003: Common Website Fails

Narrator:
You're listening to the Roofing Business Partner Podcast.

Narrator:
This is the show where you'll learn the mind hacks, strategies and process we use every day to turn everyday roofing companies into the dominating local authority with our ultimate roofer marketing method. You'll also learn how we use Facebook Ad to rapidly and affordably scale up business for roofing companies and generate leads on autopilot. Putting you in touch with the right customers who pay the right price at the right time. Here's your host, Adam Sand. Now let's get after it.

Adam Sand:
So today I want to talk about common website fails, but before we get into that, I want to talk a bit about last episode. I got really excited talking about LeadGen. That kind of stuff just drives me crazy. And so I start talking really, really fast, and I want to just apologize for talking so quickly. So hopefully that episode was easy for you guys to digest, your feedback is always important. So let me know, leave a rating or review. Let me know how the sound is because ultimately that is the whole point of a podcast is to be easy to listen to. Now, when it comes to websites, there are plenty of guys out there that can teach you or be hired to design a good looking website that can make Google website like your website more, and they can make us what shows up at the top a little bit easier.

Adam Sand:
This is known to search engine optimization, and yes, you need some good design principles and it should change the way it looks for a mobile device. That's called mobile responsive, that's what the propeller-heads call it these days. Meaning the website responds to a mobile device and scales everything down. I am looking at a ton of roofer websites this last week and a lot of you do not have mobile responsive websites. That's a big mistake. I have some guidebooks to help you folks identify some specific improvements to improve your business, and they will show you how to put in place tangible changes to get you better results from your marketing online. But there's something far more important we need to cover before we get into that. If you've ever heard Simon Sinek's, Start with Why, you'll know the answer to this question, why does your website suck?

Adam Sand:
Why do you not get enough leads? Why is it that the leads you do get are garbage? And why is it that inferior companies seem to do better in spite of the fact that you care way more about your customers. In Mr. Sinek's TED Talk and in his book, he answers the root of that question. How do you explain when things don't go as we assume or better? How do you explain when others are able to achieve things that seem to defy all the assumptions? A really good, easy, low hanging fruit, no pun intended as far as examples go is Apple. Why is Apple so innovative year after year, after year, they're more innovative than most of their competition. More yet, even if their competition is more innovative in [inaudible 00:02:43] in a more advanced product, Apple still gets to charge double and triple for the devices that do the same thing. After all, they're just a computer company.

Adam Sand:
They're just like everyone else. They have the same access to the same talent. They can pay them the same amount of money. They have the same marketing agencies that can work for them, the same consultants and the same media in which to advertise their products. So then why is it that they seem to have something different at their disposal to get better results and better profits? Mr. Sinek also asks, why is it that the Wright brothers were able to figure out controlled powered man flight? There were certainly other teams who were better qualified and better funded, for sure. So there's something else at play here. From watching Simon Sinek, I had one of those epiphanies, a change in my worldview. As it turns out, all the great inspiring leaders and organizations in the world all think, act and communicate the exact same way. And it's the complete opposite for everyone else.

Adam Sand:
All he did was codify it and it's the world's simplest idea. Imagine a bullseye, like a dart board bullseye with the circle, small to center and then you got bigger ones and bigger ones working their way out and you got so like three circles. The small circle in the middle is why. The middle circle is how and the biggest circle is what. With the simple circle, he explains the fundamental problem with how most organizations run. Every single person in every single organization knows what they do. Some even know how they do it to varying degrees and some might call it their process, their unique selling point or their secret sauce. But very few people in organizations know why they do what they do, not to make a profit. That's a result. It's always a result. Asking why means to ask yourself why you do what you do.

Adam Sand:
Why does your roofing company exist? Why do you get out of bed every morning? And why should anyone care? The simple difference is that inspired leaders or in this case, the inspired websites, begin with why. They operate from the inside out. The rest all operate from the outside in with the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. It doesn't inspire action or loyalty. Their websites simply say, "We do roofing. We do good roofing because we have lots of experience. We sell good jingles and we have a 10 year workmanship guarantee. Call us for a free estimate." Let me give you an example and again, I'll use Apple because they're easy to understand and everybody gets it. If Apple were like everyone else, the marketing message from them might sound like this, "We make great computers. They're beautifully designed, simply to use and powerful. Want to buy one?" That's how most of us communicate our roofing companies and that's how most marketing and sales agencies do it for you.

Adam Sand:
That's just how we communicate. We say what we do. We say how we're different and better and we expect some sort of positive response, like a sale, a phone call, a lead or something like that. But it's very uninspiring. Here's how Apple actually communicates. "In everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and powerful. We just happen to make great computers. Want to buy one?" Totally different, right? You're ready to buy a computer from me. We just reversed the information. Same thing for your roofing company. We start a roofing business because we believed in performing quality work. There's something about looking at a well done beautiful roof that is satisfying at the end of each Workday.

