Simple yet effective strategy for getting quality roofing leads

MARKETING QUICK TIP

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.

How to do this

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).

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).

Take it a step further
Post the link to the web page or blog post to your social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, etc.). Ask the customer if it OK to tag them in the post before doing so.

Questions?
If you have any questions about creative things to do with testimonials or referrals to get higher quality leads on roofing jobs, please email RoofPal@gmail.com.

YouTube Videos Rank Higher in Google

Roofing contractors should use YouTube as much as possible.

Please watch my video podcast about using YouTube for roofing contractors

YouTube (purchased by Google in 2006 for over $1.6 billion) has now become one of the world’s most visited websites. Google indexes those videos and more often than not, you now find YouTube videos appearing on the first page of search results, sometimes outranking aged and established organic listings.

Since there is a clear priority by Google given to YouTube videos and because they are so well received on social media platforms such as Facebook, your roofing company should be taking advantage of all of the benefits.

It is very easy to upload a video to YouTube (accounts are free and simple to set up). Here are the basic steps:

Shoot Your Video

Create a short, content-rich video. Shorter videos are viewed much more frequently (under two minutes is best). Small HD video cameras can now be purchased for just over $100 and include software to upload videos directly through WiFi (or plug into your computer, save and upload the old fashioned way).

Video Name Keywords are EXTREMELY IMPORTANT

Include in the name of your video keywords that you expect people searching would use to find information about your services ("roof repair Dallas", "metal roofing Los Angeles", etc.). I can’t stress how vital it is to ensure EVERY word in the title of your video is relevant to your content. Do not include the date or time in your title and only the location if it is relevant to the search. Your video listing could be on page one of Google search within 24 hours.

Create Incoming Links To Your Video Listing

Anchor Link TEXT is the visible text in a hyperlink. Within your website and/or blog, link back to your YouTube video using your keyword(s) in your anchor text.  Also, you can ask friends and associates to link back to your YouTube video using the same method. By applying links to your YouTube videos (and having other sites do the same) it tells Google that your videos are relevant to the keywords or keyword phrases you have chosen.

Drive YouTube Video Viewers to your Website

Once people begin finding your video listings for the keywords you have chosen, you have created a lead generation path that will last for a long time to come. Mention your website address during the video or place a screenshot of your website and your website address at the start and end of your video so viewers know how to get to your website. I also recommend including a hot-linked URL (your website address with the http:// at the beginning) into the beginning of the description of your video in the "About This Video" section.

If you have any questions about or need assistance using YouTube for your roofing company, or if you are interested in learning more about the RoofPal Official Microcast Series which now produces video blogs that can be personally branded with your company name, logo and contact information, please email RoofPal@gmail.com.

Are you on the recieving end of your own social media marketing?

If you are looking for a good way to evaluate how well your social media marketing is working, try being a recipient of your own content.

Not only should you spend time being a consumer of your products and services, you should also be a consumer of your own marketing (including social media). Think of your marketing efforts as another service offering. Is your social media content really a valuable service iteself?

How often do you go back to check your own blog for something you wrote in the past? If you do, it is a sign that you have actually posted valuable information. If you never go back to reference your own blog yourself, it might not be valuable enough for anyone else either.

The same is true for your social media accounts. I store links on my Facebook page in order to reference recent relevant content for my marketing newsletter and podcast. In other words, I am my own customer (I go back to remember what I published). How often do you check your posts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or Google+? If the answer is "never", then maybe the content you are sharing isn't as valuable as you think it is.

Much has been made of influence scores (Klout) and re-tweet or like/share metrics, but the simplest metric of all is to look at your own behavior. If you never go back to look at your own content (i.e., you find no value in what you publish), chances are that no one else does either. You can begin improving your social media marketing by publishing things that are of value to you. Do that and you’ll automatically begin sharing information that are of value to others.

If you would like an independent evaluation of your social media marketing, please email Chris@RoofPal.com for pricing (it's not as expensive as you might think).

2012 Marketing Campaign Planning Tips for Roofing Contractors



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If you haven't already, it is time to begin planning your 2012 marketing campaigns.

One aspect roofing contractors might not always consider is timing. When is the best time to put up a billboard? When is the best time to mail out a postcard? When should you send out email communications?

