Roofing Success
The Roofing Success Podcast is a show created to inspire roofing contractors to achieve optimal success in their roofing businesses. The host, Jim Ahlin, is the co-author of the book, "Internet Marketing For Roofing Contractors, How to TRIPLE Your Sales and Turn Your Roofing Website Into an Online Lead Generation Machine", and Co-Founder of Roofer Marketers, the Digital Marketing Agency for the roofing industry. On each episode, Jim will be sitting down with industry leaders to talk about their processes, the lessons they learned, and how to find success in roofing.
Roofing Success
Stop Gambling with Your Ad Budget: Become the GC of Your Marketing with Adam Bensman
Most roofers throw money at marketing and just hope it works.
But that’s like putting cash in a slot machine.
In this podcast, I’ll show you how to STOP gambling and START building a system that actually works.
You’ll learn how to:
- Know if your marketing is working
- Stop wasting money on junk leads
- Measure the 4 numbers that matter most
- Think like a GC (General Contractor) of your own marketing
- Take control — even if you’re not a “marketing guy”
I’ll also break down the BIGGEST money-wasting mistakes roofers make. (One member saved $121K just from what I shared!)
You’ll see why most roofing companies struggle with marketing… and how to flip it into your biggest growth engine.
If you want marketing that’s trackable, predictable, and gets results — this is for you.
P.S. The weak are getting crushed right now. Private equity. AI. Rising lead costs. This is your edge.
Want to stop going at it alone?
Links:
https://www.rsra.org
https://askadambensman.com/
🤖 Have a question? Ask this customized ChatGPT for the answer! Specifically designed for this episode, it’s here to help! https://roofingpod.com/chatgpt-269
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- The Roofing & Solar Reform Alliance: https://roofingpod.com/RSRA
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Are you treating your marketing like a slot machine, tossing in money and hoping something pays off? What if you could finally take control, cut waste and start running it like a predictable machine? In this episode, we're sitting down with Adam Benzman to break down exactly how to stop gambling with your marketing and start running it like a seasoned general contractor what he calls becoming the GC of your own marketing. You'll learn how to measure what matters, cut what doesn't and turn marketing into a reliable engine for growth.
Speaker 1:Adam is the creator of the Roofing Sales Survival Guide, founder of the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance and the industry's most followed sales trainer. But what most don't know is that he's also a direct response marketing expert who's helped companies generate billions in revenue by fixing one thing how they think about marketing. What makes Adam's insight so impactful is that he's done it from every angle door-to-door retail agency side. As a coach, he's obsessed with data conversion, psychology and helping contractors understand the hidden money in their funnel. His simple four-metric framework has saved roofing companies hundreds of thousands of dollars, sometimes in just one conversation. So if you've ever wondered is my marketing working, or if you're just tired of guessing and ready to scale predictably, this is the episode for your roadmap to success. Let's dive in with Adam Benzman. Welcome to the Roofing Success Podcast. I'm Jim Alleyne and I'm here to bring you insights from top leaders in the roofing industry to help you grow and scale your roofing business.
Speaker 2:Adam Benzman, welcome back, dude, it's so good to be here. I've never been on a podcast as much as I've been on yours, and it's a freaking joy. Man, I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we have a good time. We have a good time. We have a good time. We have a good time, and you know. That's why you know, that's why we're twinsies. We match rsra logos everywhere you know, representing. I love it. Um, you know? Uh, for the three people in the roofing industry that don't know, everyone that listens to this knows who adam benjamin is and if, but I have run into some people recently who are not familiar with the rsra.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, they will soon be. Uh, should I do a quick intro for those that?
Speaker 1:might not know me intro, you know I made a mistake once I was.
Speaker 2:I was speaking at a state contractor association early I I don't know years ago and I just started going. And then I'm like 15 minutes in and I'm giving these looks. I'm like does anyone need an intro? Like who I am, and like the whole room raised their hand, except for, like the dude that brought me in. So I'll never assume If you're new to my world, welcome. If you're not, welcome back.
Speaker 2:My name is Adam Benzman. I host a YouTube channel called Adam Benzman and it's the number one most followed roofing sales training in the industry. I built a sales training excuse me, a sales system and sales training system called the Roof Strategy Sales System. It was used in every single state in the US, canada, australia, my many thousands. It is now only available to members of RSRA. I'm the author of the bestselling book the Roofing Sales Survival Guide how to Beat the Odds, overcome Yourself and Win Big, and founder of the Roofing and Solar Reform Alliance, which is the most powerful, connected and vulnerable community in the roofing industry. We're a community of roofers who don't like roofers, and what we do is we share our winning secrets to help each other dominate in today's fast-changing and unpredictable times. If you want to learn more, go to rsraorg slash join. There's also a link in the description and that should be a quick quick enough version for folks who are unfamiliar with the world that we're in. That's right.
Speaker 1:Part of the RSRA. One of the things that we've connected on is marketing. You actually are have a very strong marketing background. Yeah, um, I think you're one of the better copywriters that I've ever met. Give you some little praise there, appreciate, um, people don't know that. They think of you from the sales perspective. Yeah, they don't think of you from the marketing perspective as much, but I'm a good marketer Because you're a good marketer, that's right, exactly, but most people don't know about my marketing background either, which is so, but yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Thank you for the kind words, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, in the RSRA was the struggle that most of the people listening to, listening here have. And that's you know, man, is my marketing working? Yeah, is. Am I? Did I hire the right agency or person to work within my business to manage my marketing? Do I, you know, is this, is this, is this effective? And that all bubbled up to the marketing control system?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and I love the way that you, when you first told me about it, you're like I want to teach, I want to teach contractors how to be the GC of their own marketing. I was like how good is that man? Like that's the perfect way for a contractor to look at it. Right, like I've told this story on the podcast a few times, but when I was doing a lot of residential rehabs in Denver, back in the at the turn after the crash in 08, 09, all in that area, I used to every job that I did, I did a trade. So, or every house that I did, I did a trade. So like, on one house I'd do electrical work, on another house I'd do some plumbing on another one.
