Inbound Growth for Roofing Companies

You've tried business blogging, but you never see the results you're looking for.

You make an effort to get your team members to contribute their knowledge and expertise to creating high-quality content, but they don't seem interested.

Or maybe you see the potential of inbound to grow your business but you don't know where to start. 

If this sounds like you, keep reading. 

Building a company that is built to last starts with a strong foundation. A culture of content —an Inbound Culture.

An Inbound Culture is one that under all circumstances puts the buyers' priorities first.

It’s a buyer centric model that is based on the idea of being so attractive to your targeted audience that they wouldn’t want to do business with anyone else.

Getting high-performing results from inbound marketing starts with a culture shift inside your organization. 

However, building such a culture requires a significant shift that can't be achieved with a single email or announcement. It requires a deep understanding of the key principles outlined in this guide.

By understanding these principles and overcoming the associated challenges, you can implement a successful inbound marketing strategy.

This guide provides actionable steps and practical takeaways on how to teach your team to embrace a culture of content.

Assigning content creation to someone at your company with an already overloaded workload is not a viable option.

Unfortunately, many companies make this mistake when first embarking on inbound marketing.

It's even worse when they outsource their content creation to an external agency or freelancer.

While outsourcing can be an appealing solution for those lacking the necessary resources, it often comes at a cost. Even the most skilled outsider cannot capture the voice and values of your business in your content.

To ensure that your content marketing efforts are successful, you need an in-house employee who is the owner of this initiative.

We call this person the Content Manager.

To ensure success in content marketing, it's important to have a content manager who acts as a champion for the cause. This individual should be supportive, encouraging, and make the lives of everyone in the company, especially sales, easier.

Surprisingly, the "primary customer" for a content manager should be the sales team, not marketing.

The best content managers prioritize their sales team above all else and focus on empowering them.

When executed correctly, content marketing should be viewed as a sales initiative. The content created should be designed to educate buyers, enabling the sales team to close deals faster.

Over 70% of buying decisions are made prior to ever contacting a company or filling out a form on their website. 

What does this mean? 

It means: Buyers are in control.

If a company is to survive, it must shift its thinking in a fundamental way. 

They must align their mission, strategies, action plans, and tools with how buyers think, research, and purchase.

Takeaway:

An in-house content manager facilitates and enables sales to be educators. They own the content strategy and can create authentic, true-to-brand content that answers your customers' questions.

Let’s talk about insourcing. 

There’s a core principle in life that goes like this: "If someone doesn’t help produce something being created, they won’t appreciate it as much."

Imagine you have two people who want to start a business. One person has inherited all the funding they need, while the other person has had to work hard and save up their own money to invest in their business.

Both individuals may be equally motivated and capable, but the person who had to work for their funding is likely to be more invested in the success of the business. They've put their own money on the line and may have had to make sacrifices along the way to save up for it. As a result, they are more likely to take the business seriously and do everything they can to ensure it succeeds.

Sometimes content managers or marketers say, “I’m just not sure where to go.” “I don’t know what questions our customers or prospects are asking.”

What they're really saying is, “We don’t have a clear sense of direction.” 

You can tell they are out of touch because they’re not totally engaged with the sales team. 

Because the sales team are the experts in what customers truly care about and know the right answers, they are the ones that should be the prominent content producers. 

It is their job to teach. It is not marketing's job to teach. 

It's marketing's job to facilitate the subject matter experts on staff and help them be the best teachers in the world.

To be exceptional teachers, we need to break down the barriers between different departments. It's not reasonable to expect marketers to have all the answers without the help of the sales or production team. These teams have a lot of experience and are in touch with what customers want. So, they all need to work together to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Of course, content “contribution” and “production” for your in-house experts can come in a few different shapes and sizes. 

In our experience, we’ve found there are four distinct types of content producers:

1. Writers (your blog and premium content writers) generally 5-10% of the team members are writers.
2. Actors (most sales reps fall into this category)
3. Talkers (great interview subjects for content)
4. Questioners (a mix of sales and customer service)

When you know what each of your experts in the company can bring to the table, it becomes easier for your content manager to involve them in creating content.

