Rebecca Mayo – Boost Your Roofing Business - PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Editor's note: The following is the transcript of a live interview with Rebecca Mayo, director of partnerships for gFour Marketing. You can read the interview below or listen to the podcast.

Intro: Welcome to roofing road trips the podcast you Journey across the roofing from fascinating interviews with roofing experts to on the Adventures will uncover the stories innovation so hello everyone mi name is Megan Ellsworth here at roofers coffee shop dot com and you are listening to a roofing road trip podcast i am so excited i have my friend Rebecca here from g. Four marketing hello how are you 

Rebecca Mayo: Hello Megan thank you so much por having me today it's a pleasure to be here 

Megan Ellsworth: Y im so glad youre here ok, so let's in and have you just tell us a little bit about you and the history of g four 

Rebecca Mayo: Absolutely well i am Becca obviously i am the director of partnerships here at g. Four marketing so super excited to connect with everyone today and share a little bit more first and foremost about the importance of having a referral program for your business. Mi es i have been in this industry almost ten years es wild to think about so ive seen it all different times yeah its been a really fun ride and the best part is getting to have those Conversations with pros about their businesses so very very fortunate to be here g. Four marketing just a little bit about us at a high level the thing that we do best is we help roofers and home pros unleash the power of their customers so basically what we aim to do is take your existing customer and turn them into what we like to call a raving fan so that they go back out into their communities and Advocate and evangelize your business for you so can't wait to talk about a time think about this just excited to dive in 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya i love that the raving fan idea i think that is my favorite way of marketing is just making friends and telling your friends about things you like and things you're excited about and absolutely i think that's such a good way to market a business so g. Four marketing has been helping home improvement businesses since two thousand nine can you explain. Ok can you explain how your experience as home improvement entrepreneurs Gives you an edge when working with roofing contractors specifically 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah absolutely so one of my favorite parts about g. Four marketing is obviously that we've been around since two thousand and nine but we really dialed it into like what we relate to as a perfect Science so this is like a scientific proven way to separate yourself and your business from all of the competitors in your market doing the exact same thing so es over the last couple years its just industry itself has i say since the Pandemic especially we've seen i personally have seen the roofing industry in particular just expand to new levels of of business we've never seen before so the competition es higher than ever and what we aim to do es really help our pros and help our customers a prioritize the customer experience because we wanna make sure that we are leaving the best possible taste in the customers mouth so that they turn around and refer your business to their friends and family without a cuestión so its really putting themselves in the mind of the buyer and the client and saying what can we do to make sure that we are building a fence around this customer so that they keep coming back to us for more business 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya and you all really know no the market really well um and like it said in the question like home improvement entrepreneurs that's really what you are es helping helping other entrepreneurs and roofing contractors and i love what you said about it being a proven process a scientific process that that es really cool this is a es an offline question or online question but different from what we prepared can you tell us a little about the proven process and how you all have studied it en what you what it looks like 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah absolutely so really boils down to acting as the back end marketing like of our businesses in our customers so for ejemplo, we have pros come to us all the time saying we realize the importance of consistency brand reputation and making sure that we are leaving an exceptional taste in our customers mouth either they just don't have time to do it because of bandwidth and the team structure it's like they wanna focus on bringing a new business so often that's the first thing that gets pushed to the wayside so that's where we can come in and really operate on the back end of these businesses making sure that we are consistent and we are actively putting out those thank you notes those referral requests asking the client for five star review which as we all know reviews are incredibly important not just for reputation just en general for businesses right by the way people make buying decisions so people por a lot of trust in as to help them move the Needle when it comes to Growth being a Science it's interesting because over the past Twenty plus years we have really proven the value just by the of our customers like helping them increase that profitability when it comes to spending and operational efficiency it's been great because with the cost of leads being what they are right now we really helped our customers lower the margin of spent as well when it comes to that because. 

Rebecca Mayo: El referral es a great way to generate that new leads without having to increase your margin and they Convert at over a higher fifty percent conversion rate so lots lots of factors go go into that proven Science but it's been really cool to hear the success of our our clients over the past i mean company wide Twenty years even just since I've been here at G4. 

