTgr5tYXjJApuegFKFh74FdNAabvQL23p0dNmHAGKAAUEW96Ha_ZnfFs2xNkjmWsUgKDW2Y5OEgEWNUXdO2-SAzAanGoxjgZmeLc16Ldm5NfLJjDHf0cd-JrCoA_XXXKAIoh_A/s1600/RoofPal+-+Is+your+roofing+website+optimized+for+the+wrong+things.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUXTFmvwTgr5tYXjJApuegFKFh74FdNAabvQL23p0dNmHAGKAAUEW96Ha_ZnfFs2xNkjmWsUgKDW2Y5OEgEWNUXdO2-SAzAanGoxjgZmeLc16Ldm5NfLJjDHf0cd-JrCoA_XXXKAIoh_A/s200/RoofPal+-+Is+your+roofing+website+optimized+for+the+wrong+things.jpg" width="200" /></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The focus of most roofing contractor websites are on the solutions they provide – re-roofing, new construction and repairs, as well as the various types of systems and brands they install. Many of these websites are optimized well for search engines, but is that really what homeowners, building owners, and property & facilities managers are looking for when they search on Google?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Think about how you search for answers to various questions online. Likely you search using words that describe the problem - not the answer. After all, if you knew the answer you wouldn’t have to search for it.</span><br />
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<span style="color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;">We go through five stages to solve a problem:</span></span></div>
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<li><span style="background-color: black;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stage 1:</span></strong> I don’t know there’s a problem.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stage 2:</span></strong> I know there is a problem, but I don’t know what the solution is.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stage 3:</span></strong> I know there is a problem, and I know what the solution is.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stage 4:</span></strong> I know there is a problem, and I’m ready to implement the solution.</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: black;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stage 5:</span></strong> I have solved the problem.</span></li>
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</span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;">If you optimize your roofing compan</span>y's marketing for <strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stage 1</span></strong>, you are trying to create awareness of a problem in which you have a solution for. The problem is that there is no pain to address – you have to create it out of fear or speculation (Do you have a roof leak? Was your roof affected by the latest hail storm? Is it time for a new roof? etc.).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Optimizing your roofing company's marketing for <strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stage 2</span></strong> is the sweet spot: your potential customer has a problem and no decided solution.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When you optimize roofing company's marketing for <strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stage 3</span></strong>, you are competing on all the factors that diminish your profits or make you lose jobs to your competitors. The customer is actively collecting bids and you now have to beat the price, value, and conveniences they have already been promised.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">To market your roofing company based on <strong><span style="color: yellow;">Stages 4 and 5</span></strong> is to fight the customer. You are fighting a decision that has already been made, and you now have to convince them that their decision was the wrong one. It can be done, but ultimately you have to create dissatisfaction with their original decision. The only time you will win bids this way is when the competition completely screws up or is trying to rip off the customer.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Your challenge</span></strong> is to identify what customers issues are when they are in Stage 2 and re-optimize your marketing around the questions they type into search engines when looking for the answer. This includes rewriting your website and blog content to focus around the problems people would be searching for, rather than the solutions you offer. The results should be immediate and significant.