Jacqui Brueggeman - Free Your Time and Build Your Business - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Jacqui Brueggeman of ABC Supply. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to Roofing Road Trips, the podcast that takes you on a thrilling journey across the world of roofing. From fascinating interviews with roofing experts to on-the-road adventures, we'll uncover the stories, innovations and challenges that shape the rooftops over our heads. So fasten your seatbelts and join us as we embark on this exciting roofing road trip.

Karen Edwards: Hello, and welcome to another episode of Roofing Road Trips from RoofersCoffeeShop. My name's Karen Edwards, and today, we are welcoming Jacqui Brueggeman from ABC Supply to talk all about marketing and how contractors can differentiate their businesses. This is going to be a great conversation, so thanks for tuning in. Jacqui, welcome.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Thanks, Karen. Really appreciate you having me on the podcast today, and super excited to be talking about marketing and how it applies in this world.

Karen Edwards: Yeah. So just before we dive in to marketing, which I love very near and dear to my heart, I would love for you to introduce yourself and tell our listeners a little bit about you and what you do there at ABC Supply.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Awesome. No, I appreciate it. So yeah, like you had mentioned, Jacqui Brueggeman. I'm actually the senior manager of marketing here at ABC Supply, but my career actually started outside of this industry. I started my career in OEM and automotive aftermarket accessories industry, and it was just a ton of fun. I got a ton of experience in both that sales and marketing position, and why I'm such a strong believer in that those two roles really go hand in hand and should be in lockstep in how you approach the markets.

And then, two years ago, I got the opportunity to make the leap over into this industry with ABC Supply and Karen, it has been such a whirlwind. I mean, it's obviously a new industry, so being able to just dig in and understand and learn the market, learn the products, learn the people, but it's been so much fun. ABC has an amazing culture. I think you probably hear that from a lot of people, and it's so true. And the industry, as a whole, it's been awesome because that's the one similarity between automotive and building supply is the culture. It's the people. I mean, such authentic, genuine people and that work hard hat, fun mentality. So it's been a really great transition over.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, it's a great industry to work in and once you're here, you don't ever leave.

Jacqui Brueggeman: That's what I'm [inaudible 00:02:24].

Karen Edwards: Yeah. Okay. So let's shift to marketing. And marketing is one way that contractors can set themselves apart, I think, from their competitors, but why don't you talk about that a little bit, Jacqui and what you see?

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah. I believe, at times, we make it maybe a little complicated and I think we can uncomplicate it by just saying that if we can commit to an exceptional customer service, an exceptional customer experience, that's going to do wonders for us.
And then, really, I think curating a strong brand identity, which is a pillar in marketing, right. That strong brand identity is going to help you resonate with your customers and build that differentiation between you and competitors in your space.

Karen Edwards: I think it's important just to note what you're saying. When we say marketing, it's not just buying an ad somewhere, right. You mentioned the customer experience. You mentioned the brand, and these are things that are really going to make a difference for a contractor. So how does marketing... I mean, it is the whole package. So once you develop the package, then you have to put the message out there. What does that look like?

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah, and you're spot on, Karen. I mean, obviously marketing, there's a lot that goes to it. There's lots of tactics and strategies and all this stuff, but I think you really got to take a step back and ask yourself, as a contractor, what is my brand? Because brand is the pillar in marketing because brand is what really... how you measure everything by. And the best companies out in the world have these really strong brands that aren't necessarily talking about their products and their services. The brands are finding ways to connect with their target audiences in that really authentic, genuine way, trying to build that emotional connection with their audience.

And so for contractors, step one is really just making sure you understand your own brand. And if you're in the process of trying to establish what that strong brand looks like, you got to look at a whole bunch of different facets, starting with just what is the foundation of your brand. What is your mission? What is your vision for your brand? Because that's how you measure your practices against, and it's all those statements and promises that customers are going to begin to know you by, right. When we hear some of those strong brand taglines out there like Just Do It, people just automatically know Nike. So it's super important to have that foundation to your brand.

And then next is creating a unique identity for your brand, your logo, your colors. What does it look like when it's showing up in visual areas, whether it be print or digital and stuff like that? And then also consistent messaging. We want to make sure everything is consistent with each other. And so, really defining what does your brand sound like? What is the style and tone when speaking in person, or you're copying your messaging throughout your other channels? Just making sure all of that is aligning and creating that authentic experience for your customers and making sure it's connecting with them on that more emotional level than just, "Here's our products and services."