Speaker 2:I did drywall.
Speaker 1:I'll never do that again. Um, you know, I did some tile work. I did some right. I did a lot of the work, and the reason that I did it was to know enough of what went into it so that I could effectively determine what bid I should choose when I was GCing my own rental rehabs. And it really clicked with me that this is along the same lines, like, hey, you got to know enough. You have to know enough to know what you're buying or paying someone for. You have to know if you're being effective or not. But you don't have to be an SEO or a Google Ads manager or a Facebook media buyer. You don't have to learn the trade of Facebook media buyer. You don't have to, like, learn the trade of Facebook media buying, right, like. And so talk a little bit about where, where this came from, and and and the foundation of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. I want to talk about why I did it and then I'll give the backstory. Most roofing companies and I know that it's it's a broad generalization when I say most, that's just my experience Most roofing companies are gambling with their marketing. And if I say, how much are you spending, some people will know that. The next one is where do your leads come from? They'll name a few sources and who's in control of it, and then that's when people lose it. They're like what do you mean in control? Things work or they don't work.
Speaker 2:I've tried this agency and there's a big mystery. There's a lot of marketing agencies out there that will promise the world. That is how we connected. I remember the first time you reached out and in in my head I rolled my eyes and went oh, another way, he's fricking marketers. You, you clearly knew what you were talking about and you I. You were probably the only I think still to date, the only person I've ever responded to who's like a marketer. And then we got to talking like dude. This guy knows his stuff, he actually knows what he's talking about, and that's when we really connected.
Speaker 2:But most agencies over-promise, under-deliver or they're great at one thing but they have to. I'll give you an example they're really great at pay-per-click management, but they're terrible at everything else, meaning they can't write a landing page to save their lives. Their ad copy is horrendous. But they're great at managing a campaign and optimizing to get leads, but they're like oh well, now we need someone to write the ad copy and the roofer's not doing it. So let me go jump on Fiverr, hire someone who I can just have write copy, and they undervalue the necessary pieces. So what ends up happening is roofers get burned. They spend a bunch of money. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. This guy's in charge of my SEO, who doesn't know what's going on with my landing pages. My landing page guy and whoever's building my website doesn't know what's going on with pay-per-click. My Facebook guy is on his own rogue journey and now like there's no cohesive system.
Speaker 2:So I wanted to solve that because? Solve for that? Because what I see is what is truly magical about marketing is it is timeless. Marketing is just like sales in the fact that the fundamentals will not change. Period, because humans don't, and we haven't for hundreds or thousands in many thousands of years, and what does change is the latest, greatest tool or practice like LSA didn't exist when it before LSA existed. You know, pay-per-click was a newer thing when it came to market but it built upon the fundamental laws of marketing and I started seeing this as the roofers that are gambling. As Dean Jackson, who is a huge influence in my life from a marketing standpoint I have the privilege to join him on trainings here. I'm actually going to be with with him tomorrow Says that roofers and people in general will often treat their marketing like a slot machine.
Speaker 2:So in other words, they'll just say hey, you know, maybe they even turn to the industry Facebook groups you know who's had good luck with this, where can I get leads and they literally just throw money at something and it's almost like taking a pin out of a grenade and launching it and being like I really hope it works, and then, like in 30 or 60 days, they'll look back and be like did I at least make enough to make my investment back? Oh, at least I broke even, you know, or maybe I got a little better versus it being a vending machine where you know if I'm going to, if I'm going to insert money, I can press C9 and get the bag of Doritos. I want and and I wanted to help contractors fully take control of their marketing, because the way that I look at marketing is that your company, one's company, is a high-performance vehicle. It's like the Porsche GT3. And this is many roofers that believe, and I believe it too. You have the best company, best product, best service, best warranty and the best of the best, and you pour your heart into it. But that means absolutely nothing without one thing, and that's customers. And the marketing is essentially the gasoline or the fuel for the Porsche GT3. But most people are running the Porsche GT3 on the racetrack without a gas gauge. And if you ever run a car on a racetrack I used to do these track days with my dad and I missed the snot out of them. But that gas gauge goes down really quick. You're getting two, three miles a gallon on the track and if you're lucky, and you don't know how far you can go when you have no gas gauge. So imagine you're on the track all day and you get in the car and you're like I don't even know what the gas gauge says, how far can you go? How long will your business run? And the answer is I don't know.
Speaker 2:So the idea is to teach timeless strategies for people to become what I call the GC of your marketing, which a general contractor. What they'll do is. They'll take a vision. This is the owner right has a vision which turns into blueprints, which is a plan, which then you need to find the contractors, the tradesmen, to bring it to life, and you need to know just enough to spot things when they're not right. You need to know how to stick to budget because you will go over. No one's ever built a house and been like well, surprisingly, I came in under budget. That doesn't happen. And they need to know who to call to fix the thing and fire the guy that's not working out and that's becoming a GC or your marketing. So what I built is what I call the marketing control system. The end goal is for you to have what I call marketing control freedom, where you have predictability to scale. You can run circles around the ad agencies, you can quarterback and call the shots, you know what's working, what's not and why.
