SPEAKERS

Dylan McCabe, Joe Hughes

 

Dylan McCabe  00:00

Roofing mastery podcast episode number 20 Welcome to roofing mastery podcast My name is Dylan McCabe. And in every episode we give you a seat at the table as we interview owners and CEOs and key executives in the roofing industry. And in this episode, I talk with Joe Hughes. He’s the owner of contractor dynamics. He helps general contractors and Roofing Companies increase their sales with strategic online marketing, and social media. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about what is the problem? When you’re 100% focused on sales and not strategic with marketing? We’re going to answer the question of what is a brand? What are the benefits of building a brand? What are the steps to build a brand on social media and we’re going to end it with three social media campaigns every roofing company should be running, you’re going to get a ton out of this Joe is just crushing it in this space. And he’s also one of the panelists at Rukh Khan. At the time of recording this podcast, which is coming up in about one week and roofing mastery will be there we will be there representing our roofing CEO groups. And guys, if you haven’t done so already, please take a minute if this has been helpful to rate and review the podcast on iTunes, just go to rate this podcast.com slash roofing mastery. It’s a big way to say thank you and help us get the word out. All right, let’s jump into this discussion with Joe Hughes. All right, as I stated a special guest on the show today, Joe Hughes with contractor dynamics. So Joe, thanks for being on the show, man.

 

Joe Hughes  01:28

My pleasure deal. I’m really excited to dig in here.

 

Dylan McCabe  01:31

Yeah, same here. And the reason I was excited to have you on is because you’re not some fly by night marketer, you really partner with general contracting and roofing companies in a unique way. And with my background in online marketing, I see huge value to what you do and how you partner with companies to grow their brands. So I’m really looking to dig into what we have is our outline here. And one of the things we talked about leading up to this show was what are some of the biggest challenges facing general contracting and Roofing Companies when it comes to getting in front of that, you know, target customer that they’re after. And one of the things you brought up was a lot of them are just 100% focused on sales. And there’s a real weakness there. So can you kind of unpack that?

 

Joe Hughes  02:16

Yeah, sure. So whether it’s roofing or general contracting, or really any other type of contracting company, most companies get started by having the ability to sell like, go out, and you know, eat what you kill, right? Go out and hunt for some customers find some people that need your services today. And that’s a great asset for a roofing company to have is to be great at sales, because that’s what drives business. cash is king, if you can make everything work on the back end, which I know you guys work with your your groups on. But the thing is that you got to remember, in roofing and contracting, like only a very small percentage of any given market is is ready to like do something today, whether it’s get an estimate, get an inspection, get a quote, even just talk to you to learn more about your company. Right. So this is this is a high ticket purchasing decision that people are making, whether it’s retail out of pocket, or whether it’s an insurance restoration situation, it’s still a big decision to make. So only a very small percentage of people in any market are ready to take action today. But if you think about it, if you’re in, say, Dallas, or you’re in Memphis, Tennessee, everyone in your market is going to get their roof replaced at some point, right? So the big win is getting out in front of your market consistently. so that people can raise their hands when they’re ready. Because you never know when they’re going to be ready. They might not know when they’re going to be ready. But get out there consistently. So you can. So you can be the company that that they have top of mind when they’re ready to to make that decision, or at least have that conversation. So that’s the big opportunity that most roofing and contracting companies are missing out on.

 

Dylan McCabe  03:55

You know, that’s a great point. That’s something so Miller, Wheaton, my business partner, he owns rain, tight general contracting here in Dallas. And he’s been in business for 25 years. And we were riding around, you know, about six months ago. And he said, Look at all these roofs all over Dallas, someone is doing all of these roofs and it’s not a it’s not us. It’s one of the other, you know, however many 1000s of roofing companies are in Dallas, but somebody’s getting their business. And there’s reasons behind it. It’s not like, Oh, they just got lucky and they got a phone call. It has to do with the ones that are really getting most of the business. It’s a tailored strategy to get their target customer. So before we get in all that some people may think of well, who is Joe Hughes with contractor dynamics still and kind of, you know, jumped right into the interview questions, kind of give a little bit of background on who you are and how you got into this space.

