BUSINESS FEATURE
Marketing Metal Roofi ng
Dave Yoho notes that metal roofi ng should be taught as a specialty when educating consumers. Tips for selling metal roofing to homeowners
Every year, there are 7 million new roofs installed. During the past decade, the number of homes with metal roofs has more than tripled, moving metal from 3 percent market share in 1998 to more than 10 percent today, making residential metal roofi ng a $13 billion industry. Bill Hippard, president of the Metal Roofi ng
Alliance (MRA) notes that while new roofs going up across the country may look the same as the shingles they’re replacing, the market for roofi ng has changed substantially over the past 10 years. “New eco-friendly products are rapidly replacing petroleum-based asphalt shingles,” he notes. “With an overall market share of 10 percent
in the reroofi ng market, metal roofi ng is gaining quickly on competitors’ products,” Hippard adds. And, in the smaller new construction market, metal now accounts for 5.5 percent of all roofi ng. Metal is the clear second choice in the reroofi ng market,
22 METAL CONSTRUCTION NEWS January 2013
and in 2011, 650,000 tons of steel were used for residential metal roofi ng. Research and audience segmentation studies
by the MRA shows that 47 percent of all house- holds are ready to consider metal roofi ng. With statistics like that, now is the time to boost your marketing tactics to make sure you are reaching the customers most likely to buy.
Educating Consumers Dave Yoho, president of Dave Yoho Associates, Fairfax, Va., a business consulting company within the building products and home improvement industry, says that metal roofi ng has to be taught as a specialty. “It isn’t something that you’re going to treat as a commodity; you’re going to use it as a specialty. Therefore, people have to understand the major benefi ts of metal roofi ng. Otherwise, they’re going to go with the simplest option they have: put-
ting on what they already have. And as such, metal roofi ng will compete on an uneven playing fi eld.” One way to even the playing fi eld is to make
sure that homeowners have all of the informa- tion that they need, not just the cost of installing a metal roof system. “This consumer doesn’t just buy a product,” Yoho notes. “They have to think in terms of what the product will do for them.” “We are rarely selling on price, because if we
do, we’re not going to get many jobs,” says Steve Hildreth, managing director at C.O. Beck & Sons Inc., Waterville, Maine. Instead, he says, they aim to sell based on information and quality. “Our philosophy is to try and educate customers. We don’t like to think of ourselves as selling. More educating homeowners about what the product is and what they’re going to get.” Frank Istueta, president of Istueta Roof-
ing Corp., Miami, Fla., says their website helps
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