By a significant margin, no marketing challenge torments more businesses than finding new customers.
If even the most loyal customers come to you every 1 1/2 decades for a new roof, you need a constant stream of new leads to stay in business.
Roofing companies must therefore employ affordable, reliable, and practical lead generation systems.
As of 2021, the six most utilized lead generation channels involve digital marketing platforms such as websites, social media, and pay-per-click (PPC) ads. Although these methods can return trackable, exclusive, and high-quality roofing leads, pulling it off takes substantial time, money, and effort with little to no guarantee of success.
This series of hurdles is partly why many roofing companies seek more convenient alternatives, particularly lead generation services.
Lead generators promise a steady flow of leads to help grow your business with far less trouble than devising and executing a marketing strategy.
Sift through forums, read news articles, or talk to home improvement pros, however, and you'll discover a diverse range of experiences on the efficacy of lead generators, many of them overwhelmingly negative.
Issues can arise when it comes to purchasing leads, such as unmistakably fake contact information, leads sold to a dozen contractors, allegedly fraudulent leads – the list goes on.
We don't blame you for feeling uneasy about spending your money on lead generators.
To offer you a better perspective, we dive deeper into why digital marketing alone fails to generate an acceptable return on investment.
From there, we explain how lead generation services can solve this problem and where most lead generators lack.
Why Is Generating Leads Yourself so Hard?
Successful Digital Marketing Requires Skill and Persistence
Optimizing a Google My Business listing, crafting Facebook ads that engage, and designing effective landing pages demand both expertise and sustained effort to consistently produce leads.
Unless you plan on implementing cutting-edge web development, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and social media savvy for your company by yourself, you need to team up with professionals in each of these fields.
Digital Marketing Costs a Lot
To build your online presence, you need to invest accordingly.
The United States Small Business Administration suggests small businesses should direct 7 to 8 percent of their revenues toward marketing. For a typical roofing business with a median yearly revenue between $500,000 to $999,000, marketing costs should range between $35,000 and $79,920 per year.
Just maintaining your digital marketing channels via an agency can very well exceed your yearly marketing budget without even factoring in website hosting, advertising budget, and traditional marketing expenses.
It's a Long Way to the Top
Once you start publishing website content, it can take up to a year to see an increase in traffic.
You need to wait even longer to approach the coveted top of search engine results pages, optimize your Google Ads, and develop a social media following to the point where you break even on converted leads.
The Competition Is Fierce
We don't just mean the sharks in your local pond, but the lead generation companies and review sites that collectively invest millions into dominating the airwaves.
If you look up high-traffic, high-converting keywords like “roofer near me” on Google, for example, lead generation companies own the lucrative spots at the top of the page.
With authoritative competitors boxing you out, your opportunities to rank are primarily limited to the less bountiful local search and low-volume keywords.
You Can't Predict Results
While you can control the content and ad copy to broadcast, you have little sway over their outcomes.
You could technically create the most captivating website and extremely accurate roofing content, but there's no telling whether Google will honor you with increased rankings.
Marketing experts constantly struggle to place their brands in front of eager eyes and keep them there.
The Case for Lead Generators
Given how much effort, money, and time it takes to generate roofing jobs via online marketing campaigns, roofing companies seek easier, more cost-effective, and faster ways to reach new customers.
Enter roofing lead generation companies.
Relatively Effortless
Compared to coordinating your digital marketing department, using a lead gen company is straightforward.
All you need to do is set up an account.
Real-Time Results
As lead generators already established their channels by the time you signed on, potential customers roll through frequently.
This means leads can funnel to you as soon as you activate a campaign – a mere click of a button.
Consistent Volume
By controlling the top of Google search results for high-volume keywords, lead generators maintain an abundant supply of new leads to pass along to roofing professionals.
Return on Investment
Lead generators can deliver serious profits.
If you spend $40 on one roof replacement lead every day for a year and only convert 1 in every 20, you could come out with $84,400 in profit based on reasonable project assumptions.
Lead Generator Drawbacks
Generally, business owners feel skeptical of third-party leads for several reasons, particularly their transparency, quality assurance, and exclusivity.
Questionable Lead Quality and Origin
The ease at which homeowners can enter their information into a form allows leads with little to no intent to buy to enter the ecosystem.
Although these tire kickers likely have no chance of converting, lead generators still qualify them as a lead and price them accordingly.
It's also not unheard of for lead generators to buy leads from low-quality affiliate websites and sell them to contractors as their own to keep up with high demand and boost their bottom line.
This practice further diminishes lead value and incentivizes lead generation companies to cheat contractors by selling more affiliate, fake, and recycled leads.
Insufficient Rapport and Data
Understanding a customer's unique needs equips you to make the sale.
Since you have minimal info on precisely how the lead arrived at a lead-gen website and awareness of what they specifically need, you essentially fly blind into the phone call.
That's not to say these leads doom you to fail, but they certainly don't prime you to succeed.