 

Joe Hughes  04:44

Yeah, sure. So I run contractor dynamics, contractor dynamics Comm. We are a marketing training company for the roofing industry. So it’s a little bit different of a model than most people might be aware of. We don’t actually run your ads and build your websites. are, you know, do your videos for you, we train you on how to do all that we train you on how to do marketing. In roofing companies, you can build out a marketing system. In your roofing company, you have control over your growth. So the way that we got into that is long story short, I grew up in my family’s commercial construction business here in New Jersey, and up in New York City. When I was 14, my first job ever was going up to the shipyard in Brooklyn, and like literally painting tugboats and barges and welding and driving a forklift and cutting steel and like, like playing with some big toys, it was a lot of fun. So I worked there in the family biz for about 15 years, and I left in 2012. And on good terms, I just wanted to do something more entrepreneurial is 126 year old company, my family’s business, so I just wanted to do something kind of on my own. And I had a passion for marketing and business and learned a lot of different systems and had the background in construction and, and saw the need for for marketing in the construction industry. So we started back in 2012, we’ve worked with hundreds of companies all throughout North America, you know, from startups doing a couple 100,000 a year to companies that do over 100 million a year. And really villain like everyone is the commonality that all those companies have is their sales focus. And they’re looking to build out that marketing piece. So yeah, so that’s, that’s what we do.

 

Dylan McCabe  06:28

And the thing I like about your story is like you said, You grew up in this space around the world of contracting, general contracting, and just construction, then you saw a need, and you dove in to help solve that problem. And for guys listening to this that think, Well, I know I need to do some marketing stuff. But is it really that important? Well, I know two things, because of my background and online marketing. And that is on Google, if you’re not in the first three spots, your you know, 80% of buyers, end up buying and doing business with somebody in the first three spots at Google unless you’re running paid ads. And then as far as Facebook goes, people look at your brand, they look at the amount of reviews, you have a look at the content they want to get to know you, and if they see you and then they are they they look at your competitor and they see all this stuff they can interact with and then they look at you and it’s crickets and they haven’t seen a social media posts in six months. But it’s an easy choice, who do you think they’re going to go with, they’re not going to go with you this stuff is critical and and so that’s that’s why I think it’s really cool that you have really gotten laser focused on this. And I really like the idea of helping train companies to do this themselves because let’s face it, you can train somebody to do this. But if you engage in this process as an owner in the company or key executive, you once you become educated you can have a better handle on the pulse of what’s actually happening and not think well let’s throw a few $1,000 at it and hope it works you need to be an educated buyer in the process. So I really like that so so what you’re doing is you’re coming in you’re partnering with companies and you’re helping them to get their brand their marketing strategy in place and stuff like that. So let’s clear up the word that we hear a lot which is brand what is a brand Why is that important?

 

Joe Hughes  08:11

Let’s start with what a brand is not because I know a brand can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and it does right a brand can be your logo or your truck wraps or your shirts and hats and everything like that, but we’re talking about is not necessarily that we’re talking about a company that that people in your market know like So, think about it as Top of Mind people know of your company when they have a need for roofing repair or replacement or whatever it is that you do in contracting or even if they don’t have a need, but someone they know has a need you want to be that Top of Mind company. So, when you have a brand you become one of those top of mind companies in your market. We say we like to say Top of Mind is tip of tongue right so what you say roofing company, you say plumber, you say you know architectural design firm in your town, like who comes to mind. Those are the companies that that have brand recognition. So that’s what we want to achieve. A lot of people on this listening or watching might have heard the phrase that people buy from people or companies that they know like and trust and that’s absolutely true. And I will take that a step go deeper on that and say the biggest part there is no like people have to know who you are before they can even like you or trust you so brand building a brand is quite simply like getting your market to know that you exist. And then you can take those additional steps of building know like and trust which we can get to later in the episode.

 

Dylan McCabe  09:42

Okay, so as you you know, as you explain that I think to myself, well a lot of roofing guys or general contractors who focus on roofing may think our brand is fine, but I know as somebody that’s that’s been on the marketing side when you’re on the outside looking in, a lot of them look the same. It’s It’s Joe Schmo roofing over and over and over again. And it’s it’s a logo with a little house symbol. And as a homebuyer, as a homeowner, they all look the same. It’s really difficult to know who to go with, what’s the difference and stuff like that. So can you kind of explain some of the, the key points of the benefits of a brand and making that brand really clear?

 

