Viral marketing for roofing companies

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

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

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

Here is the original full-length video:



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

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

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

Internal links improve SEO for roofing websites and blogs [+ video]

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.

Here are four reasons why effective use of internal links in your roofing company's website and blog is absolutely critical for search engine optimization:

1. 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?
2. Internal linking enhances the visitor's experience. Leading potential customers to other related content 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.

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 internal links coming in to that new web page or blog post from other existing pages or posts (where it makes sense).

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.

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.

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.

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 contact RoofPal any time.


This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Dataforma. With their best-in-class web-based business management services, Dataforma can help you to run a more profitable roofing business. For more information, please call (866) 764-9992 or visit them online at www.Dataforma.com.

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.

What should roofing companies blog about?

Here are five things to keep in mind when writing posts for your roofing company's blog:

1. Know who you are you writing for

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.

2. Write about what your customers care about
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 'Is your roofing website optimized for the wrong things?'. Start by writing down 20 common problems your customers have with their roofs and write about those (service work, new construction, re-roofing, etc.).

3. Write like a real person
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.

4. Allow and encourage interaction
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.

5.Don't hoard information
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.

Blogging is an investment
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.

If you have any questions about blogging for your roofing company, please feel free to email me at RoofPal@gmail.com. And if you have a blog already, please feel free to leave a link to it in the comments below.

Social media helps test email subject lines to improve open and click rates

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.

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 dreaded SPAM button (for more on preventing people from flagging your emails as SPAM, please see my blog post titled "Reduce Spam Reports of your Marketing Emails").

I recommend before you send out a mass email or newsletter, test potential subject lines with your connections on social media. Using a URL shortening service like bitly, Google or TinyURL, 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.

For example, here are Tweets for one of my own recent blog posts:

• 5 specific things to do that will help you get new #roofing customers from your social media accounts: http://t.co/kLDg3dNQ
• How you can get new #roofing customers from Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn: http://t.co/kLDg3dNQ
• 5 specific ways to get new #roofing customers from social media: http://t.co/4FSs68cN [blog post]

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 RoofPal eNews email campaign subject line and podcast title on.

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.

This strategy works particularly well on Twitter where people are used to seeing Tweets that lead them to click a link, but you can do the same thing on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, or any other social media platforms you participate on.

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 Chris@RoofPal.com. Best of luck!

5 specific ways to get new roofing customers from social media

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.

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).

1. Search for new customers

On Twitter, 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.

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."

2. Post interesting pictures

On Facebook, posts with pictures drive twice as much engagement as text-only posts. I would recommend creating an Instagram, Flickr 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.

3. Make each social media platform different

Don't post the exact same things to Facebook as you do on Twitter, Google+, or LinkedIn. Once people begin to notice, most will only follow you on one platform since there is no difference anyway. Define the purpose of each platform for your company and use it accordingly.

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.

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: http://vsb.li/R0K9mx" 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.

4. Be personable

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.

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!".

5. Promote your customers

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.

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.

If you have any questions about roofing social media strategies, please email RoofPal@gmail.com. Best of luck!

5 social media SEO strategies roofing contractors should do right now

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 specifically to power your SEO strategy.

Google has long relied on people to endorse relevant and useful links on the internet. Social 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 Facebook or LinkedIn, gives it a +1 on Google+, re-Tweet's it on Twitter, etc.

Here are 5 social media SEO strategies roofing contractors should do (or keep doing) right now:

1. Be more active on Google+
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.

2. Establish even more connections online
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 'Social media directly influences search rankings'.

3. Post your articles, videos and blog posts immediately on social media
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.

4. Create sharable content
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 'Social media directly influences search rankings'.

5. Add the +1 button to everything
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.

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.

If you have any questions about social media SEO, please email RoofPal@gmail.com.

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.

Facebook Timeline cover ideas and examples for roofing contractors

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!

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 your help to come up with a great list of ideas and examples.

For the RoofPal Facebook Timeline cover 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 video blog, 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.

Here is an example I did for Rhino Tuff Roofing in Texas:

Here is an example I did for Starkweather Roofing 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:

And here is an example I did for Arnett Construction in Indiana to give homeowners a sense of what hail storm damage to their shingle roofs looks like:

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.

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 Chris@RoofPal.com for pricing.

How much would you pay to stay anonymous?

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.

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).

Here's the catch: 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.

Provided you wanted to read this e-book (which is non-transferable and can not be posted online for others to read for free), which path would you choose? Is keeping your information out of my contact database worth $19.95? Is it worth $39.95? More?

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 Chris@RoofPal.com if you prefer.

Software solutions can speed the roofing process, saving time and money

Click here to read the entire article (published in Carolinas Roofing magazine)

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 their own, and some are now working as property managers, facility managers, multihousing community managers and homeowners association managers. In other words, the first generation of children who only know how to purchase something by clicking a button are now making decisions about roofing. What this means is the industry as a whole needs to adapt to them.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There are several software companies that specifically cater to the roofing industry. AccuLynx, Dataforma, Facility Control Systems, 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.

THE BOTTOM LINE

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.

Click here to read the entire article (published in Carolinas Roofing magazine)

SEO Periodic Table - How to get your roofing website to the top of Google search

I found this great infographic on what is actually important for search engine optimization (SEO) and how important each factor is, and wanted to share it with my friends in the roofing industry (contractors, manufacturers, suppliers, and distributors).

What is most important to getting your roofing website or blog to the top of Google search? Here is a list (in no particular order):

Content quality. All pages of your website need to be well written, and there must be a substantial amount of high quality original information.

Content research. You should do fairly extensive research on which keywords are the most used to search for the content you are sharing.

HTML titles. Make sure your HTML title tags contain keywords that are relevant to the content on the page.