A tool I always find helpful is Google Insights. This handy offering allows you to dig in to when people search for very specific terms. Whether your campaign is digital or print, knowing when people are interested in what product or service you are offering is extremely valuable. Here's another helpful hint: don't launch marketing campaigns when people get interested - time it to be delivered just before they are so your brand is in their minds when the need arises.

The United States search history over the past 3 years for the term "roofing" demonstrates that people consistently most search for that term during quarters 2 and 3 (April through September). When is the best time to launch your marketing campaigns? I would say February or March, right as the ramp-up of search begins (circled in red).

Go down further in the tool and you'll see geographically where the term is most searched. The middle section of the picture in this post shows that Oklahoma has the highest interest for the term "roofing" (you can drill down to the state(s) you do business in to make this relevant).

Click on your state and you'll see an even more granular geographic detail as well as the top search terms and the search terms that are more recently quickly rising. Are you using these terms as SEO bait on your website, blog, tweets, Facebook posts, etc.? If not, you should be as this is what people in your geographic region type in when trying to find information about roofing.

Feel free to type in any term you want this data for, and specify the timeframe you want to look at (I suggest at least 3 years to get a full sense of the trend). Drill down until you are seeing the relevant data for the region(s) you serve.

If you have any questions about or would like help with marketing campaigns or search insights for your geographic area, please email Chris@RoofPal.com.

20 Ways to Promote Your Roofing Facebook Fan Page

How are you spreading the word about your Facebook page?
Your fan page can be one of a roofing company's best sources of customer interaction and lead generation. The only problem is making people aware of it. You definitely need to educate your customers and potential customers on how to find you on Facebook.

To help you out, below is a list of 20 different ways to promote your Facebook page. Even if you only do a few of these things, you should start to get more fans and begin to increase your return on time invested.

1. Put your fan page URL in your email signature. How many emails do you send every day? That is how many chances you have for someone new to find out about your page. Free publicity!
2. Write a blog post about your new fan page. Give your blog readers five compelling reasons why they should join your fan page (tell them about the kinds of information you share on your page).
3. Tag well-trafficked fan pages in your status updates. Fans of those popular pages your target customers visit (that are at least semi-relevant) might see your page and click over, giving you some additional cross-traffic.
4. Ask your Twitter followers to join your fan page. Give some compelling reasons why your Twitter followers should join your Facebook community. If Twitter is the new water cooler, think of your fan page as an invitation to come in and chat. Maybe Tweet something like "Want more conversation than 140 characters will allow? Join us on Facebook at ” and leave the URL to your fan page.
5. Invest in Facebook ads. They are a lot easier than you might think and you can spend as little or as much as you want. You can pinpoint fairly accurately the demographic you are targeting.
6. Put a Facebook fan page widget on your blog and website. Have your website developer put a basic widget on your website and blog that automatically displays the last 5 or so Facebook status updates from your fan page. Visitors will see this content and a) know that you have a page and how to find it, and b) get a sense of the kind of information they have been missing out on.
7. Customize your fan page URL. Vanity URLs are a fantastic way to make your fan page memorable. For example, my Facebook page URL is http://www.facebook.com/RoofPal.
8. Put your fan page URL on your business cards. Combine offline and online by letting the people you meet in real life know about your fan page.
9. Put a link on your personal Facebook profile. You can put a link to your company fan page under the “Links” section of your personal page. This may remind your friends and family to share the link to your company page with their Facebook friends.
10. Leverage the power of your team. Ask everyone in your company put the link to your company fan page link on their personal profile.
11. Ask your Facebook fans to post a link. Simply ask all of your current Facebook fans to post a link to your company page on their personal profile. As long as you don’t ask this often, often times people are willing to help you out. This becomes a personal recommendation, or word-of-mouth advertising (the very best kind).
12. Put a tag in your YouTube videos. If you make compelling videos as a part of your content marketing strategy, throw in a well-timed Facebook fan page link at the end of your YouTube videos.
13. Put your Facebook fan page URL on your Twitter profile background. Many people still use the web-based version of Twitter, and your profile background is a prime piece of internet real estate. Cross-advertise and use one social network to promote another!
14. QR Codes for your page. Create a QR Code that takes people directly to your Facebook fan page and use that code in your marketing, stationary, email signature lines, etc. If you aren't sure what a QR Code is or how to create one, please read the article I published, titled QR Codes for roofing contractors.
15. Actually use your Facebook fan page. Use the “Tell Your Fans” feature on Facebook. With the tools built in, Facebook allows you to import a contact file or import your contacts from your email account. This is particularly good for when you’re just starting out and want to tell people you already know.
16. Add a Like box. Place a Like box in your blog and website sidebar so people can "Like" your content automatically when they are signed in to Facebook and browsing the web.
17. Use targeted keywords in a Google AdWords campagin. Use a keyword-based ad and direct people to your fan page. This is like Facebook Ads on steroids. If you’ve never used AdWords before, it’s fairly straightforward. Google the term AdWords to set this up.
18. Redirect your webinar guests to your Facebook fan page. If you use GoToWebinar, you can choose to send registrants to a URL of your choice after they sign up. This is where you can direct them right to your Facebook fan page.
19. Put your Facebook fan page URL in your Keynote or PowerPoint presentations. When you present, the last slide can be your contact information, complete with your company's Facebook fan page vanity URL. Most people are already on Facebook, so it’s a no-brainer to give them an easy way to connect with you.
20. Invite all of your friends. Facebook automatically suggests people and pages based on the connections and Likes of your friends. The more of your friends who Like your Facebook fan page, the more their friends will have your page recommended to them without you lifting a finger.