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Look carefully at your marketing (both online and offline). Are you focusing on the solutions, or are you focusing on the customer’s problems? <strong><span style="color: yellow;">If you would like assistance</span></strong> with this, please email <a href="mailto:RoofPal@gmail.com"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">RoofPal@gmail.com</span></a></span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-44795147547003685772012-03-13T06:47:00.006-07:002012-03-25T06:42:31.329-07:00Facebook Timeline cover ideas and examples for roofing contractors<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It looks like Facebook Timeline is here to stay (at least for a while), as it is now mandatory for all business pages effective March 30, 2012. Not everyone "likes" it, but we do need to make the best of it. Have you noticed a very valuable piece of real estate at the top of your page? Yes, your cover photo!</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How are you using the Facebook Timeline cover photo today? Are you not using anything at all? Is there an oddly-cropped picture of a job you've done, your logo, or maybe your crew or office staff? I think there is definitely an opportunity to get creative with this space. I have a few ideas, but I need <em>your</em> help to come up with a great list of ideas and examples.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For the </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">RoofPal Facebook Timeline cover</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> I show examples of some of the different services I offer roofing contractors and material manufacturers and distributors such as articles I have written and had published, some brochures, a roofing project recap presentation, a </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/roofpal" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">video blog</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">, and a magazine ad. There are other examples of my work I will use in future Timeline covers as well, but the idea here is to quickly convey what it is I do and give a sense of the quality of work.</span></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkKbQB9nNJlXSjTjVR_qdkkL3qDcqd0OtUiRoV2DURoIeLbU0A-mpLzA0SHLcFnnKXVgDyeOqcIOZBGCSqpG6vwt4L47JAsGWQSNIIwzNmRoCyCUNR9Mazs_F8Sfu-VbMxBjvLoBCyXgc/s1600/RoofPal+Facebook+Timeline+Cover+example.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkKbQB9nNJlXSjTjVR_qdkkL3qDcqd0OtUiRoV2DURoIeLbU0A-mpLzA0SHLcFnnKXVgDyeOqcIOZBGCSqpG6vwt4L47JAsGWQSNIIwzNmRoCyCUNR9Mazs_F8Sfu-VbMxBjvLoBCyXgc/s320/RoofPal+Facebook+Timeline+Cover+example.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">Here is an example I did for <a href="http://www.rhinotuffroofing.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Rhino Tuff Roofing</span></a> in Texas:</span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzyaJ7ZcZXlmpEP9qtA19v1lb95g614yN1DHuuPZiHljA2ow3lPm6ehP53-gqcG-ljNbvkT6JJxEQ25h0nbDLmAnR4FEWr5pwAcxDQohPP190dB98lNEbasJHib7NzLhaTCEaMlDMbmaw/s1600/Rhino+Tuff+Roofing+Facebook+Timeline+Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzyaJ7ZcZXlmpEP9qtA19v1lb95g614yN1DHuuPZiHljA2ow3lPm6ehP53-gqcG-ljNbvkT6JJxEQ25h0nbDLmAnR4FEWr5pwAcxDQohPP190dB98lNEbasJHib7NzLhaTCEaMlDMbmaw/s320/Rhino+Tuff+Roofing+Facebook+Timeline+Cover.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">H</span></span><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">ere is an example I did for </span><a href="http://www.starkweatherroof.com/" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Starkweather Roofing</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> in Arizona and New Mexico to line up a few nice pictures of completed jobs so potential customers know exactly what kind of roofs (size, slope, system, etc.) they install:</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchNCOAbydDJ_qmGRSMJ2zOARmxhoUrX4Ybgv__gdM8VmVBi54_fyVHdsL4xIO5YyyyUksk-sAX8sgIu45LA3ghx6709YuueEg0GdioP7N33BRz4rZEzRFnSkMNFAqR9m17RYPpoS74ys/s1600/SRI+Facebook+Timeline+Cover.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"><img border="0" height="118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjchNCOAbydDJ_qmGRSMJ2zOARmxhoUrX4Ybgv__gdM8VmVBi54_fyVHdsL4xIO5YyyyUksk-sAX8sgIu45LA3ghx6709YuueEg0GdioP7N33BRz4rZEzRFnSkMNFAqR9m17RYPpoS74ys/s320/SRI+Facebook+Timeline+Cover.png" width="320" /></span></a></div><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">And here is an example I did for <a href="http://www.arnettconst.com/" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Arnett Construction</span></a> in Indiana to give homeowners a sense of what hail storm damage to their shingle roofs looks like:</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs03GX5Z2TNjrd5nb2QUsy_u716ONjC_Zd58LQmj3fFfRPm0Xl5adGZ0CFXgJrBOFl3Rne0zdlrodxzUA-vPx-WwcmrPKJAq-NTpsbgzvjdi2IePbAjz1dzK8yIJJZRlFyUMFeKV9VffU/s1600/Arnett+Construction+FB+Timeline+Cover+01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="118" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs03GX5Z2TNjrd5nb2QUsy_u716ONjC_Zd58LQmj3fFfRPm0Xl5adGZ0CFXgJrBOFl3Rne0zdlrodxzUA-vPx-WwcmrPKJAq-NTpsbgzvjdi2IePbAjz1dzK8yIJJZRlFyUMFeKV9VffU/s320/Arnett+Construction+FB+Timeline+Cover+01.png" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial;">The possibilities are almost endless, and I will continue posting more examples on this blog post as I think of or come across more. Please follow or and subscribe to this blog to keep updated on the latest. If you have an example (yours or someone else's) that you think would be great for the roofing industry, please leave a comment in the box below and include a link to the Facebook page.