Over time, your website can become so powerful, you might not have the capacity to service all the leads you meet. At that point, some roofing contractors sell excess leads to businesses outside their home area. Of course, you can also scale up, using the added revenue to make investments.
The not-so-secret sauce: Continuous improvement in how your digital marketing attracts and motivates leads.
When It Comes To Digital Marketing, Slow And Steady Wins The Sale
For a digital marketing team to be a good match for roofing contractors, they need to be as interested in your business as you are. Online marketing involves lots of fancy software tools, but it all comes down to the same core focus: Your customer, their needs, and how you can position yourself as the best for the job.
That’s why, when looking at a roofing website, we don’t just look at graphic design, layout, and load time. We also make sure it presents your brand in a professional and trustworthy way that resonates with homeowners. In practice, that means digging deep to connect your brand with the market.
Here’s how:
1. Getting To Know Your Customers
A while back, we talked about the five types of online roofing leads and what matters most to each one. Most roofing contractors center their operations on one or two types. Small local contractors grow faster by digging deeper into past customer insights to achieve two goals:
- Finding new ways to deliver impeccable quality and service to key customer groups
- Mining the local market for adjacent customer opportunities to fill your sales funnel
Defining fresh approaches starts with a buyer persona. A buyer persona crystallizes everything you know about one type of customer into a single resource. Based on market research and past customer feedback, we create a “map” to each customer type you can use to make informed business decisions.
When everyone shares what they know, your buyers come into greater focus. This brings with it the chance to make easy, low-cost changes that will distinguish your brand. For example, you might discover that most of your roof repair customers are confused about how insurance works, setting up an area of difference if you can help.
Buyer personas also help you break into adjacent markets. For example, many residential roofers discover that they can compete for lucrative commercial projects with a few adjustments to their branding and messaging.
2. Aligning Your Marketing With Your Buyers’ Journey
When choosing roofing contractors, homeowners and businesses alike go through three stages:
- Awareness: They become aware of a problem (like a leak) and research potential solutions
- Consideration: With a solution in mind, they develop a short list of local roofing contractors
- Decision: Paring down the list, they try to determine which roofing company is best for them
At each step in the process, buyers become more sophisticated and need more detailed content to help them. Simple blog posts outlining common roof problems appeal to those in the Awareness stage. In Consideration, people need to know what to look for in a roofer. In Decision, they need to know why your company is the best.
By generating content that caters to these needs, you can be sure you’ll appeal to potential customers no matter where they stand in the process. Plus, blog writing and video storytelling from experienced marketers can raise your visibility when neighbors seek out services like yours on Google.
3. Continuous Improvement Using Data
This is where the science in scientific marketing comes from.
Marketing is never a matter of “set it and forget it.” It has to grow and change with the times.
Even successful ads have to be updated every few weeks, for example, or people simply stop looking.
Luckily, there’s little guesswork in modern marketing. Every time someone visits roofing contractors online, they bring with them a treasure trove of useful data: How they got to your website and every step they took while there. As that data grows with hundreds of visits, we can determine what’s working and what’s not.
And then what happens? A complete redesign? An all-new virtual reality roofing experience?
No. We simply look for ways to improve your performance by 2%-3% over and over again.
That comes from testing: Constantly comparing the current version of your ads, landing pages, headlines, and more to a new version with small, but meaningful tweaks. In each match-up, the most effective version of the content gets chosen. A 3% advantage grows and compounds over time.
Soon, your website is 25% better than the competition.
Consistency is king in marketing for roofing contractors. With experience, you won’t find yourself chasing the “hot new thing” that promises instant results. Instead, you’ll be building a long-lasting competitive advantage that others can’t reproduce … even if they go through grueling months of rigorous testing, you’re still ahead.
In the end, that can mean 30% more of your visitors eventually become customers.
Roofing contractors, you can stay laser-focused on what you do best while putting your marketing in safe hands. We’ve helped companies like yours scale and succeed. To learn more, contact New York Ave.