Joe Hughes  10:26

Yeah, it can be hard. Listen, I mean, if you’re in Dallas, there’s 1000s, of roofing companies like pretty much in every you know, every state, there’s, there’s a lot of competition, right? So it can be hard to think about, okay, what really makes us different, we put on the same, we use the same shingles, the same products that the guy down the street uses, you know, we have the same access to the financing, and warranties and all those good things. When people are buying or engaging with a service based business, whether it’s us as a training company, or you as a consultant, or roofing or contracting company, it’s really about the experience, it’s about how can you give me the solution that I’m after, give me the result that I’m after, and make my life easier, like make my life better? Don’t Don’t add a lot of work, you know, and a lot of obligations to my already busy life and business life and schedule, how can you make this a seamless experience. And so that’s what we want to communicate as service based businesses to our market. So if you, you know, go through the exercise of what can I say, as a roofing company in Dallas, that no other roofing company in Dallas can say, Well, you know, there’s exceptions, but that can be really hard. I know, there’s a roofing company called k post in Dallas, they, they did the roof to I think at&t Stadium in Texas Ranger stadium. So they can they, they use those things in their marketing, which are things that no other company can say. So that’s, that’s a unique situation and good for them, right. But if you’re, you know, if you’re not at that level, then what you can do is you can show like, don’t tell people how amazing you are show people. And the best way to do that these days is with video, right video of your team of you, your company. And more importantly, videos of your clients, your customers talking about their experience working with you. Video is going to go a long way into showing people what you’re all about. Basically, what you want to do, the point you want to get across, or the emotion that you want to elicit in a prospective client is okay, I understand these guys, I know they understand me, I feel good about them, I feel good that they’re gonna be taking care of me, they’re gonna be a trusted advisor in this whole process to me, and, and I’m comfortable with that, that whole process. So there’s a lot of things we can unpack there. But that’s kind of an overview of how you want to communicate to your market.

 

Dylan McCabe  12:48

Yeah, that’s so good. And I just want to stop for a minute and ask those listening to this. Are you using video content? I mean, are you creating videos, I know when I when I joined my business partner, Miller, the first thing I started doing was creating educational videos for our target audience to say, Hey, here’s the reasons why you really need to make sure you’re going with a great general contractor to get your roof done. Here are multiple steps that should be checked off on the list as part of the process for you, the homeowner, if not run the other way you’re working with somebody that’s going to do a sloppy job or not give you world class customer service. And so that’s with like you said in Dallas, I mean, it’s like you mentioned k post, I almost said yeah, little little bitty company, nobody knows about, yeah, there’s these huge companies. And so what we decided, or what I decided, for me is I’m going to differentiate myself by being an educator. And so every possible home or every homeowner that I interacted with, I would tell them, I’m going to I’m going to be an educator with you, you’re going to be an educated person, and knowledge is power in this industry. Because there’s 1000s of people you could call and you don’t know the difference in the shingles. You don’t know if anybody’s cutting corners, you don’t know what the price should be. If you file a claim, you have no clue what that whole process is really all about with your insurance company. You know, what they to give you is really an offer. It’s not a final word on what they’re going to pay out. So we would over educate people. And then after a while, they would say, gosh, I’ve actually got bids from two other contractors. They didn’t tell me any of this stuff. And it’s like, well, yeah, that well, that’s that’s the key. We want your we want you as a client for life. We don’t just want to replace your roof this year. There’s going to be multiple hailstorms over the next 10 years. So are those of you listening to this doing video? Are you educating your customers but you got into some other aspects as you and I were nailing down content for this interview about the benefits of a brand so can you kind of unpack some of those?

 

Joe Hughes  14:47

Yeah, benefits of having a brand so the benefits of have of having a company or even if you are an individual sales rep and you’re not an owner, if you’re working within a company and you’re building your own personal brand, which is your reputation. The benefits of having people who know who you are, are the obvious of people that need your services, or people that need Roofing Services or contracting services, you’re going to be top of mind, as we talked about, when you have a brand, something that not a lot of companies think about. But you’re going to attract, you’re going to be able to attract top talent, sales reps, project managers, production managers, admin staff, like whoever else needs to fill out the roles in your team, people have a choice these days, right, they can go work for a bunch of different companies, they can even sit at home and you know, collect checks from the government these days, which can be lucrative. So you really got to sell those top those top people that you’ve got something, you’ve got a brand that they can attach themselves to, and they can grow within your company. And that’s not only going to attract people, but it’s going to retain people more obviously, when you have a brand, you’re going to grow your business more predictably, you’re going to be more profitable, it’s just that it’s a win win win scenario. Couple other benefits that people might not think about it, it gives you an opportunity to get involved in your community. Being involved in your community is something that it’s important to me, I know it’s important to a lot of the roofing company owners and leaders that that we work with, that’s a big part of who they are. And it’s also you know, the byproduct of that is it’s good for marketing, showing that you’re a part of your community by actually being a part of your community. And then another one is, this might be something that’s not on the top of mind right now. But when you have a brand, it gives your company more value. So if there’s ever an opportunity to sell your company, or perhaps by a different company, or acquire different companies grow by acquisition, then having that brand opens you up to those opportunities that that you never be able to imagine. So there’s there’s no downside to building a brand.

