How to Use Social Media To Drive Roofing Sales: "Do's and Don'ts" For Owners & Sales People

Hey, guys. Adam here, the roof strategist. And today I have a super special guest for you. And before I get to an introduction, this is for roofing companies and owners to learn how to leverage your social media, your Facebook, your Instagram, maybe even Twitter to drive business, get noticed, and stand out in the market. So joined with me today is none other than Bill Combs, who I'm going to introduce to you in a minute. But first, Bill, great to have you here. Thanks for joining me.

I'm really excited, glad we reconnected and excited to speak with you today.

Excellent. So Bill and I have known each other for a number of years. We've spoken at some events, conferences, and things, and recently reconnected on Facebook. So for those of you that don't know Bill, Bill started Hail Watch 1995 and created the first hail swath in Google Maps. So for all you using any sort of hail mapping thing, this man's the legend behind the movement of creating an interactive map that rivers can zoom in on and actually use hail data. And Bill grew Hail Watch using social media and just had these constant requests to fall into the social media space.

Right, Bill? Yeah, absolutely. We ran probably $50,000 in Facebook ads in 08, which is quite a bit of years ago in Facebook world, and did really well with the Hail Watch Facebook page and just interacting with roofers. So I remember getting messages two in the morning. When's the hail swath gonna be ready? So just that constant interaction, and it was really exciting to see that community pull together.

Awesome. So can you give me, like a 60 second story of how you went from hail to social media?

Yeah. So I ended up departing hail watch in 2011, moved into another organization which I sort of helped found called the uasrc, United association of Storm Restoration Contractors. But at the same time, I still had that entrepreneurial gut feeling that I needed to go out and do something that was my own. So my business partner, Sam Parsons, and I decided to found a company, and lo and behold, it was 2 in the morning, and I probably registered no time for social on my GoDaddy account, went through my 50 domain names, and there it was. So we ended up starting no time for social. And we started it because I had a lot of roofers when I left Tailwatch, so what are you going to do? And I knew that there was something else and just started talking with roofers about, what do you need? And they were like, man, we really kicked ass on Facebook. I really need help with Facebook. So just that sort of transitioned into Working with a couple roofing companies. And then we started working with other companies and just, you know, from there we just built and grew our company.

Yeah. Awesome. So Bill knows the roofing world in and out and was just back from the ire through anyone that was there with Catalyst Group. And what we're going to be talking about today is again, leveraging your social media. So before we jump into it, if anyone wants to connect with Bill, go to his website, notimeforsocial.com he provides social media services, a really neat program, which we'll touch on the social media stockpile, just to help roofing companies get the content they need both for their website and social media platforms to just take all the heavy lifting out of it. Literally, just like plug and play, post up your stuff and it's really simple. He showed it to me before this interview and is doing websites for roofing company. So if you're looking for kind of a facelift or an overhaul, definitely reach out to Bill. So now let's. Let's talk social media. Bill, before we jumped on, we were talking about finding the, like, the do's and don'ts of a social media platform, specifically, let's say Facebook for this. Because I think Facebook, would, you agree, is like the most popular platform for roofing companies and for the audience, it's.

Still very popular and it's still a great way to communicate, to connect and communicate with homeowners.

Yeah. So before we jump into some do's and don'ts, why is it important for a roofing company to regularly update their social media presence, specifically Facebook posts? Because I know it often gets pushed to the back burner when we get busy, but why does a company need to do this? Why does it need to be high on the marketing priority list?

