Ratings and reviews are more important to roofers than ever before, and homeowners are increasingly relying on what they read on Google, Yelp, Facebook, and more to form an opinion about your business. The stats don’t lie:
• 82% of consumers read online reviews for local businesses (source: BrightLocal)
• Consumers read 10 reviews before trusting a business (source: BrightLocal)
As a result, positive reviews will help you build your brand, attract more potential clients to your website and, ultimately, help you win more jobs.
On the flipside, bad reviews put your business at tremendous risk. In fact, 87% of consumers won’t consider a business with low ratings (source: BrightLocal). If you’re a roofer with bad reviews and a low star rating on any of the important listings, prospective clients will move onto the next choice on their list.
Do you want to lose out on business to your competition this summer? We didn’t think so.
To set yourself up for success this summer and make the most of EVERY job well done, follow these simple steps to maximize your chances of getting great reviews:
1. Claim and optimize your listings
It’s critical to claim (or take ownership) of your business listings on ALL of the important sites, including Google My Business, Facebook, Yelp, etc. Update critical business information to ensure that your prospective clients know how to get a hold of you (by updating your phone number and website) and when (by including your business hours). Add photos to show off your great work, branding, and team. Additionally, make sure your category is correct – for instance, are you a Roofing Contractor or Construction Company?
These small updates can make a difference in whether you’re found in a local search or passed over in favor of your competitors. They’ll also provide the right signal to happy customers that they’ve come to the right place when they’re writing a review.
2. Build your list
As a local business, your mission is to assemble the largest, most complete database of homeowner information in your local market. This is incredibly difficult, as homes are constantly changing hands, and homeowners can sometimes change their contact information. However, your ability to collect the right information (full names, phone numbers – ideally mobile phone numbers, and email addresses) will help your business tremendously when following up on a bid, when providing progress updates on jobs, and when following up to collect payments and get great reviews once a job is complete.
If you’re using pen and paper today, we highly recommend that you transfer the information to a cloud-based CRM, like JobNimbus or Acculynx to protect your contact data and monitor job progress. There are many systems that can also get the job done, and we recommend finding one that works well for your workflows and can be used used by all necessary members of your team.
3. Use technology to follow through with the ask
We highly recommend that you incorporate the ask for an online review from the very beginning of the process of a re-roof or repair. Plant the seed with your clients from Day 1, stating that feedback and reviews are important to your business, and that you’ll do everything possible to earn that five-star feedback once a job is complete.
Once you’ve completed a job, we highly recommend that you use a system like Signpost to make that ask super easy for homeowners to follow through. Most homeowners have good intentions when you ask in person – in fact, 70% of consumers will leave a review when asked (source: BrightLocal). However, some people fail to follow through. They get lost when searching for your pages, they forget their logins, and they move on with their lives. By leveraging a platform like Signpost, the homeowner accesses your review page from a text or email with one click – it’s so easy that you’re *much* more likely to get a great review.
4. Connect your systems
If you’re already using a CRM, great! We recommend that you connect your CRM with your other technology platforms wherever possible to enable your team to work faster and more efficiently. For example, if you’re using a platform like Signpost, be sure to connect our software to your CRM to ensure that homeowner follow-up is sent automatically, and you never miss an opportunity to get five-star feedback.
Many of our roofing customers using Acculynx and route invoicing through QuickBooks. Once the job is paid, our system automatically follows up with the homeowner for a review – easy peasy. We also implement triggers to connect with systems like JobNimbus and automate follow-up once a job is marked complete in their CRM. Make use of integrations so that you can leverage automated messaging and generate great reviews without any added effort, so that you can focus on higher value tasks.
5. Align your team
The majority of roofers tell us that word-of-mouth and referrals are their biggest lead sources, but they often fail to take a proactive role in generating more. Referrals used to happen one-to-one, or neighbor to neighbor, but now they happen online in the form of reviews and reach a much broader audience – one great review can potentially reach thousands of potential clients in your market.
By getting systematized, you’ll get yourself the best shot at generating great reviews. We recommend getting your whole team involved with the process, as we’ve seen some great incentive programs built around review programs over the years. In our analysis of review content, we’ve noticed that homeowners often call out stellar service performed by certain team members. Why not include reviews to recognize team members in weekly staff meetings, or offer a small bonus for team members mentioned in positive reviews? These programs keep your team focused on driving homeowner satisfaction and ensure that their contributions don’t go unrecognized.
6. Stay engaged and measure your performance
You can’t “set and forget” a review program, unfortunately, so you must designate a team member to keep tabs on all of your feedback across the major sites. We recommend setting up notifications to alert you when new reviews are written (for example, in Google My Business, navigate to the “Settings” tab on the left side and select your preferences). That way, you can respond to both positive and negative reviews immediately.
We definitely recommend that you respond to both positive and negative reviews, as it shows current clients that you value their feedback and it demonstrates to prospective clients that you’re service-oriented. Measure your progress over time by using platforms like Signpost – our dashboard makes it easy to see where you stand at all times, and where you can potentially improve.
We hope that you find these steps helpful to becoming a five-star roofer! If you’d like to learn more about how we can automate the process for you, request a consultation with one of our team members.