Adam Sand:
We do this by hiring experienced roofers, using the best shingles and holding ourselves accountable with a 10 year workmanship guarantee. Want to call us for an estimate? This explains why every single person in the room is perfectly comfortable buying a computer from Apple. But we're also perfectly comfortable buying a MP3 player, a phone, a watch, a wifi system because Apple isn't just a computer company. They distinguish what makes them structurally different from their competitors. Their competitors are equally qualified to make all these products. In fact, they've tried and they've failed, but that's because they didn't begin with why. I highly suggest you buy his book, Start with Why. Spend a few nights reading it. It will change your business and you will thank yourself. Now getting into the meat and potatoes of this advice I promised you. To prepare for this podcast, I had my virtual assistant collect 1000 roofing company websites, both in the US and Canada. As well as in the last week, I've probably had about 450 roofers download the Roofer Facebook Ad blueprint, and have been looking at their websites as well.

Adam Sand:
The easy advice to give you would come from the outside in. You want the action, customers to call, so you put the phone number in seven different places on your website, and you got to make sure it's a clean website. Then you place a clear call to action to give you their email address, but you don't answer too many questions and you'd want to make it very easy to contact you. This is how most of you are doing your website and although it's counterintuitive, it's wrong. In fact, if you hire a Google AdWords agency for $5,500 a month, that's exactly what they will tell you to do and they will design your website for free and just charge you for leads. Their wholesales page will begin just like this. We design websites that make customers pick up the phone, the best converting websites. We get you to the top of the Google with paid advertising that makes people call and you're only going to pay if people call. And then if you aren't making money, they'll blame it on your closing ratio, your poor salesmanship or something like that.

Adam Sand:
That's because they don't begin with why. They're the McDonald's of marketing. Would you rather have a person call you to find out how much you'll do a roof for, or how much they would have to pay to get you to come do the roof? It sounds similar, but the fundamental difference here is that the second version, the customer doesn't care so much about the price they want you to do their roof.

Adam Sand:
The only thing they want to find out is if they can afford it, just like if you go and buy a dress, right? I mean, you're not going to buy a dress. But when a woman goes to a store, she doesn't go, "Ooh, I love that price tag. I wonder if I like the dress?" No, they go, "Ooh, I love that dress. I wonder if I can afford it." This is the power of branding and marketing. That's the power of content and that's the power of beginning with why with your website. You want to begin with the end in mind. If you've downloaded my Roofer Facebook Ad blueprint, you know that the very first step is to begin with the end and work your way backwards. You want your customers to want your company to do the roof. They might only get estimates from other companies to keep you honest, but in the end, you want them to want you to do the roof.

Adam Sand:
This is done through creative, easy to understand content. These are my mind hacking infographics. It's called cognitive fluency, meaning humans prefer things that are familiar and easy to understand. Now, remember, easy to understand might be easy for you to understand, but it needs to be easy for a non-roofer. So show it to your buddy's girlfriend who doesn't know anything about roofing, what I call is the 14 year old girl test. Most 14 year old girls are going to be more interested in One Direction. They play soccer, they play sports. They play music, social media. They're going to be interested in all these things, not roofing. So if you show them the content that you want to put in front of customers, if they can read it for five minutes and come back and explain roofing better than most of the homeowner customers you run into, that means you have good content.

Adam Sand:
So can she communicate why drip edge or ice and water is good for a roof or what the nail zone is on a Malarkey shingle? This is when you know you've done your job. So if your website is in bad need of a redesign or you think it might be best to cut and run and start over, you could be right. The anatomy of a good roofing website is simple. The easy to use Jimdo and Squarespace website builders are fine and they have lots of themes. So pick one that's close to your brand's colors. Buy a couple of high resolution roofing photos from istockphoto.com. Put them in places on your website where they have other graphics so they're going to have places on the site where there are already graphics in place like a hero image or a background, or they'll have a feature images.

Adam Sand:
You just replace them with yours and most of them already have a construction type theme. So as long as it's got a small part up top and the left for your logo and an easy to read navigation bar, that's good. And make sure that it's a mobile responsive theme, which almost all of them are nowadays. You want to have a click to call button in the top right corner of the nav bar, but that's it. You don't want to bombard people with calls to action, because you want your customers to come to your site and get to know you. You also do want to let them know that if they do contact you, that you have some kind of guarantee for response time. Things that I find really well are something like guaranteed 30 minute or guaranteed two hour response time, because people want to know that you can help them solve this problem.

Adam Sand:
They can cross "get a roofer" off their list right away. Then you need a spot for them to put to their email and name. After that, the minimal barrier to entry work is done. That is when you begin with why. Make it easy for the visitors who are still in discovery mode and they're researching roofing, make it easy for them to learn about roofing on your website. You want to teach them why they need drip edge or why they need underlayment or why they should pick a certified roofer. Or what to do if the roof is leaking or how to handle an insurance claim and who to call first. But you want to pay a graphics guy to do this in a way that makes it very easy to understand. These are my mind hacking infographics and I've got a very cool freebie at the end to help you guys out with this.

