Only 1 in 10 Roofing Contractors Will Dominate Their Marketplace - Will You Be One of Them?

Have you ever wondered why one or two roofing companies seem to “dominate” your marketplace, while other, seemingly just as good roofers are nearly invisible in the same market?

Yet, I don’t believe it’s a stretch to say that every roofer wants to be the 800-pound gorilla in their market. I’m talking about the firm that has plenty of leads, make lots of sales and they have the spoils in life of a business that has high cash flow and profits. 

There are some key characteristics that cause the differences between the “best” and the rest of the companies in your market. So let’s walk through a few of them. 

1. A big enough vision for what’s possible - This is a logical place to start our discussion. Why? Because if you cannot see yourself as the leader in your market, it’s certain that you cannot attain it. This often starts with having the data to quantify the real opportunity in the market you live and work. 

How many homes are there? How many searches are there each month for the potentially hundreds of keywords that people search to find solutions to their roofing issues? What are the best keywords that would be essential for your company to be found on page one of search results? 

This lack of data is one reason why we introduced our new “Marketplace Domination On-Ramp”(tm) service not long ago. When you order this service from us, we’ll send you 13 different reports that allow you to know what’s going on in your community and how best to position yourself to win. 

2. Clarity on what makes your company better than your competitors - For so long now, roofing contractors seeking SEO and lead generation have turned to almost any webmaster who said they knew the road to the top. The sites that are most often produced by these companies have information on them that’s virtually the same as every one of their competitors. 

But you must understand that if I cannot tell when viewing your site that you offer a unique service that makes you better - than I as a consumer are going to ask you to compete on price. 

At the same time, there are a few (like, one in 10) who are clearly different and better and it’s rare they are asked to work for low to no margins. 

They don’t compete on price - instead, they create an experience that makes people willing to pay more. Think about the Starbucks coffee experience versus getting a cup of coffee at most places. How can you do that with your customers in your marketplace? 

Our full-service clients have all experienced our Uniqueness (tm) process that extracts key information from them that is reflected in the copy we produce for their site. 

3. A high-value website that Google ranks highly - When you have studied your competition thoroughly (or had someone study them for you), it’s relatively easy to go to market with a site that helps people searching for help with their roof to find the answers they need. 

Those prospects spend time on your site, they click around to different areas and they regularly convert into leads. That information is reflected back to Google (through Analytics and other tools) and it’s used as a factor in where you rank in search results. 

4. Visibility everywhere - When you’ve invested time and money to produce a unique online experience for your prospective customers and either do it yourself or has someone help you, then you can get top visibility in the three key areas where Google can send you traffic. 

Those three areas are: 

• At the top of most search results pages in Google AdWords 
• In the maps from Google My Business that show up in the middle of most search results and 
• At the bottom of the page in organic search results 

While each of these is not exactly 1/3 of all the traffic available to you, you don’t want to ignore or be missing in any of them if possible. 

5. A focus on converting the traffic you get to your site into leads - No matter what you’ve been told over the years, conversion is more important than traffic. I see promotions regularly telling me that “I can buy 1 million visits to my site!” 

The problem with this is that very few of these people are in my marketplace and NONE of them are currently searching for help with their roof. So they don’t convert into leads. Do I need to ask you what the point is of that? 

6. A team that delivers an amazing customer experience - Once you’ve gotten traffic and converted the visitor into a lead, you have the inside track to win the business. Are your teams ready to “WOW” your new customer? 

The old expression about a happy customer tells one or two more about their experience with you, but an angry customer tells everyone they meet applies here. Perhaps worse if for them to have an “ok” experience where they don’t tell anyone and quickly forget they ever worked with you. 

7. A process for getting reviews that proves your value to future customers - When it comes to ranking in the Google Maps, a key that can override the “proximity” settings in the results is your reviews. (Google often shows the 3 companies closest to the person searching)

We’ve seen evidence that when you get to 50 or more Google reviews, you can show up on all of the local maps in the communities surrounding your market. With fewer reviews, it’s nearly impossible to rank in Maps because you’re not “closest” to the IP address of the person searching. 

Getting Google reviews can be easy or hard, but with the right process for getting them, you will easily turn the jobs you have now into solid reviews and do it easily. One client of ours has gotten over 130 Google reviews in the last 2 years, and as a result, he dominates the local search market in his community as well as 12 other small towns nearby to his offices. 

This is a bit like when Roger Bannister first broke the 4-minute mile in 1954. Before him, no one had been able to do it. After he accomplished the feat, it’s been repeated countless times by runners all over the world. 

My point is that once someone has gotten more than 100 reviews on Google, he or she has proven IT CAN BE DONE. But will you do it or excuse yourself by saying “it’s too hard?”

So there you have it. 7 keys to marketplace domination. All of them are being accomplished regularly by others in the roofing industry. After reading through the list, my question is will you choose to be one of the few who dominate or one of the many who doesn't?