Weather and natural disasters affect home improvement professionals in many ways. The recent windstorm that affected parts of the Mid-Atlantic region ripped apart sidings, blew out shingles, shattered windows, broke fences, and in many cases damaged entire roofs. Whether it’s you or a competitor, homeowners are going to be researching online for a reputable contractor to repair their homes.
This is the time when your customers and community should look to you for help. Homeowners need emergency tarp service. They need advice on how to file a claim from their insurance company. Helping them when they need you the most will get you more business and also get you the great reviews and excellent word of mouth referrals that your business deserves.
Here are 3 things to do to help homeowners after severe weather storms
- Add a message on your website and across all your internet business listings that you have emergency crews available and can perform emergency tarp services, temporary repairs, board-ups, roof tarping and many other repairs. Don’t be the company that drives customers away with a sign that says, “You are too busy and cannot take any more calls.”
- Be the Trusted Advisor. If your company has a blog, you can help your customers by sharing tips and techniques to prevent damage to their home. Help them understand what they need to do when they call their insurance company. Your website should have this information continually so when people are looking for this advice your website will appear for your local area customers.
- Activate or Add to Your Google Ads. Remember, that the top positions in a Google Search above the fold are occupied by Google Ads. Adding keywords like “wind damage”, “Roof Damage” and customizing your ad campaigns to the storm and situation will help your business generate more leads. Since Google wants to provide the best experience for the searching homeowner, they will surface ads from local area contractors.
Long-term thinking: We advise our customers not to wait for storms to occur but rather to have content produced and published consistently that help homeowners on a constant basis. When I checked on Google for resources on damaged shingles, I was pleased to see a Surefire Customer’s blog post from 2014 was the top result.
While managing an entire web presence and creating content for Google and other networks seem overwhelming, we have created a platform where you can instantly activate any of the suggestions I made here through just one login. As the leads come in our mobile Lead Manager app, it can help you respond quickly from your phone. It’s a platform that is certainly worth seeing first-hand. Our digital marketing consultants would be more than happy to give you a personal walk-through of our marketing platform as soon as you have some free time.