How to find the best digital marketing and small business SEO packages
Finding good Colorado roofing leads is a challenging thing to do but if roofing companies are working with a good digital marketing agency for online advertising and search engine optimization campaigns, those roofing contractors will be poised to dominate their competitors.
The above being said, roofing companies in Colorado have typically relied on damaging hail storms to drive potential leads from potential customers. However, until mid-July of 2021, there hadn’t been a significant hail storm in the Colorado Front Range for more than two years. This meant that the stream of happy customers delivered by insurance companies delivering potential customers to the doorstep of roofing businesses dried up and almost every roofing business was hunting for every single roof inspection they could find. Often to no avail.
In this article we’re going to go over five ways to approach a roofing marketing strategy to bring in more phone calls and thus, roofing jobs. before we get into it, if you’re the owner or manager of a roofing business, we’d love to hear your experience on what’s been working for you in finding qualified leads in the slowest hail seasons in decades. Leave a comment below or send us a message HERE.
Roof Inspection Canvassing
If you live in a house in the Colorado Front Range then there is a roughly 100% chance that a representative of any number of residential roofing contractors has knocked on your door. For years roofer canvassing and door-knocking have been one of the most impactful ways for business owners to find consistent leads. A roof inspector can knock on a door and almost certainly be in front of the property owner on a regular basis.
One of the biggest challenges that canvassers face is getting a homeowner to let them get out their ladder to inspect the roof for damage or simply wear and tear. After a damaging hail storm, the potential customers are plentiful and roof replacements are all over the place from Colorado Springs to Northglenn to Loveland and everywhere in between.
The downside of canvassing is the amount of manpower and time it takes. With an online marketing strategy from X3 Marketing Group, we can enhance the effectiveness of door-knocking and in many cases, replace it by providing a “digital door-knocking” strategy that has a steady stream of potential customers seeking out your professional roofing service rather than you looking for customers.
Networking and Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Another very effective way to generate quality roofing leads for roof repairs and replacement is by getting your name and face – or the faces of your employees – into your community. Part of this comes down to the fact that you’re likely going to be meeting homeowners but the bigger strategy is becoming familiar with them so that it’s not just when THEY need a roof inspection but also when they’re asked by their network of friends and family if they have the name of a roofing company, your name comes up. The conversion rate of this type of introduction is almost as impactful as having a list of exclusive leads for roofing.
As with canvassing and door-knocking though, the manpower and time to be involved in a deep networking dive can be large. Additionally, someone who’s told about you and your roofing company owners is still going to go online to see more about you.
SEO
Part of any good digital marketing strategy for roofing in Colorado or any other competitive state like Texas or Florida is search engine optimization – aka, SEO. What is SEO? SEO is a digital marketing strategy that aims to bring your business above your competitors in organic search.
There is the misconception that search engine optimization is simply writing a bunch of relevant content posts (like the one you’re reading right now) but simply posting fresh content is not all that SEO is. On local business directories like Google My Business, it’s important that a roofing business appears with the proper name, address, and phone number. It’s also important for other sites in the roofing industry to link back to your business. This helps to drive higher rankings in Google search as well as displaying trust which turns potential leads into customers.
SEO is the single best long-term marketing strategy as it continually reinforces brand awareness. However, SEO is also an ongoing process that takes a ton of work and it lacks the immediacy of PPC advertising. At X3 Marketing, we work with clients to build their entire strategy which uses relevant keywords to build long and short-term strategies that increase overall conversion rate.
Pay-per-click Advertising (PPC)
Often simply called “Google Ads” by many, there are a number of ways to access digital advertising but for today, we’ll simply talk about this marketing technique as PPC.
In the past, (and sometimes still) Colorado roofing companies would use paid advertising like a direct mail campaign (lovingly called “junk mail”). With these campaigns, the upfront cost is not guaranteed to be recouped and moreover, there is very little ability to track which and how many direct mail deliveries actually convert into business. This means that as an effective channel it’s very challenging to see what the real return on investment (ROI) is.
In the case of PPC digital advertising, there are several aspects that make it an incredibly effective way to generate qualified roofing leads. First, you don’t pay unless someone actually clicks on an ad (hence the name, pay-per-click). This means that if someone searches for “roof inspection” and your ad shows, should they click on that ad, you’d pay for that click (which currently goes for ~$9/click according to Google). But what about competitors just sitting in their living room clicking on your ads to waste your money? While that can happen, Google works hard on click fraud detection to mitigate that risk.
Another reason that PPC is so effective is the ability to see exactly which ad results in that click. You can also see where that “clicker” is located, what time they clicked and other demographic information which can help isolate ideal customers which can drastically lower customer acquisition costs.
The final thing we’ll mention about PPC – although we’d love to talk to you more about how we can help your Colorado roofing company dominate your competition – is the timeliness of it. For instance, we had a roofing customer in Aurora, Colorado emails his project manager after there had been a hail storm nearby. Because we’d planned ahead and built advertising assets directed at people who had possible hail damage, he named the budget he wanted to stay under and we had his Google ads live and reaching potential customers inside of 36 hours.
Social Media Marketing
In an effort to not get too into the nitty-gritty of every single social media platform out there, today we’ll just talk about Facebook Ads.
One of the beautiful things about social media platforms is that they give roofing businesses – and anyone else who’s got a budget – the ability to easily promote posts and drive brand awareness. However, more often than not, inexperience finds business owners not spending enough on say, a promoted post on Facebook. As an analogy, if you have a Dixie cup fool of water which costs $1 and a gallon of water which costs $5 using the Dixie cup to water a full-grown tomato plant won’t be effective whereas the gallon of water will give the plant the water it needs for the day and then some. At X3, we use existing and learning data to help clients find the most effective budget which drives the most ROI through a high conversion rate.
The last thing we’ll mention about social media marketing – particularly Facebook – is that the profile data we can glean from that platform can help advertisements be laser-focused on exactly the right client. For instance, if you only wanted your commercial roofing leads to come from people who “Like” quarter horses within 10 miles of the 80233 zip code in Northglenn, Colorado, you can do that. It’s a very powerful way to increase conversion rates while decreasing customer acquisition costs.
