Every Roofing Lead Source and the Pros and Cons of Each

Here's every roofing lead source and the pros and cons of each. So when you're asking yourself that question, where's the best place to get leads? You'll know the answer as it fits for you and your business. Please be very careful of taking the Internet or Facebook's advice because people that say this is the best lead source, that's like saying what's the best food? It is all dependent upon your taste. Just like the best lead source is dependent upon your business. The specifics of of your market, what state you're in, whether it's storm, whether it's retail and the size of your company, the maturity of your business, there's a lot of different factors. So I hope that by watching this video all the way to the end, you're going to be really clear about where you should be spending your money now and then where you should start thinking about investing your money in the future. Now if you stick around till the very end, I'm going to wrap this video up with my personal advice after spending a lot of money on ads. So you know, hey, this is the best way to start like testing the waters so you don't throw money at the wall and lose a bunch. It believe me, I've done that and it sucks. So let's get started. But hey, right before we do, welcome or welcome back. My name is Adam Bensman and I'm on a mission to stomp the scum out. I'm doing that by putting together an incredible community of value aligned roofing contractors who believe that sharing their winning secrets truly does help everybody get ahead. If you're interested in learning more, click the link in the description. But for now, let's get started. Roofing sales is personal development in disguise and the reward for growth is life changing. I hope my content helps you create a richer life and bank account. All right, now this video could be hours and hours and hours long because I've got a ton of lead sources on here, but I know that there are some that are likely missing and I know that I'm not going to be able to unpack each and every one in the level of detail that you might think we should. And for that maybe I'll do another video. So my ask of you is trust. Drop a comment if there's things I miss or lead sources that I miss. It'll help further the discussion. So just to give you an idea of what's coming, here's what's on my list and then we'll go through each One first we got Google Local service ads, SEO and websites, referrals, pay per click advertising, door to door, direct mail, Facebook and Instagram, YouTube, organic social media, third party lead sites like Angie HomeAdvisor and Thumbtack, cold calling, Google Maps, Hill insurance agents, trade shows, content hosting parties. That's a fun one. Coupon, books, sponsorship and associations. Now if some of those you've done, some of those you haven't, well, we're about to deep dive. Let's kick things off with Google Local service ads. First, the pros. Google Local service ads are awesome because when done right they can be very cheap and the people that call off of them have a very high intent to purchase because they purposefully searched out a roofer, took a look at your listing and and decided that you were the best choice. By the way, if you're new to the Google Local service ads, you need to start doing them because when you jump on Google and you say like hey roofer near me, what you're gonna see is it'll pop up and at the top of Google, kinda like that map listing, it's gonna show your name and your reviews and a call button and all that jazz and it's at the very top. Now the cons, I know I just said they can be really cost effective but the cons are in a competitive market, they may not provide the volume of leads that you want because of two factors. One, well three techn the number of roofers. So if you're in Dallas Fort Worth and there's you know, thousands of roofing contractors, you are in a pretty competitive market there. Number two that piggybacks on, number one is it's a bidding platform. So if you've got a bunch of roofers, companies with a really big pockets, they might start bidding up your costs. So say hey, well I'd be willing to spend X dollars per call and I'd be willing to spend X dollars and that can drive prices up. Now the third con is that for newer companies or companies that don't have a lot of reviews, you may not do so well on Google service ads because the only thing that a homeowner has to view is your listing, your name and your reviews. So your name and your reviews mean a lot. So if your name is like J and L home improvement and you happen to do roofing and you have three reviews because you're a new company, you're not going to do as well and get as many clicks and calls. If you were like a name like Top dog roofing with 383 reviews and a 4.8 star rating. So if you want to get good with Google local service ads, make sure you got a really good name and you've got great reviews. Next on the list is SEO and your website. These leads are phenomenal. Pros. People are on your website, they found you, they've researched you, they've looked at multiple pages, they reached out. You, my friend, are in the running. And one of the three estimates or whatever it is that the homeowner might request. And I know we all have those people that ask for like 17. Now, the