Do you ever feel like roofer leads are just slipping through your fingers? Has your business suffered from the industry shift towards online marketing? It might be time for a new approach to advertising your services! In today’s blog, Nolen and Jason discuss the consequences of clinging too tightly to traditional marketing practices. If your business has avoided working through the internet until now, be sure to listen in closely.
Important Tips to Listen For:
- Investment produces a reward. SEO doesn’t work without trying it.
- Door knocking is unlikely to provide heavy lead volume in the future.
- Start laying your SEO foundation now and reap the rewards soon.
Classic Marketing is Fading Out
We’re living at the end of an era. The end of the period came about ten years ago. The only thing changing today is the number of roofing contractors accepting that industry marketing is dominated by online search. Even so, we still receive several calls from companies firmly planted in the past of traditional advertising, Yellowpage-type listings, and door knocking.
This attitude is damaging their business, and it hurts to watch the consequences.
It’s not even the fault of digital marketing companies. In truth, consumers have widely adopted a habit of researching everything online. They aren’t watching television ads to find their contractors. They aren’t scrolling through local newspaper ads. They rarely pay attention to radio salespeople, and they most certainly aren’t answering the door (unless it can’t be helped).
The “New” Prominent Lead Source
Marketing changes, and so should help businesses. While Google is certainly a more complicated channel than radio (for instance), it also provides dramatically more leads for local roofers. Your most successful competitors probably rank very well in local search results. Again, people look online for their essential home services these days.
Even if you’ve had a terrible year (or five), it’s not too late to get started on local roofing SEO. Even if you have an incredibly outdated or nonexistent website, it’s entirely possible to begin developing a productive online marketing strategy now. But it’s going to take consistent work. Your high-ranking competitors didn’t climb the Google ranks by accident. Instead, they invested time and money into making their organic (unpaid) online marketing work.
Enough preaching. Now, let’s create a plan to get your business earning more substantial leads again!
Starting Up Your Online Marketing
There are three key pillars that every online marketing strategy depends on:
- A complete Google My Business listing
- An optimized, functional website
- Quality, numerous client reviews
Without these elements, your marketing strategy won’t take off like you want it to. We’ll briefly talk about each element and how to ensure maximum results (leads) for your roofing company.
GMB Listing
Your Free Google My Business Listing
Let’s start with the easiest step: completing your GMB listing. If you haven’t already, go to the Google My Business starting page and fill out as much information as possible. You will need a physical address for your business. Most startups use their home address, but you’ll have to use only official company offices if you have two or more locations.
Why claim a Google My Business listing?
If you want to show up in Google Search – you most certainly want to show up in Google Search! – this listing provides the search engine with crucial information about your business. It’s as simple as that. Want to show up when potential clients look up “roofing companies in Fort Worth, TX”? Fill out that listing. Just make sure that you use the same GMB address for all future Facebook, Better Business Bureau, and other citation profiles. Even differences in abbreviations make a difference!
Optimized Website
Use a Website Designed for Google Search
Our guide, “What Does Google Want For Roofers to Optimize Online?” (link at the bottom), goes into detail on the critical parts of search engine optimization. Just because a website looks nice, that doesn’t mean it performs well in local search. An optimized website has:
- Schema Coding
- Quality Content
- Easy Navigation
- Professional Design
We highly recommend you read our guide. A quick word of advice: Even if you have to ultimately throw away your website design, hold onto the domain name. Too many roofing companies make the mistake of throwing away their URL (web addresses). Trashing your URL is tantamount to erasing all your online marketing progress and starting from square one. It takes months to recover, so hold onto that domain!
Client Reviews
Actively Ask for Client Reviews
One of the easiest but underperformed tasks for online marketing is simply asking for reviews at the end of every successful job. Client reviews make a huge impact on any business’ success! That’s because it shows dependability, trustworthiness, and accountability for your brand. Roofing companies that don’t ask for reviews inevitably rank poorly because only angry clients take the time to go online and rate them.
There’s no other way to say it. Ask for reviews!
One of the easiest ways to ensure a higher response rate is to text clients a link to your Google My Business and Facebook Business pages. Try and collect reviews from both sites if possible, as Google respects feedback from multiple sources. If you prefer the old-fashioned method, provide your business card with the links printed at the bottom.
Team Up With Roofing Webmasters
Those are the three simple steps to starting your online marketing presence. Whether you like Google or not, your clients love it! It may take some time to adapt to this new advertising channel, but leads are worth pursuing. Of course, our team at Roofing Webmasters would love to make the transition process as easy as possible for you.