 

Dylan McCabe  16:55

That’s a great, that’s a powerful statement. Yeah, there’s no downside. And that’s, you know, interesting, a lot of guys that are younger, they’re just starting out in this space aren’t really thinking about their exit strategy. But that is something that comes up in our roofing CEO groups, is how they position themselves for sale. And, you know, we talked about having the right people the right processes and keeping score, so that somebody can come in and look over the last five years and see a balance sheet that’s attractive and see processes that are illustrated and followed by everybody and repeatable. See a situation where the owner can work on the business and not just in the business 80 hours a week. So that’s, that’s great. A great point that brand adds to that. So for people that are listening to this and thinking, Okay, both of you guys have have experience in marketing. Can you clear this up a little bit? Do you have like a case study or an example of somebody that’s just knocking it out of the park with their brand, and they’re getting traction with it?

 

Joe Hughes  17:49

Well, I’ll give you a couple. So I’ll give you one that’s a more established company, and then one that’s a younger company, that’s kind of you know, the one to $2 million dollar range. So an established company would be dnm roofing in Omaha, Omaha, Nebraska, they are in Des Moines, Iowa. And they are as we speak, opening up their third office in Florida, growing by acquisition, so company did everything run by eriko brand. They are they’ve been in business, like 52 years, I believe, second generation family biz they’ve been they’ve been growing, you know, pretty steadily. And Eric is a, he’s a very smart guy. He’s always had a lot of creative ideas, as far as creating brand, and, you know, being on a local radio show and doing some, you know, some different things. And so we we’ve been working with him for a few years. And just this year, Eric was like, you know, what, I got all these ideas, I don’t really want to work 80 hours a week, like I’ve done that I don’t want to do it anymore. I want to work smarter, not harder. So he brought on a full time marketing manager in house named Lindsay. And they’ve been able to execute on a ton of different campaigns. So they’ll run even over the winter, they’ll run brand awareness videos to get in front of commercial property owners, commercial building owners, just to let them know that they exist, let them know that there’s you know, there’s been storms in the area, but then they’ll have some solutions they might have to, to restore that roof without necessarily replacing the whole thing. So maintenance programs they have. So they’ve been doing a ton of marketing around, you know, client acquisition, and also recruiting heavily in their three locations. And they’re just actually today. The reason I brought them up at their top of mind with me is because they’re they’re having their grand opening party at their brand new office in Nebraska today that they built from the ground up. So they’ve been able to grow extremely fast over the past few years by working smarter, not harder. And by implementing some of these strategies, and year round, you know, not just when the storm comes or not just when it’s the No may and every everyone’s busy, even though they’re in Nebraska and Iowa, they’re they’re going year round with their marketing and brand building

 

Dylan McCabe  20:07

and see that this is a client of yours, right? Yes. And see, this is one of the things that stands out to me about what you guys are doing in that case study you just mentioned. If you run Google Pay Per Click ads, and you can show up, somebody does Roof Repair, whatever it is Dallas, Texas, you pay your cost per click or whatever, you get that color, you get that action on your website, hopefully your sales team immediately jumps on that they get a good response or whatever. It does nothing for your brand. I’m not saying it’s not valuable, it’s a strength in that you can be somebody answer, the buyer started the buying process, you were the answer, that’s great. But the huge weakness to that is as soon as you turn that off, it’s over. And they’re not gonna find you anymore. And it does nothing for your brand. Whereas the difference in what you’re doing is yes, there can be immediate results with Facebook ads and videos and a good call to action and a good a good process a good funnel. But it’s a long term, what it does for your brand, when you get these videos, that’s evergreen content, you get them on your website, you get them on your Facebook page, you get more people that are your followers and stuff like that. And so when when you talk about what they did that was successful, and you said they use videos, are they running videos, like on their own Facebook page? are they running ads? What does that look like? Yeah, so

 

Joe Hughes  21:25

I just wanted to touch on what that that what you mentioned about running ads and not doing anything for your brand. Think about it, like owning a home versus renting a home, right, you can rent a house, and you can pay rent, and you can have a place to sleep at night, the minute you stop paying rent, or you know, the month after whatever, you no longer have a place you have nothing right. As opposed to owning a home, you’re paying that mortgage every month, you’re building equity into that home. So you have an asset. So when you’re brand building, you’re building your asset, rather than just like renting traffic from Google or Facebook or whatever. So yesterday,

 

Dylan McCabe  21:57

awesome analogy.