downside is a lot of people. These are the cons. A lot of people spend way too much money on their website and or SEO. There's pitfalls to both. Some people just, like, get so wrapped up in getting the perfect website and they'll spend 20, $30,000 or more. And without traffic, it means nothing. It's a glorified business card that makes the owner feel good, but doesn't really do anything in reality. Your website needs to convert traffic, not look good. And when you spend money on SEO, which can be 2 to $5,000 a month, you don't get results right away. Doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. I spent about $30,000 on SEO before I started getting meaningful levels of traffic. And I remember being like, man, I don't know if we should be doing this. It's a lot of money that we spent without much to show for it. But imagine fast forwarding five years even if you spent 150 grand. If you get this pipeline of hot SEO leads from organic traffic of people finding you on Google, you're going to be very, very grateful. So the cons are if you don't watch your budget, this stuff can get out of hand in a hurry. And the other con is there's a million people that tell you that they're the world's best at SEO. But the truth is, there's only a handful of people who I think are actually really good at it. Next, we have referrals. I've done countless videos on referrals. In fact, I'll link to a couple up here in the card section. And referrals are getting your customers to be your salespeople. You have to learn to ask for referrals. There's a lot of pros, and I'll tell you, I can't think of any cons. These almost go without saying so in this video. I don't want to spend a lot of time on them. But I do think that if I were a betting man, which by the way, I'm not, I really don't like gambling because if I'm going to donate money, I'd rather donate it to the charities that I support rather than a casino. But. But if I were a betting man, I would bet you that most likely your team is not great at asking for referrals, even though they know that they should be. Which is why you need to systematically ask for them by using automations in your CRM, your inside sales team to call and ask for them as well as in my system, I call it the Referral Cheat Sheet, which is a handout that actually gets placed inside the Customer welcome folder that walks them through the referral program, introduces them to the reward system, and then have a series of checklists that remind the salesperson to ask at key stages in the process. Process cons can't think of them if you can drop them in the comments below. Next we have pay per click advertising. This is where we give Google a bunch of money and we literally pay per click. So at the top of Google it'll say sponsored and looks like your website. And someone might say hey, I'm searching for a roofer. Roofer's near me. You know, best roof repair in Dallas, Texas and you're going to show up at the top. Again, pros, they are exclusive leads and they're at the top of Google and they can do really, really well. The cons you are paying per click, which means if your marketing agency or you don't have your website set up to convert that traffic into a form, fill or a phone call, you will get really excited like oh I got so many clicks. Well great, you spent money on the click, but did you convert the traffic? So you need to start measuring how much did it actually cost, not only per phone call, but then tracking that all the way through so you know how much you spent per appointment per lead and then from there figuring out how much it actually costs you to acquire customer. So those leads can be very expensive. However, they are very very qualified. What I find is that the customer acquisition cost, or CAC for short, is really high with pay per click advertising, but they are very effective. Now last thing on the cons, if your company is not set up like a well oiled machine to take inbound leads via either a phone call or a web form and convert them into an appointment on the spot and qualify the prospects, you know your sales teams going out to the right houses with people you can Serve then this is a PPC is a very easy way to start wasting a lot of money. In my system, I teach people how to it's called the Inbound Leads Phone Sales Strategies, a call script for your intake team. Whether it's inbound calls or lead forms, but whether you're using mine or not doesn't matter. Pro tip. Just audit your process and listen to them. Do a secret shopper to your own company. You'll probably be quite surprised. Next on the list, door to door sales pros. They're direct sales pros. You're in control pros. You eat what you kill. Pros. No one's going to stop you from doing it. All right, Door to door is fantastic. And whether you're doing storm or retail, if you're new to this channel, by the way, welcome. I've got oodles of door to door videos you can click on playlists you can jump into my free training center using the link below. I'll teach you my slap formula. What to say at the door, what not to say at the door, your first second at the door, all that. It seems obvious for many, but there are cons. The cons are door to door. Today is different than it was five years ago. It has gotten more competitive. It is harder to find people who want to