23 Marketing Mistakes Roofers Make – Mistake #20 Planning Your Growth Around Third-Party Lead Services

By Art Unlimited.

Working in the roofing industry for over a decade has allowed Art Unlimited the opportunity to identify the dead giveaways that hurt a business’s marketing. Each week, we’ll be sharing those common mistakes.

Mistake # 20 Planning Your Growth Around Third-Party Lead Services

One of the hardest things about starting a roofing business is gaining leads. For the roofing business, as with most businesses, great referrals come by word of mouth. The problem with hiring a 3rd party lead generation is that they are mainly focused on getting sales. You’re thinking, yeah, so am I, duh. But stay with me. As a roofer, you’re providing a service. Your customer wants someone to work with them to provide a service, not a sale.

Think about what people say when they write you a review, or refer you to their friends. Do they rave about the great sales pitch you gave them? Not usually. They will refer you based on the quality work you did, your professionalism, and efficiency. When you’re generating leads, you’re focused more on building relationships with your clients rather than what you can sell them. Oftentimes, third party lead gen services aren’t focused on this. They want fast, cheap leads who in turn want fast, cheap work. This is not the clientele you want.

The additional caveat: Third party lead services make you pay per lead, and at first, it seems like a dream come true. This strategy usually works for about 3 months to a year. After this, the leads start to be less quality. You find people calling to ask questions about services that aren’t even related to the ones you offer, people looking for a different company altogether, the list goes on! Eventually, you find you’re paying a whole lot of money, for a whole lot of worthless calls. Sure, there might be a good one here and there, but definitely not the ROI you signed up for.

We tell people this all the time, they don’t believe us, and come back a year later saying, “Yep, you were right.” Are third party leads all bad? Not at all. They can be a great backlink for your website and can help Google vet you as a trustworthy business if they are a digital company, but you shouldn’t fully rely on this type of marketing effort to sustain your business. It’s not a good long term strategy.

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