Scott DeBerry, Marketing Manager, Tri County Metals
With a background in managing business development and marketing in the manufacturing industry, there is one constant I’ve noted for sales success – the need for qualified leads.
Finding new lead sources can be daunting. With paid referral sights, contractors can pay upwards of $150 per qualified lead. The quality of the leads combined with the skill of your sales team will ultimately determine your close ratio. From there it becomes a numbers game, calculating how many leads are needed to achieve the desired revenue rate. Looking at these numbers will help you to determine your cost of sales and also help to project where your sales are going.
But what if you could both reduce the cost of each lead and also increase your close ratio? Wouldn’t that be an attractive consideration? This is where innovation takes over.
If you look at the demographics of social media platforms and overlap them with individuals and families who own homes and need roofing, Facebook is an obvious choice to pursue as far as advertising.
When it comes to Facebook, there are several ways to advertise. You can simply boost a post – maybe a drone film of a recent high-profile project or some gorgeous project photos. You can also promote your business page on Facebook to attract a larger fan base. Or, you could set up a more sophisticated campaign of ads within Facebook, targeting a demographic that will coincide with who your customer actually is. And there are more technical approaches to advertise on Facebook as well.
If you are new to Facebook, of course the first step is to set up a business page on Facebook. This will require that you also have a personal Facebook account, or someone on your team will need to have a personal Facebook account. This will allow you to monitor the activity on your Facebook business page and respond to opportunities as they occur. If you are reading this and interested, but don’t yet have a Facebook business page, don’t fret. I’ve met many contractors who have been successful in business for a long time, but are completely new to Facebook. What these contractors realize is that they have to innovate. They don’t want to be like Sears or Toys-R-Us or others who refused to change with the times and are no longer in business. Once you have an established Facebook business page, you need to first start by promoting your page. You can post all the photos and videos and updates you like, but if you don’t have an audience to consume what you are sharing, your efforts may be misplaced. Have a goal of 100 fans, then 500, then 1000 and onward from there. The larger your audience, the more valuable the data that Facebook tracks will be. This data can help your marketing efforts to help identify what your potential customer demographics are. What their age, sex, location and hobbies are. This is very valuable information. From there, once you have an active audience, the next step will be to post regularly and watch what your audience responds to. You should coordinate posting updates and advertising so that they coincide. If you post a video that gains a lot of traction with people visiting your page, you could boost that post and get even more engagement and potential to monitor the activity on your Facebook business page and respond to opportunities as they occur. If you are reading this and interested, but don’t yet have a Facebook business page, don’t fret. I’ve met many contractors who have been successful in business for a long time, but are completely new to Facebook. What these contractors realize is that they have to innovate. They don’t want to be like Sears or Toys-R-Us or others who refused to change with the times and are no longer in business.
Once you have an established Facebook business page, you need to first start by promoting your page. You can post all the photos and videos and updates you like, but if you don’t have an audience to consume what you are sharing, your efforts may be misplaced. Have a goal of 100 fans, then 500, then 1000 and onward from there. The larger your audience, the more valuable the data that Facebook tracks will be. This data can help your marketing efforts to help identify what your potential customer demographics are. What their age, sex, location and hobbies are. This is very valuable information.
From there, once you have an active audience, the next step will be to post regularly and watch what your audience responds to. You should coordinate posting updates and advertising so that they coincide. If you post a video that gains a lot of traction with people visiting your page, you could boost that post and get even more engagement and potential lead opportunities.
Be sure to include a call to action in your posts and ads. Maybe you want to steer them to your website, or a specific page on your website, or to a specific Facebook post. Also, use Facebook ads to answer audience questions and to overcome objections before your sales team even sits down with generated leads.
Facebook, like other media platforms, is continually evolving. A newer feature uses artificial intelligence with Facebook’s Messenger system to answer customer inquiries. Wielding this as a successful tool is, for sure, a higher-level marketing
endeavor, but with the right team, you can also secure leads through Messenger while automating more – or even all – of the Messenger conversation.
The most important take away is the need to innovate your marketing model. Just as any good salesman understands the need for ongoing development and training, your marketing approach should be continually evaluated and improved.
Scott DeBerry is the Marketing Manager at Tri County Metals, based in Trenton, Florida. Scott has a BS in Business from Jacksonville University and is an award-winning marketer. At Tri County Metals he leads a team of online marketing experts and leads management.
Previous Article