Local Leads
We all need local leads to get our business off the ground. In a competitive market or when we are moving into new locations, we need proven tactics that work for bringing in roofing leads. So below is a list of different ways to get leads from digital marketing. Along with a few tricks to improve each platform.
Google My Business.
Google my business, or GMB, is one of the most powerful ways to get local leads. GMB is the maps portion on google as seen in the picture below. These GMB results are higher than the organic results and are highly valuable for customers who prefer a local contractor.
To improve how this platform works, make sure you fill out all the information in your profile that is available. Even the Q&A area. Post pictures of your roof replacements or any other work you’ve done. Post updates and promotions. And most of all, make sure you get reviews and respond to them.
If you are growing into a new area in your state, you can open a second Google My Business as long as you have an actual brick and mortar. Once you have that second location, make sure to get reviews on that GMB as well.
Your Website
Your website can generate local leads by creating location pages on your site. These are pages that talk about your services but in relation to a specific location. Below are some examples of location page URLs and a photo from a company that is using SEO properly.
www.yourwebsite.com/austin-roofing-company/
Make sure that each location page has unique content. Meaning the text, pictures, etc needs to be unique. You can add reviews from that city, photos of local jobs in that city and that will help it stay unique.
Aside from the location pages, you want to make sure your website is listed in local business listings like Yelp or BBB or chamber of commerce. This helps Google identify your business as being a local company and adds credibility to your website.
Google Local Services
Sometimes referred to as Google Guarantee, is a new service Google provides. It is similar to lead generators except it only sends leads to you. The beautiful thing about it is that it sits at the top of the Google results.
When using this platform to get local leads, make sure you log into the platform on a regular basis and fill out the info and update the status of the leads. It will ask you about whether or not the roofing leads were scheduled or sold. Filling in this information will communicate to Google that you are an active and responsive user. They prefer to show active users to customers because their goal is to produce great results.
Google And Bing Ads
We are probably all familiar with google ads but Bing ads can also be beneficial. We’ve always seen good results from Bing. There are a lot of computers that default to the Bing search engine, and there are a lot of people on there. So we suggest using both.
With these ad platforms, you can be specific about the location you want your ads to run. This will help you get those local leads you are looking for.
There are many ways to get good leads from these platforms but one aspect that is often forgotten are the negative keywords. Negative keywords are words that are closely related to your target keyword but don’t produce the results you want.
A few examples of negative roofing keywords:
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Sunroof
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Roofing material supply
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RV roofing
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Roofing tape
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Book
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Video
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Any city you don’t want leads from
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Any service you don’t want to do
This is a very short list. There are hundreds of words you can have on this list. The goal behind this is to make sure you get customers who are ready to buy. You don’t want someone looking for educational content to click on your ad. You want someone who is ready to call you for an estimate.
Landing pages are also crucial to making Google ads work. If you have high impressions and clicks but low conversions, this could be a result of there being a disconnect between your meta description and the landing page.
The meta description is the words that show up in the google results that someone clicks on. An example of this disconnect would be, if your meta description says, “Roof Replacement 25% Discount” but the landing page doesn’t mention the discount or how to obtain the discount, this could be confusing. This might lead the user to thinking that it was clickbait and that the discount wasn’t real.
Social Media
As I’m sure you’re aware of, you can be very specific about the location of your social media ads. So when you’re creating the ads for local leads, use photos, videos and text that have to do with your local area.
Using local content is just one option. You can also go for informative, funny or whatever you find that catches the users attention and helps them stop scrolling.
Be consistent with your ads and content. Branding is key. You want to stay in front of the homeowner.
Lead Generators
I don’t typically recommend third party lead generators other than google because they have a reputation of giving your lead to five other contractors. So if you do use them, I recommend creating a system that enables you to respond to the leads right away and get out to the customer the same day if possible. If you’re the first person to make an impression on the person, you will be most likely to win the job.