Introduction
It’s been a staple in the roofing industry since the beginning. You park your truck at the entrance of a neighborhood and start walking around, knocking on every door along the way. But the times, they are a-changin’. As technology creeps more and more into the field, the process of door knocking has also found its way to the digital space. And while this may seem like a foreign concept- digital door knocking- it’s shown its benefits in just a short time.
Our team at Summa Media recently launched a digital door knocking campaign for New Era Roofing, and our results ended up being fantastic. Making the initial contact through text and pairing it with good old-fashioned door to door work produced some incredible numbers that everyone involved was more than happy about.
Prep
Step one just so happened to be something out of our control- a hailstorm hit Colorado Springs. Any roofing contractor will tell you that a hailstorm is like winning the lottery, but you’ve got to act quickly because if you don’t, the competition will. With that in the back of our mind, we got to work immediately after hearing the weather forecast.
Our goal was twofold in our approach to the campaign: first and foremost, we wanted to book as many meetings as possible. But a second, less obvious goal was to get our foot in the door in the specific neighborhoods we targeted.
Our thinking was that making an initial impression on the customer before they ever saw a roofer in their neighborhood would give us a leg up on the competition, so that when New Era did do the physical door knocking, the customer would already be familiar with the company.
With that in mind, we launched our campaign. We targeted a specific neighborhood in Colorado Springs and started sending out texts. Even before a salesperson for New Era took their first step in the neighborhood, we had locked in 13 inspections! And 9 of them turned into jobs, from minor repairs to full replacements! Once our campaign had a few days to work its magic, it was time to get the salespeople out on the trail to hopefully lock up a few more inspections!
Results
Little did we realize the power of the digital door knock. The New Era team found that, when they knocked on the door, the customer was already familiar with New Era. They had checked out the website, looked into the reviews, read the blogs. In other words, we had already made a great first impression and the physical door knock was something of a follow up. And, as we’ve learned, the follow ups are where the deals are made.
And here’s where it got even better. We had gotten New Era’s name in the door of the neighborhood, the people knew who they were. But when they actually started doing work in the area and put up a company sign, people got even more interested. A neighbor’s word is stronger than any review in terms of referrals, so when people would drive by and see New Era’s sign in the yard of their neighbor and the roofers working on the roof, it added a ton of confidence in the New Era name. And that name was already in the heads of members of the neighborhood from our digital door knocking, so that referral was just the icing on the cake.
Customers were calling constantly, saying that they saw New Era’s trucks and signs in their neighborhood, and asking if someone from the team could come check out their roof. While our door knocking process was technically over, New Era was still adding more and more inspections every day that they were working the neighborhood.
It was a whirlwind combination that led to a total of 36 of the inspections converting into deals signed and roofs repaired. Our goal was to get the New Era name in the neighborhood before anyone had a chance to start door knocking. This led to a familiarity of the company with the people of the neighborhood, which greatly improved the results of the physical door knocking.And once the team began working on the roofs, the New Era name was at the top of people’s minds, so when they drove by and saw a sign or truck, it acted as a referral and a vote of confidence. It said, “Hey, I trust this company with my roof,” which, coming from a neighbor you trust, is one of the most valuable assets you can have.
The Summa Media team was so thrilled to help New Era get their name in the neighborhood and book so many inspections and jobs! We knew that there was power behind these text message campaigns, but we weren’t expecting the results to continue well past the campaign. We’ve always heard that first impressions matter the most, so to help New Era make a great one is something that we were very proud to do.
