Data-Driven Campaigns

Leverage TOMA

How do you leverage TOMA (Top of Mind Awareness) on behalf of your business to have the scenario that I explained in the last part not become a reality for you? Well, contractors that partner with Cognitive Contractor know what’s up. We identify your best customers with you. We seek out the best prospects that look like your previous customers, the 30% that I referred to before, the proven ones. Let's go find more of those homeowners. All the other competitors, let them stay with the eyeball test. Let them keep doing the guessing game, zooming in over and over, looking at households on Google Maps and trying to make their best educated guess. That's amateur hour. At this point, we're moving so far beyond that. We’re going to let them play that game. We already know where all the best ones are. They can't beat me to that, right? So, they can go have the 70%. We’re going to focus on the 30% and we're going to market to these people over a period of time. We're gonna hit 'em with emails, send them letters, call them, text them, and run social media campaigns, like with Facebook and Instagram.

The Rule of 7

Who knows about The Rule of 7 in marketing? OK. That basically means 7 times on average is what it's going to take. Making impressions, someone's seen your brand and they recognize you. That’s how you achieve TOMA. From there, the consumer will likely make a buying decision. So, if it's a storm and you're showing up without any TOMA, it’s going to be really difficult to engage with the homeowner. Like, hey, you've never heard of me before, but I'm so and so with xyz roofing, and yet, they don’t even give you the time of day.

Imagine this Scenario

On the other hand, imagine this scenario. The big storm hits the night before and you have already identified ideal prospects throughout your entire market. You have already been delivering mailers and have been targeting them on social sites. You have built TOMA with the 30%. We campaign and send an email blast targeted to just these homeowners and it says something like this.

Hey. There was a big storm last night. It was pretty severe. This is what happened. This is the damage we have encountered so far. I'm David with XYZ Roofing. I'm the one in charge of taking care of your neighborhood. There's going to be people canvassing your neighborhood over the next several days. I'm the one you need to look for. I'm wearing a black shirt and my truck has this logo, and so forth and so on. Here's a picture of me in the email. Wait for me. I'll make sure that you're taken care of.

At a minimum, you send that out to all of the target households in your market. Does that make sense? Do you realize how powerful that is? And then, you follow up halfway through the day with an automated text message.

Hey, the damage has been severe. I'm on my way to you. I'll be there soon.

Do you hear what I'm saying? You can form a strategy around this. Let everyone else go through, pushing hard and applying pressure to get people into contingencies. You look like you're the neighborhood local guy. You take your time. You stay focused on the high-value homeowners who are your 30%. You're scooping up the quality, premium roofs. You’ll do much better focussing on the people who have been patiently waiting for you. 

“Yeah, there were like 2-3 people that came by. I was wondering when you were gonna come by.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. A lot of roofers have come out, trying to make the most of the storm but I'm here to take care of you and the neighborhood. All right, you’ve probably seen me on the roofs just down the street. Awesome. Cool. What is your name? Let's get you started. 

Right? So, you have the ability to beat everyone. No matter how fast your competition gets to the door, they can't beat your email. They can't beat your text. It's impossible. When you show up, you say,

“Oh, by the way, you probably got my email. You probably got my letter in the past, right? Or you probably saw my ad on Instagram? Did you see that?”

That's where TOMA kicks in. And they think, 

“Uh, yeah. I don't really remember how or... but yeah, I know you. Like, I recognize you guys.”

Don’t you think you’ll stand out from everyone else? Even if they didn't check the email that day. When you show up, if they have TOMA, do you not stand out from every other random person that shows up to their door? The typical stormer, you know, not quite put together, hair is everywhere, shirts untucked, and they’re just about making a transaction. To them, the homeowner is just a sale and to no one’s surprise, they can feel it. Versus, you show up, all calm and collected, and there's TOMA in the situation. You have exponentially more credibility than that stormer ever will. And you'll make so many more sales, even though you could be the lesser salesperson. Does that make sense? Now that you're leveraging TOMA and the homeowner has seen you over a period of months, you're all set. It's time to strike. That's the principle, the core of what we do at Cognitive Contractor.

Path to Leadership

So, as we finish up this final segment, I want to come back to why you are here, alright? When is the last time that you significantly refined your D2D sales strategy? No matter how good your best sales rep is, they're only so good and there's only one of them. You have to replicate their success as many times over as you can. If you don't provide a good path to leadership and development for that good sales rep, you're on a timer because, eventually, they're going to leave. That's the reality, right? So you gotta think, when was the last time I took a really good look at this and improved some things?

Connecting the Dots

As far as longevity goes, let me ask you another question. How long have you been in this industry? Just in the amount of time that you've been in this industry, what has already changed? I'm sure you've seen some pretty crazy changes occur. And things are just getting started. Because guess what? Data is the future of this industry. I'm telling you right now. I wish I had something like this when I first started. My time would have been so much better spent, doubling down on my strengths and not wasting time. Not hitting the doors of renters that were never going to buy. All these kinds of things. Right? Is this connecting with all of you? I'm trying to do my best to like, connect all of these dots together. How data will, literally, change the way that you do business. How data will increase the likelihood that your rookies and your reps will be successful. This is how you help them see the light. This is how you grow the number of “at bats” exponentially. When you have the data, you know the good ones. You market to them. You’re creating TOMA. Make sense? It's awesome.

GO FOR IT!

Lastly, as a reminder, remember that you can't lead with a scarcity mindset. I implore you to lean into taking some risks. You know, I would argue˛ it's not a risk at all. But, whether it's something that we talked about in this series or something you've seen recently at a trade show, all I really want at the end of the day is for you to trust your instincts. Trust yourself. Trust the expertise of others who are providing this kind of value. Go for it. Go for it! We don't want to enter 2022 and you're like, I didn't change anything. You know, you don't want to be in the same place. Stasis is an illusion. You have to adapt and innovate.

What Does It Cost?

If you want to say, OK. This all sounds really amazing but what does it cost? That’s probably the number one question. If you want to know what the strategy and pricing will look like for you, let’s get in touch. What we do is, we set up the Zoom and we say, hey, let's talk about your business. How many sales reps do you have? How much revenue did you do last year? What are your goals for this year? If you have X amount of reps, how many doors do they knock each day? How many appointments do they run? How else are you acquiring leads and appointments? From there, we can put together a scope based on how many households we can market for you and how many appointments we can set that would make sense based on your pace and your size. We need to have that whole conversation because some of you have 50 sales reps. Some of you have 10. And for some, those 10 out-knock those 50. There are a lot of variables. If you want to have that next conversation, please, give us a call or schedule a time right now on my calendar.

This is the final segment of this series, and I'm going to say, do not let another year go by. 2020 hopefully shook you up enough, I would hope, so that going into next year, you're ready to implement and not be left with your hand out, right? So please, quit playing for 2nd. Play for 1st. I love you guys.