Heidi and Vickie Show- Smart About Marketing- PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of The Heidi and Vickie Show. You can read the transcript below or listen to the podcast here. 

Heidi Ellsworth: Good morning. It is the Heidi and Vickie Show. It is Saturday, and we are here as part of Roofers Coffee Shop to talk about, well, whatever Vickie wants to. So Vickie, what are we talking about today?

Vickie Sharples: That was Heidi and this is Vickie. Today I was thinking about talking about advertising and marketing, you see that everywhere. There's a lot of webinars and podcasts and all sorts of things. When we go to trade shows that everybody has their opinions on stuff. This week has seemed to be a lot about that. I thought it was like a little recap and talk about the resources we have and what we know. I wanted to start with the fact that you have two books you've written for roofing contractors and they're available, not in our gift store, but maybe someday because I just thought about that as I'm speaking right now-

Heidi Ellsworth: We should do that.

Vickie Sharples: They're available on Amazon and then how smart you really are, that you are a trained professional in advertising and marketing.

Heidi Ellsworth: Self-trained a little bit. It's always funny when you go back and say, I didn't have marketing in school, but over the years between you and I we've done a lot of it.

Vickie Sharples: Yeah. It just kind of comes naturally [crosstalk 00:01:47] naturally. Talk about your books just a little bit.

Heidi Ellsworth: The thing that's really fun is I co-wrote them with Karen Edwards, who is our editor at Roofers Coffee Shop and we've done a lot of different collaborations and I don't know if everybody appreciates this, but I call it salt of the earth. I wrote it, as if we were writing it towards my dad, who's a contractor, what would dad need to do in his business for sales and marketing to help drive business and to get leads. We take them through step by step on working with their team at their company, on really how to look at sales and marketing and to think outside the box a little bit. I don't even know, if you know this Vicki, but what was fun is that I did have my dad read it before we published it, to kind of say, hey would this help with your construction business. We had a little bit of insight that way. We followed that up with, How to build a marketing plan, which is, you and I were going to talk about that, how important a plan is. We always have a plan. Really step by step, putting together a written marketing plan is so important for any business, but especially for roofing so that they are hitting the right markets, and so two books easy to read, very easy to read and easy to use is workbooks.

Vickie Sharples: You know, as we were talking, I just went hey wait and I have a copy of each of those books here. People have a business plan a lot, but they don't really think about their marketing or advertising. What's the difference between marketing and advertising? Heidi.

Heidi Ellsworth: Marketing is the big plan. You can do marketing without ever doing any advertising. Advertising is usually paid and it's putting out an ad or it's putting out usually an ad, some sort of advertisement. Whereas marketing is really looking at that bigger picture of writing with PR, with public relations, with content, your website, how your salespeople go to market, your brochures, all of those different types of things that create the entire experience of branding your company and talking about your products to your customers, where advertising is just one part of that.

Vickie Sharples: Sometimes we give people titles of sales and marketing?

Heidi Ellsworth: Right, yes.

Vickie Sharples: So, tell me the difference between those two.

Heidi Ellsworth: I think that's funny because there are truly people out there who do both, sales and marketing, but there are a lot of people out there who maybe do one or the other. They're just a really great sales person, but marketing they're okay or they're a really great marketing person, but they want nothing to do with sales. In all honesty, people who do both is not as common as you would think.

Vickie Sharples: I think you can do both.

Heidi Ellsworth: I do both, but they didn't think so, remember when I was mostly marketing and I wanted to go into sales, I really had to battle my way to get into those positions because they didn't think I could do sales because I did marketing.

Vickie Sharples: Yeah.

Heidi Ellsworth: But there's some really good people who can do both, but it's usually one or the other, it just depends.

Vickie Sharples: Part of the reason, that I was thinking about this, this week is because we've had some good stuff come through the website lately. I know everybody, there's a lot of different places we can go to get marketing advice [inaudible 00:05:47] a really good webinar with the ladies from TAMKO and you will also have them in the coffee conversations that's coming up.

Heidi Ellsworth: I'm so excited for that. Melissa and Kim, they are amazing marketing professionals. They really get it.

