Is your roofing website optimized for the wrong things?

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?

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.

We go through five stages to solve a problem:

• Stage 1: I don’t know there’s a problem.
• Stage 2: I know there is a problem, but I don’t know what the solution is.
• Stage 3: I know there is a problem, and I know what the solution is.
• Stage 4: I know there is a problem, and I’m ready to implement the solution.
• Stage 5: I have solved the problem.

If you optimize your roofing company's marketing for Stage 1, 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.).

Optimizing your roofing company's marketing for Stage 2 is the sweet spot: your potential customer has a problem and no decided solution.

When you optimize roofing company's marketing for Stage 3, 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.

To market your roofing company based on Stages 4 and 5 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.

Your challenge 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.

Look carefully at your marketing (both online and offline). Are you focusing on the solutions, or are you focusing on the customer’s problems? If you would like assistance with this, please email RoofPal@gmail.com.