do it. It can be very unpleasant for many people. That is pretty much it. If you're willing to move through those cons, you will stay competitive in a area, in a market that many people are afraid of, intimidated by, and just quite frankly don't want to do. So if you do door to door sales, my guess is you're jazzed up because you're here. You've been consuming my stuff, using my door to door strategies. And if you're not, you might be finding that you want to start doing that. And if you are that person, there's ways to make it easy. And we do that by just opening up the neighborhoods that we're already in. After we sign a customer. I have a full system on how to do this, but it's not rocket science and I'll just give you a few tips right now. When you show up and you sign a deal, get your team to knock the doors of the neighbors and introduce themselves and say, hey, Peggy just chose us to do your roof. Same concept. When the job gets scheduled, get back in the neighborhood. Hey, we're doing Peggy's roof next week on the day of installation. And then even when the job is done, that way you're not showing up As a complete stranger soliciting people, but you're showing up to mention the neighbors, it makes it much easier to get started. Next on the list is direct mail. Now it's important that we break down the categories of direct mail because we have direct mail letters like the ones I teach. By the way, if you don't know how to do that yet, jump into my free training center. There's no catch link in the description. I have an entire playlist on direct mail. I'll teach you how to write letters for it. The leads that come off these things are hot, hot, hot. I'm talking about a plain piece of paper stick stuffed in an envelope, hand addressed, hand stamped and sent to a very specific home. And by the way, that strategy is something that your salespeople can even fulfill. So the houses that were no one's home targeting a certain neighborhood, that's where that strategy is really, really good. Now postcard direct mail is easier to do because it requires less thought. You get a postcard and you can mass mail them to a zip code or strategic areas on mail carrier routes. Now there are downsides to each of these and I just want to highlight them first. The targeted direct mail strategy using personalized letters is slow. It can feel a little cumbersome and it is manually intensive. Generally speaking, people have to do it. That means your salespeople or someone in your office. I do have plenty of clients who've developed these tools in house. They've got handwriting machines and they're doing it via automations that essentially they've built. And it's stupid powerful, that can get a little expensive. But again the leads that come off of it are fantastic. Now on the flip side, the postcard mailers or like the six pack mailing, mailing around job sites that can be effective, especially when paired with door to door sales and knocking behind those letters. Pitfalls number one, cost. You can spend a boatload of money on these and if you're delivering them to the wrong houses where people aren't homeowners, that people aren't qualified. If it's a storm and you're on a fringe area and if it's retail and you did one roof and now you're mailing around like brand new homes that don't need a roof, it can get very expensive very quickly. The next con, crappy postcards that like a lot of design people make look nice. But they are not direct sales pieces. They don't get people to call. Now I could go into a deep dive into what goes into a powerful postcard. But here's some highlights. One is an attention grabbing headline. Two is an offer giving someone a reason to call. And three is a sense of urgency, why they should call now and not delay. And fourth is some social proof or credibility that you in fact are the best person for them to call. Without these elements, your mailers will not be as effective. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of people that are happy to take your money for these, but they may or may not be effective. Now, at the end of the day, no matter which direct mail strategy you use, the most important thing is your list, meaning who are you mailing to. So don't just go out in mail to a massive area without knowing who you're mailing to and that they're qualified. The quality of your list dictates the quality of your results first. And another pro tip, make sure to double check everything. We had spent $20,000 on a round of direct mail letters and we accidentally mistyped the phone. We only found out after someone emailed us. That was a big oopsie. Next on the list is Facebook and Instagram. Now Facebook and Instagram can be good lead sources. Why? Because they're entertaining. Why? They're exclusive. Cons it's really easy to spend a lot of money on Facebook and Instagram with no results as you learned. Cons it can be very difficult to convert traffic that's mindlessly scrolling on Facebook and into saying oh that's right, I do need a roof. So there's not the same search intent as Google, but when they see it, you're capturing their attention and drawing them in. Now, because of the type of traffic, meaning the audience on Facebook, you will find that you'll have a lot more unqualified leads on Facebook. So even if you can get your lead