6 Essential Videos Every Roofer Should Create to Grow Their Business

It's about this time that people say, well, I don't want to just start off by sucking. And they say, how do I make good videos, Adam? And my answer is always the same. By making enough bad videos that eventually you can't help but to get better. If you're at a point where you've had enough of customer acquisition being some voodoo science that you can't figure out, it's just kind of a preordained challenge that you just say, you know what? Customer acquisition, gosh, that's hard. I want more leads. How do I get more leads? I wish we got more leads. We could grow if we could just get more leads. That's the first step. You have to feel the pain of that because the pain of making videos will always be there. So you have to get sick of not having enough videos. Then once you commit to that, the second step is then, okay, well, what kind of videos should I make? And there's six kinds that work really, really, really well. And I'll go through them now. People Product process, Thought reversal. Caught Doing It Right and giving pledge. So the first one we're gonna talk about is this video here. And this video is from me actually working. Okay.

What matters more that the company is certified or that the people doing the work are certified? Even over here, you can see we've got Bob and we've got Joe in a super professional spider man shirt. We've got them doing a deck mounted skylight. These guys have been installing skylights for 26 and 15 years. But the problem is, is that this deck mount stuff, this is a little.

Bit newer for them.

So we want to make sure that they get updated training, that they actually.

Go through it, that they actually. So what we're working with here is what we call a people video. And the purpose of a people video is to generate videos that showcase team members. You want to emphasize the roles, their experience, the character that they have. You can choose one employee to feature in a conversational style, talking with them, or you can kind of go into a group of employees like we did here, where we talked about the benefit of hiring our company is that we're getting our people certified in how to install V Lux Skyline. The position that I'm taking when we take a video, we think of instant clarity headline. Does it matter more the company is certified or the people who are certified? So that was my instant clarity headline. You knew what this video was going to be about. Then declare the problem. It doesn't matter that the company is certified. You have to make sure that the people doing the work are actually the ones that are certified. Then the solution that I present is we're getting our people certified and we make it interesting and that there's stuff going on, there's action, people can go and look and see, hey, what is actually happening. That is a benefit to me as a homeowner. So that is the people video. The next one I want to show you guys is a product video. So this video here is something that we used to talk about. The architectural cap 1% to the value.

Of your home with almost no money spent. A common concern when going away from a high end roofing system like cedar roofing is that you lose that structured, architectural, high profile look. We just took the cedar roof off this home. Now when you look at those cedar shingles, it doesn't look like it was just wrapped up. It has that high structure. Gives it some depth, some contrast in between all the shakes. Even this homeowner was concerned about losing that look. And so we were going to use the regular capping shingles. And so it would look a lot more like that route. So if you look at the ridges, notice how it just looks kind of.

Wrapped over the ridge.

It loses that three dimensional look that gives it that high end structure. That high end structure. You wouldn't believe how much it adds to the value of your home. When we do a capping, you take a three tab shingle and we cut them into three pieces and it wraps over the peak just like this. Now you can see that when you look at that from the. It doesn't give it any kind of structure. And it's that structure that adds value. It's what makes you look at the home and see something that looks strong and formidable. And this is something brand new. This is from bp. This is the new silhouette capping shingle. And so what this is is it's a structured architectural capping shingle so that when we put it over top of the roof like this, it gives it that gator back look. And that's what gives it that strength and definition so that it doesn't look like it was just wrapped.

So you'll see from this, this is not a fancy recorded video. I don't have to schedule a videographer, but I mean, this has 42,000 views on it. We would get lots of people engaging with us over this. Got 66 comments on there. And we respond to every single comment. There'd be little dialogues going back and forth. Like you can see here. Again, this is four Years ago, we would generate leads in social selling from this. The point that I'm trying to make is that when you want to talk about product, we had instant headline. You have no idea how much having depth and structure in a roof can impact the value of your home. Then we declare the problem. You know, when you're moving away from cedar, you're losing that, like, high end look. And then we present a solution, this architectural cap. And we get into it and we show people what that cap looked like. This kind of stuff works really, really well because you're demonstrating the different options that are available. You could talk about the different ventilation options. These are all videos that were in my, like, 91 highly successful videos that we used to generate a lot of leads and attention. So the next video that we're going to talk about is the process video. This is 2018, so this is a little older than the other two.

Okay, so another. I know I promised you guys a video.

Wow. Like, I'm literally that white. Like, why?