Speaker 2:And just in the workshop that we ran for our RSA members I'm so glad that you were able to fly in for that one we saved two members and this is no exaggeration. In under five minutes of questions, two members saved. One saved $75,000. The other one, by the way, she posted in the community after the total tally was $121,000. That doesn't account for the gain. I'm just talking quick cuts, of looking at your marketing in a different way, cutting out wasted spend and then reallocating that money elsewhere. So the ROI of doubling down on what's working well, that's pretty darn high. I mean, imagine if I walked up to you and was like here's $116,000. Go ahead, deploy it in a vessel that you know is going to kick butt. So that was the whole concept between the marketing control system.
Speaker 1:And it really is. It comes down to having proper expectations of your marketing, to having proper expectations of your marketing, knowing if the projects are being completed in the way that they say they're being completed. If you're managing a person or an agency right the same way that you're managing a crew, are they completing the job on time? Are they doing a proper installation of this roofing system? I love that. This is how people should look at it, and so it starts with having that end in mind, knowing what you need and knowing your numbers. So what numbers are we looking at in their marketing, or what numbers should they be looking at that will give them that gauge right. Are we on? Are we full? Are we getting close to E? You know, is this thing working or not working?
Speaker 1:Before we carry on with the episode, let's give a shout out to one of our sponsors. I talk to contractors every day that feel stuck, not because they're not working hard, but because they're missing the structure to grow without chaos or their culture's falling apart, because their team's unclear, unaligned or just burned out. And when change hits, they're reacting instead of leading, because time and priorities aren't under their control. Day 41 Thrive helps to fix that with proven strategies for growth, culture and leadership that actually work, ready to thrive beyond the storm. Visit the link in the description or visit the Roofing Success Podcast website on the sponsors page to start your journey today. So, what numbers? What numbers are we looking at in their marketing, or what numbers should they be looking at that will give them that gauge right. Are we on, are we full? Are we getting close to E? You know, is this thing working or not working?
Speaker 2:So, before I answer that cause, I will give you very I'm going to start with five different metrics, four different metrics that are that, I think, are you could run all your marketing on these four. Now what ends up happening? The reason I start with four to get started is that's attainable, it's doable. If you saw what I look at every single month, most people would would not even believe that you would. Even they wouldn't even know what I'm tracking because of the level of detail that I track and I didn't start like that, I just started by having a clear grasp. So, number one, uh, and, by the way, as I run through these, when you, as we break these down, the idea is that your data tells a story, and I'll teach later, or we'll discuss later, how to hear the story from the numbers so you can identify, using the theory of constraints, what's the easiest way to make a tweak to what you have in place. Because, at the event day one I know you flew in on day two, one of our members, we went through his landing page and saw the data there and it was performing dismally. When you look at the copy which, by the way, for those that aren't in the marketing world. The copy means that the language, the text on the page that does the selling, the copy was terrible, the button was in the wrong place, the forms weren't right and he could easily go from. I think it was like 7%. We can get him up even if it went to 20%. And then we also looked at another one of these numbers and identified that his set rate, meaning the number of inquiries that came in, that converted into appointment, that could be lifted through operational efficiencies, those two things we just ran the numbers those two fixes would produce $1 million in revenue without spending a single penny extra on marketing and most roofers. The problem with, with a lot of roofers, is that they think like a roofer and if you want to, if you want to grow in business, you have to elevate the level of your thinking, to become a more sophisticated business owner If you want to keep up in the in the current times of AI and private equity, uh and all that.
Speaker 2:So, um, the numbers. Number one total leads. How many leads am I getting? Okay, now, this number means one thing I'm getting leads, but what it doesn't mean is I'm getting appointments, which is why we look at number two, which is the number of qualified leads. So if you're running ads on Facebook, you'll get a lot of people that fill out a form, especially if you're using the meta native stuff. It's like the information from their Facebook account that they set up 18 years ago or whatever it is. You know and you'll never make contact. So it's not a qualified lead. These are the folks that filled out a form that live out of state, the crews that are calling to get um, uh, to get work. This is the homeowner that calls because they want a pool in the backyard. You're like I'm a roofer, not a pool guy. So that's the percentage of qualified leads.
Speaker 2:Number three is your set rate. That's some people call it your booking rate. So from my qualified leads, how many of those do I actually convert into an appointment where I have one of my sales team members or salespeople or project managers whatever clever name you use for a sales team sitting with that homeowner, talk to them about the roof? And then the final one is the close rate. What percentage of those appointments do you close? And I know we just blended sales and marketing, but just from those numbers you're able to move the needle really quickly. If I know that my qualified leads. If I'm only getting 60% of my leads are qualified. I now have a focal point, which is qualify my leads better. I want to increase the number of qualified leads.
Speaker 2:If you have no leads coming in your funnel, you need leads to begin with, because it's always easier to get too many leads before you qualify them. If you overqualify them, you get too few right. Your set rate is going to indicate your process for converting leads into an appointment, and that'll happen in one of two ways. One is over the phone, via your person at your office or, ideally, maybe even an AI tool that's doing it after hours or doing the outbound inquiry, and then a web form, and those are the toughest ones to convert quickly because your team's tied up. They don't make contact as time. Again, that's when, when AI tools that can do that outbound call for you. And again, what I call in funnel conversion, using the dumbest. When I say the dumbest, I mean it's like so overlooked.
Speaker 2:I presented this, the concept of a tripwire page In at the workshop that after someone fills out a form that says request an estimate or whatever, most people say, all right, great thanks, we'll get in touch with you within 24 hours Like dude. Put your calendar on there. Hey, fast track your service. Click here to pick a time. Fast track your service. Call us now, text us now. Talk to a pro. When I talked to Rufo, by the way, that language talk to a pro worked really well for them. So these numbers again total leads, qualified leads, set rate, close rate. Now those are the four.