As a content manager, when the sales team sees the great content you create, which they can use in their sales pitches and give to customers, they will thank you for it.

Takeaway:

Internal subject matter experts are the key to great content. Sales members involved in the production process see the value in content created specifically for the customer.

The myth is that "inbound is slow, that it takes a year or more for content marketing to work."

We've heard this misconception before, but we've found that in most cases, people who believe this simply don't fully understand how to use content to boost their revenue and sales. With the right strategy in place, inbound and content marketing can be very effective and will move the needle forward.

Many companies write about topics at the top of the funnel or in the awareness stage of the buyers' journey.  

This "fluffy" content appeals to a large audience but likely attracts unqualified leads who are not really interested in what you're selling. 

So instead, you want to create content for people who you know are in the market to buy from you. What does that look like?

Think about it this way: How much did you research your last big purchase? The cost of that item was likely at the top of your list when making your decision.

When you go to a website and you can’t find how much something costs, you feel frustrated. You’re saying to yourself, “I can’t find what I’m looking for. I’m trying to give you my money, but you’re not allowing me to do it."

Instead of sticking around on that website, you're probably going to continue your search on other sites until you get the answer you're looking for. And you'll be happy to do business with a company that gives you that information upfront.

This company built trust with you by giving you the information you were searching for to help you make your purchasing decision.

This is what inbound is all about.

An inbound approach is human, customer-centered, focused on a specific persona, educates and helps first, and delivers an overall superior customer experience.

Inbound is a way of doing business by simply bringing so much value to the marketplace that the market can’t help but trust you. And because of that trust, ultimately many buyers will give you their business. That’s the essence of inbound; they come to you because you’re so attractive and so valuable to the marketplace.

You want to start at the end of the buyers' journey with your inbound content strategy with those ready to buy and then, later on, work your way back through to the awareness stage.

No matter what space you're in, there are five content categories that have been shown to generate more revenue than any other content topics:

1. Cost
2. Comparisons
3. Problems
4. Reviews
5. Best in class

Writing about these topics, which not many people are willing to, will show buyers that you care about their questions, even if that means they don't do business with you.

Today's modern buyers don't want to be sold to. They want information in their hands to make their own decisions.

When you're a buyer looking for answers to your questions, you want to find a company that is honest and thorough. That's why it's important for companies to make it easy for you to find those answers. And if a company goes out of its way to do that, it'll earn your trust and business.

Smart companies don't shy away from difficult topics. They acknowledge them and show their customers that they're willing to address them head-on.

Additionally, these same companies quickly point out who they are NOT a good fit for and what makes them not a good fit.

They understand the way people think when they buy their products and services. 

Takeaway:

If want to see your company grow, you need to establish yourself as the go-to resource in your industry. That means being willing to answer any and every question your customers have, even the tough ones. If you're honest and open, your customers will trust you more, and you'll win their business.

What is your greatest sales tool? The majority of companies would say it’s not their content. 

Most sales teams don’t use content in the sales process because they don't see its value.

Salespeople should see every piece of content produced as another tool in their toolbox. Tools that give them a definitive advantage over the competition. 

That’s why we start in the decision stage of the buyers' journey. 

Every decision stage question aligns with the biggest fears, questions, and concerns that prospects – your good-fit buyers – have. We want to ease their fears and answer their questions even before they talk to a salesperson face-to-face.

Prospects should already know the answers to their questions so that by the time we get to the actual sales appointments, we sell. 

But the reality is that we spend too much time teaching in sales appointments and not enough time selling. 

If you provide your sales team with content, they can focus on selling to people who are actually interested in buying instead of wasting time on those who aren't a good fit.

This is called Assignment Selling, and it can save your sales reps a lot of time and effort. By using educational content to address common concerns and questions, your team can be more efficient and effective in their sales conversations.

Takeaway:

Our goal, especially as marketers, is to be the best teachers so our salespeople can be the best at closing deals. We can use their knowledge and expertise to create content that is used to teach.