Vickie Sharples: You also had a very successful coffee conversations this week with Greta.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. I know. Vickie, I have to tell you, I have gotten so many emails since that coffee conversation from people, from manufacturers, from distributors, from contractors who were just blown away by Greta. Greta Bajrami is the CEO of the Golden Group out of Massachusetts, Worcester. A millennial, if you're listening to this, you've got to go to the coffee conversations On-demand and listen to Greta. I'm just blown away by this young lady. She just is so smart and so passionate and just loves roofing. Her and her husband own the company together and they are, they're just phenomenal.

Vickie Sharples: Yeah, I understand. She has a good story too.

Heidi Ellsworth: Oh, she's an immigrant, yeah.

Vickie Sharples: She said one thing that was quite interesting about the appointment setter thing she put it on her website and that [inaudible 00:07:30] business.

Heidi Ellsworth: You always say this, if you can take one nugget away from anything that is just well worth, any time you spend listening or watching or reading, and really besides just the inspiration of her story overall. The nugget that I took away from that was on her homepage of her website. She has a big button that says book now. Her thinking behind that was that in a restaurant, so open table, this exactly how she said, she says, I'm lazy, I don't want to call the restaurant. I want to just go on open table, find a table, get my time, book it, be done. And she said, I got thinking about that and maybe that's how people feel about getting a new roof. So we made it easy. We have book now on our homepage, and they have seen a huge increase in people setting appointments with them because of the ease of it. And how obvious is that and how smart.

Vickie Sharples: So they're booking the appointments, not booking the project?

Heidi Ellsworth: Right. They're booking appointments to talk to the team about a new roof. Plus their website has all the different types of roofs, so actually once they book it and they sit and have that conversation, they've actually had a chance to look at all different types of roof types too, and really have a good conversation.

Vickie Sharples: That brings us into technology. There's a lot of important technology available in marketing. I've always felt that the primary, well, at least with residential roofing is referrals, but still you need to nurture those relationships along the way. What are some of your main things that you think about that technology could really help a contractor?

Heidi Ellsworth: Well, it's really interesting because I did a podcast yesterday with Mark McDonald from Sherwin Williams. We talked a lot about this and his big push, which he thinks is one of the most important things coming out technology-wise for sales is the visualizer. So there's a bunch of companies out there right now that are doing these visualizers where you can go in, put a picture of your house, get the new roof, look at the new siding, the windows. In fact, TAMKO the ladies who are going to be on [inaudible 00:09:57] They have that for both homeowners and contractors to use on their site. I agree with Mark on that. I think it's going very important, that with the ability to do video, you know the zoom or however you seeing each other, whereas if sales person can sit there and bring up a customer's home, show them all the different colors and they can do that while they're sitting in their pajamas or whatever. And they can talk to that person and they can look at what their house would look like and go through that whole experience. I just think that is going to be huge.

Vickie Sharples: That technology has been available for a long time, but it's really like, it's almost been waiting for present day. Present day it's imperative to have that technology available to you.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah. You know, and one of our folks on the Roofers Coffee Shop, [Decorah 00:00:11:00], we've worked with Decorah for years and they had this, you're right Vickie 15, 20 years ago, working on doing visualization, but this COVID thing has really accelerated all technologies and made people who weren't comfortable with it, comfortable because they had to use it over the last three months.

Vickie Sharples: Personally, I think we should both try doing that for our house because that's going to be fun. Because I've never actually tried it before, but I know that I've had a number of people come to my house for estimates right before this hit. And I hate it. You know what I mean? I have to be pulled away from what I'm doing, the dog's barking. I have to be mean and ask if they're crazy, when they give me their price.

Heidi Ellsworth: Exactly.

Vickie Sharples: Throw them out of the house. This will be so much easier. No, I'm kidding. But yes, I think that if somebody, especially because we have products that can digitally measure your roofs. We have all the wonderful technology with drones, they can find things, we've changed the face of estimating. It becomes so easy. If I knew for sure that my roof had been properly inspected and I feel confidence in the measurements, which are now better than they've ever been, and I would do it by the phone.