costs down, it might take you, let's say four more leads out of 10 to get to quality people where the ones that are calling off of pay per click or Google local service ads, you could say 8 to 9 out of 10 are really, really, really qualified. And again, Facebook and Instagram might be different. So make sure that you have a good offer, a good way to convert the traffic and a great follow up sequence in place. And most importantly, someone who's got truly your best interest at heart managing your Facebook and Instagram spend. YouTube ads YouTube ads are under leveraged by so many roofers. And the Coolest thing about YouTube ads is you can run them in their videos and you can make them entertaining. You can be playful, you can have fun, and they can show up in people's faces in the areas you want to target. Now, pros, they are effective when deployed the right way. Let me. And by the way, so all great things on the leads, but let me talk about the cons. Number one, if you make boring content, it won't work if you introduce your video. Hi, my name's Adam and I'm with the best roofing company around. And you might be wondering, who should I hire for my roof? No one's going to care. You need to grab them by the throat in the first five seconds, capture them with a hook or something entertaining, guide them on a journey, and tell them exactly what to do next. Go here, fill out the form, and I will be at your house for a free estimate. You know me or a member of my team. So the actual, like, skills that it takes to produce a quality video is far more difficult than just setting the ad up. So the cons are it takes the right person, it takes the right video production, and it takes someone who's patient to learn it. Video ads are something I'd recommend only if you have someone in your office who's really good on camera and if you have a really good plan of action to target the right people. Because on YouTube, you can get really specific on who you want to get in front of. It's kind of creepy, by the way, but can be really effective. Next on the list is social media content. Now, if you want to start doing this, I have to give a shout out to Joseph Hughes and the team over at Contractor Dynamics. They actually ran a guest presentation for our community, the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance. And Joseph does a great job at helping companies bring this in house. Now, I also happen to make a lot of content myself, and I can give you a few pointers. Number one, you have to make content that is entertaining that people want to watch. And the pros are organic content does get leads. Okay? And I know some people say, well, I've never been able to do that. That's probably because you haven't cracked the code yet. That'd be like saying, I went out and knocked doors for days with zero training and I didn't make a sale, therefore, door to door doesn't work. No, no, no. You just haven't figured it out yet. There are people that are doing this and they're doing a darn good job at it. So the pros are it can be effective. Now, there's a whole list of cons, but just because they're cons doesn't mean you should do it. Just means you need to be aware of it. Number one, it can be very, very, very time consuming. Number two, the tech can be overwhelming to set up so you can manage it all okay. And then number three, you have to be willing to learn and screw up. And it is like it's doing art, man. Like, it sucks. Like you're going to do stuff and think it's going to do great, and then it does terrible, and then you're going to do other stuff that you think is going to do terrible and it's going to do great. So it takes a lot of time and attention to optimize as you go. But again, if you crack the code on it, it can be absolutely fantastic and it can be really fun. So, again, a few tips. Have a content process. Delegate someone on your team to do it. Follow a content calendar so you don't have to think about what to produce. And the last thing I'll say, it really helps when you analyze your results and just keep doing more of what's working. All right, next on the list, third party lead sites like Angie, HomeAdvisor, and Thumbtack. Now, before you freak out and say these are absolutely terrible, which generally kind of think they are, but here's the weird thing. Sometimes they can be really effective. And this is something that's worth experimenting with, depending on the market that you're in, because I have found folks who do Angie and they crush it. Like, they crush it. And other people that do Angie, and they don't crush it at all. So let's talk pros. Pros is the leads can be pretty cheap, and that's pretty much the end of the pros list. Okay? The cons are they're not exclusive. They're being farmed out. The homeowner got 17 phone calls in 20 minutes. People are hounding them. The downside, it's a lot of work to chase these leads. People have no idea who you are. Some people are confused. I fill out this thing on Angie. Isn't someone from Angie supposed to call? No, they're connecting you with a roofer. A million other roofers call. But what you need to do is just experiment with it. Because I remember wanting to turn Angie off, and Angie did really well on the retail side. For us. We had a relatively high closing rate, and even though we had a lot of