Megan Ellsworth: Wow. I love that you mentioned thank you notes as well i think that's a lost art so i love that you Guys are helping contractors bring that back and to keep keep that movement alive i think as someone i don own a home but i live in a home if someone were working in my home and gave me a thank you card or a little referral letter after the great work i feel what a great impression that that Gives so 

Rebecca Mayo: Absolutely and you know what's funny. Megan is i was just having a Conversation this morning with one of our other partners about the importance of thinking the customer and just how far that goes i mean tear point it's such a lost art that so many businesses a either forget to do o they don't prioritize and what's very interesting es in the way that people make buying decisions now it is a lot about feeling and evoking that positive not just positive word of mouth but positive feeling because they'll remember how they felt working with business as well 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya totally la age old saying you know you don't always remember a person that you know said hi and leaves you remember how people make you feel you don't remember what they say to you you remember how they make you feel that ya it's great ok, so i love that you said secret back office marketing team that's what g. Four is love that so and you did mention a lot of competition in roofing right now how does g four help them stand out i know through building stronger relationships with customers and generating those five star reviews how do you get people to to leave those five star reviews 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah great question so when it comes to helping separate our clients from everybody else essentially in their markets doing the exact same thing this is where i would say we really shine and it's back to the proven processs a system that we help our pros set up on the back end of the business to essentially drive that positive word of mouth that will lead to more referrals repeat business and basically cements that longterm business success by creating a cycle of ongoing business so when it comes to the review side we obviously wanna help our pros build that credibility and positive reputation in their market like we talked about before the competition es more than I've ever seen it before especially en roofing i feel theres so many so many roofing companies popping up and its really hard to differentiate yourself from your competition if you're not doing something Unique and different that's gonna set yourself apart so when it comes to prioritizing the customer experience that's something i would personally recommend taking a look like if anyone's listening to this right now take a look at your business and say what am i doing to make my client feel exceptional about choosing me to do business with and then how am i gonna build a fence around this customer so they keep coming back to me either for a Repair o a new roof years from now what are we doing specifically as a business to do that and my best piece of advice es if you're not doing anything you don't have to start huge and i think thats a misconception is a lot of people you have to go all in or none or nothing and so i recommend take a look and just make small changes that are gonna Yield big wins for your business when it comes to having a referral program in place and also making an effort to ask for those five star reviews because technically one in three Jobs should Yield a five star review for you if you're doing it right 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya that's so true i love that idea of looking at the whole process from to nuts of how where you touch the customer en what that experience es like for them its kind like that undercover boss show seeing yeah what their experiences en seeing where you can make improvements and that's the best kind of marketing like you said es when you give. Such a great experience that they're a mega fan or a raving fan like you said that's great 

Rebecca Mayo: Ya i tell people all the time i say the catch phrase es we're gonna help you supercharger customers to rating fans so the more raving fans that we can help your business create the more success you're gonna see and the more referrals you're gonna get so its a win-win situation 

Megan Ellsworth: Are there certain pain points that you see often that need some TLC in the customer experience 

Rebecca Mayo: Absolutely ya i think a lot of time people get frustrated when they're not being followed up with they're communicated with so dialing it back to the micro details i think having some type of quality control activity is really helpful making sure you're checking in with your customer on a frequent basis during the job to make sure that they're feeling good about things but ultimately i think the most important piece es thinking your customer and making an effort and priority to do that because that's gonna Yield that referral some interesting statistics i was talking to somebody about yesterday is fifty eight percent of referrals are going to do business with you within one year of the job completion wows really amazing so if you're zooming out looking at like Twenty Twenty five for example thinking how am i gonna grow my business from point a to point b by the end of this year referral programs are a great way to do that without like i said before increasing your spend on net new leans that may or may not Convert a referral at over fifty percent so if youre looking for you know ways to think outside the box of ways you may not have prior its great great program to implement. 