Heidi Ellsworth: I was talking to another major manufacturer this week, who I guess I can say it Owens Corning, I'm going to be doing some webinars for them on this. We're going to be talking about diversity and the new generation of millennials and Gen Z and all of that. I truly believe that it's not just about young people, wanting to do everything online, I'm with you. I don't want to have somebody come to our house and make sure that Tim and I are both sitting down and as they go through their [inaudible 00:13:12] book and talk to us, it's just, that just, Oh, I'd rather not do anything than have to go through that. I think that has changed a lot, a lot on how people sell and market.

Vickie Sharples: Yeah. And so we went into sales a little bit, but it's still part of marketing. It still part of how we present this to the, to the buyer.

Heidi Ellsworth: Right and how contractors are going to really have to change, I can remember working at [EagleView 00:13:43] and we were talking about, don't just email him a bid which, is still true. Don't just email a bid. You need to have that personal touch in the sales process and really explaining it. But it just constantly is changing, 10 years ago, everybody was like, you got to have two people there. You got to sit down at the kitchen table and you got to do that. Well, that is different now, but it can't be just emailing or just using technology as a crutch, got to build that relationship. So how do you do that? From a roofing contractor standpoint, they have to just be on top of it all the time, learning all these new things. Because the consumers are demanding change at a rapid pace of how they get roofing and how they decide on roofing and how that works.

Vickie Sharples: I'm thinking about, if I'm a small guy starting out. We have the technology and how to present it, but how do I affectedly keep my relationship going? So for example, I have a homeowner that's very happy with my job. I remember somebody saying, you need to be their roofing contractor for life. You need to be someone that, when you know somebody, you have a relationship with your electrician, you know what I mean? I know that sounds funny, but then we all get an electrician that we can rely on, that we can recommend them for somebody or a plumber. We need to have those relationships with roofing contractors. I think there's a tendency as a roofing contractor, I could be wrong. I wonder how many people fit this, is that we're putting a big ticket item on there, they're not going to [inaudible 00:15:31] for 20 more years, so we don't nurture that continuous relationship. I think that's an important part, just besides reaching out, getting them initially and selling it to them. How are we going to keep them? So were top of mind, do have good tips for that?

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah, [inaudible 00:15:53] I think you are the expert and you do such an amazing job with Roofers Coffee Shop social media and social media is one of the biggest tools that contractors should be using on, especially Facebook and Instagram for staying in touch with staying in touch with their customers. Like you've said a million times, don't put your birthday pictures of your employees on there, put things that really will kind of intrigue these customers that you've put the new roofs on. They may want to see that there's maybe you're an exterior contractor and you also do siding and windows. So you need to make sure you're showing them everything you do, ongoing and then your involvement in the community. I just can't say that enough. I think if you are out there and you're sponsoring a little league team, or you're doing it habitat for humanity house, you've got to have that on social media and sharing that with [E News 00:00:16:48], with all customers, past and present and future.

Vickie Sharples: Well, there's two other things I was thinking of when you were talking, I'm also thinking about referral programs. Referral programs could be in a variety of ways and initially, and this is something I don't think people forget about anymore, but in the old days they used to not even think about a maintenance program, calling up, going hey do you want us to check the flashing around chimney, maybe check your gutters or whatever, commercial roofing contractors totally do that, it's part of the plan, you have to, somebody needs to get up there and make sure that you don't even have three feet of water sitting on your roof, but that's just another good way. I remember two clever things, my friend Lefty did in Pennsylvania, a residential roofing contractor. He is to have a contest once a year in which they went back to all of the... I'm not exactly sure how it went, but it was yard sign contest. He would go back to anybody around town that he put the roof on and put a yard sign in their lawn for a month and then have a contest. I don't remember exactly how it went, but you imagine driving down the street and seeing his yard signs all through the neighborhood that was profound. He also used to put a little, there was some sort of little bird stop or some little emblem. He actually marked the roof somewhere, there was something on there that he might've attached to the end of a piece of edge metal or there was some sort of insignia that he would put on that he did the roof. I thought that was kind of smart too, but that's a separate thing, but it's part of advertising and marketing, so I guess it's not separate.

Heidi Ellsworth: No, I think it's perfect. You can think of so many out of the box things, especially right now and when kids are home. You know they're doing these really cool things in neighborhoods where kids walk around and look for stuffed animals. Well, why can't roofing contractors do a coloring contest or having things at the different houses, if their customers are okay for that, something to engage the kids, because parents are going crazy with the kids home all the time. So thinking out of the box like that lead to fun things.

