RELIABLE REFERRALS Residential roofers often differ from siding or window companies in the amount of business they’re able to generate from referrals and previous clients. That can be anywhere from 30% to 80% at some companies, depending on how long they’ve been in operation. “I would say,” says Jeff Petrucci, owner of Bloomfield Construction, in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., “that if you’re an established business, with a base of homeowners and property managers who are prepared to refer you at the end of the job, then [roofing] is recession-proof.”
Sixty percent of the volume done by Bloomfield Construction in 2007 was roofing work, compared with 30% the year before. Most of that, Petrucci says, came from referrals. And where the company owner once aspired to diversify into design/build projects such as additions, he now prefers roofing because jobs turn faster and the need is constant. “It’s the same amount of volume with more profit and less headaches,” he says.
But repeat and referral work can only go so far. Many roofing company owners are in Gotschi’s boat: their biggest challenge now is generating steady lead flow, especially when weeks and months go by without rain. And though the fact that people need a roof means they’ll call sooner or later, the question then becomes who they’ll call, or who they’ll buy from.
“Most roofing companies can build good roofs,” Good says, “and most know how to sell. But marketing is the bigger challenge, and it’s one that a lot of contractors don’t have much experience with.”
CHECKING YOU OUT Today, the homeowner looking for a roofer is often inclined to do some detective work. That typically involves a Web search where said homeowner may end up at manufacturers’ sites or at Angie’s List (www.angieslist.com), as well as the sites of local roofing companies. Not long ago, for instance, a lady called Dryhome Roofing & Siding specifying that although she wished to have the company replace her roof, it was not to do so with the shingles of a certain manufacturer, which she’d read had been involved in a class-action lawsuit.
Fifteen years ago, homeowners would rarely be aware of such information. But today the Internet not only allows roofing manufacturers to showcase their products, and roofers their services, it also subjects them to a level of scrutiny, and opinion, that can be uncomfortable, even damaging. Ask any roofer who’s been slammed on Angie’s List, which in many locales is fast becoming an indispensable reference source for homeowners seeking contractor services. It can also work the other way. Steve Smalley, owner of Exterior Home Improvement, in Indianapolis, estimates that 70% of his business now comes from Angie’s List, where his company has received more than 500 customer reviews.
ON SITE In years past, roofing companies typically relied on the weather to create business and the Yellow Pages to alert beleaguered homeowners to their presence. No more. Today, homeowners in search of a roofing company are most likely to refer to the Web (unless they live in a rural area without high-speed Internet access). Last year, Burr Roofing, Siding & Windows generated 50% of its leads through multiple Web sites, including www.burr123.com. Open the home page and Priest introduces himself in streaming video. Other features guide visitors through a typical roofing project, and explain the company’s same-as-cash financing package.
“What we want to do is create a sense of trust and confidence,” says Jonathan Lawrence, of Lawrence Media Group, in Richardson, Texas, which, along with Doug Chuhran, creator of the “Monopolize Your Marketplace” system, designed the site for Burr Roofing, Siding & Windows. Lawrence says he made the site heavy on video because it’s what people see every day and because, at the moment, so few roofing company Web sites use it that to do so is a way to stand out.
Homeowners are finding the site largely because a year ago Priest engaged a search engine optimization (SEO) firm to populate it with common keywords. Type “roofer Fairfield County” or “roofer Southwestern Connecticut,” or any one of a dozen other verbal combinations, into Google, and www.burr-roofside.com pops up on page one . “SEO,” Priest says, “is an absolute necessity.”
Troy Marshall, owner of Marshall Roofing, in Lorton, Va., would agree. He similarly had his video-heavy site — generating around 16% of leads — optimized. One reason was that the cost of pay-per-click leads was escalating as an increasing number of roofing companies bid up the price per click. So Marshall Googled “search engine optimization” and, with that as his acid test, contacted the first company listed. Contractors can expect to pay about $5,000 for initial SEO costs, and another $500 monthly to keep the company site current since, as Lawrence explains, “what works now may not work next year.”