leads that didn't pan out and or leads that weren't qualified, when we calculated our customer acquisition cost from our Angie Leads because they happen to be a little cheaper. It was within the realm of where we needed it to be, so we moved forward with it. Now it also worked in some markets and not other markets. So you need to test this for yourself before you go all in or all out. But one thing's for sure, I wouldn't bank my business on it. Cold calling is next on the list. And yes, cold calling can be so stupid effective even in today's time. In fact, inside the Roofing and Solar Reform alliance where amazing companies who are value aligned share our winning secrets. We had two members peel back the curtains and share how they've built call centers in house, including how they source the data, how they scrub the data, how they call the scripts they use, all of their KPIs in terms of their cost per lead, their close rate, et cetera. And that masterclass in and of itself was absolute gold. It's recorded, it's available for all of our members and future members. And the reason I share that with you is a lot of people outsource cold calling and there are some good people that do it and a lot that like start good and aren't great. And the pros are if you can bring that in house, which is what this training was about, helping you bring it in house. If you can bring that in house, your ability to generate leads literally on demand is like out of this world. Amazing. But there are cons, and the cons are there is risk involved, there's laws you have to comply with. You'll likely end up getting sued at some point. And most everyone that shared had been sued for violating can spam laws. There's some angry person. It's cost of doing business. You do the very best you can. Okay, now the other cons are what you'll find. This happened to me. I remember I got a telemarketing lead or a cold calling lead. I ran it and the homeowner changed their mind. So at that point we were outsourcing our cold calling. The person tried to call back to cancel, but they got a call center and then they definitely didn't want me there. Now I showed up anyway and so there was like an uphill battle for me on that front. The other con is like, if you're outsourcing this, your entire brand and reputation is on the hook with whoever they hired, whoever's working that day, and however well trained they are. So there's a lot of like brand risk, in my opinion. And if it were me in today's time, I would build a team in house and that would allow me to avoid all of the cons. So anyway, that's pretty much it. And if you're not doing it, I'd do it. I'd start off. If you can find a great company offering it, start there and then build it in house as soon as you can. The same works, by the way, for both Storm and retail. Next up, Google Maps. And yes, your Google Local listing is important. If you're a new business and you don't have a Google Maps listing because you're operating out of your house, this would be a really good time for you to take a look. Oh man, my flyer's getting out for you to take a look at getting a local listing setup. And the reason I say that while we feed the fire here is people can't show up at your at your house. Now. Hopefully we kick that fire back up again. Now back to the Google Maps idea. Now for many new companies that don't quite have an office yet or haven't taken the time to register their business, you'll never get these leads. This is a long term play. And again, that's where your reviews live. Everything lives on there. Someone that finds those, total gold. Now there's a pro tip that was shared recently, by the way, in RSRA and that was when you're responding to reviews, make sure to plug in your own keywords because Google Scrolls and searches, all that. So like let's say you're looking for a roofing company in Aurora, Colorado. If you're responding to the review, you can mention your city and hey, thanks for calling us up for your project in Aurora, Colorado. It was so great to fill in the keywords, repair your blank, blank, blank and blank and replace your roof due to hail damage. Now again, this is the type of thing that helps Google Maps crawl when someone's searching and say, hey, I should suggest you. So if you there's by the way, no cons to this whatsoever. It is free or darn near free. Get your Google Maps or Google Local listing up, get your reviews on there and leverage those keywords so you can get more organic traffic. You're not going to expect a huge lead volume from these. It's one of those things that, that adds to what you have. But I wouldn't be like I'm going to get 15 leads a month or 25 leads a month or 100 leads a month. Now you may as you grow, but it typically isn't going to work like that straight out of the gate next on the list is insurance agents. Now, I'm going to put insurance agents and networking into one category because insurance agents may or may not be the place for you to network for retail. I personally think it's a fantastic place because oftentimes agents are calling a homeowner saying, hey, we're going to drop you, unless you replace your roof. Or a homeowner needs to replace the roof and calls their agent first. Now, there's someone in this industry that you should know about if you don't already, and that's Matt Danskin