-Joe Radcliff
I often talk to roofing contractors who are struggling with marketing that doesn’t work or produce results. You put in your money, and you don’t get very many sold jobs in return for your investment. Because Storm911 is a roofing marketing service for Roofing Contractors, we are often asked how a contractor can know for sure if their marketing isn’t working and if it’s time to make a change for the better.
Your Phone Isn’t Ringing
Does your marketing make your phone ring? This is the ultimate test of whether you are making a good investment in marketing or not. It’s hard to argue with marketing brings in qualified leads and sold jobs. At the same time, it’s hard to justify marketing that doesn’t produce tangible results.
There are a lot of marketing concepts being sold to contractors today. These may include online marketing, social media, various forms of advertising and even postcards. In every case, the salesperson trying to sell you on buying their solution will use an elaborate sales pitch, which many include statistics, graphs and charts to try and convince you to buy their solution. Since effective marketing is a vitally important part of running a successful construction business, it’s important that you understand what is most likely to work for your business, and what’s just money down a rat-hole.
You Aren’t Getting Roofing Leads
At Storm911 we offer roofing contractors value by delivering guaranteed qualified roofing appointments. With many other forms of marketing and advertising, there is no promise that you will get a single lead, let alone a sold job from your investment. The salespeople will tell you that you have to “have faith” but all to often, contractors make investments based on faith and a good sales pitch then wind up with nothing to show for it. Before spending your hard earned money on marketing make sure and ask if the company guarantees results. If they don’t have enough faith in their own product to offer you a rock solid guarantee of results, you should probably keep looking.
Too Few New Roofing Sales
A roofing contractor was investing thousands of dollars a month in direct mail. Running the numbers, the contractor discovered that the number of jobs that came in as a result of the direct mail didn’t even pay for the postage! With many marketing and advertising choices on the market, the contractor was easily able to redirect dollars away from marketing that didn’t work, into marketing that produced a huge number of leads, sold jobs and resulted in high profits.
Just because you make a few sales a year from a form of marketing or advertising, doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile. At Storm911 our contractors close an average of 30% of the appointments we generate. Depending on the time of year, sometimes that number can vary. But, our clients will tell you again and again that they get a positive return on investment, because running qualified appointments results in sold jobs, which not only covers their cost, but puts cash in their pockets as well.
Low Profit Margins
A few years ago I met the owner of a roofing company that was doing over $10 million in annual sales. The problem was, at the end of the year, there was nothing left for the owners, other than a modest monthly paycheck. After examining the contractors books, the problem was clear. Expensive, ineffective, advertising that sucked up most of the profits. By simply cutting out the marketing that wasn’t working, going with new marketing that did work and making a few other simple changes, the company was able to achieve over $2M in profit the next year.