Vickie Sharples: Yeah, the coloring contest thing was somebody who was doing it. And I actually shared it. And unfortunately the name escapes me right now. I saw it on Instagram and then we [crosstalk 00:19:23] Pardon me?

Heidi Ellsworth: SRS, they did a coloring contest.

Vickie Sharples: Oh no, it was a contractor up in the Northeast somewhere. I think, I know their name, but I don't want to say it if I'm incorrect, but yes, that's kind of a fun idea. I didn't see the SRS one. We also have lots of good resources on the website besides buying your book. If you go in, there's a lot of read, listen, watches. If you want sales and marketing information, you can look at people that have put information out there on blogs, but we did do something that's kind of my little thing is brand ambassadors. You can see if you look in our influencer topics that we had a whole thing and these different influencers we have, wrote about how they, the importance of brand ambassadors and that is where your employees out in the field, anybody that's touching anybody else representing your company, you need to use them. That's one of my big things, that I think is important because nothing makes me [inaudible 00:20:33]. And I know this is the basic dumbest thing, but I just have to say, let's think about this. When I see your truck and this happened last weekend, I see your truck working on a project and my husband and me were together and he wanted to give away some of the fandanas, we had a couple of them and he didn't want to give away, you know I mean we saw these guys working on a [inaudible 00:20:56]. We asked them who they were with and in typical man fashion, maybe I should cut that out, my husband forgets the name. So [inaudible 00:21:08], what was their name honey? When he went there, he goes, I don't remember. Oh my gosh. So anyway, when he gave them all fandanas they were wearing them and we didn't have a [inaudible 00:21:17] what a mess, but anyway, they didn't have a business card. If there's nothing that drives me crazier than when you see, we don't want to bother the guys on the job or whatever, but it happens in all trades. I need a painter, somebody painting somebody's house, you go up there and you go, hey, I would like to get an estimate and they don't have a business card. So please, so I don't come down and yell at you guys, make sure your people in the field always have a business card.

Heidi Ellsworth: I agree and that's so simple, that's simple, that's some of the best marketing there is because they already see as a trusted trade in the community or around your neighborhood, your street. I mean business cards, obviously you should be having your lawn signs out there, all those things. I'm going to just say one thing, kind of crazy off topic here too, but make sure that your crews are doing all of the safety measures too. I think that shows a lot about a company and we had a lot of those discussions this week on different podcasts and things about the fact that when they're doing this crazy social media stuff out there, because you think, oh, we want to do social media. We want to engage. But yet you have crazy people walking the top of the roof on the ridge or doing dumb things out there that are unsafe. It can go too far the other way too. So think always have your guys' safety and in company shirts with the business card and the lawn yard sign. That's what real brand ambassadorship is about, is showing the whole picture.

Vickie Sharples: Yes, that's true, absolutely true because I might say that these men we approached or my husband actually did over the weekend, had no safety gear on. [inaudible 00:23:25] the pictures with the masks on anyway and so yeah it is sad. They think they're running out there for the weekend and nobody's going to catch them. And yeah, it is representative they'll see. A normal person might not have noticed they didn't have safety gear on, but I did. I remember I was walking around downtown Disney in California and there was this little baby, it was so small. It was one of those things that are going to sell a churros out of. They had two guys on this little metal roof and it literally, you could almost jump off of it, no big deal and the guys were all tied up with all the safety gear and I was kind of thinking of that's funny. There was no way to attach it or you know what I mean. It was so small, but dang it, they had it on [crosstalk 00:24:20].

Heidi Ellsworth: Disney had something to do with that.

Vickie Sharples: Yeah, but I shouldn't laugh, but yes, it's so important and I can't tell you, but so those are some of the things that I wanted to talk about. I think the most important thing to say, if you have one Pearl from this, is that actually have a plan at least to keep your referrals organized so that you can reach back out to them. I think that to me is one of the number one things and that's generally with a piece of software. You can have them, that you can remind you to send them Christmas cards or birthday cards, little things that endear you to them. I know [inaudible 00:25:00] social media and we didn't even talk about, writing a blog or content like that, but I'm still trying to... Our basic way that we used to do business, we need to improve on it or to actually do it, do something because we can't rely on referrals right now. We've been busy for 10 years, but when we're not busy, this is all going to pay off.