with Restoration Referral System. He's got an entire system designed for it. Part of my sales system, by the way, integrates components of this, like introducing ourself to every agent in an outreach. Through the process, I provide all the emails and the templates and all that jazz. But if you want, like a dedicated team to go around and develop relationships, Matt Danskin System is great for that. Now, these referral sources, which I did another video, by the way, which we'll link up here, which is basically, I teach you how to create rockstar referral relationships and bulletproof referral relationships from vendors that are serving homeowners your same target market. And this could be pressure washers, window cleaners, pest control companies, lawn care, gutter cleaning, anyone that does home services when they're in the house, you teach them what to look for, and you can set up a referral program from those fellow professionals. Again, this is another tool in the tool belt to help you generate leads. It may not be all of them, but, man, if you can scrape up, you know, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15 leads in a month. And those referrals are really hot. There's no cons. To me, referrals and networking are 100% pros. I guess you could say that. The cons are you have to spend time to manage the relationship. And there is. There is cons. The other cons is the time it takes to develop the relationships. What I don't. I guess I do have it on here. I'm going to jump a little bit ahead. But, like networking groups, there's very few people I found in the roofing space that have found them to be an effective use of time. For me. I joined one and I did it for two years and I got like two really small jobs out of it. And I had to do like, you know, it's an hour, hour and a half every Wednesday. And then your commute time. It was a colossal waste of time, money, energy and effort because I only got two Jobs from it. And they were very, very, very tiny jobs. Most people don't have good success that I've found, unless they're in a very targeted association, which we'll touch on in a little bit. All right, next on the list, trade shows. Trade shows can be really done really well. In fact, there's been quite a few discussions inside our private app in our SRA of members sharing their trade. So trade show booth setups, what they bring to the show, the offers, their lead conversion strategy, and how they're. Some of them, like, by the way, pictures and all. Like, that's the coolest part of people peeling back the curtains to share. And they've shared the intricate process of harvesting leads, including booth set up. Not having your table at the front, but in the back, having an attention grabber to bring people in, making sure you're standing at the front of your booth, having a giveaway or an offer, incentivizing people to sign up for a inspection or estimate while they're on site, doing a giveaway at the home. So you reduce cancellations. Like, hey, you know, at your appointment, we have a $25 gift card. It just ensures that they actually show up. So these are the pros. And again, just a few pro tips I sprinkled in to help you actually get something out of your trade show. And having energetic, charismatic people working it, there are cons. It is time consuming, it is expensive, and they can be kind of boring to sit at sometimes. So just be very careful, like, that you don't overspend because. And make sure you budget because you'd be like, oh, I got into the show. And you're like, crap, I don't have a display. Or my display looks silly. Like, you gotta be set up to look the part and look professional when you're there. All right? So just make sure you got the budget for it. But when they're done right, you can harvest a boatload of leads in a very short period of time. So that's my spiel on trade shows content. Now, this could be organized under the social media side. I want to expand upon content. That's why I listed it separately. Content doesn't necessarily need to only live on Facebook or Instagram. Content includes YouTube. Content includes videos or blogs or articles that you write on your website. We live in an era where people want to be informed. And if we take a look at our last election, I don't care which side you swing. It is, I think, relatively common knowledge to see how much independent media, independent journalism made an impact on the election where folks like Donald Trump and J.D. vance and RFK, they used the platforms that were not censored and had wider reach. And Donald Trump's interview that he did with Joe Rogan got over like 30 million views. It was at a million and a half views per hour. And I'm just sharing that as an example. I know voting for a presidential election, very different than buying a roof. But it shares a common trend that people want to feel informed and they're willing to take the time to do it and so they can come to their own conclusion. Instead of a conclusion someone tells them for themselves. So again, instead of just hearing a sound bite and saying that's truth, going to the source or the source material and finding it out for their, for themselves. And this election proved this like mental shift in America. And it's not just for politics. It is consumer driven as well. In fact, Marcus