What Would Nolen Do?
Nolen, the founder of Roofing Webmasters, would invest in marketing and keep it going. As someone who once owned a home service business, he knows how valuable marketing is for lead generation. Nolen grounds himself with the concept of marketing. Once marketing is made a priority, everything else will follow suit. The most substantial advice from Nolen would be to stay true to your marketing. Here’s how you can accomplish this as a roofer:
Laying The Foundation
A roofing company’s foundation should be in online marketing. Organic search is still the best long-term digital asset. If you can get your company ranking on Google Maps and traditional results, you can dominate your local market for quite a while. The best way to accomplish this is to invest in a roofing website, not just any old site. It should be designed with marketing and promotion in mind. Even with the emergence of new digital brand platforms like Google My Business and Facebook, linking each back to the main website is key to online branding and high-ranking positions on Google.
Custom Website Design
A custom website with a marketing foundation is the best kind of roofing website. Although new tools exist to build your website without design experience, ranking said sites on page one are not accessible, and controlling their HTML & CSS code is even more challenging. With a custom website, you will have control over what goes on behind the scenes of your site. Website makers can be helpful, but they mainly deal with front-end edits. In other words, you are placing widgets on your pages and adding elements in that manner. It might look quite good from the user’s perspective, but the coding can be bogged down and even slow down page speeds.
Google Maps & My Business
When roofers think of organic search, they typically think of traditional results. But one of the most critical organic placements occurs on the Local Map 3 Pack. The Local Map 3 Pack is the top 3 Maps rankings in a specific region. It is shown based on a user’s search term as well as their current location. The goal for every contractor should be to get into the top 3 for keywords in their service area. Because most consumers find contractors through mobile search, Maps placement is more critical than it’s ever been. Remember too that Maps placements show your aggregate star rating, so you should compile reviews when possible. You should also claim & optimize your My Business profile and align it with your website.
Search Engine Optimization
Aside from Maps, you also want to rank on traditional organic results. The best way to accomplish this is through SEO, otherwise known as search engine optimization. SEO helps not only with conventional results but with Maps placement too. The foundation of your organic reach is SEO itself. SEO is the refinement of your web presence to best suit Google’s standards and pursue the most excellent chance of ranking high.
SEO includes everything from keyword placement, content quality, NAP consistency, inbound linking, and much more. And optimization is not a singular task but rather an ongoing process that takes consistency and attention to detail. Anybody suggesting SEO is a one-time deal is mistaking or disreputable.
Roofer SEO Mistakes
As someone who has worked with hundreds of roofers to improve their SEO, several mistakes have shown to be apparent and consistent. When contractors come to us, they’ve usually had missteps in past marketing endeavors. For example, they may have placed all their resources in one channel, which is not a good marketing ideal.
Instead, diversity should be stressed when allocating resources, financial and otherwise, towards marketing. Going for content-only leads-only, web-design-only, etc., are alarming signs of poor resource management. Another critical mistake that companies make, either before or after investing in marketing, is hiring an in-house marketer to handle everything by themselves.
In-House Marketing
We see this all the time; a hotshot in-house marketer is hired, and the company tanks. No single person can be an expert at every aspect of marketing. Roofing Webmasters employs expert web admins who specialize in SEO, web design, PPC, and local optimization, to name a few. But each member has a specialty skill, rather than having one person who thinks they know all of it. Worse yet, in-house marketers remove checks and balances from the process.
Lack of Marketing Diversity
A lack of marketing diversity can be a significant problem. Sometimes roofers will hire a service that offers content only or web design only. First, these tasks as standalone services don’t do enough to improve rankings. For example, a web designer could make a visually appealing website, but if they know nothing about optimizing it, it will serve no business purpose.
The same is true of hiring writers for content only. If they don’t understand SEO, they won’t know that specific blog post elements are necessary to rank well. Worse yet, writing for a poorly designed site with no technical optimization will make the point moot. Everything must work together for optimal ranking.
Poor Resource Management
Probably the most common marketing problem for contractors is resource management or lack thereof. There’s an idea that cutting costs is the most critical aspect of a business, especially during down seasons. But when it comes to marketing, cheaper isn’t better. There has to be some commitment to marketing from a financial perspective to expect any return.
Ignoring marketing altogether is the fastest way to destroy your business or halt it from ever getting established in the first place. Affordability should remain a vital consideration, but relative to its potential ROI. For example, you should look for a full-service marketing agency that is also affordable. Avoid going for the cheapest option in the process of sacrificing services. Contractors should always try to keep their roofing company in perspective.
