Its not easy to start a roofing business and make it successful in today’s world. The competition is tough, and it’s getting more challenging each day as more people are jumping into the roofing industry and starting their own roofing companies.
The roofing company owners who can beat the competition and emerge victoriously are the ones who understand the importance of digital marketing and online lead generation.
What Is Lead Generation and How to Generate Roofing Leads:
Lead Generation is the process in which you get people genuinely interested in your service to give you their contact details so you can diagnose their roofing problem and sell them your services.
We will not lie to you and tell you it’s going to be easy. But, we’re surely going to tell you that it’s possible and can be done with a bit of experimentation and repetitive effort.
Remember, the same techniques which worked years ago to generate commercial roofing leads and residential roofing leads are no longer helpful. Today is the time of digital marketing; In addition to conventional lead generation tactics, you have to rely heavily on different social media channels and Google to get you qualified leads.
So without wasting any more time, let’s discuss all these conventional and modern ways of generating roofing leads for your roofing business:
Canvassing:
If you want to open the doors to opportunities, then you got to knock on doors first. The most suitable time for knocking on doors is right after storms.
Here are some tips for canvassing:
1) Deal with rejection positively; Some people won’t like that you bothered them. If they say some derogatory words, don’t take them to your heart. Move on, and knock on the next door.
2) Have a convincing, logical reply ready for any objection they might have.
3) Act out a script that is proven to work, don’t experiment. This way, you’ll be more confident in your sales pitch.
4) Have a clear objective, but don’t focus only on achieving this objective. Remember, people like to talk about their problems and not want to hear about the history of your company solely or be forced to make a decision.
5) Offer them a free roof inspection or drop some valuable advice on them, ask them questions about their house, give them compliments on their house’s interior or some other personality trait. Make them feel valued, and make them realize that you genuinely care about who they’re, what they’re about, and their likes dislike.
6) Follow up; if you’re courteous, kind, They’ll gradually convert. Always do follow-ups.
Direct Mail:
While you get many emails and usually ignore them, it’s not the case with direct mail. The average american receives only 16 pieces of mail per week.
To avoid landing in the trash bin, make sure that your direct mail pieces or postcards are not long-form self-praise and history lessons about your company. Be concise in your postcards, Make them attractive and address the common pain points of your prospects.
Some ideal headlines on these post cards could be,
“Don’t wait, Until its too late. We’re here for you. Free Roofing Estimates!”
“Storm Damage has been reported in your area, Your roof may be damaged!”
“Protect your most valuable possession, Your home!”
Along with these highly impactful taglines, use corresponding imagery to add power to your message.
Local SEO:
Ranking locally is much easier than ranking globally. Ranking on “roofing contractor in (insert_your_service_area) is easier than ranking on “best roofing contractor.”
TO get ranked locally, use a combination of blogs and GMB posts, in which local keywords are used. Ensure the GMB posts have some posts specifically about your service area, along with posts about your roofing company or roofing services. Similarly, have web pages on your website about the areas where you’re providing your services. After this, make sure you do interlinking between the blogs and posts to create a robust digital footprint of your desired keywords. This Footprint helps convince Google that showing you at the top on local keywords will serve the user’s intent.
GMB means Google MY business. It is the business directory of Google. Google stores the information of all businesses, their services, their timings, their reviews, their photos, and lets the business managers upload posts about their business.
The advantage with Google My Business listings compared to the standard google SERP’s is that while regular webpages get ranked based on relevance, volume, and intent. Google My Business mainly considers proximity.
Suppose someone located two blocks away from your roofing company office is searching for a roofing company, and you have optimized your Google My business in your service area. In that case, that person will certainly and indubitably find you in the Google My business 3 pack.
Hence, Google My business will generate free Commercial roofing leads, and residential roofing leads for your roofing small business growth.
Pay Per Click ( Search Engine Marketing )
Want to be at the top of the search results and don’t have time to wait for SEO results?
Pay Per Click Could be Right for You!
Pay Per Clicks are effective because they don’t interrupt user’s experience. They only get shown to people looking to buy a product or service. These are motivated buyers looking to buy what your business has to offer.
Another benefit of these ads is that Google only charges you once someone clicks on these ads.
Cost per click (CPC) can run anywhere from $0.05 to upwards of $50.00 for the most competitive keywords.
For high commercial intent searches (where a person is looking to buy a product), paid ads receive 65% of all clicks.
So, Opt for Pay Per Click ads for generating residential roofing leads and commercial roofing leads in the shortest period. Want help in setting up your PPC campaigns? Contact us here.
Facebook and Instagram advertising:
Facebook and Instagram are an excellent way to target all homeowners in a particular place. They allow you to target according to interests, age, location, and home’s net worth. You can target different behaviors and demographies like, “people who just recently moved in seattle.” This demography will respond better to your roofing Facebook ads since people who’ve moved in a new house might not like the roof over their head and want a roof replacement.
Remember, to generate roofing leads efficiently through Facebook and Instagram advertising; You must have a strong marketing funnel in place, a follow-up email sequence setup, and an appealing lead magnet. A lead magnet could be a checklist about “how to choose the best roofing contractor,” “Most popular roofing materials popular in 2021,” or “INsurance FAQs”. This lead magnet is mandatory for generating roofing leads because advertising on Facebook and Instagram is disruptive marketing. People are on these social media channels to enjoy. They don’t like being sold. When you allure them with your bait or lead magnet, they click your ad and land on your thank you page.
At this point, you extract their emails to do two things: Retargeting, in which you sell your leading service and start your email marketing sequences. The objective of these retargeting campaigns is either getting them to agree to a roof inspection or directly hiring you for a roof replacement or roof repair.