Speaker 2:To start with, in terms of ad performance, there's two main things how many people are clicking and how many people are converting on your landing page. Converting meaning they go to the page and they either call or fill out the form. And and they either call or fill out the form. And then, in terms of your financials, I wanna know my total spend, my cost per lead which is really funny because I really don't care that much about that one because you will find leads that are really cheap and the quality is terrible and you might need, for example, if you're running Facebook ads, you might get really cheap leads. You might get leads at 30 bucks a piece, but you need a hundred of them before you get a qualified one versus the next, maybe it's your pay-per-click leads are the most expensive, but you're closing one in three. And if there's 300 bucks a piece, those leads are actually, it's a cheaper lead source.
Speaker 2:So I want to know my total spend, my cost per lead, my cost per appointment, how much it is I'm paying to sit someone in front of a customer, a potential customer, prospect, and then my customer acquisition cost and the customer acquisition cost. This is where, depending on if you talk to a finance guy or a marketer, you're going to get two different ways to measure this. My answer is who cares? Measure it both ways. When I look at it in this lens for marketing, I'm looking at my total marketing spend divided by the number of customers, and now I've got my customer acquisition cost Again.
Speaker 2:The next question my marketing spend do I include my team or not? Both? Yes, look at it both ways. I look at it from a how much did I spend on ads to how many customers I got, which will tell a different story of the effectiveness of my ads and my marketing, my, my marketing investment. And then, when I layer in my team, that tells me the financial health of my company if the overhead makes sense. So they're going to tell different stories, but those are the main domain metrics. If you just get clear on just those you'll, you'll.
Speaker 1:You will have a a new, a new eye on your marketing that you've never had before yeah, and I and I see people measuring two of those four to measure their sales closing rate and they meant they measure the number of leads, essentially right, and they're just like oh well, we got this many leads and then we got this many, but you're missing out on key points, key places, key levers to be able to pull. There's big levers. There's a lot of leverage in that appointment set. There's a lot of leverage along the way. That sit rate. There's a lot of leverage there that you can go. Oh, and that's where you're get to, that's where you're squeezing the juice out of the like you're. You're not leaving money on the table and that's the problem. It's. We saw it time and time again, you know, from the marketing side. We did the math. It was 40% of leads went unanswered.
Speaker 2:It's a great way to light money on fire unanswered.
Speaker 1:It's a great way to light money on fire. 40 like you're talking about almost almost half of the lead flow that came in, it was just wasted. You gave it away, and so knowing that, knowing the effectiveness of everything along the way, gives you those, those very clear levers to pull for sure.
Speaker 2:Jim, when we were at we did a two day workshop in Arizona. We were at Cody's office with Cody's office Yep. We had a member of ours share that he was spending $600,000 a year on ads and then said that 75% of his leads came in after hours or over the weekend when there was no staff working. $600,000. Yeah, 75 of those leads didn't until yeah, so four hundred thousand dollars worth of leads got touched.
Speaker 1:You know, you know, whatever like it's, it's insane like it's crazy, yeah yeah great way to light money on fire yeah, yeah, we don't want to light money on fire. What is another way that they can keep their money in their pocket and not light it on fire?
Speaker 2:There's. You know, I would probably jump ahead to what I call your marketing control comms and that's your core messaging. And I think that, before I get into what core messaging means, it means like what's the story, what's your story? Why do you? Why does someone want to use your roofing company as opposed to the other? You know, I think, in Dallas, what is? I think they say there's 12,000 roofing companies in DFW area, 12,000. And most roofers believe that they're competing with roofers, which cracks me up.
Speaker 2:And if you learn marketing, your job is to own your, what I call your sliver of the market, which is your little category. And there's a lot of categories of roofing. There's affordability, there's service, speed, insurance, drive claims, people who don't know they have damage, partial payments, virtual sales, sales over the phone, metal roofing repair, illumination, tile, sounds, don't put in steel, solar roofs All these are little, tiny slivers. And if you're like sweet spot is hey, people choose me because I'm killing it with financing. I'm leading with financing offers. Affordability is my hook Bingo. We've got other members that are killing it on repairs because most people don't want to market to repairs but the lead costs are 300% cheaper on repairs and they're converting half of them into replacements and they still have a repair division. So that's a sliver right. There's other folks that are like man. I really I'm fantastic on the claim side, dealing with challenging claims. That's really my bread and butter. So all these are your sliver of your market.
Speaker 2:So what I ask is ask folks like what category do you own? What is your sweet spot? And then what makes your company, service or product special or unique? Some folks are like we are exceptional at communication, we have text updates throughout the process, and what offer promotion will entice someone to contact you If you're in the retail space, putting together this incredible value stack like get a free roof assessment or a report or a free lifespan assessment. Maybe it's free virtual appointments? Hey, we're gonna give away free upgrades, synthetic underlayment, designer, single, high profile ridge cap and 0%, same as cash financing for 12 months or affordable financing options or zero down, zero payments for six months, like whatever it is.
Speaker 2:You can combine all this to have this really enticing offer versus like get a free estimate, because most roofers, when you Google it and I'm going to call out a whole bunch of people now and I love you, by the way, I love you enough for you not to like me for a minute, but your website my guess is the marketing agency for about half of you listening, agency for about half of you listening your website says number one or best roofer in your city and state, and then it says something like best service, best quality, best whatever, and then get a free estimate or schedule a free estimate and that's your offer. But if I I don't know, I'm going to get too down the rabbit hole. So that's owning and then identifying the desires, identity and beliefs of your prospect. And I just did. In fact, I don't know when this will air and when this video air, but I just filmed yesterday a video analyzed 1,642 Google reviews by companies rated 4.7 star or better, and I was able to extract the top 10 words used to describe the emotional experience in the home. And guess what's not on the list Anywhere? Product Not one mention anywhere of product.