 

Joe Hughes  22:00

figure, we bring it home to the you know, construction, right, everyone can relate to that. So yeah, they’re videos. So a lot of them, you know, simple, simple cell phone videos like this, which we you know, train them on how to do pretty efficiently. What they did was, which is cool is they built a relationship with a local video company in Omaha. So every quarter or so they’ve had that video company that come out that production company and do some, you know, higher end, nothing too crazy, nothing too fancy. But, you know, maybe spend a couple a few grand on a few videos that they’re really going to be able to use as assets for, you know, a year, like if you go to dnn roofing.com, you’ll see the big video on their on their homescreen, or the homepage of their website. It’s like a testimonial mashup, which is professionally done, but most of their stuff is just you know, simple. Either like Eric, the owner at his desk on his webcam, or the guys out in the field on their phones and whatnot. And so it’s it’s a lot of the organic, which is the non paid like organic just posting on their, their business page. And then the the people in the company sharing on their personal profiles as well. So that’s the foundation. And then when they want to, you know, run a campaign for hiring or pour fuel on the fire if there’s a specific storm or if it’s busy season, or they have like a winter siding special, because they can do siding in the colder weather. Whereas with roofing, they have to kind of cut it off at a certain point. They’ll pour fuel on that fire with some paid ads. But it’s don’t like Dylan just said like, Don’t expect to like do nothing. And then just pay Google or Facebook for a bunch of you know, ad traffic and expect a miracle. It’s about having that foundation of that regular consistent content, like every week. And then when you really want to pour fuel on the fire, then you can go and you can reach 10s of 1000s of people with Facebook or Instagram ads.

 

Dylan McCabe  23:52

No, it’s good stuff. The other thing I like about you, you know, you chose to focus on Facebook and on social media. And the reason I like that is because number one Facebook’s the number one app in the world. There’s billions of users on Facebook. And then number two is you can have a sloppy website, not that I’m advocating for that. But you can have a crappy website and still have a really strong Facebook presence. And the reason I say that is because you know, we used to deal when I was VP of operations at a digital marketing company. And we were we were really rocking and rolling. We co hosted events with Google, we got Google premier partner status, which you really have to do a lot of things to get that Google doesn’t just hand that out, you actually have to do a really good job. And Google tracks everything that every single advertiser does. And so what we would constantly have these customers that would say, Well, I just need sales, I need sales. I need sales. I’m willing to spend three, four, whatever, $1,000 a month and it’s like your website’s terrible. So if we turn on Google and send a bunch of people to your webpage, let’s go to your web page real quick. What business Are you in, it’s like it’s awful, you’re not going to get a single call, they’re going to look at your website and think this is a Podunk little company. And so let’s rebuild your website first, then turn on the ads. And so there’s another issue there is if you want to really be effective with Google, you got to have a web presence. It’s amazing. with Facebook and social media, it’s totally different. And it’s so much more personal. And I love what you said about the even the webcam videos. I mean, the statistics show that you either need to be really raw and just like holding the phone or webcam, or it needs to be super professional. If it’s somewhere in between people don’t really think it’s authentic. And so I love that I love that idea of of just having that kind of raw real this is who we are kind of deal.

 

Joe Hughes  25:50

Yeah, that’s so true. What you said there with either, like very well done professionally done, or the raw. It You’re right. I mean, that’s been our experience as well with ourselves and with our, with our clients and students as well. It’s funny, it’s funny how that is, there’s just so much skepticism out there. Right? So authenticity, transparency, those are the things that that really win today.

 

Dylan McCabe  26:15

So let me ask you this, if if people are listening to this, and they think, Okay, well, I’m not ready to jump in and spend a whole bunch of money on branding or whatever it may be. But can you just give me some tips? Can you help me get started? What would you say are some steps to build a good brand on social media that people can take?

 

Joe Hughes  26:33

Yeah, so Alright, so this is like one on one stuff. But we work with any industry heavily all day, every day. So I am acutely aware of these things. Make sure your Facebook page is you know, dialed in letting people know exactly where you where you operate what you do, on your personal profile, or personal, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and whatnot. Make sure as an owner, as a marketing manager, sales manager or sales rep, that you are optimizing your page. And I don’t mean anything like behind the scenes, I mean, just like saying what you do, I am a project manager at you know, blue nail roofing I am this is what I do. Because people are doing their research, right. So even if you’re not running any ads, even if you’re all referral based or door knocking, that’s fine. People are still going to your business Facebook page, maybe even your personal profile, to see who you are, and validate that this is a you know, a quality individual that I trust to be, you know, doing my roof, or doing my project. So just make sure that stuff dialed in the common sense things like, you know, try to if you’re if you’re using your Facebook, your personal Facebook for business, you know, don’t have any Spring Break pictures on there, you know, things like that, like, just be sensible about that. And then we’ll put one again. Yeah, we’re not getting that ready. But I mean, hey, it’s people are doing the research, okay. Facebook, stalking, whatever you want to call it. So put your best foot forward out there. Do you want to get into a couple of campaigns? Is that where you want to go with this? Or

