- Discover what email strategy to use during storm mode
- Learn what types of content to include in your campaign
- What capturing relevant pictures and videos can do for you
- How social media can help promote and propel your business
Send us your questions, comments, feedback, praise! We can’t wait to hear from you!
Transcription:
Hey, I’m Amanda Joyce.
Devon Hayes:
And I’m Devon Hayes and today’s topic is preparing an effective storm campaign. And here’s why you should care. Don’t miss the opportunity to target customers before your competition does.
Amanda Joyce:
This is a great topic. We’ve seen this in so many markets and I’m really excited to talk about this because I think this is something that a lot of contractors don’t think about until it’s too little too late.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, until they’re in the middle of it, a hailstorm is happening and then you’re calling your agency or calling your admin like, “Hey, we should post something on social media. We should get some ads going.”
Amanda Joyce:
Get some ads up. Yeah. Where are we going to drive the traffic? There’s so many elements of it that if it is planned out ahead of time, it can be such a huge opportunity. And if it’s not planned ahead of time, you can just be caught with your pants down and the competition is just going to go out there and gobble up all those leads.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. If they hear there’s … I don’t know, one inch hail in a certain area or a certain zip code and they’ve got ads locked and loaded and all they have to do is what is it? Set them live or publish them and then boom.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. Just turn the campaign on. You go into social. If you’ve already got pre-scheduled posts you just change the date on it or the time and say post it right now. You can do a whole bunch with a couple of automated switches and buttons if you’ve really thought about it ahead of time.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, that’s true. And so we’ve done that before for clients where we’ve kind of outlined like, all right, here’s an email campaign. We’ll do an all out blitz for X amount of days. This many touches on social, this is what we’re doing unpaid. Here’s what we’re doing for content on the website, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The point is, there’s a lot you can do and if you’re in a market where a storm happens every single year, get ahead of it.
Amanda Joyce:
Do your homework.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah. Then when it does happen, you’re not running a fire drill and you already have content loaded up into your social media publisher ready to go. You can have images from maybe the prior year storm and then just go in and update the city name where it actually happens.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. You can go in and a lot of times with some of those social posts that we’d have on deck, we’d have a space in it so you could enter how much the size of the hail or a couple of the storm details. You definitely have to go in and be prepared to make a few of them customized to what’s happening so it doesn’t feel too canned. But you can have a whole bunch there. And I think some of the posts I liked the best with the planning we’ve done for our clients in the past is doing some of the, there’s the storms predicted, so you’re already kind of getting in on that when everyone in town’s talking about it and everyone’s like, “Oh my god, this huge storm’s on its way.” You could even update something when it’s happening. And like you said, in that case you could maybe have some images of hail from previous years, and then after the storm following back up with them.
And hopefully in that process you can have all the canned stuff, but ideally you have your team ready and say, “If there is hail hitting right outside your house or someone sends you a picture, get it to us so we can also use stuff from the current campaign.” But you could have 95% of it canned and ready to go before the storm hits and then you can just kind of pepper in some imagery and details as the storm kind of unfolds.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. And I guess we should have prefaced this episode by saying this is pretty specific to restoration contractors. If you work on the exterior of a home, kind of a pre-canned storm campaign, it would be a great idea. It would be a great use of time if you have an admin who maybe is already doing your social media, if you start to have them have some post ready scheduled that just need a little bit of updating, same thing with email marketing. You can make sure your lists are segmented. You can target your past customers, maybe remind them that you exist, remind them if you’ve got a referral rewards program. It’s just a great way to have that top of mind awareness.
Then again, you can target your referral partners, maybe who it’s more of a B2B situation and have different distinct messaging for them. Having these specific emails kind of locked and loaded and ready to go and have an updated email list in whatever you use for your email marketing, you’re going to be so thankful you did it.
Amanda Joyce:
Oh, so happy you did it. Because also, ideally, if a big storm hits you are going to have a natural amount of people reaching out to you and you’re going to be already tackling all kinds of stuff that’s in here. And now you do not have time to stop and have a quick team powwow about social and how you’re going to handle it. If you’re already in that moment, it’s too late. Just having a little bit of the foresight, maybe when things are a little bit slower and you guys are getting nervous because you’re waiting for that storm, use that nervous energy for something positive and just get the wheels in motion and start planning that stuff.