Karen Edwards: So Jacqui, now that the contractor has figured this out, right, what their brand is going to look like, feel like what their purpose is and what that experience is like, it's time to think about some marketing strategies and what are some work for contractors?

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah, there's... So, again, I think we overcomplicate this at time because there's a ton of them out there, right. We can do so many different things. But because we live in a digital world, now I'm going to start with some digital tactics and then I'm going to move into some maybe more low-barrier entry-type tactics to consider as well. But having that strong digital presence is crucial. So creating at least just a bare minimum website. It doesn't have to be this amazing work of art, just a basic landing site that delivers and speaks to your services. It speaks to who you are, what your brand is, right.

Maybe a section that gets to showcase your work, a contact information place and then a call to action to get potential customers to convert on your site and hopefully turn into sales and leads and whatnot. So I think it's really important to have just that basic website presence. And then, alongside with having that website, really considering leveraging localized SEO by claiming and optimizing your business listings. So there's Google My Business and claiming those, your Bing, maybe it's on the Apple platform. But identifying where all your business is showing up in the digital world, claiming those listings, optimizing them with keywords that are specific to your service and your local area.

And all of this is going to help improve your online listing and the visibility of your business in a more organic way that's not going to cost you a lot, right. But then you can obviously take it a step further, and you can get into paid advertising and that's where you're going to be able to put money behind Google Ads or Facebook ads where you can target the exact demographics you're looking for. So maybe it's a homeowner in a certain zip code area and drive them back to your website and get them to convert there. So those are from the digital side, a little bit of paid tactics right there.

But then also social media. This is huge in today's world. Whether it be TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, these are all really great spots to A, show your work, B, engage with your potential customers, your current audience, engage with community pages because there's so many, whether it's potential chamber pages out there or what have you, it's a great spot to just always be showing up in. And sometimes I think we get locked down the fear of, "Well, I don't know how to do social media." But it doesn't have to be overcomplicated, right. It can just be as simple as just starting, putting something out there, you know, your first picture, your first video of maybe going out at a job site and showing the experience of getting a new roof and what does that look like.

And then, over time, you're going to get better at it. You're going to get into all the trendy stuff, all that fun stuff. But just start with those simple, simple things and then create consistency with that. So a couple of just easy digital things because we have to be really conscious about showing up in that way since we do live in a digital world. But then, outside of that, there's other items like social proof and content marketing and community engagement that I think are equally as important. And these are more of your low to no-cost type entry points into marketing tactics. And so specifically in the roofing industry and remodeling, these tend to be some of the biggest expenses that a consumer or homeowner is going to make to replace their roof.

And it's super important for them to be able to see the experience of others and understand how others went through it and what their experience was. And so that's why it's so important to leverage social proof and the idea of sharing your before and afters and asking your customers for reviews or setting up a referral program. All of this stuff is, again, going to help validate your company and your practices and bring that credibility to you. Because Karen, I don't know about you, but when I'm looking for a new dinner spot in a city I've not been, what's the first thing we do?

Karen Edwards: Yep. Open the... my phone and restaurants near me.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Exactly. Restaurants near me. That's exactly what we do. We go there, and we look at the pictures, we look at the reviews and we look for quality reviews. I don't care if there's a company that's got five five-star reviews. If there's another one next door that's got 1,000 4.5-star reviews, the quality of that is exponential because there's so much more there. Versus, "Maybe this is a little sketch. Why is there only five five-star reviews?"

Karen Edwards: Right.

Jacqui Brueggeman: But it's what we all naturally do these days.

Karen Edwards: It's important to understand too that you're not always going to have five stars just because of people being the way that they are. So should you have a situation where someone doesn't give you five stars or something, always respond to the reviews, even if it's a negative review and make the situation right.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Oh, 1000%.

Karen Edwards: They can change their review after that, right.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah, 1000%. I totally agree with you. And that all adds to that customer experience because, to your point, if somebody did leave a slightly unfavorable review, this is your opportunity to take that to heart and show them that you care and respond to that and see if you can right the situation. So social proof, again, I think, is such an undervalued way to bring that credibility to your business because it's not you saying, "Hey, look at what we do."

It's saying, "Hey, look at what my customers are saying about what we do." Or, "Take a look at our pictures. They speak for themselves." So such a great tactic to use. And the next, content marketing. Again, this is another way for you to show up as a leader in your expertise. And you can do this through blogs if you have a website. It might be through mass emails to your customer base. It might be text messages. Who knows?