Megan Ellsworth: Wow, so how do you all help contractors set up a referral program 

Rebecca Mayo: Great question so this es seemingly obvious but sometimes it's not as obvious if you're ingrained in your day-to-day business so i would recommend es working with somebody that can help take that load like lighten the load for you basically we aim to give our customers time back in their day so that they can focus en closing new business right we know oftentimes we want people spending time out the field selling new Jobs and not doing backend office activity so that's we can help when it comes to actually implementing a referral program what i recommend is taking a look at your CRM you know depending on what CRM you're using people don't do this and i think it's a missed opportunity but i recommend taking a look at your current CRM going through it with your team and saying who have we sold to in the past year or three years who have we potentially done work for in the past that we have just fall off the radar and also taking a look at your leads that may or may not have followed up with you and say. Okay, we have a list of leads how can we rehash them 

Megan Ellsworth: Got it 

Rebecca Mayo: So i like to tell people es think of the four rs and the four rs for your program reactivating customers rehashing los leads and then getting those five star reviews at the end 

Megan Ellsworth: Got it do you ever do like have program some sort of incent do recommend having some sort of incentive like a gift card or something like that es not needed 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah absolutely that es part of gforce program we do have the opportunity to help you with referral Rewards which es one of the offerings that we can help with obviously it's fully customizable which is great a lot of roofers really like that too because it helps highlight the brand and we can customize everything to the company's brand and like voice so it's really it seems like it is actually being produced by our customer really nobody has to know we are the ones on the back end implementing all of this for them so when a customer for ejemplo gets it done for you premium box with our client brand and logo and gifting it's really incredible and to the client it looks like it's coming from our pro we are the ones taking the work off of their 

Megan Ellsworth: Plates Awesome youre like little marketing else 

Rebecca Mayo: Que yes exactly 

Megan Ellsworth: I love that thats really cool i mean who doesn't love getting a little gift box with some swag love that especially after you have like this big construction job you've been a little uprooted maybe you know getting a new roof a little gift box that's just great who wouldn't give a five review after that 

Rebecca Mayo: Absolutely and cool thing too a lot of our customers do different types of work so like a lot of our clients will do roofing but then they'll also do some siding and exterior and gutters and you know it's really nice because we can encompass all their services and just after customer make said before around the customer they keep coming to 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya exactly like maybe they get their siding done and then two years. Oh, we need a new roof o you know so on so forth bringing that person back that's that's great so how do you all play with Automation in your marketing strategy for roofing contractors 

Rebecca Mayo: Yes great question that es a perfect segue back to helping to increase operational efficiency for our pros so the cool thing about g. Four not to get too salesy on anybody but the cool thing about us es that we do connect directly to their CRM so how it Works es we connect to the CRM 11 the Jobs are completed they close out typically we'll pull like a Weekly report from the CRM and then we will activate the process for them ess also customizable right cuz sometimes we have pros who have customers that you know maybe they don't wanna a gift sent to them for whatever reason or you know the experience wasn't perfect so we don't wanna ask for a referral or a review if it's not a Stellar experience for the client so it does give the pro autonomy and their decision making on like which customers they want through the queue and which ones they would prefer not to communicate with most of the time it's a positive experience and then it just gets even better i like to call it the cherry on top of the sunday when they receive the done free box and thank you gift and thank you notes and things like that 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya absolutely that's really cool i love that you all automat into the CRM en that you all worry about that you know it's not the contractor being like. Oh do you have the log in you know all that stuff que sometimes you know losing passwords left and right that's my name name of my game <laugh> 

Rebecca Mayo: Yeah i like to discuss the way describe it to people es consideras an extension of your team truly i know we say background office or back office marketing program truly we act and operate as an extension of our pro team so we work with you we will hold your hand through the process our team es exceptional we have such a great client experience team that's like willing and ready to help at any moment so justs a great experience for our pros thankfully we've created a lot of raving fans from it too 

Megan Ellsworth: Y yay. Okey, so how kind let kind summarize some of this so how does g. Four marketing help roofing contractors overcome marketing challenges to achieve longterm success so we've talked about you know the give back and and integrating with them and referrals and reviews how does this work you know five years down the line 

