By Mark Ward Sr. /
Gutter installers have for generations advertised in newspapers and yellow pages, distributed fliers and door hangers, exhibited at home shows and even run commercials on radio and television. Over the past decade, websites have become an increasingly important — and for many installers, the most important — way to generate new leads.
Today, social media are all the rage — blogs, Facebook, Twitter and a growing array of online communities from Craigslist to Angie’s List. Can these media be used to sell gutters?
To find out, Gutter Opportunities spoke to three very different companies — a seamless gutter installer, an installer of high-end copper gutters, and a gutter products supplier — who are reaching out through social media and learning how to get results. Though the three customize online content for their different services and sections of the country, their experiences also suggest some common strategies for successful social networking.
Chandler Gutters and Metal Roofing
Lodi, Calif.
In 2010 when Errol Chandler took over the company his father founded, he was “proud to be running my dad’s business and, being 30 years old at the time, it was natural for me to share the news on my personal Facebook page and Twitter account.”
Over the ensuing months, Chandler from time to time showed off photos of completed gutter projects on his Facebook page. Then he discovered something that immediately piqued his interest. “My primary marketing vehicle is our company website,” he explains, “and when I did Google keyword searches, I found that our website was more likely to appear on the first page of search results when I was Facebooking and tweeting about my gutter jobs.”
Chandler has since learned that “if my business is on Facebook and Twitter, then we ‘move up the Google ladder.’ Google likes it when you’ve got fresh content and when your company is using the latest social media.” For that reason, Chandler is active on Facebook and Twitter not so much to create a following from which to generate leads, but because the activity keeps his website near the top of Google search results — which in turn boosts website traffic and then generates sales leads.
With one crew, three gutter machines and metal roof panel machine, Chandler covers a 120-mile radius that encompasses the northern California cities of Sacramento and Modesto. He and his four employees install seamless gutters for homeowners and home builders. To generate leads, then, he banks on potential customers finding his company when they search Google for “gutters” and the names of their towns or cities.
During the past year or two as Chandler has experimented with Facebook and Twitter, he has formulated a strategy for using these social media. “If I have enough work, which has been the case for the five or six months, then I’m not as active on my company Facebook page and Twitter account,” he relates. “But when the business cycle goes down, then I’ll get more active to hopefully generate more leads.”
Chandler’s method is to post on Facebook and to Tweet when he has completed a gutter job, say, in Sacramento. Then, when Sacramento homeowners do Google keywords searches for “gutters” and “Sacramento,” they will be more likely to see Chandler Gutters on the first page of search results.
By contrast, his father has launched a new business that rents commercial kitchens by the day to businesses. “If a potential customer for my dad Googles ‘kitchen’ and ‘Sacramento,’” notes Chandler, “there’s no way his commercial kitchen service will come up on the first page. So the strategy won’t work for him. But it works well for a gutter installer like me.”
Happily, he says, creating Facebook content is as easy as “taking my iPhone to the jobsite, snapping a photo, writing a couple of sentences about it and posting it to Facebook.”
At least for Chandler, though, the value of being active on Facebook to generate leads directly from Facebook followers is diminished by the growth of the phenomenon. In the beginning, his jobsite posts could be seen by someone — a homeowner or a contractor — who actually knows the customer firsthand. Now that connection is more likely to be several times removed as “everyone is now ‘friending’ everyone else,” he continues. Some businesses are even hiring people to build up the company’s list of Facebook friends into the hundreds or thousands.
So for now, Chandler employs Facebook and Twitter primarily for their secondary effect on driving up his company “up the Google ladder” and thereby boosting website visits. Yet the benefit is enough so that, Chandler reports, “I haven’t bought a newspaper or yellow page ad since the fall of 2010.”
Chandler also stopped advertising last summer on Craigslist, the online buy-and-sell website. “I used to run ads there all the time,” he explains, “but found that Craigslist tends to draw customers who are primarily looking for the cheapest prices. As an alternative, he is currently giving a try at Yelp.com, a website that features city-by-city customer reviews.
Another nice spin-off from Chandler’s social media outreaches are the connections his company is making with a younger, tech-savvy homeowners. Building relationships with a younger demographic bodes well for the future, he observes, “and even now, when I make a sales call, doing small-talk about the latest ‘cool’ social media is a good way to break the ice and create in customers the confidence that I’m on the cutting edge and relate to them today.”
Guttersmiths Roofing & Sheet Metal, Co.
Madison, Wis.
After earning a degree in history and apprenticing in ornamental sheet metal, John Briggs left Baltimore six years ago and moved to Madison. In a city with a progressive reputation, the company he founded prides itself on being the “only gutter installer in Dane County that plays an active role in reducing rainwater runoff and protecting the local watershed through a conscious effort to direct rainwater onto permeable surfaces,” he explains.
Guttersmiths has also installed more than 100 rain barrels, often on a volunteer basis, around the Madison area.
About a third of Guttersmiths’ business comes from installation of seamless aluminum K-style gutters, while the remaining two-thirds are high-end decorative systems that include half-round copper gutters, rain chains, chimney caps, leader heads, and other ornamental products. Standing seam and flat-lock metal roofing are also provided by Briggs and his crew.
Guttersmiths performs projects throughout the Midwestern states and, Briggs reports, “When I ask people how they heard of us, 90 percent say either word-of-mouth or that they did a Google search and found my website. I’ve used yellow pages advertising in the past but it didn’t pay for itself. So now I’m putting more of my marketing efforts into social media.”
While Guttersmiths has a Facebook page and Twitter account, Briggs finds that his blog provides him the greatest return. “Blogging gives me the best chance in our blog posts to use keywords that will come up in Google hits,” he explains. Twitter has a limit of 140 characters per tweet and Facebook is more suited to breezy messages than article-length content.