Devon Hayes:
And worst case scenario, if you don’t have a big storm that year, that season, it’s ready to go for the following year. Also, I mean after you have this pre canned content, when you go to your first house and it’s like a swimming pool filled with debris and leaves and junk from the storm, take video of that. Post that video, share it. It’s going to be geo-relevant and help people in the surrounding area where you’re already working then see your content better. There’s like geo signals there and then that’s the stuff that people like to see. They’re like, “Ooh, what kind of damage did this storm do?”
Amanda Joyce:
And it also speaks to their pain points. They may be like, “My pool looks just like that.” Raise their hand, they need your help too. Or a picture of gutters falling off the side of a house or big hail in the siding those kind of things, it speaks to what people are experiencing in the here and now and it reminds them that you’re the person to call when they need help fixing that. They might not have even thought to go out and check and see if they have damage on the side of their house until they see that image.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, that’s true. And video. These days, 2023 image is great, but we as marketers were like, “Give us all the video, send us more video. Can you get drone footage of that pool with all the debris in it? We’ll take that too. Give us all the video.”
Amanda Joyce:
Yes. Absolutely.
Devon Hayes:
If that’s an option, if you’ve got that tool in your shed, absolutely. Especially the first few houses right after the storm, when you know things look terrible, that’s when you want to get as much media as possible, get just as many formats of still shots, drone shots, time lapse footage, talking through the damage with a customer. I mean, obviously more pictures of just the damage itself. I’m losing my train of thought, but you get the idea. You get the idea. You can have canned content, but then you can get that real meaty, real life good content that people actually engage with. And you won’t have to worry about your run-of-the-mill, “Hey, this area has been hit by a storm, contact us,” because you’re already going to have that boring content canned, but it will help it get served if you also mix it in with some more engaging content, which is what you’re going to give your social media person or your marketing agency to work with when you see those first few homes that you inspect.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And that’s also a good conversation to have with your team now, when it isn’t in the craziness. You’re not going to think about it and they’re going to be busy too in the moment. But if you’ve in several meetings prior to it reminded everybody of it, hopefully when they see that crazy lightning starting to strike, they’re going to just pull their phone out instinctually, and you’re not going to be having to send out a text to everyone that’s like, “Capture that media.” Just get it at the front of the conversation now and it’ll naturally happen. Everybody will be ready to do it.
Devon Hayes:
Let’s maybe talk about some of the ideas that they could have ready in canned content ahead of time. I know we did just talk about segmenting your email marketing list. Those emails could be ready to go. It’s always good to have one on how to contact your insurance company. And this could be a social post and not just an email, but we’ve done that where we put together all of the phone numbers and contact information to file a claim with your insurance company. And that’s an easy social media post. You guys probably already have that information right at your fingertips if you’re a restoration contractor.
Amanda Joyce:
And talk about something super valuable to people. That’s not just more content for content’s sake. It’s actually goodwill at the same time.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. There’s that one. There’s just the generic, “Hi, we do these services, we’re going to be in your area. Here’s our phone number.” Getting that post ready. Sharing meaningful blog content.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And for that, you can write stuff that’s going to be relevant before the storm’s ever hit. It could already be published on your blog and then it’s there and ready to link to it. So if it’s tips about signs to look for, if it’s time to file an insurance claim, questions to ask when you’re vetting out home restoration companies, things like that that don’t have to have specifics about the storm that just hit. But if it’s already live on your site, it’s good quality content that then you can link back to that you’re educating consumers about in the moment when they actually need that information. When maybe they normally scroll past that post, but right now they’re like, “I actually do need to know what questions to ask if I’m going to hire somebody that’s going to come out and fix my roof,” or whatever it may be.
Devon Hayes:
Yeah, absolutely. Just try and answer the questions that they don’t know to ask. Whatever those might be, get those together ahead of time. What’s something that you always tell homeowners they need to have prepared before you arrive? What is that thing? Or what’s an FAQ? And then turn those into social posts. You’re educating them, you’re giving them good valuable information. And I think it’s the whole on social media, that whole jab, jab punch thing. You don’t want to do too much self-promotions. If the jab, jab, giving, giving and then the punch is maybe promoting yourself one time. But just think of it that way. What’s something that you would want your mother to ask a contractor before they came over to her home after a storm? What is that? If you’re a landscaper, is it like, do you have a regular landscaper? I don’t know. Whatever the qualifying questions might be for that, but things like that you can do in advance.
You can humanize your brand and have posts about the owners, or maybe you donate a portion of every project to a nonprofit. We have one client, they donate a portion of every project to the ASPCA and that’s something great to promote. People love that we have. A lot of our clients, they actually donate to a nonprofit of the customer’s choice. That’s something great to promote too. Then you’re kind of humanizing yourself and you’re not just this company doing what every other company does. You’re also selling your brand and why they should choose you over everybody else who’s scrambling and doing the same things and paying for a bunch of ads left and right and are going to be popping up and following people throughout the web just the same way you are trying to do. But you just got to keep in mind that humanizing yourself is going to have them connect with you a bit more.