Well, I think that's where your customers are spending their time. So if you're not marketing or you're not producing content, to where those customers are potentially spending time scrolling through Facebook, in between sports, in between commercials, while they're sitting at the car wash, wherever they're at, most people are going to be spending some time on Facebook. So you've got to spend time where the majority of the consumers are also spending time. So I think it's super important. As a roofing company, you're not. No one's clicking a button and buying a roof. But if you're producing content, if you're providing great value, if, you know, I've worked, obviously in the world of hailstorms, when a hailstorm hits, if you're able to produce really good content with tips, tricks, top 10 do's and don'ts. That is a place that consumers are going to interact with you and it just levels you up to that next level. And if you're not doing it in your community, I can almost guarantee you there's some roofers that started their company when they were 26 and that's their, their entire life is social media. They're probably not using any other marketing techniques.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And you know, the other important thing to touch on is just how customers or your prospective customers are researching you. And the material inside my marketing battle pack, let's say the direct mail letters, the letter leave behinds any collateral marketing collateral that you might be sending to or leaving at someone's door, first thing they're gonna do is look you up. And if your only, if your only post was from like 2016 and they're like, hey, Adam Roostrattegist was at my door and he left me this really personal letter. But I'm like, but why has his Facebook page not. But are they still in business? Yeah, you can't have that happen. So it's important and it doesn't need to be every single day, but it does need to be weekly. You can't, you can't let this go for months. So really important when we talk about because as anyone who's watching this channel knows, I preach multi touch marketing. You know, you show up, you knock the door, you cold call, you send a direct mail letter, you show back up again, you're using your digital marketing, whether it's on Google or Facebook, people, those multiple layers, when everything's consistent, it builds trust.

Yeah.

There's inconsistency. They're like, yep, I trust these folks.

Yep.

So anyway, sorry to jump in there.

No, and that's fine. I mean I think that's a really good point. And I think the biggest point about social, which is why we sort of started this social media stockpile and why we currently manage 20 or 30 Roofing Company Social and digital marketing brands, is it's different than a website. You know, we know that if somebody hits a website that was built five years ago, if the content is still relevant, if the phone number still works, nobody's going to know that that website was built five years ago. Now there may be some ways to sort of figure it out. Right. But nobody who hits the website is going to be thinking that when they hit your digital marketing and you want to be on every single platform. Right. How can I get My roofing company on Snapchat. How can I get it on Twitter? Let's just stick with the basics, right? Let's stick with Facebook, let's stick with possibly Instagram because you want to, you know, those co mingle and ads can run on both platforms. So as their Facebook owns Instagram, you know, let's start with something simple, but make sure you're at least putting out some updates. So it's a living, breathing thing versus a website. And I think a lot of roofing companies sort of have struggled with that transition. They want to be out on these platforms, but they don't know what to post. They don't know how to post, they don't know how to create the content, create the images, create the videos, do it correctly and that's a big challenge. So you're either going to hire somebody in house. If you're that passionate about it, you're not going to do it at all, which means you got posts in 2016, or you're going to look at some kind of solution that's going to get you there. And I think it's important to have a solution in place and to really understand what you're doing within those, those various platforms.

Yeah, I love it. So, Bill, let's talk about like some, some basic do's and don'ts. If you were going to boil us down to maybe three top tips of like what you should put on your Facebook page. And let's talk about for owners, so your company page and then for sales reps, you know, you can use your personal page to drive business and you should be sure. And also after that, just so I don't forget, my memory is that of a NAT these days, what to not put up there. Because there's definitely things that like companies put up. You're like, why in the world are you posting that? That just confuses people. So let's start with the don'ts. What shouldn't you put up on your Facebook page?

So I think obviously don'ts, in my opinion, based on what I've seen, is anything that's going to be somewhat offensive to the potential consumer. Right? So it's easy to share things that look funny. It's easy to look at maybe politics as something that you want to sort of make sure you voice your opinion as to whose side you're on. I would really keep the content built around company values, employee recognition, for example, how you run your company, how positive your company is. If you're giving back to the community. I think that's huge. So being able to tag those various community entities when you go to these events and give back if you happen to participate in one of these veteran roof giveaways or free roof giveaways, building a full built content around that would be super positive. So, you know, staying away from the politics, staying away from anything offensive. I really think it's important to do that because I've seen some nightmares and you know, it's, it's, it ends up going south pretty quick.

Yeah, it's, that's a, that's a really good point. I'm glad you touched on the politics thing because it's so polarizing and I know a big topic lately I've been getting emails and comments on the videos like, hey, I lost a job, I signed a deal, someone else came in and I have video that I've done or will be doing. I forget when it's scheduled to post, but it's done. About this topic. But one of those things, like if you put up both as an individual sales rep and, or a company and you're like any polarizing topic and I don't want to get into the political polarizing thing. We all know what it is when there's a, there's this way or this way and people are like, they just don't see any way to agree.