Architecture crawl. Make sure search engines can easily "crawl", or scan for current information, all the pages on your website or blog.

Link quality. Make sure the links on your website or blog go to trusted, high-quality websites.

Link text. Don't use link to another page on your website or blog using the words "click here" (or something similar), highlight a good keyword or phrase that makes sense for the destination page and make that word or phrase become the linked text.

Trust/authority. Your website or blog will become a trusted authority as a result of lots of inbound links, many shares on social media, and other similar factors.

Physical proximity. The closer geographically you are to someone, the better.


Additionally, here are the second-tier items that will help get your roofing website or blog to the top of Google search:

Words and phrases. On each page, make sure you are using the words and phrases that you want it to be found for when someone does a Google search.

Engaging content. Use your website or blog's analytics to see not only how many page visits you get, but how long people spend looking at the page. Are they opening it and then clicking back or closing the window quickly after, or are they reading the whole page?

Fresh content. Are you producing new content and is it relevent to the "hot" search topics of your industry?

HTML description. Make sure your meta description tags accurately describe what the page is about.

Social reputation. Are people who are respected on social media sharing links to your website or blog?

History. The more someone visits your website or blog, and especially if they have "Liked" something on Facebook or shared on social media in any way, the higher other pages on your website or blog will begin to show up for them on search.


Last but not least, here are some additional items to consider that do have some impact on how your roofing website or blog will be found on Google search:

HTML headers. Make sure headlines and sub-headers use proper header tags with relevant keywords.

Page speed. The faster your page loads, the better.

URL format. The shorter a URL is, the better. Also, make sure the URL contains meaningful keywords to the topics of the webpage or blog post.

Number of links. The more external links that point to your website or blog, the better.

Social shares. The more people who share links to your webpage or blog post on social media, the better.

History. The longer your website or blog has existed, the better.

Social connections. The more those you are connected to on social media Like, comment on, re-Tweet, etc. posts containing links to your website or blog, the better.


Please also note the pink and orange sections at the bottom of the chart that discuss violations and blocking. These are some things you definitely do not want to be doing, as it will decrease your positioning in Google search.

If you have any questions about this blog post, please email me at Chris@RoofPal.com.

How roofing contractors can get more clicks on Twitter

Twitter is best used to broadcast and gather information. Creating a lot of interesting content to share with your followers should be your goal for the tool.

I was reading a blog post from Dan Zarrella last week and came across his research findings from studying how to optimize click-through rate of links that you include in your Tweets.

CTR: # of clicks on a link in a Tweet divided by total followers at the time

Without going through all of the details, here is what he found studying 200,000 Tweets containing links from highly followed Twitter accounts:

1. 120 to 130 (of 140 possible) characters is optimal.
2. Put the link 25% of the way through (at around the 30-ish character mark).
3. Tweet at a slower pace, with 1 per hour being best (I've made this mistake).
4. Use the words "via", "@", "RT", "please", and/or "check".
5. Check out paper.li - the phrase with the greatest positive effect was "daily is out".
6. Use more verbs & adverbs (action words), and fewer nouns & adjectives.
7. Tweet on the weekend (Friday, Saturday and Sunday had the highest CTR).
8. Tweet later in the day (2pm-1am had the highest CTR).

Honestly, I don't know if the results of this study relate to the roofing industry or not, but I thought it was interesting to share and definitely worth a try for a few weeks for those who use Twitter (by the way, I am @roofpal if you'd like to follow).

If you have any questions about this blog post, feel free to email me at Chris@RoofPal.com.

3 steps to determine if you need a mobile roofing website strategy

The title of this blog post is actually misleading. There are actually no steps involved in determining if you need a mobile website strategy for your roofing company - you do need one! The real question is, how much should a mobile website matter to you?

At a minimum you should have mechanisms in place to serve up content targeted at the someone viewing your site from a mobile device (smart phone, iPad, etc.). But how do you know what to measure to determine just how pressing a need this is?

Step 1: Turn on "mobile traffic" in Google Analytics

Every installation of Google Analytics has a custom traffic segment called "mobile traffic". Log in to your Google Analytics account and turn on this segment in the upper right-hand corner.

Step 2: Identify your % of traffic that comes from mobile devices

Browse over to your visitors tab. What percentage of your traffic is mobile? If it is higher than 1% you need to start thinking about a mobile website strategy. If it is higher than 10% you need to kick your mobile website strategy into high gear. If it is higher than 25% and your mobile strategy isn’t in full swing you are losing business to people who don’t want to navigate on a mobile unfriendly website.

Step 3: Identify the % of mobile traffic for new vs. returning visitors

Two other data points worth noting is new and returning visitors. What percentage of each is mobile traffic? If your returning visitors are using mobile devices to browse your roofing company's website in any serious way, then you are annoying them by not offering up a mobile option. If your new visitors are coming from mobile devices, then you may be turning away business and you don’t even know it.

There is a very good chance that search traffic from a mobile device is coming from someone who needs a roofer ASAP. Make absolutely sure that your mobile content gives the information they need in a hurry - an easy way to report a leak or request an inspection, an easy way to contact the right person for a project or service work, how to get to your office (if appropriate), etc.

If you aren't getting any mobile traffic at all, that should raise two questions: why not, and what should you do about it? As more and more internet traffic migrates to mobile devices you should see an increase in mobile traffic over time to your website. If you see none, that means you have likely done zero optimization for mobile and local search. At a bare minimum, register your website with Google Places and consider at least starting a free account (plus profile data) on Facebook, Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla, and any other services that heavily promote mobile usage.

If you have any questions about optimizing your roofing company's website for mobile devices, please feel free to email Chris@RoofPal.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).