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white;">If you would like to create a Facebook Timeline cover photo for your roofing company, the image should be 850 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall to maximize the space without anything getting cropped out or having unused white space. If you would like me to design one for you, feel free to email me at </span><a href="mailto:Chris@RoofPal.com"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;">Chris@RoofPal.com</span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white;"> for pricing.</span></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-70575395161659856072012-03-05T09:41:00.003-08:002012-03-05T17:34:49.689-08:00How much would you pay to stay anonymous?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9yG2elLNnyuSy31ADnYYYgMXqAlPOaifaZdNcUwn9cvZ2JTPiEuka8Smk8cbF54uebUwZwE3ZmN_B-5ZnTQROIRlitImqSafj2Pl0PXVTRYxjkjPIKxoNcaadnUUpmYRMn9_cGDkZk20/s1600/RoofPal+-+How+much+would+you+pay+to+stay+anonymous.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9yG2elLNnyuSy31ADnYYYgMXqAlPOaifaZdNcUwn9cvZ2JTPiEuka8Smk8cbF54uebUwZwE3ZmN_B-5ZnTQROIRlitImqSafj2Pl0PXVTRYxjkjPIKxoNcaadnUUpmYRMn9_cGDkZk20/s200/RoofPal+-+How+much+would+you+pay+to+stay+anonymous.jpg" width="200" /></span></span></a><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am going to be launching an experiment soon that has multiple benefits: educate the roofing industry on marketing while either building my private contact list or making money, and to see just how valuable your privacy is. I hope you'll play along.</span><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The experiment involves writing a short but comprehensive e-book that gives the "secret formula" for using social media to create exposure of your roofing company, to engage deeper with your customers (past, existing and future), to improve your online communications, and to increase your sales. It is a formula that I know works because multiple roofing business owners pay me handsomely to do this for them (and they are seeing tremendous results).</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: yellow;">Here's the catch:</span></strong> you will be able to download the e-book for free, provided you fill out a form with all the contact information I request (which is verified prior to you receiving the download to ensure you aren't making up a fictitious identity). If you prefer to not give up that information, you can just pay $19.95 and get the e-book immediately without having to provide any information.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Provided you wanted to read this e-book (which is non-transferable and can not be posted online for others to read for free), w</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hich path would you choose? Is keeping your information out of my contact database worth $19.95? Is it worth $39.95? More?</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="color: white;">Please leave a comment below with your thoughts. I want this to be educational, valuable for all, and a fun experiment. You can also email me at </span><a href="mailto:Chris@RoofPal.com"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Chris@RoofPal.com</span></a><span style="color: white;"> if you prefer.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4140281616790868558.post-73367890863678647812012-02-13T06:53:00.000-08:002012-02-13T06:54:45.223-08:00Software solutions can speed the roofing process, saving time and money<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgq5sXWtvwBx8xGqaKcGZc9Ds1Qsp6CXcL-yCrRFDv7BzXjQA8k8vsLmCfVmCgw3_N-1K1s8LV-6OE3L4rurKR8gaa4sR62_w9uwUPRl95Ihk-RqGObk6LIlMjoS84ncvqoabsFlzk8XQ/s1600/RoofPal+Article+-+Carolinas+Roofing+Magazine+-+Technology+to+the+Rescue+-+2012+January+February.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="192px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgq5sXWtvwBx8xGqaKcGZc9Ds1Qsp6CXcL-yCrRFDv7BzXjQA8k8vsLmCfVmCgw3_N-1K1s8LV-6OE3L4rurKR8gaa4sR62_w9uwUPRl95Ihk-RqGObk6LIlMjoS84ncvqoabsFlzk8XQ/s320/RoofPal+Article+-+Carolinas+Roofing+Magazine+-+Technology+to+the+Rescue+-+2012+January+February.png" width="320px" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://roofpal.com/Documents/RoofPal%20Article%20-%20Carolinas%20Roofing%20Magazine%20-%20Technology%20to%20the%20Rescue%20-%202012%20January%20February.