How to find potential roofing customer contact information online (Part 2)

When you reach out via email to a potential new commercial roofing customer such as a property or facility manager and get an Out of Office AutoReply email message response from them... EUREKA! - you may have just struck customer contact information prospecting gold!

 

Why Out of Office AutoReplies are so valuable

When someone is on vacation or out of the office for an extended period of time, they often leave one or more alternate names in the company (with contact information) who are supporting their customers during that time to people who email them during their absence.

 

Those alternate contacts often have a similar or supporting role (i.e., they manage other commercial properties or are otherwise involved in the process) and are likely another person worth reaching out and introducing your roofing company to.

 

If you are interested in building a list of potential roofing customers and gathering contact information so you can create awareness of your roofing company and request to be contacted for opportunities to bid roofing work, please also see: How to find potential roofing customer contact information online (Part 1).

 

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.

Are people hiding your roofing company's Facebook posts?

Most roofing companies focus on how many people 'Like' or are friends with their Facebook page instead of focusing on what is important like what they post, how often they post, and actually engaging with those they are already connected to. Now they are paying the price: people are blocking or hiding their posts.

 
4 types of negative feedback on Facebook
Outside of bad reviews or comments, there are four types of negative feedback your roofing company's page can receive on Facebook:

1. Hiding a single post from their newsfeed
2. Hiding all of your posts from their newsfeed (also called “unsubscribing”)
3. Unliking or unfriending your page
4. Reporting your post as spam

If any of this has ever happened with your roofing company's Facebook page, it doesn’t mean what you are posting is bad - it could just mean you are posting to the wrong audience or maybe you are posting too frequently (overwhelming your connections).

PageLever is a Facebook analytics tool that measures more than 1 billion Facebook fans across thousands of fan pages. They have found that approximately 2% of post views (1 out of 50) generate some form of negative feedback.

Your connections are most likely to hide or block ALL of your posts when they take a negative feedback action (60 times more likely than unliking or unfriending your page), which means that just because your roofing company has a lot of connections doesn’t mean they are all seeing what you post. Also, they are more likely to report one of your posts as spam than they are to unlike or unfriend your page.

Why are some people hiding or blocking your posts?
It is most likely because you aren't engaging and interacting with them, or they find out after connecting with you that they don't like what you are posting.

What can you do?
The best advice I can give you is to both ensure what you post is relevant and on topic with your service offerings, and that you post at a reasonable frequency (and at an optimal time of the day and days of the week).

Don't be afraid to ask some of your connections what they would be interested in seeing posted by your roofing company. Track your page metrics to see which posts get the most engagement and the most organic virality.

Periodically try new content and new formats of content like text only, pictures of your work or team members, videos of your work or roofing video brochures, links to roofing articles or pages on your website, polls/questions, etc. Try new things and measure the results so you can make quick adjustments when necessary.

One other thing I would recommend is to focus more on quality connections than quantity of connections. Define your ideal customer and target people who match that profile.

Want to discuss or need some help?
If you would like to discuss this in more detail or would like assistance developing a Facebook content or engagement strategy, please email RoofPal@gmail.com any time.

Choose your roofing customers - outbound vs. inbound marketing

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.

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?

Grow your roofing business with video blogs and video brochures

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.

Stop selling! Social media is for creating awareness and developing relationships

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.

How to find potential roofing customer contact information online (Part 1)

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.