Sheridan shared it in one of his books, I can't remember which one, that the average person that would purchase a pool from him and he wrote a book they Ask youk Answer, which you should read if you're into content, consumed 63 pages on his website before purchasing a pool. I'm going to repeat that they consumed 63 pages. So what that means for you is if you want to make informational articles about the questions homeowners ask, helping them through the process and it just, it can't read like propaganda. Choose me. It just needs to be really helpful information to help educate a homeowner. This content can take so many forms, you know. In our annual members only event called the Room, Cody Landos shared his process for using content on YouTube. And even though if you looked at his videos there'd be like no traffic, but some of those videos, I forget the amount one of them had driven like a couple million dollars in sales, if my memory was right, because of how they use it. So if a prospect comes into their world, they. They're able to send this information prior to the appointment. And again, it shows that you have a YouTube channel that you care. There's content that they consume in advance, which makes them a more educated buyer and a higher chance of closing. So content is one of those things that on the pros, like there is so many. You establish yourself as the authority, you help progress the sales process more than any other lead source, by the way. Way more. But there are a lot of cons. The cons are it takes time. There's a steep learning curve you can get in your head, but all you really need is a microphone and a cam or a phone. A microphone and a phone and that's it. Like, you can start making content. So anyway, I'm very for content, and if you haven't noticed, I kind of maybe run a business doing it. But I would highly recommend that if you're not doing it already, you need to get started. Next on the list. This is a really fun one. This is hosting a block party or a food event. So I did a video which I'll link to up here where I share a story. And we did this a couple times. I got a giant tent set up and gave away free pizza. And there was no catchers like free pizza sponsored by. And when folks would come up, we set up on the main drag. By the way, it was a small, smaller community town. It was right in the main drag. And when people showed up, you know, people like, well, what's this about? We said, hey, I'm so and so with our contracting and the reason we're here today is we've been in the neighborhood helping homeowners out, because I know that we had this huge storm and, you know, we've been helping homeowners through the process. When was the last time you had your roof inspected? What was the outcome? And then we started conversations. I don't remember the exact stat I did for the video, and I shared it in there, so I don't want to misquote, but the point is we got tons, like, tons of leads off of this because we just we pulled people to us. And so instead of going door to door and having to, like, get a stranger to talk to us, we gave away free food. People love free food. So they came to talk to us while we're there. We were able to convert that conversation into a set appointment. And by the way, we had another member of ours, his name is Brandon. He shared how he used. He got a Kona ice truck and popped it up in front of a community and got a ton of leads. Especially because, like, kids want to pull their parents towards. If you can do it for entice them around, they'll drag the parents with you to come have a conversation. So those can be great. You know, there's another technique used where you can set up a little block party at the install of a homeowner and invite people in. There are regulations you got to be aware of in terms of feeding people. So just try to use someone who carries all the proper licensing insurance, blah, blah, blah, for food safety, because you're a roofer, not A restaurateur. So the pros of that it brings a lot of people in. You can bust it out anytime you want. They're really fun. They're fun to work. You can get a lot of your team there to convert leads. The cons are the only cons I can really think of is again, they're time consuming. Funny enough. Like even though they're quote unquote expensive, the cost per lead is stupid cheap. So I wouldn't even throw that as a conversation. And the only other con would be exposure and if you suck at marketing it and getting people to show up. But a really fun thing that I think is under leveraged because we get so busy we think of just like slowing down and investing in our community. Next on the list, coupon books. Pros. Can't find any cons? Lots. Avoid them. Challenge me in the comments below if you've had good luck with coupon books. As a roofer, I'm sure you've had people in the direct mail space come to you and say, hey, do the coupon book thing. I have not found that to be worth a single penny. So avoid coupon books. Next on the list is sponsorship. This I've seen go one of two ways. You'll likely get targeted by local sports teams or schools to sponsor you or put your logo up on the backstop or backdrop or home run fence or inside the hockey stadium. And these things often feel good. They're generally low cost. These are things that, that, that I would do