How Important Are Online Reviews for Getting More Roofing Leads

How Important Are Online Reviews for Getting More Roofing Clients [And How to Collect Them]

This indeed is a great question. Especially because changing a roof or fixing it is probably one of the most costly investments one can make as a homeowner. Therefore, when it is time to hire a roofing contractor, people will want to know that their money will not be wasted.

Now, there’s some good news and some bad news.

The good news is that you can develop trust and present yourself as an expert roofer relatively easily. All you need are recommendations. But the bad news is that personal recommendations can be so fucking difficult to collect. Roof replacements and repairs are not a regular occurence so people might not even remember the contractors they hired several years ago.

This is where online reviews come in. Read on to understand why they matter, how strongly they influence potential customers, and which strategies you can use to get more reviews for your roofing business.

Why Online Reviews Are Super Important for Roofers

As you may notice, the question really isn’t whether online reviews matter. Because they do, A LOT. Just have a look at the results of Bright Local’s Local Consumer Review Survey:

According to this study, an incredible 93% of consumers said they read reviews to determine the quality of a local business.

In addition to this, 73% said positive reviews make them trust a local business more.

Get out of here! These numbers are fucking incredible! If you find them hard to believe, think about it this way:

Each person (yourself and myself included) wants to make sure they won’t be throwing their hardly earned money into the wind by hiring a wrong company. They’ll go through reviews in detail until they find the right company. According to Bright Local, they’ll read around 7 reviews before they decide that they can trust a business.

Now, if you don’t have reviews or you happen to have fewer reviews than your competition, people that are searching for a roofer in your area will probably contact the roofer with the largest number of (good) reviews.

Don’t let that happen. YOU need to be that roofer.

Can Reviews Help You Rank Better

A lot of people wondered the same thing and did some research to find out whether there’s any correlation between the number of Google Map reviews and increased rankings.

It turns out that having a larger number of reviews can actually improve your business’s ranking in Google Maps and the chances of getting into the 3-pack. You won’t be able to see the impact at the same moment reviews start dripping, but you can expect to be pleasantly surprised in a few month’s time.

Also, if you already rank well in Google Maps, but you aren’t receiving a good number of monthly phone calls, it’s very likely that you don’t have ENOUGH reviews. Getting some more could give you the boost you need to stand out from your competitors.

How to Generate Reviews for Your Roofing Business

Now that we explained why having online reviews is a must in 2018, let’s talk about ways to generate them.

So, what you need is 10 or more reviews on your online properties like your Google Maps profile (the most important), Yelp/Home Advisor/Houzz profile, and your website.

These don’t need to be all 5-star reviews. As a matter of fact, it’s even better if they aren’t. I mean, realistically, what are the chances that every single person you worked with perfectly satisfied? Bullshit, I know. That’s why having only 5-star reviews will look fishy to say the least.

So how do you actually collect the reviews? Here are some tried out methods:

  1. Ask your old clients

You probably have a database of all the customers you worked with. Simply put together one email template that has your .review link in it and gradually send it out to people in your database.

If we’re talking about a very old client and you’re not sure whether they’d remember you, you can first hop on a phone call and and then follow up with an email.

  1. Ask every new client

Make it a standard practice to ask each client to leave a review after the job is done. If you’ve already put the .review link on your business card, all you need to do is tell that’s the place to go and leave a review.

Remember to follow up after a few days in case they forget to do it or they didn’t have time.

  1. Ask friends, relatives, and employees

You’ve probably done a roofing job for some of your friends and relatives. Why not ask them to leave a review for you? They’re usually more than happy to do it.

Also, if you’ve done a roofing job for any of your employees, that’s another great chance to get a review.

  1. Do review swaps

Join a few roofing groups on Facebook and get in touch with a few local roofers. Ask them whether they’d like to do a review swap. They’ll leave a review for you and in exchange you’ll do the same for them.

BONUS TIP:

Create some type of incentive for every person who leaves a review. For instance, you can reward them with a $200 coupon that they can also share with their friends. If you constantly send out coupons, sooner or later, someone will share it with their friends and send you a new client.

Last but not least, it’s important to mention the timing. Don’t just go ahead and use all these strategies I’ve outlined at once. It’s actually better for your Google Maps listing to have a steady stream of reviews coming in over a longer period of time.

For example, getting 1 review each week over the course of few months is actually better than getting a ton of reviews in just a few days. “Slow and steady wins the race” rings true in this case.

The Quickest Way to Get New Reviews

There’s actually a quick and pretty easy way for you to create a steady stream of new reviews and really dominate your local area.

You can do that by owning a .review domain.

As you probably know, there are many types of domains: .com, .net, .org, .info, .co and others. .review is simply one of them. However, unlike other domains, it can be used to set up your review funnel in a pretty awesome way.

Here’s how this works:

Let’s say you’re a roofer from Dallas. You can claim a domain bestrooferindallas.review, bestrooferdallas.review, yourcompanyname.review or any other variation you want.

Now, the trick is that you won’t actually be using this domain to showcase your reviews there. Why not? Because Google Maps reviews bring the most value. They are integrated into search results and show up automatically whenever someone is searching for a roofing contractor in your area.

So what are you going to do with this .review domain? You’re actually going to redirect it to your Google Maps review section. And then you’re going to place it on your business cards besides your website URL, on your website, on your flyers and promo materials, and in your email signature.

That way, you’ll have a neat shortcut through which prospective customers can have a look at your current reviews and existing customers can leave new reviews super fast!

Now, how easier is that than telling them them to go to Google maps, find you there, click on the reviews, and then leave a review? And how neater is it than giving them a crappy link with your business ID that is a sequence of letters and numbers? If they accidentally delete one letter or number, the link won’t work and you won’t have the review.

You can even set up a funnel for leaving reviews where the 5 stars rating is already checked. How cool is THAT?!

Another great thing is that you’re not limited only to Google Maps reviews, but you can do this same thing with any directory where people might be looking for roofers, such as Yelp or BBB. It works perfectly each time.

YELP: bestdallasrooferyelp.review

BBB: bestrooferdallasbbb.review

HOUZZ: houzzdallasroofer.review

Google Schema Review

Last but not least, you can also integrate reviews into your website. That way, when your website turns up in search results, it will have a nice star rating right under the URL. This is something that very few roofers are using so it will definitely make your website stand out and catch potential clients’ eyes.

Just to demonstrate my point, it took me around 10 minutes of scrolling down and going through search results for several different locations to find ONE roofing company that was using the 5-star method:

Right now you’re probably thinking: “If no-one is using this, it must be some complicated shit”. Actually, it’s just the opposite. All you need to do is take a piece of code called Schema Review, fill in your information, and simply paste it into the code of the page you want the stars to appear for. Done!

Now that you know reviews matter, what are you waiting for? Stop sending potential clients to your competition by missing out on something so simple and yet so powerful.

If reviews are not a priority in your plan for getting more roofing leads, it’s about time to make them one! You can do it by yourself or you can contant online roofing marketing company.

Matt Jacob has been in the marketing business since 2008, working exclusively with roofers for more than 5 years now. He has come to know all the tricks of trade inside-out and he is committed to helping roofers by sharing some of the most important ones. Find out where your best opportunities lie, as well as which challenges lurk out there for roofers – all in his detailed blogs.

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