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.
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.
Choosing Your Customers
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.
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.
'Spray and Pray' vs. 'Ready, Aim, Fire!'
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.
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.
How Do I Target Customers?
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 using resources such as Google, LinkedIn, Spokeo, and others.
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.
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.
Want to Discuss or Need Some Help?
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 RoofPal@gmail.com any time.
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?
Let's face it, attention spans are shorter than ever. No one wants to read pages of information on your website or in your brochures or proposals about the roof system you are proposing or about the qualifications of your roofing company. So how do you make sure the customer is fully informed?
A short, scripted, edited, professionally produced video can provide enough information in just the amount of the time you are actually going to get from most prospective customers. A win-win for everyone!
Video blogs can serve multiple purposes for your roofing company:
They enable you to more effectively, efficiently and consistently communicate information to your customers.
In just 3-5 minutes you can communicate all of the benefits of a particular roof system you are bidding.
You can highlight the qualifications and accomplishments of your roofing company that otherwise get lost in your proposals or website.
With the proper title, description and tags, potential customers in your service area have a better chance of finding your company online when performing a Google search, since videos (especially those uploaded to YouTube) are now ranking higher than many older, established web pages and online documents.
Your proposals, bids and presentations can be enhanced to help you get all the pertinent information across and help you stand out from the competition.
Print marketing such as postcards, brochures, business cards, door hangers, service vehicles, yard signs, billboards, and more come to life simply by incorporating a simple QR Code that launches your video blog.
They are ideal for sharing on social media and expanding on messages in email newsletters without the addition of pages of unwanted text.
You can play them on a loop from a DVD in your reception area or at trade shows.
They bring your blog posts and articles to life - further explaining the topic you are writing about, or the script itself can become its own blog post or article.
And the best part is that customers can watch them anywhere, any time at their convenience.
Video blogs can be a huge time saver for your sales staff:
For example, if you have 5 salespeople who bid 100 jobs per year and each time they have to spend even 15 minutes explaining the roof system you are proposing, that comes out to 125 total hours per year explaining the same roof systems over-and-over.
At $20 per hour, that totals $2,500 in productivity time lost. But more importantly, that is 125 hours every year they are not out selling more roofing jobs.
Due to the conversational nature of the sales process, it likely takes more than 15 minutes to sell the customer on the roof system, and there is no guarantee your sales staff is explaining the systems as effectively and consistently as you would like them to.
By incorporating video blogs into your content and sales strategies, you streamline the most basic component of your communications processes, instantly have compelling content for marketing and social media sharing, and improve your search engine optimization all in one shot.
RoofPal produces video blogs on a variety of topics such as the benefits of elastomeric roof coatings, historical preservation of slate roof tiles, metal roof restoration, storm damage restoration, and so much more that can be completely personalized for your roofing company.
We can also develop custom video blogs on any roof system you need, for a large bid you are preparing, or a short video brochure or commercial for your roofing company.
If you have any questions about creating or putting video blogs to work for your roofing company, please feel free to contact RoofPal any time.
This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by The Contractors Alliance. Expand your roofing business by integrating Conklin reflective cool roof coatings, foam, single-ply and other systems. For more information please contact Stan Volkman at (612) 750-6639, via email at Info@TheContractorsAlliance.com, or by visiting them online at TheContractorsAlliance.com.
Social media marketing is very different than traditional marketing. You shouldn't login with the intent to sell your roofing services. Instead, look to create relationships. If people feel you are part of their community they will support you and recommend your company to their colleagues, family and friends.
Here are 5 tips for getting started on creating relationships with existing and potential roofing customers using social media:
Dedicate Resources
Building relationships in social media requires both time AND people. At least one person needs to be responsible for communicating with those you are connected to, including reading status updates, Tweets, and blog posts; writing comments, joining groups, uploading photos and videos, participating in discussion forums, writing and sharing blog posts, responding to questions, etc.
Be Real
Building relationships in social media is predicated on trust and familiarity. Be yourself, and let your employees be themselves as representatives of your roofing company. Creating a stale, robotic profile and only posting sales messages and links to your website or blog are pointless activities, and honestly a complete waste of time. You want to discover a suitable mix of personality and professionalism.
Communicate Early & Often
It doesn't matter if you send email newsletters, write blog posts, update your status, send Tweets, or post to a group discussion - just be sure you are actively communicating. Get a jump start on topics that are hot in the industry and respond to them earlier than your competitors. Communicating often helps to build relationships with your audience so they can trust you will be there and will inform them of the valuable information they need or are looking for.
Get Involved
Engage your connections with questions and provide relevant context to what you post. People will start to ignore you if what you post isn't a two-way conversation. Get involved - if people are looking for assistance, point them in the right direction when you can or introduce them to someone who can. If someone posts something funny, interesting or personal, "Like" it, comment on it, re-Tweet it, etc. Show them you are interested in what they have to say as well.
Remember to Listen
Building a relationship requires that you listen more and talk less. As much as you want to spend time promoting your roofing services, that is actually the last thing you should do on social media. It is amazing what you can learn just by listening to what your customers are saying. Take the time to read their posts, the comments they leave on your blog, their Tweets, what they say in reviews, etc. This will help you understand their needs, concerns and interests.
If you have any questions about creating relationships with roofing customers on social media or would like help coming up with a social media strategy for your roofing company, please feel free to contact RoofPal any time.
This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by The Contractors Alliance. Diversify your service offerings by integrating Conklin reflective cool roof coatings, foam, single-ply and other systems into your roofing business. For more information please contact Stan Volkman at (612) 750-6639, via email at Info@TheContractorsAlliance.com, or by visiting them online at TheContractorsAlliance.com.
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. 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.
Next, I do a Google search for "commercial property management" plus each city name in their service area. I copy and paste the company name, website URL, address, and general phone and fax number into the spreadsheet as I find them. Sometimes you can also find aggregation sites or directories that have many of these companies listed in one document or page.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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.
You now have enough direct contact information to execute an extremely targeted cold call and/or direct mail campaign.
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.
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.
In future podcast episodes (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.
If you have any questions about finding potential roofing customers in your service area online or would like assistance doing so, please contact RoofPal any time.
This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Hail-Track. Hail-Track combines real-time storm maps 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 Hail-Track.com.
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
miscellaneous industry-related articles.
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.
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.
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.
The first step 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.
The second step is to determine which social media platform or platforms you will post them to, how often you'll do it, and how many pictures and videos you feel is appropriate to post per day.
The third step 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.
Regardless of who posts the pictures and videos, make sure to include brief descriptions written in a way that would make sense to potential customers.
Also, don't forget 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.
Taking pictures and video clips also provides you with great content to share with the customer offline, giving them a first-hand look at what exactly was wrong, how you went about fixing it, and the quality of your finished work.
One other benefit 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.
Something I often recommend 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.
If you have any questions about real-time social sharing or would like assistance setting up a structured, repeatable process for your roofing company, please contact RoofPal any time.
This episode of the RoofPal Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Hail-Track. Hail-Track combines real-time storm maps 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 Hail-Track.com.
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:
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
