What is Social Media for Roofers?
Roofing social media refers to apps and web platforms that foster social networking, along with content creation and sharing. Examples of social media for roofers include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Do Roofing Companies Need Social Media?
Social media remains a powerful marketing tool in 2022. Despite the merits of roofing social media marketing, a surprising amount of roofing companies around the country aren’t utilizing this platform.
Many of the roofers we talk to cite that they don’t have enough time to consider a roofing social media marketing campaign. Others say that they don’t know how to go about it. While social media marketing does present a unique set of challenges, it is usually the difference between doing alright as a roofing business and true success.
Don’t believe us? Please consider the following statistic: 89% of consumers will buy from a brand after they have followed them on social media. Almost as many will go on to recommend the brand or company to a friend.
Social Media Strategies for Roofing Companies
Everyone wants to be the friend or neighbor that finds a great roofing company and tells everyone else about it. These days, they are finding these companies on social media. Now ask yourself, are people able to find your company on social media?
If you answered no, don’t fret. We know that roofing social media marketing can be daunting, but that’s why we put together the following guide. In it, you will learn the essential elements of a successful social media marketing campaign.
1) Set Clear and Realistic Goals
First and foremost, you must have a clear goal for your social media marketing campaign. Are you trying to increase brand awareness? Do you want to boost sales for a specific service? Perhaps you want to promote a particular product or service. Focus on one goal at a time but be clear with your ideal outcome.
For instance, determine how much you want to increase sales if you want to boost sales. Nail down a specific percentage. Then establish a realistic time frame for your social media campaign to achieve the goal.
Your goals (and their particular figures and timelines) will provide a framework for your social media marketing campaign.
2) Distinguish Ads from Organic Marketing
Much like Google, social media platforms allow roofers to reach their consumers organically or through paid advertising. While roofers can still promote for free on social apps like Instagram and Twitter, other platforms make it more difficult. For example, Facebook’s algorithm makes organic promotion difficult, and in turn, Facebook Ads for roofing becomes a critical option.
Running Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, or Twitter Ads requires understanding demographics, budgeting, and ROI. The good news is that each platform provides in-house support when running advertisements and will even recommend budgets, intervals, and more. Your job as a roofing company is to produce compelling promotions, slogans, and offers for potential consumers.
3) Determine your Key Demographic
Your social media marketing campaign will be predicated on creating content for a specific group of people, or in other words, your key demographic. As a roofer, the most fundamental demographic for you is homeowners. You may also need to branch out to include property management companies and business owners.
This step aims to create a customer persona based on your critical demographic’s age range, typical income, gender, geographical location, spending habits, and even personal values and interests.
The customer persona you come up with will be the average person you are trying to connect with on social media. Everything you promote should aim to address this persona.
4) Meet Your Customers on Their Preferred Platforms
Some businesses would do well focusing on a few select social media platforms based on their key demographic. The same is true if you own roofing businesses. Let us give you an example. 60% of the users on TikTok are between the ages of 16 and 24, while only 26% are between 25 and 44.
Now ask yourself this question: how many 16-24 year-olds do you know to be homeowners? If it’s possible, it would be ideal to have a social media presence on all platforms. As a roofing contractor with limited time and resources, however, you may want to focus on the more popular platforms with your key demographic.
Roofers will want to focus on platforms like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Twitter is very popular among people between the age of 18 and 34, and the average age of Facebook users is 40. Instagram is also owned by Facebook and reaches homeowners consistently. These three platforms hit the sweet spot in terms of the key demographic age group for roofers.
5) Maintain Brand Consistency
If your roofing business is already up and running, you probably already have your company logo and slogan. Using the same logo and slogan across all your social media platforms is essential. Why? Because brand consistency is crucial for brand recognition and even revenue. Solid brand consistency can increase revenue by up to 33%.
Brand consistency doesn’t stop at logo and slogan, though. Social media will offer you something you may not have had before: an opportunity to communicate with an audience. You must establish a tone in your roofing social media campaign – and stick to it! Do you want to educate your audience? Then, adopt a formal style with your posts and content.
Do you want to increase brand awareness? Then maybe a more conversational tone would be better. Whatever technique you choose, be sure to stick to it. Make it consistent with your brand so that people can recognize it just by reading a few words.
Here are some more tips for maintaining brand consistency on social media:
- Use your company logo as your avatar
- Make sure NAP (Name, Address, and Phone Number) are listed the same on all your social media outlets
- Use your slogan wherever is appropriate
6) Strike an Informational / Promotional Balance
While it’s tempting to look at your social media marketing campaign as a means to sell your services, you must remember that even though many people make purchases through social media, it is still used mainly for entertainment and information gathering.
People aren’t looking to be sold when logging onto their Facebook or Twitter accounts. Your content has to strike a good balance between fun/engaging/informative, and promotional. Think of it like this: 80% of your posts/content should engage your audience, and only 20% should be geared toward selling to them.
7) Creating Social Media Friendly Content
Now comes the tricky part. What things should you post in your roofing social media marketing campaign? Here are some ideas to jump-start your imagination:
- How To’s: Show your followers how to test a roof leak or identify a roofing material. You don’t have to choose a technically advanced topic. Maybe just a how-to on cleaning gutters.
- Before and After’s: Instagram stories are hugely popular and perfect for before and after pictures of your roofing projects.
- Get Opinions: People love when their opinion is valued. Ask your followers what they think of a recent job you completed or what style of roof they like most.
- Tell a Story: Do you or one of your team members have a remarkable, funny, harrowing, inspirational, or otherwise interesting story to tell? Use your social media outlets to share them.
- Reply: Simplest and perhaps most important of all; reply to your social media messages and comments.
DataPins is a software tool that helps roofers automate social media content through pins. Each pin showcases a recent job along with a mini-map and job description to enhance the photos.
Bonus Social Media Tip for Roofing Contractors
Last but not least: when in doubt, call a professional out. Perhaps the best thing you can do to ensure a fruitful roofing social media campaign is to work with the professionals here at Roofing Webmasters.
Our in-house application, DataPins, changes social media, reputation management, and SEO as we know it. As software infiltrates the digital marketing space, more and more processes become automated, suitable for roofing companies. Of course, not all software can replace human behavior, but setting expectations with your digital marketing company is essential.