But after creating a free blog through WordPress.com, Briggs can post substantive text and photos about his latest projects. “In every post,” he continues, “we mention the location of the job, which then can increase the number of Google hits we get by location. That can be important — since we travel across southern Wisconsin, northern Illinois, and throughout Iowa — in letting people know we serve their areas.”
Briggs’ choice of blogging as his preferred social medium is also driven by the nature of his business. One K-style seamless aluminum gutter installation looks pretty much like another. But a blog permits Briggs to post attractive pictures of, say, a high-end half-round copper gutter system or copper bay windows, along with a paragraph detailing the distinctive aspects of the work. In addition, the Guttersmiths blog and website are easily linked to each other.
“Having a website and a blog doubles my changes to get Google hits,” Briggs reports. So he has converted one of his crew members into a blogger responsible for taking jobsite photos and writing content. Yet because online content takes on a life of its own when posted to the World Wide Web, Briggs is careful to oversee his company’s blog. Likewise, he checks with customers to see how much detail about their homes he can put online. “Obviously,” he says, “you could post information — like how much was spent on the gutter system — that a customer would be really uncomfortable to see on the Web.”
At the same time, Briggs attempts with blog posts to use “a certain style of writing, wording things in such a way so that people see me as a real person. So we might thank a customer for bringing us a pot of hot coffee on a cold day. We want blog readers to feel a personal connection, trust and confidence in us — even before they contact us.”
Briggs also emphasizes blogging more than Facebook and Twitter due to his customer base. “Younger homeowners don’t usually have the money to buy copper gutter systems and high-end decorative work,” he notes. “By the same token, how much time do upscale builders and homeowners spend on Facebook and Twitter? We do some Facebooking and tweeting, but those outreaches are still in their infancy for us.”
Guttersmiths has marketed itself through Craigslist but found that, says Briggs, “The site tends to draw more price-conscious shoppers.” On the other hand, he reports, “Angie’s List gets us more qualified leads” as potential customer read reviews of Guttersmiths’ quality workmanship and service.
“I’m a younger person myself,” relates Briggs, “and by using social media, I can reinforce our image as a progressive, cutting-edge company.”
World Gutter Systems
Erie, Pa.
As an Internet-based gutter supply company, World Gutter Systems has put all its advertising efforts into its website and into trade shows — that is, until last summer when it launched a blog, Facebook page and Twitter account and registered on the networking sites GPlus.com, Pinterest and Instagram.
“The more places you’re on the Internet,” affirms Steve Krugger of World’s sales and marketing team, “the more you show up on Google searches.”
World Gutter Systems’ social media outreach differs somewhat from most gutter installers since its efforts are “B2B” or business-to-business. The company seeks to connect with North American and Caribbean installers who might be interested in its copper and steel gutter systems and accessories.
Thus, where installers may be looking for consumers to follow them on Facebook and Twitter, the concept of social networking takes a different slant in B2B marketing. “We look for installers who are on Facebook and Twitter,” explains Krugger, “so that we can follow them. And as we follow them and start to network, the installers might follow us. By building that relationship, they might become customers of ours.”
For its summer Facebook launch, World hired a designer who specializes in Facebook pages in order to make a good impression and achieve a professional graphic look. “If you go the same route,” Krugger advises, “you can probably find a local Facebook designer by calling your web designer. Also, you can hire someone to write your content and manage your whole Facebook account for you.”
At present, however, World is still in the beginning stages of its Facebook outreach and has developed only a limited amount of content. “We’re not quite sure yet where we’re going with Facebook,” Krugger admits, “but we do know that, even to use Facebook as a way to increase our likelihood of showing up on Google searches, Google likes you to keep your Facebook content fresh.” As for Twitter, the company has so far used the medium primarily to tweet about its trade show appearances.
Content posted to the Internet, Krugger notes, becomes public property in a practical, if not legal, sense. “Once you’ve put something out there, you can’t take it back from anyone who’s downloaded it,” he cautions. “So be honest and accurate. If you play loose with any of your claims, it can come back to haunt you.”
As a newcomer to social media, concedes Krugger, “Getting involved is something of a ‘defensive’ measure for us, so that we don’t fall behind our competitors but can stay ahead of the curve and build our image as a cutting-edge gutter supplier.” After that, staying on the cutting edge requires constant scanning. “I find out the latest ‘new thing’ by reading the trade magazines and websites related to sales and marketing,” he says, “and by following the thought-leaders on applications for social media.”
For example, a recent C/Net online news article reported that Pinterest is touted as “the next big thing” by some media experts. Pinterest has been called “scrapbooking on the Web,” allowing users to organize their favorite Web onto a single “board.” With 11 million visits per week — a 4,000 percent increase since the middle of 2011 — Pinterest is pegged by one rating service as the 10th-most popular social networking site on the Web, just behind Yelp.com.
Scanning sites like C/Net put Krugger wise to the potential for Pinterest. His company then set up a Pinterest account in January and, if the social networking site takes off as hoped, World Gutter Systems is poised to reap the benefits of the service.
Through its social media outreaches, Krugger reports, his company “is making contacts with younger, newer gutter installers, many of whom are in their twenties and grew up in a digital world. If we can cultivate these young installers as loyal customers, then that has obvious long-term benefits for us.”
On the flip side, Krugger finds that “the older, more established installers are not so tech-savvy. Most are great at the installation side of the business, but on the marketing side they may be conservative about technology. So there aren’t too many gutter installers in the social media universe. But that means there’s a real opportunity out there for installers who want to seize it.”
