Covid-19 has taken many things away from our society. However, it’s also given us something important: perspective. We now know just how quickly our daily life, routine, and business can change.

The roofing industry was a relatively lucky one. Even during the crisis, homeowners continued to require roof repairs, installations, and replacements. What Covid-19 did change was the marketing options roofers had to work with. The practice of door knocking, in particular, took a big hit, forcing countless roofing professionals to explore other opportunities for sharing their brand.

Today, we’ll explore the death (or at least the induced coma) of door knocking and what that means for your roofing business. We’ll also dig into your other options for marketing your company in the meantime. Listen in to our latest podcast and take notes as we discuss the changing landscape of the industry, and how your business can continue to thrive.

Takeaways for Enterprising Roofers

Even before the crisis, door knocking effectiveness had waned.
Today’s newest generations don’t answer the door for many people.
Covid-19 is an opportunity to reevaluate your marketing strategy.
Local SEO offers more lucrative gains than it did a few years ago.

Is Door Knocking Effective Now?

In the throws of Covid-19, door knocking has come grinding to a halt. Put simply, door knocking isn’t even an option right now. If you happen to come back and read this article in the future after the crisis has resolved itself, odds are door knocking still hasn’t recovered to its former glory.

It’s not your fault. Much of society has shifted away from answering the door bell anyway.

Even prior to the Covid-19 crisis, the death of door knocking seemed to draw ever closer and closer as younger generations took on the mantle of home ownership. The practice may never fully pass away, but its waning effectiveness means that your roofing company will likely need to focus in another direction for your marketing efforts.

What are My Marketing Options?

We could pour over the dozens of advertising options available on the market right now, but that would take too much time. Right now, your number one goal should be putting your brand in front of the people who are most likely to need your services. This begs a couple questions:

Where do you need to put your brand so that those people see it?
How do you focus specifically on people in your service area?

More than ever, homeowners (and commercial prospects) are looking online for their day to day needs. That includes big budget purchases like roof replacements too. So if you want to get your brand in front of the right eyes, that’s going to happen on a digital landscape.

Connecting with people in your specific service area is going to force you to think locally. This limits false leads from outside your community and maximizes your chances of converting to sales. No more driving an hour from your office just to perform shingle repairs (unless that’s something you really like doing).

Now that you’ve established online marketing offers the best brand exposure and you know locally-targeted marketing offers the best sales potential, that leads us to our final question. What digital marketing solution targets the greatest number of people within your service area?

The answer is Local SEO.

How Local SEO Works Now

If you want to develop a consistent stream of roofing leads, the most practical method to do so is local search engine optimization (local SEO). That means getting your company website to the top of Google Search results specifically for the people in your community.

Now you might say “But our company is already on Google. We have a website.” Unless you are literally the only roofing company within a 30 mile radius, simply having a website isn’t going to get you the sales you crave. With local SEO however, your website will start to deliver actual (qualified) leads for your business.

As your rankings improve on Google, you’ll naturally start to receive more calls from homeowners and/or commercial prospects in your community. More calls means more lead potential for your company.

How to Improve Local SEO Rankings

While Google uses hundreds of signals to determine ranking potential, there are a handful of areas that impact your local search rank the most.

These include:

Roofing Website Design
Google My Business Listing Optimization
Local Citation Creation
Domain Naming
Content Creation (Writing, Pictures, Etc.)

Thanks to industry changes over the last few years – Google’s Local Search Update of November 2019 was especially impactful – it’s easier than ever before for roofing companies to make large gains in local rankings. So don’t let unfamiliarity or inexperience stop you from earning more revenue for your business. Even if your team doesn’t have the time or resources to pursue it, there are several amazing marketing teams out their with the skills to manage it for you.

Ultimately, local SEO provides the best marketing opportunities for your business because it allows you to make quality connections with people within your community. If you’ve traditionally relied on door knocking until now to grow your company, it’s not too late to get started online. Of course, our team at Roofing Webmasters is always here to help!

Roofing Company Marketing Letters Banner

Whether you call it a roofing company marketing letter, a sales letter, or a roofer mailer, every roofing contractor should understand the concept of promoting your company to potential customers via print.