Heidi Ellsworth: Right. I loved what you said about going onto the Roofers Coffee Shop and looking for those nuggets in there, because you've really made me think about one of our RCS influencers who I think is incredibly smart and that's Wendy Marvin. She has a residential company in Vancouver and a couple years ago started kind of going back to your saying about maintenance, but she started a [honeydo 00:25:51] division of her roofing company. I'm sorry, Wendy, but I don't know if she actually calls it that. I think there's a much more professional name, but basically her... She's like, oh my gosh Heidi.

Vickie Sharples: Look on her website real quick and see what it is, but go ahead.

Heidi Ellsworth: What it's called. She started this, and then past customers who have maybe they need some basic repairs, some, Oh, I think it's handyman, not honeydo, handyman, that they need handyman services. She provides that. Now she's really has that engagement of coming out and not only doing some handyman services, but inspecting the roof, spring and fall and working with those homeowners who've been, are referring her to everyone else. When we had her on coffee conversation a couple of weeks ago, and we were asking her, how you doing, in Covid? She was doing pretty good. She had done the differentiation of her business that was carrying her through plus she's just brilliant with technology. So she has all that going. I'm inspired by a lot of these roofing contractors across the country, Greta, Wendy all [inaudible 00:27:06] influencers Rackley, so many different great contractors that really are making a difference and leading the industry through all of this, but with technology and a new way of marketing.

Vickie Sharples: Yeah, it was just this subject was just front of mind for me for this week just because it's come up a lot. I think that part of our Vickie and Heidi Show is a review of what's happened to us during the week. So that's why I was thinking about this topic. I don't want it to be over done, but it's so important. There are so many different people out there giving you pearls, you just listen to them all and pick the best thing for your company.

Heidi Ellsworth: Since we're getting close to the end of our time, but I have to say too, that when I look back on my week, the last couple of weeks talking to manufacturers and distributors and technology companies really smart, smart people, you've seen the calendar Vickie, we're on calls all day long talking to all these really smart marketing folks and they are frontline on digital. They are on Roofers Coffee Shop. They are doing all the multimedia, the podcasts, the advertising with really amazing clever campaigns that you are behind working with. You know, our answer me this, I love that current campaign with construction solutions. I just think there's so many smart people in the roofing industry and they're coming to digital and they're coming up with these ideas. I want to encourage the industry to really embrace this and come talk to us and get involved in this community because it's really taken off. I mean, it's been taking off, but it's like really got a kick in the butt the last couple weeks.

Vickie Sharples: Yeah. It's necessary

Heidi Ellsworth: Well, I love this, thank you. You know what, you've been coming up with the topics. I love that and I love this topic and this has been really fun. We're going to have to get this out to all of our friends that we mentioned today too. So they can hear that we're talking about them on a Saturday morning.

Vickie Sharples: Yes. I really think that we just need to think, even if we're busier and so once again, even if we're busier and we couldn't take any more business, you cannot neglect this.

Heidi Ellsworth: Right. I don't think everybody is that busy right now. Maybe a few people.

Vickie Sharples: As busy as they can get help for.

Heidi Ellsworth: Yeah.

Vickie Sharples: But that's another topic.

Heidi Ellsworth: Maybe for next week recruiting because we got a lot of that going on our site too. Awesome, okay, well, I want to say thank you to everyone who listened to this podcast. I hope you're listening to all the podcasts and videos and RLW's under the read, listen, watch portion of Roofers Coffee Shop. We just love on our audience and everybody out there and Vickie, you are amazing. Thank you for another wonderful Saturday morning on Heidi and Vickie Show.

Vickie Sharples: Well, thank you.

Heidi Ellsworth: We will be back in two weeks. We decided to go two weeks during the summer so keep watching, there's a whole bunch of the Heidi and Vickie Show out there and we will be back in two weeks. Probably talking about recruiting. We'll see what happens that day. So have a great day, thank you.

Vickie Sharples: Bye.