My head is just gone. I have a head, I swear. Anyways, I promised you guys another video. This is not that video. This is a different video. Something else I want to teach you guys about.

That sucks. As an opening, there's no instant clarity headline. There's no declaring the problem. We are five, six seconds in and there's like nothing of value for the person looking at it. And look, 1.4 thousand views.

The heck is a palm nailer. So it's a little tool that we have to have a special compressor for because it only can take 80 pounds per square inch. So we have to have a second compressor on site just to run this tool. That's why a lot of guys don't use them, because otherwise you'll blow it. Because our regular guns run at 110 psi. So Joe just decided to hop up here and he's going to do a quick video explaining what the heck that is.

Hey, guys, how's it going? Joe here. So I wanted to show you the palm nailer. This is your regular Hitachi roofing gun. When it comes to the palm nailer, it becomes very useful in situations like this. Because a lot of times what will happen is guys will come here, they'll shingle this, and you take the gun, you nail this. But then what happens when you can't get the gun underneath there? What are you gonna do?

The nails are gonna go sideways.

Yeah.

Doesn't work that way. So what we gotta do is we hook the palm nailer up, put the nail in that Little dinky hole right there and basically come under here and hit the nail in there. So it actually gets bit little a nail this to get the proper.

So we use this palm nailer video. We made probably like five or six of these. The video that was more successful that we use was make sure your roofer has one of these, right? Or don't hire a roofer unless they have one of these. That was like the headline and the text that we put in the video. That's when we got this video to hit. When it finally hit was when we were saying, don't hire a roofer unless they have one of these. And so this is a process video. So what you're really talking about here is you're trying to say like you want to showcase the operational frameworks that you could be doing, how you set up a job site for safety, highlight the things that you do. You could talk about how inside sales works, why you have the role of inside sales. You could talk about a rivi. So talking about your process is huge because you're showing people the benefits of buying and working with a company like yours. So the next thing we're talking was one of my favorite videos, which is the thought reversal video. So now this one is the thought reversal video. And this one here was like gangbusters for us. This one was deadly. Like, if there's a video that you're going to rip off, it's this one. It's longer, but man, did it work well. Like it was. This is just such a deadly video. I can go back and remember how many people were like, oh, I love that video. It's so helpful. Like we got that comment all the time on this one. So I'm going to jump in, show that to you guys now. All right, so let's get. Look at this one. 136,000 views 297 engagements 112 comments Shingles don't matter.

The prep done.

Okay, so there's your instant clarity headline. This is why this video works so well.

I wanted to show you exactly the importance of underlayment and how it affects your roof. Shingles are just one of those things that go over top. This is actually what guards your roof. What we have here, this is called drip edge. This needs to be on your roof in order for your roof to be warrantied by any manufacturer, weather type warranty in the business. This will ensure that your investment that you've spent oh so much money on is protected. When we're doing the installation, installation, nothing bad will happen.