 

Dylan McCabe  28:07

Sure, just any advice you have on how people can go I think it’s great. I mean, get your get your your social media presence there, a lot of people it’s not there. And then same thing with Google My Business listing a lot of people don’t even have a Google My Business listing. Or if they have at its bare minimum, it doesn’t even include a link to their website. So it’s this basic stuff that I think people get so focused on growing their business, they don’t take the time to manage and cultivate a healthy online presence. So I think these are great tips. I know one of the things you talked about as well is just going back to video, making sure you’ve got some video content that’s really dialed in on who your what your target customer needs, and making it easy for people to take action. So how do they do that? I mean, if somebody says, Okay, well, I want to create a video, what the heck do I say? Do I say hey, I’m john, the owner of John’s roofing and I mean, how give him some tips on how to do that.

 

Joe Hughes  29:03

Sure. So with roofing and contracting, it’s easy because we’ve got you got the material like you’re doing projects, right. So with me, I’m sitting behind a desk most of the day, you know, there’s only so much I can do to get creative, but you’re out in the field, you’re on roofs, you’re doing estimates, inspections, you’re having meetings and whatnot. So you have that raw material. So at a basic level, the easiest thing to do is when you’re doing a roof replacement when you’re even if you’re doing an inspection or an estimate or a scope or whatever you’re doing in contracting, just just you know pull your phone out just do one of these or have someone else do it to have someone else shoot you say in the front yard of a job so that way you get the perspective of you but you also get like the the proper view of the building in the background or the house or whatever it is and just explain what you’re doing right we are replacing the McCabe’s roof today because storm rolled through here. April and they are just busy with the whole year and everything and they just hadn’t gotten a chance to get around to it but we were able to do an evaluation of the roof and find a lot of damage that quite frankly wasn’t visible from the ground. We got up there you know, we did a we did a thorough inspection and we found that they did have a lot of damage. So we’re going you know, we’re giving them this product that has you know, this this lifetime roofing system with this warranty, and and it’s going to be a beautiful new home. So So just like the simple fact of letting people know like, what you’re doing and where you are and why you’re doing that project. That’s that’s super basic, but very effective. Another company we work with in up in the Midwest, Wisconsin, and all over the place, is Martin Dale Pinnacle construction MPC construction. Paul Martin Dale and his team do a great job, they don’t run, they don’t really run ads that much. They do a fantastic job have like exactly what I just said, whether it’s on video picture, like letting people know where they are, why they’re doing that particular project, hey, there’s a storm in this area, or in this town, there’s a lot of homes that were built 20 years ago, and a lot of them are coming up on their, the roofs are coming up on their useful life, because they’re built with builder, great materials and whatnot. So just simply letting people know that you’re out there. And that’s, that’s a basic thing that you can do, and just kind of get in the habit of that. And it doesn’t have to be you if you’re the owner, you know, incorporate this into your sales meeting, like make it part of the culture of your team that when you’re out on a project, like you do a video, you don’t have to post them all, of course, but just get in the habit of doing that. That that’s going to be that’s that’s going to be huge. And you know, it’s free, you don’t have to, you know, we’ve all got the equipment right here in our in our pockets, you run that content, you don’t have to run ads, that’s going to that’s going to take you pretty far.

 

Dylan McCabe  31:53

That’s good stuff, just video as you go. And I actually bought I actually bought one of those little pop socket deals just for that. So I could pop it out. I’m like, man, I don’t want to drop my iPhone. But now I can like, hold it. And I did I did a short little video, I was up inspecting the roof saying, hey, it doesn’t look like it, like you said from the ground. But while we’re up here, here’s what Hail Damage looks like this is a hail hit. And here’s the reasons why your insurance company will replace your entire roof. If they see a certain number of these in a square a 10 by 10 foot area on your roof. Here’s why. And so it’s just an educational video I posted on my personal Facebook page. Man, it got a it got a lot of views and likes and comments and everything. And it goes back to what you said like people need to know what you’re doing. Because you’re not Top of Mind, you’re just not even if they know you. Well, if you haven’t posted anything in six months, there’s no way you’re Top of Mind we live in the most crowded environment online that’s ever existed. I mean, it’s just people are inundated with information. And so having a consistent plan, it doesn’t have to be great. But having a consistent plan, just posting that content, letting people get to know you, I think is is great. So it’s awesome that you guys are teaching people how to do that. Another thing that you mentioned is you and I were discussing all of this, as you said, you know, there’s really three media campaigns, every roofing company should be running, what are those?