Right.

Like, that's not an important factor in choosing a company to do business with. Like, if I need a heart surgery, I don't care if my heart surgeon votes left, right in the middle, I don't care what color skin he has. I don't care anything. It's like, are you good at your job and are you going to make me better? Yes. So keeping all that stuff because people dilute it. And I do see, like there's some roofers that will friend me on Facebook and stuff. And, and I'll look at their stuff like, man, I hope their customers aren't seeing what they're posting. Because I know if I was on that receiving end, I'd be like, yep, I don't want that guy in my house.

That's a great point. As you began to sort of allude to the fact that a salesperson could use their personal Facebook page to get business. There's sort of this, there's the question of how do you want to use social and are you using it for your family? Are you using it to be super, you know, close to a certain number of people? Or do you really want to sort of transition over to say, I'm going to Join five or six local community groups. And I'm going to participate if the group moderator will allow me within these, these conversations. Right. So, you know, if there is a hailstorm in Austin, Texas, right. There's probably five or six groups where I'm at that have 100,000 members where you could, you know, hey, we really want to help people out. We give back to the community. And depending on whether or not there's sort of that fine line of commercial promotion. But if somebody goes out to your page, are they going to see things that will immediately turn them off? So it's a tough, it's a tough, you know, sort of line to draw, but you almost need to figure out where you're at in that line. And again, anything offensive is probably going to potentially turn people off if they want to dig a little bit.

Yeah, that or polarizing. And another thing too is we all know, like everyone, friends, everyone on Facebook anymore, you don't even need to know them well, it's like, Oh, I have 10 shared friends and I look and it's like, you know, the roofing buddies or I've got like a mountain bike. People just friend you all the time. Customers do the same thing. I like, I'll not even, I'll have like an appointment set to talk with someone and they'll friend me and you don't want some. Plus, going back to what you said about like posting groups to help out, by the way, brilliant. Like that's the golden nugget, by the way. Every salesperson and every owner watching. Join your local groups and look for opportunities to connect and network. Don't be easy. Be authentic. Yeah, conversational. Remember, same approach that I teach. I'm going to order. It's all about just starting conversation. But anyway, when you make those posts, we all do it. We're curious. You click on their name and you look at the pictures. We all want to do it. We all want to see what the pictures are. I want to see what's on their wall. And if it's like you hitting a beer bong off a two story building, you know, and then like a meme about political something or like holding two handguns, you know, like whatever it is that could be like, you know, like, like just keep the same thing for your business page. But like, man, some people, because a home is a castle. Like I've been in a lot of different business worlds. I will tell you, when I was actively a COO in a roofing company and I was handling all the shit, something went wrong. We're going to sue you. Situations when you are in someone's home that is their palace. Yeah. People are very particular. And if they're going to research the owners. Owners listening. Same thing goes to your page. And it's cool if you want to keep your page for that. Just make sure it's private. Don't accept print request.

Right, Right.

That's your right. You know, but I'm just thinking like, hey, at least for me, you go on my page and it's like, there's nothing incriminating on it whatsoever. Plus, I don't drink anymore and I have nothing incriminating to put on it.

Right. Same here, by the way.

Yeah, I love that. Probably the only two roofers that don't drink. No. But anywho, the. Those things can turn someone off because they may look into you personally, your company, before they make a choice.

Yep.

So we got that one out of the way. I think we covered a lot. Don't put political things. Don't put polarizing things. Don't put anything that sends the wrong message. And I used to use this rule. Don't put anything you wouldn't want your mom to see. But I realized that a lot of people have really funny relationships with their parents and they'd be like, oh, I just was actually with my mom at our. Like, all right, that's a bad role.

Especially in Colorado now. Right, Exactly.

So cool. So let's talk about, like, the good things to post and how to balance the obvious of, like, promotional material. Salesy.

Sure.

Content. Like, where does someone start?