Longer video, but this one killed it for us. The thought reversal video is all about taking a common misperception. So you're kind of calling out the misconception. You empathize with the customer. Why they would have that misconception. You would turn the misconception on its head. So you kind of break the beliefs. You give this new way of thinking. And then asking, knowing what you know now, would you still do this? And the call to action. This is really effective. Knowing what you know now, would you still let a roofer pay your deductible after? Like, I taught you all this. So that's like how you do the thought reversal video. The next video I'm going to show you is the video that we came across across by accident. It requires you to be brave. This one here, you got to be brave. This one went nuts for us. It's the caught doing it right video. So what a caught doing it right video is, is when you make a mistake and you have to pay for that mistake to be rectified. You just invested money. Every investment of money should come with a return on the investment. And so with this customer, she sent us a quote back that we gave her two years prior on a system that we were no longer using. And the roof was obviously way cheaper than it should be. But she said, hey, guys, I'm ready to go with this quote now. We thought it was so co that she remembered us, found the quote, sent it back to us and said she was ready to go with it. We're like, screw it, let's just do it for the price. Like, how cool of a story would that be to tell? We thought it'd be a cool story. So on the quote, it said, bp. We were BP contractors at this point. And so I was like, BP mystique shadow Black was the color in the quote. And at the bottom in the notes, it said, weather rock is existing. And we did that because at the time, we wanted to, like, make sure we showed up to the right house. And so we want to say, what's the existing colors? When we show up, we're like, showing up to the right house. So now we're ripping off the roof. I remember in the quote, we said, what color do you want? She said, well, just like the ones that are around. And so we looked around and most of the houses were black. So we put black on the quote. She shows up halfway through the day, tops, shingle bottoms, getting kind of starter rows or something put on. And she's like, why is my roof Black. And our hearts lurched into her throat and actually wasn't around. But Joe phoned. He's like, we got a problem. And so I drove out and they were, like, still kind of working. And I kind of went out to the customer and met with her. And this was in a city called leduc. And there was this Facebook group called leduc rant and rave. And I know because I owned a house in led, So I was in the leduc, Grant and Ray Facebook group, and I called it the angry mom club or angry wives club. Because these ladies, like, if you cut their sandwich wrong at the sandwich shop, they would tear your business down. And, like, you just be, like, the laughing stock of this group for, like, three days. And you'd be terrified for your business because of this Angry wives club. And I was terrified of what that was going to do because our business was still small at this point. So we tried saying, okay, well, can you see that if you went into a dealership to trade in your car and you said it said black car, and it said your pre existing car was a blue car, you wouldn't expect that the new car would be a blue car. She's like, well, I thought that was just the name of the shingle. And it's like, well, it is, but you're still going to be getting the black that's on there. And she wasn't going to pay for the material. She wasn't going to pay for the labor. She wasn't willing to pay for half anything. We were just like, nope, this lady's either going to tear us apart or we have to have to have to replace the roof. So we did. But then I wanted to control the narrative because I knew that the whole world in that neighborhood was going to see us pull up and rip off the roof. We just did. And everybody's going to ask why. And then it was going to turn into this, like, thing that we were going to be this laughing stock in this group. So I wanted to at least have our story out. So I showed up early in the morning when the fog was still out and said that I'm gonna record a video. Hi, everyone.

So welcome to the most expensive video we've ever made. It's not because I'm wearing this fancy hat.

No.

I want you to take a look at something. So notice this brand new prep work. Notice this brand new shingles. They're black.

Okay.

So we're not immune to mistakes. We had a customer two years ago.

We did.

Nesting on this very home. And that when we did that estimate. We had on the estimate estimate a black color, right. Shadow black for the shingles. And in the description, it said that weather drop was the existing color. Right? And so two years later, we had a conversation about how they were actually.

Going to do the.

The same color instead of going to a darker roof, like many in the neighborhood.

So we.

But we don't remember that conversation, right? Because it was two years later, she emailed us and said, hey, I'm ready to go with this quote from our mistake.

We didn't double check that she actually.

Had looked at the color. So again, nobody's fault mistake.

But the.

The shingles showed up with black.

And then we were. By about noon when she came home.

We had about half this top lid shingled and labor. She's not paying for any extra shingles. She's not paying for the disposal. She's not paying for a thing. But we are gonna put on the new shingles this one rip.

Taking it out of the bag.

But this, we're put on this because this is the color that she wanted. So long story short, you know, mistakes happen. But you can. You can use this as proof that even if it's a $4,000 honest mistake, we're gonna do anything we can to. To make it right for our customers. Even if we could say, you know what, set it on the estimate, that's what.

That's what you said was okay. Too bad, so sad.

That's not the kind of people we are. Because although we could have said that, ultimately there would have been a very unhappy customer who doesn't like the look of a roof. And that's just not something we can live with. This is our names, this is our company. This is something that we've worked hard to.

To build.

And we're not going to let a little simple error cause the fall of our.

The fall of our good name. More comments like this, you know, where people were like, oh, my gosh, you guys are awesome. You guys doing business the right way. We had so much, like, good to see you guys taking care of customers. I'll give you the two thumbs for that overwhelming positivity. We ended up getting all the houses in this area. Like, we got so much business from this. If I told most roofers, hey, when you make a mistake, go out and video record it and tell the whole world that you made a mistake. Most people are like, there's no way I'm doing that. This actually was a video format that we called caught doing it. Right. We got caught doing the right thing. And then we made more videos like this. Anytime we made a mistake, I was rushing to go record the caught doing it right video. When you make a mistake, be brave, talk about it. The last video, and I want to kind of wrap up on this one, is the sixth video, which is the giving pledge. And this is where you try and align yourself with some kind of local cause. So what we did was we called it a AA Barchitecture for Allison and Adam Barkitecture. Like architecture. And we built doghouses. And then we would shingle it at the job site. And then for every roof, we were basically paying Allison 125 bucks. And then taking this dog house and donating it to that organization that helped the dogs in these rural areas.