Speaker 2:Yet roofers are like we have the best product, the best service. Pick the cult. That's not what they care about. So Eugene Schwartz, one of the greatest marketers of all time, says we cannot create desire. All we can do is exploit existing desire. So I couldn't go to you and say the latest thing is for grown-ass men to have pink hair, you'd be like no, it's not. I can't make you want to have pink hair, but I can exploit the desire of most men to show status, authority and be unique. And if I can attach the idea of pink hair to those who have pink hair, have status authority and express themselves as unique, now you'll want pink hair. So that's what I mean by exploiting existing desires, because you don't care about pink hair, just the same way as homeowners do not care about a roof.
Speaker 2:So what I want to ask you, the listener, the viewer, what tuning in is?
Speaker 2:What is it that your customers want?
Speaker 2:And the answers are in your reviews. Go to chat, gpt your review link, copy it, put it in there and say identify the most common words and phrases used in these reviews to describe the experience and then ask a follow-up question. Give me another list of the top 10 words to describe the emotional experience of the review writer and you will immediately know what people want, because it's what they talk about. And now you have the language to write beautiful landing page copy and beautiful ad copy where the homeowner feels like they were hand selected to serve just every wish that they ever had, and that would be the best way to stop losing money is get your messaging dialed, because your conversion is going to increase a ton and the best part is the front end of your marketing when that conversion happens. That messaging is going to lead to a better customer experience because you're bringing them in on a story that your team can fulfill on, and then it's magic, and those are the customers that invite you over for dinner and tell their friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the whole thing. Marketing is very simple. It's the who, the what and the how. You've kind of talked about things. Don't change the who, doesn't change the what. Is your message to them that you just talked about tying into their current things that they desire? Yeah, it's just how you get that message in front of them. That has changed over time. Yeah, whether it was from a newspaper to a yellow page, to a right like it, that's the only thing to Facebook ads, whatever it is, that's the only thing that that has changed.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, one of the things that I really enjoy about the marketing control system, and something that you put into perspective, I think for a lot of contractors, is understanding themselves. We struggled with this time after time when a door-to-door storm restoration company, the owner, decided that they wanted digital marketing and and they would come to us and they would hire us and we would start working and things would not work out the way that they had hoped. Yeah, and I would have to have conversations with them about well, does, does? Does Joe want to leave the neighborhood that he's working to drive 45 minutes across town to work? That Facebook lead Is your team in alignment with the way that you're marketing and so talk to that a little bit.
Speaker 1:I know you're enjoying the episode, but let's give a shout out to another one of our sponsors. As a roofing marketing agency owner and coach, I've seen it all Great marketing wasted because no one follows up fast enough. That's why I built Power Up Agents, not just a receptionist. Our AI handles the entire customer journey, from answering the first call to booking the job, to post job surveys and reviews 24-7, inbound, outbound, even multilingual. If you want leads followed up instantly and customers nurtured automatically, visit the link in the description or visit the sponsors page on the roofing success podcast website. Your full AI team is ready.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Like is this really good? Like, does your team in alignment with the, with the way that you're marketing? And so talk to that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's. It's funny, I've been a student of marketing since 2011. And I'll spare the whole backstory. I'll give some.
Speaker 2:But I got involved in marketing as a roofer because I studied marketing, because door-to-door sales is marketing, knocking doors is marketing, generating leads is marketing. That's not selling. The selling happens once you're having a conversation to close the sale. But getting them to open the door and allow you on the roof, that's marketing. And then I started working with our agency writing the copy, because the copy they provided was terrible and I was like no, no, no, this is terrible. So I was writing our direct mail letters, our postcards and Facebook ads and all that stuff. And then I took a little break from roofing and I worked as a direct response copywriter and sales consultant for some big names, people that many folks would know, authors. I worked for one of Oprah's top 50 most influential women, one of the fastest growing fintech companies.
Speaker 2:Anyway, it blew my mind that it took me let's see 12, 13 years to come to what I'm about to share with you, and that is that there are only four ways to get customers and frankly, I'm actually thinking of trimming this to three. So we'll have a conversation, but I'd love your input. There's four ways. Number one they come to you. They come to you. This is inbound leads in branding. These are people that seek you out and the retail companies they are a. They come to you. This is inbound leads in branding. These are people that seek you out. And the retail companies they are a they come to you company. They don't go out and knock doors. The phone rings. Leads come in and the team runs them. There are. They come to you company. Number two are you go to them company. You go to them. So the second way to get leads that's door to door cold calling, calling, direct mail. Where you are doing direct sales. People don't come to you. You're reaching out to them. And a lot of the storm restoration companies they are a you go to them company, but they wanna become a they come to you company, which we'll talk about in a minute, because that's where the problem lies, and instead of well, I'll save that rabbit hole for the next thing.
Speaker 2:Number three is they are introduced to you. So that's the third lead source. They're introduced to you and this can happen from referrals for customers or centers of influence, so it could be one-to-one. Jim, I did your roof, you loved it. You told your neighbor or Jim, let's say you're my insurance agent or you're a builder gutter company and you're going to tell all of your customers about me. Either way, the people are introduced to me.
