In late 2016, a commercial roofing sales representative for a Northeastern commercial contractor called me about an article I had written. Richard and I had spoken by phone several times before this – as he often called during his train ride/commute to ask about things I’d discussed in my blog.

This call, however, was different. He wasn’t on the train – he called from his office, with the owners of the business listening in to our conversation.

Almost two years of sharing ideas and stories of other firms who had solved their biggest marketing problems led to Richard trusting me enough to introduce me to his employer.

This company had hired a “marketing expert” about a year before who was hired to build a website and market their business online, largely through Google Ads and SEO.

The only appropriate thing to offer to do is to evaluate where they were in the process of gaining visibility in Google search. What’s been done? What still needs attention?

• The website was poorly constructed and the content on the pages provided no real help to a commercial property owner or a property manager with roofing issues that need solved.
• The search engine optimization they were hired to do wasn’t even started – for example, the home page title tag was shown as ‘home’ and not the primary keyword they were focused on. As a result of poor SEO work, they did not rank for anything useful.
• Google Analytics was installed – however the company could not access their info, as it was a shared account with the company’s other clients. No useful analytics were available.
• It was however, when we looked at their Google Ads, that the BIGGEST problem was discovered. Much of the fees the client paid each month were supposed to be the cost of the clicks on their ads. They received a monthly statement of all the clicks reported and their cost per click – and dutifully paid the bill.
• However, the vendor did not provide, nor would they allow the client to see their actual Google ads account. They received a ginned-up report that had no relationship to the facts. Using specialized tools that many consultants cannot offer, we discovered that the firm was not running ads at all.
• It appeared over the previous year we could only find 2-3 days when client ads actually ran on Google – the clicks they were billed for were simply fraud.
• After presenting my findings and the company agreed to retain our services, this fraud became plain. When the company called to cancel their agreement – their agency said “you are month-to-month on the agreement” so you can cancel; just pay for the clicks occurred today.
• When asked to say how many there were, the agent said they’d received 23 clicks that day at an average of $23 each. Not true. Our analytics revealed they had exactly one click that day. It was from me as I was testing the routing of things.

The client wanted to earn the opportunity to serve as many commercial businesses in their region that they could whose buildings had TPO (single ply membrane) and were experiencing roof leaks as possible.

There are opportunities to use classic direct marketing for such a task but initially they wanted me to focus on fixing their online marketing.

• We delivered a new WordPress website that was filled with professionally written, yet completely unique content about the company and its work.
• Dozens of high-resolution photos were used in telling our story to the market.
• A crystal clear, easy to understand call to action was placed in the most visible locations.
• All content on the site was properly optimized for Google’s search engines.
• Call tracking and deep analytics were installed so we could track results and report them accurately to the client each month.
• We built out their Google My Business profile and began cleaning up all the citations and local references to ensure that name, address, phone info was scrubbed and correct.
• A process was developed and implemented to begin building domain authority, which often leads to higher organic search rankings.
• Then – we built professional landing pages for their Google Ads and began running a very tight, locally focused ad campaign using nothing but exact match and phrase match terms. This keeps costs down and often prevents wasted clicks.
• The primary “assignment” given to the client to complete was to begin gathering Google reviews from customers past and present.

The Results –

A quick comparison of the search results today to where we started shows how far this company has come for their most critical keywords.

The picture below shows results as of July 2018 and reveals that the client has 4 of their keywords ranked at #1 and a total of 16 terms ranked on page one of Google. Further, they also have 1 listings in local maps at #1 and a total of 5 listings in the top 10 in their region.

The real results are in the leads that regularly call or contact this contractor to inquire about getting help with their TPO roof covered commercial building.

The client often gets 20 or more legitimate inquiries that lead to a chance to evaluate the roof and speak with the client. Richard and I spoke recently and he said, “We’re seeing ideal jobs calling for bids and pricing all the time.”

One of my calls with the owner yielded this note in reply: “THANK YOU Scott for all your help year round! – We’re looking forward to continuing our work together in 2019.” (It’s now summer of 2021 and I still work with this client. We’re approaching the beginning of our 7th year)