 

Joe Hughes  33:19

Sure. So if you for those of you who do want to get into running some basic campaigns, ad campaigns, so just let me clarify. We’re talking about Facebook and Instagram, Facebook owns Instagram. So when you go into Facebook Ads Manager to run your ads, you can run them on Instagram, the same time from one platform. And I’m not talking about boosting posts, boosting is mostly a waste of money. So make sure you’re in the Facebook Ads Manager when you’re running these campaigns. And you can run these for you know, depending on your market, you can run these for say $5 a day per campaign. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy. But you’re going if you do it consistently, you’re going to get the results of that, that compound effect of that effort put in you know, consistently. So number one is simply a brand awareness campaign. As the name would imply, making people aware of your brand making people aware of your company. So it could be a simple video it could be you know, in your in your office and your it could be in front of a you know, a job site. Just letting people know making people aware that you’re there, like where you operate what you do like the basics, provide some value, maybe some consumer awareness tips for them, like hey, for considering hiring a roofing contractor here’s a look for or making them aware of Storm Damage like Dylan was just pointing out and then letting them know how for those of those who do want to take action or ready to take action, make it easy, right? Tap you know, tap the button below to go to our website or tap the button below to fill out this form and we can schedule an appointment to check out your roof. You know nothing too salesy here people don’t want to be sold. But you know, just kind of a gentleman invitation for those of those who want to take action to do so easily. So that’s just a, you know, a simple video could be a one minute video, hey, you know, here’s who I am, here’s where we are, here’s what we’re doing. We love helping our neighbors, we have a passion for what we’re doing, go check out our reviews online. You know, don’t, you know, I understand if you don’t want to trust me, you’re just seeing me in your social media feed. So, you know, Google our company name and go check us out. And they can, you know, see you from from different angles. So that’s a brand awareness campaign, you can run for, you know, five bucks a day, and just pretty much run it all the time, even over the winter. And what’s gonna happen is you’re gonna build up an audience of people that are engaging with that video. You know, most people aren’t going to comment or like or share, messaged you and say, Hey, that was amazing video. But we’re all out there. Like it’s the silent majority of people that are out there that are, you know, consuming but not interacting. But when you’re running this as an ad campaign, you can then go back in and do a second campaign. That’s a retargeting campaign. So let me just explain this in a visual term. You know, if you are, say you’re shopping for like a Yeti cooler online, I think, you know, most of the roofing and contracting industry can relate. So that’s why I use that example, you might go to Amazon, you might go to yeti.com, you like looking at different coolers, check it out, different prices, even kind of deals are going on and whatnot. And for whatever reason, maybe you get busy or you’re just you know, you’re not going to buy it right then and there. You go to your Facebook, you go to your Instagram, you see Yeti cooler, following you around wherever you go for, you know, weeks. And that’s because they know that most people that come to the website are not going to buy. So they’re going to retarget you with these ads. So the same strategy that is available that big companies like Yeti or Amazon or Nike use on us, we can use as small businesses, it’s very simple. So that second campaign is that retargeting campaign, and it’s, it’s a campaign that goes out to anyone that’s engaged with your videos, anyone that’s been to your website, anyone that likes your Facebook page, or likes your Instagram profile, people that have already expressed some low level of interest in your content and your company. So that’s, that’s a warm audience of people that are already familiar with you. And that’s when you can put out your your property evaluation offers or your roof assessment offers, or your financing offers, or you know, whatever the situation is holiday specials, or whatever you have, you put those offers out to a warm audience of people that are more likely to take you up on that because they already know who you are. So that’s kind of a one two punch, you have the brand awareness, and then you retarget with an offer. It’s a very, very simple thing. It might sound a little complex, because I’m there’s no visuals here. But it’s very, pretty simple to set up. And then the third one is something that you don’t always have to be running but always have this ready to go. When you want it is a recruiting campaign. I can’t tell you how many companies i don’t i’m sure you see it all the time, like roofing company owners posting on Facebook, looking for sales reps pm me amazing opportunity to make six figures like that doesn’t really cut it, like who you really going to attract with that minimal effort. Like why don’t you put together a video of you and your team or get some of your team members talking about how amazing the opportunity is to work with their your company and how they used to be making x. And now they have flexibility over their schedule. And they they feel like they’re an entrepreneur working for this awesome company that has a great culture and vision and, and really like selling people on that opportunity. So again, you don’t always have to be running that if you’re not always recruiting, but always have that available. So you can just deploy that, you know, whenever you do need people instead of just kind of posting something random on a Friday to get sales reps to start on Monday. And we all know how that works out. Right. So those are the three campaigns I’d recommend. Um, and again, you can run those for five bucks a day each, depending on your market, maybe in Dallas a little bit more, because it’s just you know, that crowded, but um, but that’s, that’s a good, that’s a really, really good start that, you know, 97% of roofing companies are not doing so you don’t even have to be amazing at it just be just do the basics. And and you’ll you’ll have an advantage.