Yeah, I think it's a mix. Right. So a mix of content, which is educational, sort of promotional, talks about whatever core values you have built in your business. And if you don't have any, you need to figure that out quickly. I mean, you've, you know, you've got to come to the table and figure out who you are as a company and what things you plan on standing for. Right. So we've got four at no time for social action, accountability, clarity, and communication. Those are four things that are super important in the world that we live in. At no time for social. So you may have customer service, may be one big one for a roofing company or whatever that works for your company. So building content around those types of things I think is super important. Sort of segueing into what an ad strategy might look like. Downloadable content is super cool. You can run within the ads platform is downloadable guides, anything downloadable. You can set up a system where that download forces the potential customer to enter information first before they get it. So that potentially could generate some leads for your company, including name, email, phone number, information about your company and what you stand for. Anything giving back to the community. I alluded to that earlier because roofing and construction companies usually tend to be at the top of the list of most complained about. You want to stand out. You. You want to be that roofing company in your community that does things much different than others. Anytime there's any kind of issue with a customer that's posted on your page, I would respond to every single review, every single comment that potentially could be damaging to your company. So you're going to want to handle those issues because again, social gives us. It's that platform that we can communicate with everybody, but it's also that platform where if things go south, they could really go south for your company. So if you're going to be all in, you almost have to say, we're going to run our company to the highest level of ethical standards and bring in the best people and the best people are going to want to do the right thing. So I think those are some of the things that I think I would look at from a content perspective to help be successful.

That's awesome. So just to recap that, humanizing the company, right? Like putting. Showcasing an employee of the month and employee the week. Introducing faces people want to buy from, people they don't want to buy from. A faceless corporation. Like, I could take my logo and name the roof strategist out of this and my community of people is going to watch this because they know me like, you know, whereas if I just wore like a paper bag over my face and was just like delivering this content, be like, this is my brand. Like, right, this branding, you know, who cares? Who cares about this brand? It's. Yep, it's the person. So that's one thing. Community events to show that you're actually integrated because everyone. What's the number one objection that you hear if you're working a storm? I want to work with a local company. I mean, I know we've got other ones, but that's a big one, right? Well, we have a look in office here. Everyone's local the minute you have an address. But to showcase your values of giving back and don't be afraid to say, hey, we're offering, you know, free inspection, free estimates, whatever it is, and giving people an avenue to reach out. And then the last thing that you touched on that I want to add to a little bit is. Reviews responding to Feedback.

Yes.

Customers are smart. Who cares if you get a negative review? It happens. You cannot please everyone. Side note, we were doing a roof. It was a redeck, all wood shake. Had the roof torn off. Freak rainstorm came in like a, you know, like blue skies turn, wind kicks up, two hour downpour, clear skies again. It was a two story, like a 9 or 10 12, super steep. And while everything was torn off, it was tarp. The wind tore the tarps off, dumped rain in this home for 45 minutes to an hour. I get a call from the hospital. I'm three hours away. I hear all the alarms going off in the house. He goes, hey, Adam, I think you need to get over here. We have some water. He was so calm. I got there. Every single surface of that home, walls, furniture, everything was drenched. The crew was scrambling to hold the tarp in a lightning storm on ladders because it had ripped up because they tarped at last minute. And we did $70,000 worth of damage to the home. We had to pay for temporary housing for six weeks while we dried it out and restored it. Have a letter, testimonial from the homeowner recommending us to someone else.

Wow.

Saying we realized it was a freak thing. Yeah. Did it suck? Of course. You guys handled it. An attorney was never involved. My point in that story is people, consumers are smart. If you saw that they wrote that or they said, hey, this happened. And I responded on the up and up and was like, hey, I'm really sorry. That's why we ended up paying for your temporary housing. We got our insurance company involved in their insurance company. We handled everything. I don't even think we ended up charging them for the roof. I forget how that whole thing happened.

Sure.

Anyway, my point is that when people see that bad review, they're looking at, like, are they a crazy person? You know, because they want to see how the company is going to stand up.

Right.

And the worst ones are the ones that go unanswered.

