Roofsimple is a leading provider of quality roofing solutions in Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, and Texas. It is rapidly expanding to other areas nationally, and much of that growth has been driven by the content marketing strategy developed and executed by Kathryn Aragon.
Co-owner Mark McShurley shares his experience working with Kathryn and the results for his business.
Background: Solid Growth, Huge Potential
Launched in 2014, Roofsimple had reached $7 million in sales by 2019, driven primarily by door-to-door sales. McShurley and co-owner Marty McMahon had a big vision to go national and saw a need to start reaching people outside their region.
They had begun revising their website and realized SEO content could be a great asset to support their growth strategy — but they knew it needed to be high-quality and strategic.
I’ve been involved in web marketing before and done the hardcore SEO stuff. I didn’t want to use a normal agency doing generic content that’s meant for machines, not people. Even agencies I’ve used for other things, I would never use them for content. They might get some results, but I would feel ashamed if somebody went to my website and saw that content. Even if it’s working, it’s just not real.
The Ask
Roofsimple wanted an updated website with authoritative, geographically agnostic content to bring traffic and support their vision of expanding nationally.
I was looking for somebody who could actually plan the larger vision, lead it once we had agreed on it, and then execute it with real content. I was introduced to Kathryn through a mutual friend after I told him I wanted help for content that was actually good.
A core motivator driving Roofsimple’s content marketing efforts, like the business overall, was a desire to be genuine and provide real value.
The deep simplicity of success is to just do the right thing. So, if it’s real content that people will actually value, that will obviously help your search rankings, especially if it’s also being created with search in mind. Kathryn has all that experience and know-how.
The Approach
Kathryn quickly set about developing the product marketing strategy, including brand messaging, positioning, competitor research, and keywords. She then created a content strategy, beginning with competitive research and identification of the primary keywords and topics to target.
Once we had an initial discussion, and I could tell Kathryn was tracking with me on what we were trying to do, she completely led the strategy and implementation. She decided which terms we should focus on, shared a spreadsheet with me, and just checked in with me as needed.
Kathryn managed the website, product pages, and the blog. She wrote the web copy for the updated website, built the pages, and kept them updated.
In addition to writing high-quality articles for the blog, Kathryn also researched and developed an authoritative, 200-page ebook to guide homeowners in understanding roofing — and how to get a good deal from a quality provider.
The ebook supports the door-knocking efforts because people can go and see it written down. There’s an added trust factor of, ‘Oh, you’re publishing this information publicly.’
For both the articles and the ebook, Kathryn developed custom visuals and infographics to add even more authority to the content. She advised Roofsimple to hire a photographer rather than using stock images. This included specific guidance on what images would be most important and impactful.
The content really strengthens our marketing efforts. We want the website and all the information we provide to reflect who we are, so that if somebody looks us up (before or after we knock on their door), they’ll realize they can trust us. All the marketing pieces work together, so I wanted this to be really good. And it is!
The Results
Over about 12 months, Kathryn implemented the strategy, producing the website, a detailed ebook and 24 authoritative SEO articles.
Two years later, here are the average SEO stats:
- 2 keywords per article in the number 1 position
- 6 keywords per article in the top 3 positions
- 19 keywords per article on page one of search results
- 60 keywords total per article
As a result, website traffic has jumped from 1,000 visits per month to 8,000.
Metrics-wise, I can tell this content has made a huge difference — our lead flow has increased a lot as a result. And of course that translates to sales. The website generates a few million in revenue every year by itself. People find us through that content. And the door-knocking benefits from it too, because when people go look us up, they get content that’s actually worthwhile.
The non-geography-specific content has also been performing as intended to bring in leads from new areas and support Roofsimple’s national expansion efforts.
As we expand to new geographies, this content remains relevant. We have people we can’t even monetize yet actually finding us from all over the country.
And because the content is designed for both people and search engines, it has continued to perform over time.
I knew that it was going to take a little while to really see the results. But once it got going, it’s just been up ever since. And our content started to get linked to naturally — without any extra effort on our part — because the content was worthwhile. It’s all just kept working in the background, as it should.
Takeaways
Strong product positioning and messaging are key to marketing success.
To drive growth, you have to understand what your ideal customer needs and wants, then position your product as the unique solution they’re looking for. Just writing articles around high-volume keywords isn’t enough. You need to answer questions, provide useful insights, and highlight the value only you can deliver.
When we started with Kathryn, we probably had less than 1,000 visits a month. Now, we routinely get 6,000-8,000 a month. And most of that is organic. It’s dramatic — what we set out to do happened and continues to happen.
If you want to be a leader in your space, don’t settle for generic content.
Whether it’s from an old-school content mill or an artificial intelligence tool, generic content is not going to earn people’s trust nor perform as well in search results. Go for quality.
Everybody’s excited about using ChatGPT to write content, which is fine if it gives you a head start. But if you publish what comes out of there, that’s a problem. When you’re doing SEO cornerstone articles, you want to outdo anything else out there — make it better and more complete. Kathryn really did an excellent job with that.
The same goes for visuals — the more original assets you create and own, the more you can show authority.
Strategy matters in product marketing.
It takes knowledge, experience, and dedication to develop and execute a winning marketing strategy. Seek out experts who will be true partners in your success.
A lot of agencies just go through motions (not to mention the dishonest ones that don’t even do that). They’ll deliver what’s agreed to, but a lot of times, there’s not an overall strategy that’s really contributing to quality of content and driving results. With Kathryn, I’ve found a long-term strategic partner who matches my commitment to quality.
Ready to get started? Contact Kathryn today to schedule your discovery call.