Amanda Joyce:
Absolutely. And by putting all of these pieces in place ahead of time and really thinking about them, you will naturally stand out from all the other guys that got caught with their pants down that are suddenly pulling an all-nighter to launch a bunch of ads and make a bunch of social posts. And it screams desperation when that happens. You can see it in the content. The quality isn’t there. There’s misspellings a lot of times. It looks more just cobbled together. And as a consumer, I find it much more comforting from a company if I’m going to need their help in a moment like that. If it looks like they’ve got things buttoned up, they’re there to help me, they’re there to educate me. And it’s not just in your face.
Devon Hayes:
And I think something too-
Amanda Joyce:
Fill out the [inaudible 00:12:33] form.
Devon Hayes:
Give us your information. But when you’re talking about launching ads, social media posts we know take a while too. But I don’t think oftentimes that people know what goes into launching an ad. We’re talking about, they have to make the creative and it’s got to be in all different shapes and sizes. And then you also need it to go to a specific landing page. That’s something you can do in advance, have your 2023 storm event landing page designed, created, the workflow, whether you’re sending them to Calendly to book now or having them fill out a short form, a long form, whatever it might be. But that landing page can be done. Your forms, your workflow, that can be done. You can have your creative for all the ads done. These are all things that have to be taken care of before you can launch a campaign.
Saying, “Hey, let’s turn on some ads five minutes into a storm,” some guys out there, they maybe don’t know what they’re asking when they say that. To just kind prepare in advance and realize there’s mounds of work. There’s probably 15 hours of work ahead of time for an eight-day digital marketing blitz. Now you can add more hours if you start to do any of those direct mail campaigns, outlining those campaigns. There’s a ton of those that will send out a series of postcards for you. But having those outlined, that takes a pile of time as well. Those are just some of the things that you want to consider when you’re trying to put together a storm campaign and really think about how much time that takes.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. And as someone that has run a lot of ads in the past, there’s nothing more stressful than a moment when the client needs leads that badly having to start right then to update a landing page and things. Like you were saying, you can have 99% of the landing page created. You can already have an image of some damage that you’ve had in the area a year ago for the header image. You can have all the texts and maybe you just need to update it to say inner city name for where the storm super hits. You can change three pieces of text on the page, turn the ads on, and relax. And then optimize it. And that’s what you need to be doing. But there, it’s just you’re going to save yourself a headache and a heart attack in the moment you need those leads the most because for a lot of people that one big storm can make or break their year. So you just need to be ready to strike when the iron is hot.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. And we know there’s a ton of business coaches who are rolling over wanting their contractors to not be storm dependent, but I mean, it happens. It happens in a lot of markets. While we don’t want you to be storm reliant, you also need to be prepared for it when it does happen, because then you’re just going to be more efficient and it’ll help you kind of get the cream of the crop when it’s those people that are active and on top of it and ready to get their exteriors taken care of.
Amanda Joyce:
Exactly. You’re going to be ready to be the hero when they need you and really do what you’re in business to do and not be worried about all these other items that at the moment probably won’t seem very important, but could really help you drive along leads.
Devon Hayes:
Absolutely. I feel like that covers it. I think we touched on kind of everything.
Amanda Joyce:
Yeah.
Devon Hayes:
Did we leave anything out? I mean, we talked direct mail, email, social, content, landing pages, ads, creative.
Amanda Joyce:
All the things.
Devon Hayes:
All the stuff. I don’t think we did a little dance with it, but maybe we could have next time.
Amanda Joyce:
That’s how we can close it out, yeah. And I guess one other thing I would note, probably most of you already do this, but if you don’t already have a platform that you use to pre-schedule social posts in one place so you’re not having to go all over the place to get stuff going, there’s Loomly, there’s Later, there’s Hootsuite. There’s all kinds of options. It’d be really great to just invest in that and have it there so that it’s really easy to go in and just kind of open the flood gates and let all that content you’ve pre-planned do its job.
Devon Hayes:
Love it, love it. Great. Great nugget per usual there, Amanda Joyce. Well thank you all for listening, hanging out with us. Let us know if you have any questions or anything you’d like us to cover. We’re always here to listen. Thank you.
Amanda Joyce:
Thanks guys.