But it's a way where you can offer up other content. Maybe it's tips about what to expect when you're getting a new roof. Maybe it's different prep things for seasonal prep and maintenance guides. Again, it's content that's going to help deliver additional value to your customers above and beyond just the normal products and service offerings. And oh, by the way, it also helps your SEO. So we love content marketing, right.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, yeah, that's for sure.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Love that.

Karen Edwards: Just going to ask a question because it's all great stuff, but what size contractor should be looking into marketing their business? Is a small business? At what point? Maybe it's a couple of three, four-person company. When do you know? When do you know start?

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah, that's a great question and I think you should start right away. I don't think it matters what size company you are because you're always wanting to build your brand reputation. You want to build that awareness. You're trying to generate leads and establish credibility in your service area.

So I think it's so important because there's a ton of tactics marketing can do for you against establishing that strong brand identity that's going to help continue to launch your company and set yourself apart from your competitors. So all levels of business, all sizes of companies and I don't think there's any wrong time to start, but just start.

Karen Edwards: Yeah, and you mentioned start small, start with the free stuff and then as you do grow, then you may want to consider putting some money toward your efforts. But yeah, it's really easy to get started and claim that space, like you said, the Google My Business and the Bing and wherever you exist on the web. Another website that I think is important for contractors to be aware of is the Nextdoor platform.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Karen Edwards: And you see a lot of people. Your happy customers when they see someone say, "Hey, does anybody know a roofing contractor that can help me out?" And they'll leave... refer you on there. So I loved it when you talked about the referral program as well. Ask your current customers, "Hey, how'd you hear about us?" And that's a good thing to do too, not just to give somebody a gift card for a referral but to find out what's working, right.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Exactly. Yeah. And that platform is actually really fun [inaudible 00:15:31] almost has turned into a bit of a social platform in a way too.

Karen Edwards: Yeah.

Jacqui Brueggeman: And so, again, it's being able to leverage those environments to bring that credibility through the social proof through your customer base who's already had amazing experiences with you.

Karen Edwards: So the next question I want to ask is, and I'll give a little bit of framing around it. I'm on my LinkedIn. All right. I get emails and messages from people all the time who think I'm a roofing company just because I do so much in the roofing industry, and they want to know if I can handle 10 qualified leads a day and do I want to grow my business. And they're this expert, and they're not always.

Jacqui Brueggeman: [inaudible 00:16:15].

Karen Edwards: They don't understand the industry. They don't understand, and you spend a lot of time and money just educating them about the industry. So choosing a partner is really important because you want to have the right one. And I'm just curious what ABC Supply... what kind of tools or support that you can offer to contractors as they start this marketing journey or want to grow their marketing.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah. No, that's an amazing point, Karen, because you're right, we get hit up all the time via LinkedIn or as soon as you start searching this stuff on Google, now all of a sudden, you get all these ads for XYZ SEO company or whatever it might be, social media management, all that stuff.

And so years ago, ABC actually developed what we call the Freedom Programs, which, at the core of it, they're programs and resources with third-party vendors that we negotiate with and offer up to our contractors as a resource.

And the idea around it is that it gives contractors the freedom to do what they do best because maybe they're not going to be super, super great at creating a website or getting into paid search and stuff like that. So we've got these pre-vetted programs available to them to tap into.

Karen Edwards: That's fantastic. And how does a contractor access the programs?

Jacqui Brueggeman: So we have them on our website at abcsupply.com. We do have them listed there on the Contractor Center area. But honestly, their best resource is to talk to their sales associate about it because all of our sales associates know and understand our Freedom Programs or can at least point them in the right direction to learn more because we've got a number of great ones already established and we're continuously trying to bolt on new ones because there's always a growing need for new things.

Karen Edwards: Sure. And we're talking more than just marketing, right?

Jacqui Brueggeman: General marketing ones. We talked about establishing brand identities. So we've got one for professional image building that's going to help them establish their logo and get into their website and creating a website. And then we've got a new one, actually, that just launched this year. And it's a service that helps them with claiming their Google listings and their other business-

Karen Edwards: Wow.

Jacqui Brueggeman: ... listings and take it a step further in going into the paid search. And we've actually seen really great testimonials with that program from contractors up here in the Midwest who were able to leverage that program during their off-season, their low-season because they do... they kind of switched their business from traditional contracting to some snow removal and other things like that. And this program helped them come above the fold and really drive traffic in a slow time for them. So we've got some of that digital normal marketing stuff, some traditional tactics with job site marketing.