When you own your own company, getting the word out to local consumers is vital. After all, it doesn’t matter if you have the best service if no one knows about you.

But, as simple as that sounds, it isn’t. There are so many different ways to attempt to reach your target audience and generate leads that will ultimately produce more revenue for your company.

One of the more underrated ways to do this is by using a marketing or sales letter for your roofing company. It might seem like an outdated method, but it serves several purposes.

Best of all, it can be used across several different formats, making it an incredibly versatile form of reaching your target audience.

Types of Marketing Letters for Roofers

Email Campaigns

You can use sales or marketing letters in your email campaign. When you reach out to current customers and any leads you might have, use the marketing letter as an email blast.

Communicate what your company has, what they offer, and why these folks should opt to invest in your business.

Direct Mail Campaigns

You can use roofing sales letters for standard through-the-mail campaigns as well. Send letters to prospective customers or any leads that you might have.

Direct mail gets more responses than email marketing because that mail is in the hands of those prospective customers, and they see it; with email, they could potentially skip through and never see it.

How To Construct Your Marketing Letter

You should implement a few foundational things into your marketing letter. These are essentials, something you should never omit for any reason possible.

Without them, you are defeating the purpose of having a marketing or sales letter, and you will not get the results you are after.

So, what should you have in your marketing letter to make it as successful as possible?

Make Contact Info Visible

You want to make this the easiest bit of information for the customer to see. Never, ever make the customer work to find a way to contact you.

More often than not, if you make it a complex process, the customer will lose interest, and you will lose out on a prospective sale.

Start by putting it at the footer of your letter. Make it large enough to be immediately noticeable but not so large that it feels out of place.

Put your phone number, address, any relevant emails, and your website for starters. Anything else you can fit without it seeming out of place is a bonus.

You also want to sign off on your letter with this information as well. Again, give your leads as many opportunities to see how to contact you so they never feel like they have to work for it.

It’s imperative that anyone receiving marketing letters can easily view contact information.

Add Pictures

The old saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words; get many thousands of words in with pictures.

Ultimately, the way to show potential customers what your business can do is to show them photos of jobs you have completed.

The key here is to implement them to fit in with the rest of the letter. Perhaps create a space on the margins to implement these pictures so that your leads can see exactly what it is you have to offer.

In addition, these pictures will give those leads an undisputed look at what your company can do for them.

Whether it’s direct mail or email, users respond more favorably to sales letters containing unique and original images. Avoid using stock photos and instead focus on your staff and equipment.

Unique and original photos of your staff build an immediate repour with consumers.

Showcase Accolades or Awards

One of the quickest ways to get a lead to consider your business for their needs is to list the ways your company kicks butt.

In addition, any certifications and awards that your company has received should go just above the information you have placed in the footer.

These awards don’t need to be dominant; they need to be there so that the customer notices them and notes how many different accolades and accreditations your company has.

Endorsements from 3rd parties are essential not to toot your company’s horn but to build trust in the eyes of those potential customers.

Trust is one of the most significant factors for developing leads and turning those leads into sales.

If you can build a level of trust with the customer, you have broken down one of the most significant barriers that companies face. These accolades will only strengthen that sense of confidence.

Add a Personal Touch

The most delicate line to walk here is delivering a message to these leads. It can’t be too preachy, too much of a sales pitch, but it must be personal enough to feel like a family friend is speaking to them.

If you can get the leads to trust you, you can secure their business better.

Perhaps make a note of instances where you did an excellent service to someone, gave them a discount, went above and beyond to deliver superb service, or something similar.

You can showcase anything to where your company went above and beyond for them whenever it is needed.

When the customer feels like your company cares, that is another huge barrier that you have broken down. Companies across all industries struggle to find that level of trust in their customer base.

Developing brand trust is one of the most significant aspects of owning a business; if you can achieve this, you have already won a massive battle in the marketing world.

Make the most of your marketing letter. Implement it across multiple platforms and ensure it concisely delivers your message.

Then, when you create a marketing letter that delivers on all of these points, you will have a leg up on the competition.

Tag Archives: Marketing for Roofers

COVID-19: The Death of Door Knocking