The success of your facebook and Instagram advertising to generate residential roofing leads and commercial roofing leads will be dependent on your targeting, retargeting, ad creative, ad copy on your landing page, facebook ad copy and the allure of your lead magnet.
Strategic partnership:
A lot of renowned companies like Lowe’s and Home Depot offer strategic partnerships. They’re inundating with leads because of their colossal portfolio and extensive experience that they now sell those leads to other roofing companies.
Align up with them and become a sort of subcontractor for them. We know it doesn’t sound like an ideal scenario, but you have to start somewhere to get significant results. You have to be flexible in your demands and accept what is quickly attainable, so you don’t lose hope and can keep the company afloat. However, keep working on your online presence to grow your small business, and soon you’ll start generating roofing leads on your own.
Storm Chasing Apps:
Most people show apathy towards their roofs until the water starts dripping from the ceilings. These leaks mostly take place in areas where there’s been a storm. So to chase down leads, register yourself on apps that notify you everytime there’s been a storm.
Content Marketing:
Make engaging content about roofing industry and your service area. Post this content on youtube, google my business, facebook, instagram and in the form of blogs.
Find what your audience is talking about and make content about that.
For instance, I saw roofers post jokes about the rapid weather changes in their areas. I also saw an interesting post by a roofer where he posted pictures of the buildings worldwide with the most distinct roofs.
Many roofers make a mistake by repeatedly posting the same boring content that sells their roofing service. You have to go beyond that to be successful.
It would help if you talked about your ideal prospect’s interests, whether it’s a Halloween they’re celebrating or a funny video they’re sharing. You need to talk about it. Try to find the content which is an intersection between what your roofing company is about and what’s going on in your surroundings.
E.g: it could be that you are running a charity for veterans, and news about some veteran is circulating. You should definitely share it or write a blog on it and share it on your Facebook page.
We suggest posting 70% content that people find exciting and only do selling with 30% of the total content on your page.
Once you build an engaged audience of 1000+ people. You will see the most effective form of word-of-mouth digital marketing happen. People will start sharing your content, and your brand will get huge online visibility. Soon you will become the brand from which everyone wants to buy a roof.
Making sales require Building trust, and doing that takes time. It doesn’t happen with just running a single ad with a messaging objective or an inquiry form attached . It involves building a relationship with people, talking about what matters to them rather than what matters to you.
Make sure the branding, colors, logo, and fonts are consistent in all your content. This similarity will allow others to perceive you as a professional and competent roofing company. You will also be quickly recognizable and become distinct from other roofers. We can help you make such content. To read more about our roofer marketing offering, click here.
Email Marketing:
Email Marketing might seem ineffective, but we assure you it’s not. Doing email marketing without the collaboration of other marketing techniques can make them weak. But, when email marketing campaigns are used to send follow-ups after a sign-up on a form. They’re super effective in converting your roofing leads into long-term customers.
Even email Marketing campaigns sent out to a cold audience can be effective if you have an appealing lead magnet. However, before you send out a cold email campaign, make sure that you do it after warming up your email and send the emails in drip mode rather than bulk mode. Another thing to make sure of is that if you’re using custom variables like first name or last name, then each record which you’ve imported should have a corresponding value for that variable.
Stats show that For every $1 spent, there is $40 return on investment.
Trade shows:
Networking is an essential aspect of generating residential and commercial roofing leads. Going to trade shows, demonstrating your past projects, showcasing your client’s testimonials can be a revolutionizing point for your roofing company.
Your roofing company can get opportunities through these trade shows, which will skyrocket its growth.
Make sure you appealingly showcase your brand through banners, posters, videos playing on big screens. However, don’t just try to make the whole trade show about you, Give freebies. Giving away Mugs, notepads, and pens with your logo and branding will allow you to create a win-win situation.
Another important tip here is to go to all renowned company owners booth and praise their company, Don’t just do bland praise. Do a bit of research on them and talk about something you actually liked about them. Fake praise is easy to detect and always tarnishes your reputation in other’s minds. The benefit of this will be that if these renowned roofing company owners one day have more work than they can handle or they get a call from a client who is in your service area and doesn’t fall in their’s, then they might give you this roofing lead for free. Never underestimate the power of Networking in the roofing industry.
Review Sites
Reputation is everything in the roofing industry. If you want to generate roofing leads, work on getting reviews.
For a while, people who know you for a while have seen your progress and skills up close will not look you up before buying your service, and you won’t have to prove to them your worth. However, people who have just found out about you will be doing some research before buying your service.
By research, we mean they will read up your reviews.
So do everything in your power to maintain good communication with your customers and offer excellent service, so they are more inclined to leave a positive review after job completion.
Here are some tips for leveraging the power of reviews for generating roofing leads:
- Engage with customers whenever they leave reviews, this lets people know you’re a serious business that values its customers
- Use testimonials in content and marketing campaigns to attract similar customers
- Ensure that your contact information is readily visible on all profiles
- Ask for referrals and reviews from customers when a job is done
- Enable reviews on your Facebook business page
- Monitor and engage authentically!
Want to leverage them even further:
Offer some extra service to a customer and ask him for a video testimonial. This testimonial can include clips of your crew working on your customer’s roof. Drone footage of how clean and elegant your roof looks. Customer’s clip in which he admires and acknowledges that your service is better than others.
TeleMarketing:
People never ignore messages if they’re written astutely and prudently. Run an SMS campaign through a telemarketing company or part of your overall funnel marketing campaign.
We hope you liked our advice and recommendations regarding your roofing company’s marketing. We hope to see you using these techniques and generating tons of roofing leads for your roofing business.
If you’re unsure how you can put these highly desired, effective, and proven-to-work techniques or recommendations to work, then don’t sweat. We’re here to help you. Book a free Roofing Marketing strategy call with us. We will provide you with the right roofing marketing strategy to get the maximum digital exposure and roofing leads.