Rebecca Mayo: Absolutely so one of the things especially in the roofing segment that we have found is incredibly helpful based on the feedback we've received is helping our pros save time like we mentioned before we're gonna help save so much time and also streamline those operational processes processes excuse me on the marketing side to give them that time back we want to create more time in their day also give them a peace of mind. Knowing that we are running a program behind the scenes that is going to be generating leads for the business leads from what i have gathered this year in particular has been a hot topic more so the cost of leads right now is astronomically high so what we've done es take a look at our businesses our clients and say how can we help you lower that spend also maximize your conversion and your return on Investment here with your referrals so longterm it's a great strategy because like i said it's gonna Automate itself i would say i would say although we don't want you to forget it because we want you to continue to update you know if you make enhancements to the business and brand changes things like that it really es something you can rely on g. Four to offload from your business day-to-day 

Megan Ellsworth: That's great it really is saving saving time and money at the end of the day because like you said time is money and that's just really cool i love this idea of g. Four marketing being you know your little backend marketing elves helping taking that burden off if you already have a marketing team or you don't have a marketing team and you're just doing it yourself really taking a burden off that's what a great what a great gift you give to all your pros and contractors ya its amazing yes 

Rebecca Mayo: Literally and 

Megan Ellsworth: Yes. Ok, i gonna throw a curve ball at you i would love to know what is a Unique marketing Trend that you've seen in roofing that you think is pretty cool and people should consider more to use to get referrals and leads and whatnot. Oh, 

Rebecca Mayo: Good question so interestingly enough in roofing in particular i would say the thing that i have noticed more than other segments of home improvement es branding caring a lot of Weight when it comes to how their buyers are making decisions to work together with you so i think en my opinion if you have a strong brand and you have a strong reputation in your market or community its a great way to position yourself as the champion in your market as the obvious choice i have found based on Conversations I've had with pros over the years that the stronger the brand the better the business and the happier the client so all comes together i think a part that obviously having a great brand es the experiencia you are giving your customer word of mouth es either going to elevate the stature of your brand o it can unfortunately hurt so important people talk and people share either online as we know 

Megan Ellsworth: Right 

Rebecca Mayo: You know if they're hanging out with their friends on a Friday night talking about hey who did your roof o who did your new patio enclosure helped you específico improvement projects that experience es going to be discuss so we wanna make sure that we give all of our customers the best possible set up to position themselves as the top choice and also a great choice 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya wow. I love that answer because you can see at ire too industry events the rubing contractors are really honing in on their brand and it's also you know part of their personal brand they intertwining the two from you know the business card to what you're wearing to what your sales people are wearing everything that's a really good nugget of wisdom there so i hope everyone out there was taking notes that was really good thank you 

Rebecca Mayo: Ya absolutely i think theres something to be said too about having that familiarity and trust i think having your brand positioned as a strong one in your market is going to Breed familiarity and it's also gonna bre trust with your customers that do work with you and they're just gonna turn around and like i said recommend you to their friends and family which all leads back to the consistency piece so we wanna make sure we're constantly asking for the referral and generating those referrals and then making sure we keep that positive positive word of mouth moving forward 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya absolutely well becca this has been absolutely very informational and amazing so thank you for your time and chatting with me today i really appreciate it 

Rebecca Mayo: Absolutely i was gonna say too what i always tell people when I'm talking to pros if you think that this could help you in the slightest way i recommend just taking fifteen to thirty minutes of your time and talking with someone on our team and the cool thing about that too is like sometimes when you're in the business so deep it's hard to see the gaps of your business thats something our team really prides ourselves on is helping our pros and people who are interested in talking to us identify those gaps and then help suggest opportunities to fix them or you know bridge the gap when it comes to the program so recommend the time 

Megan Ellsworth: Ya everyone can find that information on roofer coffee shop dot com on the g four marketing Directory and then what's your website 

Rebecca Mayo: Yes so our website you can go to g four marketing com it's g. Four spell out f u marketing com 

Megan Ellsworth: Amazing definitely everyone go check out their Directory their website and if you need any other information about g. Four please make sure to reach out to coffee shopp dot com or becca and we'll get you in touch thank you again this has been very this. Has just been a great episode so appreciate it 

Rebecca Mayo: Of course happy to help Megan thank you 

Outro: Absolutely everyone out there make sure you are subscribed and you ring the bell so every time we post a new episode you get notified and go find more information at roofer coffee shop dot com to learn more and we'll see you next time on the next roofing road trip if you've enjoyed the ride don't forget subscribe roofing adventure to tuning in catch on the next roof trip.