Adam Sand:
Then you write a post below your infographic so this is going to go on your blog. And usually the design brief that you gave the graphic designer is good enough. Because if you're helping the graphic designer understand something about roofing, usually you can adapt that text and make it into your blog post. And because it's keyword rich, it's going to be SEO juice, which is going to help you with the Google. It's going to help you show up higher on the list because you're doing SEO by accident, but you're repurposing that content so you're not creating a bunch of extra work for yourself. If you do it this way, it's going to make it a lot faster and easier for you to put out good content, help your readers, help the visitors coming to your site and build all kinds of important things as far as improving your results and Google search.

Adam Sand:
Google also measures the amount of time that people are spending on your website. People tend to avoid reading large blocks of text, but they like the idea of learning from graphics and videos. So you need to start taking time to invest in this kind of asset for your website. If Google sees that people are clicking on 2, 3, 4 pages on your website and they're spending three or more minutes on it, you are automatically way ahead of the industry for roofing websites, which means you're going to show up higher because Google knows that your site is where people are going to acquire information. And Google's whole game is making sure that they stay the top search site. So people got to keep finding what they're looking for on Google. The minute someone does it better than them, this is the day that Google goes away. That's how Google became who they are.

Adam Sand:
So you might convert a few less visitors this way, because you won't have seven places to phone you and you won't have a big, huge form right front and center. But the visitors who do call inquire have read your info. They'll have a higher likelihood of preferring you over the other contractors. They'll be more familiar with your brand and because Google understands this, they'll rank you higher. So you're going to get better customers more often and all this happens by accident. The result is you'll have to spend less money on Google AdWords and other lead generators and you'll show up more often. This is all because you invested in why people pick a roofing company, instead of just showing up in the 'me too' list of roofing companies available to do the work. There will always be a bunch of roofing companies out there offering discounts and free estimates.

Adam Sand:
That's just a minimum barrier to entry, everybody has that. But I have a guide that is going to teach you guys how to develop my mind hacking infographics that sell more roofs. And this is exactly what I do with my roofing company as well as with my roofing business partners. We started with a free gym to website. We had a graphic designer throw together very quickly, some really good infographics and honestly it has been a huge change for our business. And it's been a huge change for my clients. Most of them say that once these things start taking hold, is that not only are they generating the same number of leads, but they're better customers. A good example is a company that brought us on. They kept the same marketing budget that they were using with canvassers, bus benches, signs, flyers, a couple lead generator websites, Angie's List and HomeAdvisor.

Adam Sand:
They kept the same budget but they were able to make the same revenue and fire three of their sales people. So the sales people they had were making more money and because the customers wanted them to do their roof, they didn't have to do as much follow up. The estimates were faster. They closed at the estimate. So the sales people make more, the business made more. The marketing guy was happy, I'll tell you that. And the customers were happier and they got better roofs on their home because at the end of the day, they understood what they were getting. So they chose to pay for all the good extras that made them have a better roof in the end. So again, to recap guys, when you're designing your website, you have to begin with the end in mind. Your website is your first impression on the internet, and you are going to decide what kind of customers you get based on the website that you have.

Adam Sand:
If you get trapped in this bubble that you think all customers do this, or no customers appreciate that. You get these kinds of broad stroking generalizations about customers. I'll tell you right now, it's more often because of how you've positioned yourself in the market than anything based in reality. If you've positioned yourself in the market, that you are the cheap alternative to a good roofing contractor, it doesn't matter if you're the best contractor in the world and you might stay busy. You'll probably still stay busy. There's a lot of roofs out there. Roofing's a really hard job. So not a lot of people are going to do it. So if you do good work, you will always be busy. But if you want to be profitable, work less and make more. You have to be begin with the end in mind.

Adam Sand:
And now that most of our customers are spending a lot of time on the internet, they're going to be doing research before they call a roofer. The study actually indicated that before hiring a contractor, most people referenced 16 different points of research. For an easy comparison, when buying a car, they go to 21. When they get elective surgery, so something where they are going in for a medical appointment, where they're getting changes made to their bodies, they go to 12. So people are more afraid of hiring a contractor than they are of going in to get surgery. Why? Because they trust the contractor. You are one step above car salesman, which means if you become the trusted authority in your market, teach first and sell second. You'll get more leads that are better, and you'll sell them for more money. You'll have happier customers in the end, get better referrals and all of a sudden your business will be a dream to run and own. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.

Narrator:
Free stuff is the reason you listen to the end. And this week's episode is no exception. Head to roofingbusinesspartner.com and check out this week's show notes to get your freebie bonus. Also, until February 2nd, get our Roofer Facebook Ad apprenticeship program for only $127. This 18 day program includes over 80 minutes of video instruction. Done for you resources, two guidebooks, a forum to ask Adam all your questions along the way. This should remove any excuse or doubt that you can have your own ads running and generating roofing leads in less than 18 days. Adam spent thousands of dollars to learn this stuff and to give it away for only $127 is the kind of craziness that only happens during a new podcast launch. So go check out the show notes and we'll be here again next week, flapping our gums and making you money.