Speaker 2:And then number four this is the one I'm debating scratching is the they stumble upon you, and that's what I'll call social media and content, because I do think that there's a gray area on Facebook ads. If no one's ever heard of you in the world and they just see you in a newsfeed, you know they stumbled upon you, but at the end of the day, they also came to you. So that that's why I'm considering um scrubbing the they stumble upon you, because it really boils down to they come to you, you go to them, or someone introduces you. It's really that simple. Now the um. The concept behind this is that with each of these methods, the sales process is different. And when you talk about understanding who you are as a company, there are companies that have a core competency. I'll give an example. We have a member who is a they come to you company retail company in Florida. Hired Deshaun to come down and train the team on door-to-door sales. Hired Deshaun to come down and train the team on door-to-door sales. Guess what they're struggling at.
Speaker 1:Door-to-door sales.
Speaker 2:Door-to-door sales when they come to you company and then we've got storm companies that are you go to them. They're like I want to get leads and they try to turn into it. They come to you company but what happens is, operationally, they're not set up to succeed that way and the sales process is different and there's going to be people who are listening saying it's not true. Hang with me and I love to disagree with people. It's good, I think it's healthy and no one should ever just listen to everybody. But I know that there's resistance when I say that, but there are. I'm going to quantify it. The core competencies of a they come to you company is qualifying leads when they come in, converting them into an appointment and showing up to run the appointment. The core competency of a you go to them company is strategic hunting, converting the appointment on the spot, usually in person, and then having someone run the appointment. Now there are three levers that must be pulled to get the sale and this is where three levers that must be pulled to get the sale and this is where people don't really think that much that I've seen. Number one is problem awareness. So it's low or high. How aware am I of the problem. And if you go to them company, a lot of people don't even know that their roof is damaged, so their problem awareness is really low. But if they call you up, their problem awareness is pretty high because they're not just going to spend their time talking to a roofer we're not a ferrari dealership, okay. Number two is the brand awareness. And if you show up at their house and they've never heard of you which is why a lot of the storm companies that that travel or like there are companies that work with both of these are north of 50 million a year and they, um, they spend almost zero dollars, almost zero because they're that you go to them. They'll take over a neighborhood with no brand recognition.
Speaker 2:And then the third, the final one, is the need. Is the need high or is the need low? And again, let's just break this down If you're a, they come to you company and I'm getting inbound leads. The homeowners are very aware of the problem. There's high problem awareness. There's generally high brand awareness because they sought you out. The exception is those leads that come in via lead aggregators, that aren't exclusive. And then the final thing is the need is high, relatively high speaking, because they called you for a roof. Meanwhile, when you're going and soliciting people, they are often not super aware of the problem, they are not aware of the brand and their need meter is very, very low. So the sales process for that you're spending more time on your brand and you're spending more time specifically on the problem and the need. Above all else. And when you start taking people who are used to selling to people who have no problem awareness and no need awareness, where 90% of your time is just get them to own the problem and understand why they need to take action and, by the way, you're there as the guy they're going to choose you is a very different sales process than someone who's shopping and they already have a problem. They know a little bit about your brand and they're just collecting estimates. This is a very different ballgame with very different strengths.
Speaker 2:So the key takeaway is for you right now which company are you?
Speaker 2:Are you?
Speaker 2:They come to you?
Speaker 2:Are you a you go to them company or they are introduced to you? And there are companies. By the way, one of the companies is doing over 50 million a year. They are usually people, have core competency in one and then they have like a secondary one and it's usually like 80, 70 to 80% of their leads come from one of these channels. And then they have like a secondary one and it's usually like 70% to 80% of their leads come from one of these channels and then they're supplemented at 20% to 30% from another.
Speaker 2:And most are you go to them, company and they just really hope that if they come to you just a little bit right, most of the door-to-door guys have a really hard time converting to. They come to you and then the final one is they're introduced to you. So there's a lot of companies that are you go to them and they're introduced to you. Because I got a great referral network. So know who you are and then double down on what you're already good at. So if you're the, you go to them company and then you're like I want leads, I'm going to start doing pay-per-click. In my opinion, maybe don't do that yet. Maybe spend money on cold calling, because that's in the same realm of you go to them and then maybe spend more money on direct mail and layer those two in because you're feeding the core competency of how your business operates. So that's my spiel on knowing who you are and putting your marketing dollars that can fuel your core competency.
Speaker 1:That, that's that. That's gold right there, because that's what knowing what kind of company you are, knowing the metrics that you need to measure, like now, it's a different. Now, going back to those four core metrics, if you're a you go to them company, you're going to measure your. You're going to have different measurements in the beginning, right, you're going to. And so if you're trying to measure yourself as one company but you're not that company, it's a problem. Yeah, like in your salespeople, it's a much different sales process, very different, very different sales process, and that's what you know. That that's where the challenges are. Yeah, so what do you think? What do you think goes next? Do you think that we should talk more about the type of messaging that they should have? Do you think you know?
Speaker 2:Let's save some money. All right, I think, with what we're about to go through, this could be the single highest paying podcast or video watched. And I'm going to ask four questions and I believe, if, if, if you're watching or listening, take these to heart, because these are the exact four questions that we went through at the workshop. Uh, saved two members, one with that actually turned out to be uh, it was 75,000 at the workshop. I think it turned into a hundred after the other one started at 21,000, after the workshop went up to 121,000. So, stop bleeding money, start printing money. What I want you to do is just think through all your lead sources and let's just start with one. Let's say, well, you pick it, pick one lead source where you're spending money to get leads. Now there's four questions to ask. Number one is it trackable, yes or no? Is it trackable? Now I'm going to give an example on one that might not be.