We love turning every lawn into a personalized billboard for contractors, right. And then target mail, which is an old school tactic, but it does really, really well in this industry still and be able to target during after storms because, when a storm rolls through, there's a ton of hail damage, homeowners are looking for the contractor that can help them that's reliable and it's not just some unvetted guy popping by. And then, outside of that, we also have awesome financing programs.

And the reason why we bolted these in was because we know for contractors going into the house and going through the pitch process and quoting and all of that, to have that financing option available in the moment instantly increases their close rate. Because, again, a roof is a huge investment for the homeowner. And to be able to take that massive sum and be able to break it down into smaller bite-sized monthly payments just makes it way more consumable for them. So we tacked on those ones several years back. And then, like I said, always trying to grow them and find new avenues for things that are going to help our contractors.

Karen Edwards: Yeah. And having, I mean, finance...having financing is really... helps with marketing as well, because you can say as part of your is, "Don't worry. We offer financing. We can make this more palatable for you" because it is an investment. It's a big purchase, and not everyone can slap that on a credit card or find financing on their own. So it really does help. That's great that you guys do that. And just anybody, any contractor, is welcome to come onto the website. Do they sign up?

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah, so...

Karen Edwards: Talk to the sales associate you mentioned?

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah, so this is really going to be specific to ABC Supply customers. We really curated this around for them, but it's available on the website for anybody to see and view and to just learn more about. But we're always trying to find ways for our sales associates to bring additional value above and beyond just product and pricing, and this is one of the ways that we do it. We arm our sales associates with all these resources to then be able to take it to their customers.

And in those conversations, when a customer is saying, "Hey, I'm just really struggling with getting Google reviews or having my listing even show up on Google." In that moment, our sales associates have a resource that they can say, "Hey, we can help you with that. We can help you claim your Google listing" to continue to build that stickiness with our contractors and our customer base.

Karen Edwards: I love it. I love it. And I love the fact that it's... everybody's kind of vetted. You're going to the Freedom Program, you know that that vendor has been looked at, that they've been given... put through the wringer and they're going to do what they say they're going to do and be a wise investment for you and your business. So that's-

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yes.

Karen Edwards: ... really great, Jacqui. Okay. So what do you think one of the main takeaways that a contractor should take with them after listening to this podcast? You know what we say? Let's find some nuggets. What are some key nuggets that you think people should get out of this?

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah, key takeaways. I know we talked about a lot. I think, again, number one, let's make sure we're establishing and understanding what our brand is and making sure that we're building a really strong brand identity that is connecting with our customer base and showing up in the community, engaging with the community, because that helps build your credibility as a community partner.

And so I think that goes a long way for local efforts. And then, again, building that digital presence, making sure you've got that website, claiming your business listings and then jump into social media if you're not. We love social media, and it's such a great way to share your content, to connect with your audience and maybe even connect with people who are outside of your traditional target audience because maybe you end up having an awesome video that goes viral. Who knows? We love it.

Karen Edwards: Oh, that's awesome. And we just want to remind everybody that whenever you post something on social media, be sure all the safety is proper. And there's no safety violations going on in any of those pictures because-

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yes, please.

Karen Edwards: ... we don't want to put that out there. And then the last takeaway is check out the Freedom Programs from ABC Supply.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Yeah, check out the Freedom Program. So, like I said before, you can talk to your ABC Supply sales associate or jump on the website at abcsupply.com underneath the Contractor Center and get kind of the brief overview there as well.

Karen Edwards: Awesome. Jacqui, thank you so much for being here today and having this conversation about marketing. It's been really fun.

Jacqui Brueggeman: Thank you so much, Karen. I really appreciate being able to be on this with you and talk marketing and join the pool of all your other amazing guest speakers [inaudible 00:24:36]-

Karen Edwards: Thank you. And I want to thank everybody out there for listening to this episode of Roofing Road Trips from RoofersCoffeeShop. Visit RoofersCoffeeShop and you can check out ABC Supply's directory.

It'll have all the links to their website, contact information, everything you need to know about ABC Supply is out there. And be sure to follow us on social media, hit the notification button on your favorite podcast platform so that you don't miss a future episode. We'll see you on another one. Take care. Thanks, Jacqui.

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