Yep. Because then they're like, that's a great, great point. And I can tell you, you know, I'm involved in a bunch of roofing groups on Facebook. And. And groups are big. Right. Facebook didn't run a Super bowl spot and continue to run the same spot now for Facebook groups because they're not popular. But I will say that, you know, there. There will be, X amount of, you know, 1 in 10, 2 in 10, 5 in 10 that will go out to a roofing group that would be in that same situation and say, I don't want to do anything. I don't want to pay for this. It's not my fault. I didn't make the storm pop up. What are the best ways that I can get out of this situation? And it's. That's the kind of stuff that I think really harms the industry. You have to level up. You absolutely have to. You just got to handle it. There's, you know, those types of freak things. It's the way that you handle those situations, the bad ones that are going to grow your company and build your company over the long term. And when you fight tooth and nail to not do the right thing because you're. Because money, at the end of the day is the only thing you're thinking about. It's going to harm your company over the long term. And I've seen it. You know, again, I've been in 25 years I've been in this industry and I've watched over the years, you know, there was just another guy or a former client of Hale Watch that was arrested in Alabama. I won't name names, but, you know, stealing people's money, hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he's been doing it. He did it and he did it in Kentucky, did it in Florida, did it in Alabama. And it's like, you know, it's. It's unfortunate, but it does happen.

And it's really frustrating. And it's the reason I've said this on the channel. I took a break from the industry because I got frustrated with how. How, I guess how many, like, bad apples have kind of ruined the bunch, so to speak, would be a good way to put it. And same thing on the news. Not long ago here in Colorado, I think it was about a week ago, I saw. It's a company that got in trouble. Large company. I recognize the name. And they had done the classic storm thing. I've run in, grab the deductibles and head out of town for the next storm. And roofs never got done, by the way. Who knows? The real story is, I know that we in the past had a salesman that was like flipping contracts and signing checks to himself.

Sure, sure.

End up getting like, warranty calls. Like, hey, you did our roof in. In 2010 and we have a leak. And we're like, we have no record at all. And then we investigated in. The salesperson was making them sign the checkout to the company name plus his name and then depositing, forging our signature and putting it in his own account and then paying his own crew and he was really rich neighborhood. The company ended up stepping up to the plate and covering it, but it costs a lot of money. But my reason in that is like homeowners know this and they're aware. And that's why like all the training you see on my channel, everything inside my marketing battle pack, it's conversational, it's personal, it shows your and it shows the integrity versus say, like, if someone says integrity, like run, you know. Yeah, show it, don't say it.

Yeah.

And really important for social platforms and our public presence to do that.

Sure, sure.

I realize we have been rocking and rolling on time. I'd love to close with a couple of things and please chime in if I forgot anything.

Sure.

What are the best ways or tips that you want to leave this audience with for owners and for salespeople on how to make money using social media in the roofing business?

Sure. So you mentioned one word that I think is going to be critical to the long term success of any roofing company. It's the word audience. You have the ability within the Facebook ads platform to build, grow and sustain audiences. And you may have to develop 15 or 20 different types of audiences over your Facebook ads career, if we call it that right, as a company. But audiences are going to be key to making sure that you're not overspending Facebook ad dollars and just hitting that little boost post button and sending a badly crafted ad out to the community. So audiences would be number one. You've got to run website retargeting audiences. You've got to build your local audiences. You can target all the way down to one mile on Facebook and even closer if you have some other techniques that you can use. So audience is one and then two is going to be what is that content? What does that creative look like when you decide out of the 10 posts that you put up that you want one post to go out as sort of that promotion? That ad, is it crafted correctly? Would the person who's looking at it receive it and want to interact with it? I like to tell roofers, you know, if you're watching a football game on a Saturday, scroll through your Facebook for 20 minutes straight and look at every single ad that says sponsored and make the determination in your own head, do I want to interact with this ad? Would I click on it? Would I interact with it? That's the same thing that consumers are doing that you're running ads to. Roofers can be successful running ads on Facebook, but you've got to have a system in place and it takes time. It takes, takes time to build that audience.

Yeah. And it's a good thing. I'm glad you said that because you have to approach it differently. Like so many, excuse me, so many roofing companies are accustomed to these like pay per lead platforms.