Speaker 2:We had a conversation occur where a member had been offered this beautiful opportunity from a weather app and this local weather channel was like hey, people turn here to check the weather and we're going to get a display ad up for you and it's X dollars a month. And after I applied the law of attrition and we took a look at what that could actually produce from a guesstimate standpoint, it was dismal. But are those leads trackable, yes or no? In that case, I'd say no. Next question Does it generate quality leads?
Speaker 2:Does it generate quality leads? And for many people that are doing ads on Facebook, they're not. And, by the way, hold on, many people I remember this at the event they're like all right, it doesn't kill it. No, no, no. That's like hang tight because there's a way we can fix before we kill. That's like if you hire someone to go knock doors, they knock 10 doors until you door knocking doesn't work. Okay, great, tell me. Tell me about the hundreds of millions of dollars at this point literally probably near a billion dollars of of sales of companies I've worked with Doesn't mean I'm responsible for them. I want to be really clear on that. I'm not taking credit for their work. My point is I work with a lot of companies that are doing door-to-door sales in over the last I don't know almost 15 years I think it's fair to say the companies I work with have produced well over a billion dollars over the last 10 years. It may be an estimate, so does it generate quality leads, yes or no?
Speaker 1:I know you're enjoying the episode, but let's give a shout out to another one of our sponsors.
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Speaker 2:I work with a lot of companies that are doing door-to-door sales in over the last I don't know almost 15 years. I think it's fair to say, the companies I work with have produced well over a billion dollars over the last 10 years. That'd be an estimate. So does it generate quality leads? Yes or no? Okay, next one Are customer acquisition costs acceptable? Now for those that don't know your customer acquisition costs, this can be measured in a couple of ways. I'm gonna give you the simplest one. Take how much you spent on that ad source divided by the number of customers you get. So if you're doing a weather app display ad and it's $3,000 a month, is it trackable? No, does it generate quality lead? I have no idea, so I'm going to err to no. Are customer acquisition costs acceptable? Oh, I might've gotten one. So my question is is it acceptable for your company and profitable for you to spend $3,000 to get one customer, yes or no? If the answer is yes, keep it. If it's no, it goes on the chopping block. And then the final one is it consistent and predictable? So let's run through the list Is it trackable? Does it generate quality leads? Are your customer acquisition costs acceptable and is it consistent and predictable? And if the answer to consistent and predictable is a no, these are the things that you want to likely either cut or try to fix and then cut. And by doing this we ended up.
Speaker 2:I'll give you an example of the types of leads that were cut Radio advertising cut. Tv advertising cut Billboard advertising, chopping block, a lot of sponsorship stuff like the, the stuff that tugs on your heartstrings, like the kids. Um, and, by the way, there's certain things you should do because you just love to do it. I do a lot with charity. I don't do it for sponsorship, so that's different. I'm not investing in it in hopes of getting business. In fact, the people we support asked to put our logo up. I said I don't care, I'm not doing it for recognition. I'm doing this because I believe in you, but like the banners that, like the kids, ball games and stuff, that stuff gets cut. Display advertising often got cut and again I'm hearing people well, what about branding? And I just want to push back on this branding idea for a little bit, because a lot.
Speaker 2:There's a tremendous amount of talk about branding, but you need to be mindful of where your money goes, and what do I mean by that? For a company that's doing three to $5 million a year, and if you're spending 5% of your revenue on leads, on ads, you know you don't have the world's largest budget to spend on branding. One of our members just spent 80 grand on a rebrand and we will know if his organic costs and lead costs go down If they don't. That was a really great way for him to feel like he's cool and, by the way, his stuff is cool. He's a really good friend of mine. I wear his shirts, he's giving me shirts.
Speaker 2:Branding is awesome, but my point is the next company that's doing $55 million a year for them to dedicate $100 grand towards branding that can get lost. It's like that's nothing. So branding takes a lot of money and a lot of time and there's a big lag. So if you're sub $10 million a year, if it's me, I'm spending money on now money and slowly building up my brand, because brand is through reputation above all else, and then I'll start wrapping the trucks and doing that stuff. But if you have a limited budget, if you have three, four or $5,000, $10,000 a month to spend, I can tell you a branding. If I'm taking five grand of that out, I'd rather put 10 grand into marketing because I'm going to grow a lot more than spending the extra cutting my budget in half from my leads. So that's just my two cents on branding and people may not agree with it, but I built one of the largest brands in the roofing space and guess how much money I've spent on branding?
Speaker 2:zero, yeah, this is the most important thing for my brand is the sign. Jim, you had to tell me to get swag for us. I shipped you that sweatshirt because you asked me to and I'm grateful I did like I. So my point is like your brand is based on your experience, so that that that right there, my guess is, is folks tuning in um identified. If you run those through each lead source, you will. You will locate money that you can cut.
Speaker 2:And now I want you to tally up the total savings. You can write Jim a thank you card and say hey, jim, your podcast and the education I got from this just saved me 20, 30, 40, 50, $100,000 because I paid attention and took notes. And then you can figure out where you want to reinvest that money. Hell, you can just keep it. Maybe it's profit, maybe you just want to go on vacation? Cool, you could reinvest it by just looking at all the lead sources that check the yes, that it's trackable, generates quality leads, acceptable cost and it's consistent, predictable. And then you just double down and then you just miraculously poured a hundred thousand dollars back to put fuel on the fire of what's working. Magic, true magic, and then maybe even get a test budget together. So that'd be, that'd be. That's probably my, my biggest, my biggest takeaway to help people just immediately open their eyes, to just thinking a little differently about marketing.