These are just some examples. What are some of the most interesting ways you’ve seen people or businesses promote their fan page? Let me know in the comments box below and share what you have found.

Why Email and Direct Mail Campaigns Fail (and What to Do Differently Next Time)

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 ISP's. So what do you do?

If you have experienced failure in direct mail or email marketing campaigns, it is likely a result of a combination of factors:

You are targeting the wrong prospects. 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.

Your message doesn't stand out. 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.

Me, me, me! Your message should be focused on what you think they should know about you - focus on what's in it for them and why they should care.

My name isn't John. If you have the recipient's name listed incorrectly (or flat-out wrong), it will immediately be deleted or go into the shredder. Personalization is a great way to make messages more effective, but for God's sake make sure you have the names right!

Boring! Interactive isn't just for digital media. Direct mail pieces can slide, unfold and open to create an experience for the recipient. Interaction gives the recipient a reason to engage with your direct mail piece.

Bad timing. Often, timing can be everything. Receiving your marketing piece just as there is a need for your product or service 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 the day before a massive rainstorm, monsoon or hurricane they will receive your message exactly when they have a need.

Shotgun approach (blast messaging). Smart direct 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 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.

One and done. It takes more than one email or postcard for you to get noticed. Send out different messages with unique offers in different formats to become memorable and non-repetitive.

No sense of urgency. Put an expiration on your offer four to six weeks after they receive it to create a sense of urgency.

More is less. Don't write a novel or make the reader work to figure out your message. Going through the mail and reading unsolicited emails is not the highlight anyone's day. You have an extremely limited amount of time to get someone's attention, so get to the point.

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:

1. Improve your list. Make sure you are targeting the right people and that names are correct (and spelled correctly).

2. Improve your content. 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.

3. Improve the physical look. Make sure the look of your email or direct mail piece looks professional, is appropriate for what you are communicating, and is well designed.

If you have any questions about direct mail or email marketing, would like feedback on a campaign you are about to launch (or recently launched) or would like assistance planning your next campaign, please email RoofPal@gmail.com. We can help you build and improve your mailing list, actually write the content and/or design and coordinate printing of the physical piece for you.

Why You Should Blog

Simply having a static webpage and social media presence is no longer enough in today's rapidly changing digital world of marketing - you now also need to blog!

A website may be an important component of your online presence, but it doesn't engage your customers and can be cumbersome to keep updated. Social media is great for building relationships and trust, but you are limited to the depth of information you can post at one time. Alternatively, a blog enables you to easily update your website with fresh, relevant content and engage your customers (and can be shared via social media to attract readers back to your website).

Similar to social media, customers can leave comments on a blog which you can respond to. But unlike a status update, the discussion is centered around a specific, detailed topic that you have shaped and encourages ongoing community conversation and debate far after the post was uploaded.