Right.

And they're like, hey, here's my money leads now. Right?

Yeah.

And social media is more of a long game play. Yeah. You can have quick results but ads need to saturate and customers. By the way, I've counted this. I'm gonna pull up my Facebook right now. Facebook. So I've got post second thing that I see when I open it up.

Birdie ad. Yeah, there it is.

Then 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 AD. I have counted between five and six posts. You'll see before you're an AD. 20% right. Of your, of your time scrolling roughly. I don't know is ads. So if you are going to run ads, one little thing that I've found too is that authentic images of the team are going to work better. I know it's really cool for you to like find a multi million dollar home and get your drone shot, but it's not emotional. Someone's like anyway, it's not relatable because 90% customers aren't millionaires with those homes. So I'd rather see like the smiling customer who cares about the roof. Put your yard, sign it like you're a rep with your customer and like maybe you're high fiving or smiling or hugging. I've gotten hugs from customers. Like build that connection, you know.

Video testimonial.

Oh yeah. Gosh.

If you could get a video testimonial and then you can build audiences off of that.

Yeah. So but yeah, and that was super helpful. Did I interrupt? Was there anything else?

No, no. I think really those are. If any company on Facebook could get audience down and then creative down and make sure that they're optimizing both of those things. There is a whole plethora of other things. Right. We can get into email remarket. We can get into all kinds of different ways. Blogs running blogs as clickable to go through to your website in order to retarget. There's a whole plethora of things. But if you're running ads, which you should be as a roofing company, I don't care if you're just local to a small town. Audience and content are going to be two critical things.

And this segues into both of the things that we offer. Right. So if you guys want to start doing this and you'd want to take the kind of thinking work because I know what it's like. You're running around and it's hard to be like, oh, what should I post today? Yep, now I got to think of something. And like, meanwhile, your phone's ringing off the hook, your crew short on material, it's about to rain. Like it's the last thing you want to think about. So reach out to Bill, no time for social, and ask him about his social media stockpile. It's a way for you to get that information, get that material and just kind of like have a turnkey plan and a brief. Just, this is brand new. I just saw this. Or brand new in my eyes. I saw it today before we talked. It would work so well. Hand in hand with the material inside my marketing battle pack. Both of them act in a very similar way. You download, you get access to it, you plug in the right information and you're armed with the right stuff to take control of your marketing in house, which maximizes your roi, reduces your risk. I mean, when you break it down, it's like kind of a silly no brainer. Especially I got a letter the other day that made my day saying a guy made, literally made millions off your letter last year. It's on my website. You'll see it if you click the link. I'm like, sweet. He spent like $300 and made millions. Like, where do you put money in that cash machine?

Right? No kidding.

In the same.

Well, when the foundational content gets, you know, through social media stockpile is what gets you away from the last post in 2016. If you're using that content, posting it, you're getting, you know, a post every second or third day that content's going out. It's all pre built, blogs, newsletters.

So in the calendar, I thought the calendar was cool. You literally get a calendar that says like it's Monday on January, whatever. I don't. But it's February now. Let's say it's March, March 4th. Post this. So it is like a guide. You can hand it to your admin and be like, yeah, one responsibility for you. Copy paste, follow this calendar. Done. I'm bummed I didn't think of it first. It's a really, really good idea.

Appreciate it, Bill.

Thank you so much. Again, you can visit Bill's website at no time for social. Bill, any closing things that I may have forgotten to hit on today?

I don't think so. Nope. Just great that we got to spend some time together and look forward to keeping communication up in the future. I'll be at when the Storm. So if anybody happens, if this gets published then, which is like next week or two weeks from now, I'll be at the Catalyst Group booth, which is a nonprofit that I help start with a bunch of other industry vendors. And, you know, hit me up@billotimeforsocial.com if you want to email me or check out the website.

Awesome. And those links will be in the description as well before we wrap up. Bill, thanks again for joining us. If you liked the video, click thumbs up. Lets me know that this is content you want to see more of. Subscribe for new videos every Tuesday and check out all those links. Drop those comments and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks a lot.

Excellent. Thanks.