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Click</span><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> here to read the entire article (published in Carolinas Roofing magazine)</span></a></span></div><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Your customers are changing. The first generation of kids who grew up texting, buying music on iTunes, purchasing items on eBay and coding their own MySpace pages are now graduating from college. Many have purchased homes of t</span>heir own, and some are now working as property managers, facility managers, multihousing community managers and homeowners association managers. In other words, <strong><span style="color: yellow;">the first generation of children who only know how to purchase something by clicking a button are now making decisions about roofing</span></strong>. What this means is the industry as a whole needs to adapt to them.</span></span></span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the next five years, these kids are going to completely change the way services are bought because they want convenience and simplicity. If your roofing company isn’t “push-of-a-button” easy to work with, one day these consumers will stop calling or simply send you a text message informing you they no longer need your services.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Enabling the immediate transfer of information has tremendous benefit to roofing contractors. Increased speed, improved accuracy and significant reduction of manual tasks create an obvious case for reduced costs of labor, inventory and operating costs, as well as significantly improved employee and customer satisfaction.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Real-time data processing would allow you to achieve cost reductions and productivity gains by building an inspection report and proposal while you conduct the inspection. Customers could have the report in hand, sign-off on the recommendations and actually remit the down payment before your technician is off the roof.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition, requests for service or leak repair work could be automatically routed to your scheduling system, which would alert your technicians through their cell phones, giving them all the information they need, including GPS-guided directions to the facility. All work can be tracked and reported back to your office and to the customer as it is happening. While on the roof, your technicians could access all the roofing history for the building with a few clicks and update the records with pictures, videos, drawings and notes based on the work performed. Invoices would be automatically generated and sent to the homeowner or the building owners’ Accounts Payable representative instantaneously, significantly reducing the actual cash-flow cycle time.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are several software companies that specifically cater to the roofing industry. AccuLynx, Dataforma, <a href="http://fcscontrol.com/core/index.html" target="_blank"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Facility Control Systems</span></a>, RoofLogic and dozens others offer solutions that range in functionality, usability and price. With real-time data processing, everything is updated in the system as it happens. What now takes up to a week manually can be done in a couple hours.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><strong><span style="background-color: black; color: yellow; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">THE BOTTOM LINE</span></strong></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s time for the roofing industry to evolve. Our processes are manual, complicated, costly and, frankly, take too long. If they haven’t already, your customers will soon demand you become “click-of-a-button” easy to work with. They want information and they want it now. As an industry we can no longer do things the way we’ve always done them. Real-time information isn’t the flavor of the month. It is 2012, and it is time we embrace the information age before we are left behind.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="http://roofpal.com/Documents/RoofPal%20Article%20-%20Carolinas%20Roofing%20Magazine%20-%20Technology%20to%20the%20Rescue%20-%202012%20January%20February.pdf" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="color: #6fa8dc;">Click</span><span style="color: #6fa8dc;"> here to read the entire article (published in Carolinas Roofing magazine)</span></span></span></a></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0