 

Dylan McCabe  39:19

That’s good stuff. I mean, you’ve shared a lot of really helpful insights here. We’ve talked about, what’s one of the biggest weaknesses, you’ve seen a lot of companies that you’ve worked with, what is a brand? How do you break that down? What is some really effective content to create in a video How to do that? What are three social media campaigns, everybody should be running and we’ve shared a ton of great content, and some people are going to need to just listen to this again. But if you were to distill it all down and say, Okay, if you forget if you forgot everything I said, Joe Hughes as the guy who runs contractor dynamics, working with all the customers you’ve worked with, and you’ve seen what’s worked and what hasn’t. What’s your parting piece of advice You want these guys to grab hold up with both hands. And gals, by the way I say guys, including everybody.

 

Joe Hughes  40:06

Yeah, man parting piece of advice. Be consistent. I mean, I think that goes for anything in business. But like, again, with the hiring, the brand awareness like whatever you’re going to do, if you’re going to post twice a week, great if you’re going to release a you know, deal and you’re going to release a podcast every week, grapes be consistent with it, the thing that you that I want to mention earlier, is that most people, again, are not going to comment and like and share your content. But there are people out there watching, and you don’t know who they are, and you will get calls, you will get calls and inquiries all the time and leads in all the time, from people that have been watching your content for weeks or months or, you know, maybe a year and they’re like, Okay, I’m ready. I want to work with you. I want to work with your roofing company. I’m not calling anyone else, like how do we get started? And that that’s an amazing conversation to have, rather than Hey, you know, what’s the, what’s the lowest price you can give me on this roof? Right? So just be consistent, trust the process. And again, you’re gonna it’s the compound effect of those, you know, consistent efforts put in every day, every week, just like with anything else in life, really. So that’s my number one thing

 

Dylan McCabe  41:21

that is so good. I can’t remember I can’t recall the man’s name. But he had one of the biggest real estate sales training organizations in the US. I think they train something like over 500,000 real estate agents and that and he also scaled his company to be a multi billion dollar company and somebody asked this guy, it’s killing me. I can’t remember his name. They said, What was that?

 

Joe Hughes  41:44

Gary Keller? Keller? Williams? No, it’s

 

Dylan McCabe  41:46

not killer. Well, it’s a company I hadn’t heard of before I read this in a book last week. And so but somebody asked him, What was the key to your success? And he said, consistency. And that was it. Everybody’s got a process, they follow it, they do it over and over and over again. And that gets you traction over time. So that’s great stuff. Well, Joe, I know there’s a lot of you listening, you think, hey, I’d like to learn more about what Joe Hughes is doing. I’d like to learn more about how to implement some of this stuff. How can people get in touch with you?

 

Joe Hughes  42:15

Sure. So I’ll keep it simple, get roofs, now.com. Get roofs now.com. And that’ll give you some info on what we talked about today, and how we can help you implement that if you want to take the next steps and get plugged into our training program. If not, there’s some other training videos on our site there that you can check out as well.

 

Dylan McCabe  42:36

Awesome. So for those of you listening to this, I mean, you owe it to yourself, if especially if you’re a key executive or owner of a company, you owe it to yourself to learn about this stuff and to get free content from Joe Hughes and go to get roots now calm and just check it out. You You only stand again, you won’t regret doing it. But you might regret not doing it. So I encourage everybody to do that. And, Joe, thanks for being on the show, man.

 

Joe Hughes  42:58

Yeah, appreciate it. It’s been fun. Thanks for having me.

 

Dylan McCabe  43:02

All right, really interesting conversation with Joe Hughes at contractor dynamics. I really like his emphasis on long term branding. I love the analogy of a rent house versus a house you own. You know, if you’re just paying for ads all the time, and you’re not actually building your brand, and creating evergreen content and video content and letting people get to know you. As soon as you stop spending money on those ads. All of your effectiveness is gone. Whereas if you follow his process, and learn how to build your brand in a way that’s not dependent on a third party source or dependent on ads, you reap the benefits long term. I think it’s amazing. I think everybody, you definitely owe it to yourself to at least talk to him and schedule a free strategy call to learn about his program. I got a lot out of it myself. And that’s what we’re all about is just sharing helpful resources with you guys the roofing mastery nation. Alright guys, this is Dylan McCabe with the roofing mastery podcast and I will catch you in the next episode.