Some business owners are concerned about the time it takes to properly maintain a blog. The good news is that a blog can actually take the place of many of your existing static pages, and they become interactive (not "brochure material"). Blogs can also be easily integrated into your static website as a dynamic component, giving you the best of both worlds. Blog posts don't have to (and shouldn't) just come from your marketing department - your employees who are experts at various components of your company should be encouraged to write blog posts (published with management review and approval, of course).

A blog enables you to attract new customers, build brand awareness and compel more prospective customers to buy from you. There are also great search engine optimization (SEO) benefits when using a blog. Due to its dynamic nature, a properly set up blog can attract twice the visitors your website can, and blogs get indexed by search engines like Google 4x more often than static websites.

My challenge to you is to set up a blog today and post something - almost anything, just to get started. RoofPal uses Blogger.com partly because it is free, but mostly because it is owned by Google (and I assume as a result, Blogger.com blogs are indexed more frequently and ranked higher in search results).

If you have any questions about blogging or would like assistance setting up and even managing your company's blog, please email Chris@RoofPal.com.

Roofing Customers are Extensions of your Marketing Department

People trust the opinions of their friends much more than corporate marketing messages, hence the growth of social media networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Google+, Foursquare, and so on.

In fact, a recent AdAge study found that 90% of American consumers trust recommendations from people they know and that 70% trust recommendations of general consumer opinions posted online.

I began thinking this morning about how personal recommendations relate to the roofing industry... and I came up with an idea!

Because of what I do, I happen to see a lot of the content that roofing contractors post on social media. Most of it is sell-sell-sell posts and links with the occasional pictures of jobs in progress or recently completed. BORING! On my personal social media accounts I don't follow any contractors because there is almost no content shared that is value-added for me, let alone anything I would care to share with the rest of my network. But I know that there could be.

On Facebook for example, I almost never see contractors tagged in their customers' posts, photos, or videos. Why is this? My guess is it is a combination of a) we don't ask them to, and b) they don't have anything interesting to post about us. Essentially roofers do their job, leave, and send the customer an invoice. What's the fun in that for the homeowner, property/facility manager or building owner? Nothing. So here's an idea: give your customers content they could share and ask them to do so.

All roofing contractors (and especially residential roofing contractors) can get their customers to become extensions of their marketing department by doing a few simple things that could go a long way. Here is a simple 4-step recipe for engaging your customers on social media and getting some free advertising through personal recommendations (the best kind of marketing):

1. Take at least 5-10 pictures of every job you do. There should be before, during and after shots - as well as a few from interesting angles (from vantage points the customer wouldn't see from the ground).
2. Take 3+ videos (30-60 seconds in length) of every job you do. Videos should give the viewer a "peek behind the curtain" of what was found (i.e., why you are doing roofing work), an idea of exactly what you did, and how it turned out.
3. Email only the best pictures and the videos to the customer(s) of each job with a simple note thanking them for their business, asking them for feedback, and letting them know you thought they might enjoy seeing exactly what was done and how it all turned out. Give a brief description of each picture and video and then encourage them to share those photos and videos on Facebook, Twitter, etc. using the descriptions you have provided (and to tag you in them). If you aren't connected online with them already, provide them with links to the pages of the networks you participate on and ask them to send you an invitation to connect (so they can tag you, and so that you have a newly established ongoing connection).
4. Once you are notified that you have been tagged in content they shared, acknowledge their efforts by "Liking", leaving a positive comment, re-Tweeting, etc.

Not all of your customers will do this, but even if just 10% did wouldn't that be a huge improvement in obtaining personal recommendations that you never had before? For the minimal investment of time required to do this, I think it is definitely worth trying. My challenge for you is to do this consistently for the next 60 days. Then please come back and leave a comment on this blog post and let everyone know how it worked for you. Worst case, you will show your customers that you care enough to follow-up and share with them details of what was done, which is much more personal and thoughtful than just sending them a bill.

If you have any questions about this blog post or would like assistance in implementing a strategy to get your customers to become an extension of your marketing department, please email Chris@RoofPal.com. I would be more than happy to discuss this with you. Best of luck!