The Challenge
Secure more leads for a local roofing company by creating a brand new marketing plan.
A local roofing company approached us with a need to garner more leads for their business. The client had no clear direction or plan, so it was left up to us to determine the best path forward. The client stated that as a licensed roofer, he spent most of his time fixing bad roofing jobs done by unlicensed handymen, and he would be able to save people a lot of money by using him first, instead of to fix, and undue the bad work.
In this case, the awareness we needed to gain was multifaceted. Awareness of this roofing company’s existence, the awareness that, as they say, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” and lastly, the awareness that a bad repair person will cost more in the long run.
The Process
We created videos and targeted homeowners in unique ways.
We decided to start this approach by running a video ad about “kicking Bob to the curb.” Uncle Bob was a persona we created that embodied this lack of professionalism, with a penchant for duct tape. In this short and entertaining video, a homeowner had a problem, but her problem was only increased by Bob fumbling the repair.
In 2018, Facebook removed the option to target homeowners, so we had to get creative on targeting. Being a local company, there were specific zip codes for us to work with. Within that, we targeted interests like “home improvement,” “top 10% income,” and “HGTV fans.”
If clicked, the ad sent users to a landing page with a form they could fill out for a free quote. This had some success, but there were obviously a lot of users that would fall through the cracks.
For users that didn’t convert in this step, we would retarget with Facebook Lead Generation ads. This showed a follow-up video with Bob tackling a homeowner because of a botched insurance claim repair. Again, a bit silly, but it was attention-grabbing. The call to action on this ad was “Get Quote” and had a form pre-populated with the Facebook user’s information. This information was automated to email the roofing company, where they would make a phone call within 24 hours.
The Outcome
Where are we now? We reevaluated our efforts and increased conversions.
In our experience, the Facebook Lead Generation Ads aren’t the most effective ads. They do catch some users but we found this to be more effective for email list building than for something more involved like a quote for work. After users have the form pop up, they click off out of confusion or concern, especially when asked for a phone number and their number being pre-populated by Facebook.
Acknowledging this, and seeing our results being too costly, we decided to revamp the initial landing page (add statistics about roof repair and cost over time, add photos of the business owner, more introduction language) and retarget the first group of users with a video about repairing their roof before the problem got more costly. This final retargeting, with a more effective landing page, led to the most conversions, not just for quotes but for actual roof repairs.