if you are like super community based, put it into your branding budget. I have not seen them actually convert leads myself, but they're like one of those many touches. You may end up like, hey, you know, I'm on so and so's kiddie football team and I saw this but again that's like a feel good thing and part of the branding and one thing I didn't actually have on this list that I caught now is billboards and this would be a good time to throw that in. Is sponsorship very similar to billboards? Again, it's part of the branding and billboards are right for certain people, but not everybody. They can be expensive. There's if you haven't read Tommy Mello's book Elevate. Great book. Tommy Mello is one of the leading names in the home improvement space and he runs A one garage doing a couple hundred million dollars a year. And he uses billboards not only for branding for when someone's garage door breaks, but from a recruiting side. So a billboard and it's very tempting to just like follow what the big dogs do. We've done a lot on the billboard side and I will tell you this, it's like the thing that might push a homeowner over the edge. They might remember to call you, they might see you a few times and it's one more touch. But in terms of like a physical roi, I would put it really low on the list. Unless you're a company doing 20 million a year plus and you have a dedicated budget for branding and you got enough trucks running around that then it all adds up. But if you're like, you know, a five man crew and you have logo trucks and you're going to put a billboard up, I think the impact will be pretty minimal. So I'm going to go on the billboard. Way more cons than Pros, unless you're 20 million plus. Last on the list is associations. Now associations is a broad term, but there's associations for darn near everything. And let's say you find a home building association or a remodelers association. These associations may lead to potential relationships. And I just want to be crystal clear, I have not done this on the roofing side yet. However, I did have incredible success outside the roofing industry, actually in a finance space where I was a partner on a project and we were selling a particular type of very, very advanced life insurance that was for the ultra high net worth individuals that had a lot of real estate. So we ended up getting into a real estate association. Now that association was specifically for apartment owners. So these are people that had portfolios of apartments. But getting into that association allowed us to sell what we needed to sell, which was life insurance at this point to this group of apartment owners. And that was like mind blowingly successful as a strategy. So what I want you to think about is what type of associations could be beneficial for you. Apartment owners, commercial property owners, an investors association. Again, this one. The reason I saved it for last is this only applies to someone who is set up to do that. A restaurant owners association, again, home builder, remodeler associations, anything like that. And again, depends on your service area and your capabilities. If you're set up to serve multiple states, you've got more options here. But it warranted being on the list because I think it's an advanced technique and I don't want to leave it out simply because it was advanced. So again, I had experience in a lateral industry, but it was after my days in roofing, which is why I want to revisit this concept in roofing because I know that the right associations would be successful. Now the cons, they can be expensive to join cons, they can be very, very time intensive to get into the associations and you don't know if it'll actually pan out to anything. So it's a bit of a gamble. But generally you're gambling with hitting grand Slams, not singles in doubles. All right, now I told you if you stuck around till the end that I had pro tip for you. I When it comes to testing these new lead sources, my preferred method is as follows. Number one, determine how much money you're willing to test that you can flush down the toilet. Why? Because you might. Learning in marketing is expensive and it's a series of tests. So get a test budget. Number two, whatever you do, track everything. Track it in your CRM, get call tracking numbers. And you want to track the following Number one cost per lead, Number two cost per appointment and number three your customer acquisition cost. Because what you will likely find is that certain cheaper lead sources bring more volume of leads but less quality, which results in a expensive customer acquisition cost. On the flip side, exclusive leads like Google service ads or SEO, those can be way more expensive leads, lower volume leads, and the customer acquisition cost may be about the same or even cheaper than cheaper lead sources. So it's counterintuitive. So that's all I got for you in this video. What I'd love to hear from you in the comments below is which lead sources have been best for you? Drop a comment, share it with us, and I'd also love to hear which lead sources you want to begin testing. Thanks for joining me. And if you want to join me in the trenches, there's links below to my free training center or to learn more about our community. Thanks again. We'll see you in the next one. SA.