Speaker 1:So one of the things I want to add a couple of things to that. So first of all, trackable is like. My favorite way of tracking is forms and phone call like call tracking numbers, call tracking numbers 100%, that's like. So you know which phone number they called, where that came from, you know what form they filled out. That form exists on a specific landing page or on your website or wherever that is, so you're getting that attribution.
Speaker 1:It does get challenging, because sometimes they see you here, they call you there and they tell you that they found you on Google, but really it was something else and they just Googled your company name and called you there. So you have to be cautious in your tracking around that. One of my favorite ways that I've learned to measure brand and is brand working. Brand is outrageously hard to track, but branded searches in your Google search console is a way to. It's a metric that you can measure against the more people that type your name in specifically into Google. I feel like that's a good measurement of brand. So, from a tracking perspective, if you're you know, you can kind of see, you could see, that that's actual, that's an actual number. So that those are some tips for people there. Um, one of the things that I've been talking about that kind of comes down around this too is the acquisition cost acceptable? This is I really believe that there is no definitive customer acquisition cost number and that it really falls within a range.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it will fluctuate seasonally too, and it'll fluctuate and there's so many variables and it'll be different per channel, per marketing channel. There's so many variables. But I think that that's where I've had this conversation with a lot of people recently where I'm like do you know what your optimal customer acquisition cost range is? If you don't, you're not ready to market. Yeah Right, like you're just not ready, you don't know where the goal line is. It is. And if you don't know where the goal line, that's the goal line. Customer acquisition cost. To me is the goal line Like now you have a lead cost is variable Appointment set rates, are you know sales closing rates from this rep to that rep? But that customer acquisition cost coming through really hits your. That hits your net profit.
Speaker 2:And so you just got to think what. What is the most that I am willing to spend? Earn a roof customer. Earn a roof customer. And the reason that you can't just pick a number out of a hat is I've worked with companies whose average sale price is north of $40,000. And I've worked with others that are barely north of 10. And if you're selling a $10,000 roof on razor thin margins and you're making a few grand, that's very different than if you're selling a $40,000 roof with a really, really fat margin and obviously you'd be willing to spend a lot more money to earn a $40,000 customer than a $10,000 customer. But you need to just ask yourself what is the most you'd be willing to spend, and that becomes your cutoff point. By the way, the most you're willing to spend while staying profitable, yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, key. Thing.
Speaker 2:While staying profitable.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, key, key thing, while staying. So here's some things I want. I want to kind of wrap it up here with, uh, with, with kind of you know how to like how can they put these things that we talked about together? Yeah, um, you know how do we? How do we kind of hear this is a starting point. Do this first, this second, this third, like let's just run them through. You know, of course, I'm going to tell them step one, join the RSRA so that they could get access to the full, to this full conversation and trainings. But, like, for people listening, like let's go through just some, you know, putting it together, some steps to putting it together.
Speaker 2:Let's go through. I'm going to give a homework assignment, and I mean this. I don't care what you do or who you work with. By doing what I'm about to share with you, you will likely run circles around the marketing agencies that you're working with. So, number one get your dashboard in place. Your reporting so your total leads, qualified leads, set rate, close rate, looking at your ad performance, clicks and landing page conversion. And then your financials total spend, cost per lead, cost per appointment and customer acquisition cost. Start there. Step two set a weekly meeting. My theme that I always hear marketing Mondays. Every Monday you look through these numbers each week, not each month, because you wait 30 days and look back and say, holy crap, the form of my website was broken. The agency blew through $10,000 in my budget and it didn't work. Look at it weekly. So that's your first two things Get your dashboard in place and measure it weekly. On a marketing Monday set meeting, okay.
Speaker 2:Number three secret shopper your own company. Secret shopper your own company. Go to your website, fill out the form, call your company. Go through the process. Fill out a web form through the landing page and all the places you're paying money for ads. Go through it as a customer. Don't rely on your agency saying they did a good job and they tested it. Look at it. So that's number three. And then number four.
Speaker 2:Rewind this episode and listen to what we talked about with nailing down your sliver of the market in the messaging for your company. And then, once you have that in mind, once you're secret shopping your company, you'll be like oh man, adam's right, my agency said that we're the best roofer in all of Atlanta and so does every other competitor. So there's 126 companies that are rated number one in Atlanta. It cracks me up. You can do this anywhere. I pulled out oh, number one roofer. Here there's a lot of number one roofers, self-proclaimed, and in most marketing is all about me shouting from the rooftops.
Speaker 2:But powerful marketing is telling your customer story. It's talking to them and giving them what they want. So if you can do just that, you will immediately highlight I don't even whatever's right for you is wrong for the next person and vice versa. Take these concepts, apply them and, like a, I mean it. It's magic. You're going to start to see your marketing with different light. Like oh, wait a minute, I don't have enough qualified leads. I got to fix that. Wait a minute. My messaging is not great. I got to fix that. Wait a minute. My office is not really handling these phone calls and about leads very good, I got to fix that. So start there and I promise you with every single penny in my name that by doing that, you will notice a statistically significant difference in your marketing. By applying these concepts, that's awesome, man.
Speaker 1:Thanks for your time today. This has been another episode of the Roofing Success Podcast. Thank you for tuning into the Roofing Success Podcast For more valuable content, visit roofingsuccesspodcastcom While there, check out our sponsors for exclusive offers, shop for merchandise and sign up for our newsletter for industry updates and tips. Also join the Roofing Success Facebook group to connect with other professionals and stay updated on the latest trends. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, like, share and leave a comment. Your support helps us continue to bring you top industry insights. The website link is in the description. Thanks for listening you.
