From Systems to Assemblies

Background.

Schulte Roofing remains the brand to trust, to rely on like a neighbor when homeowners need quality work for their roofs and roofing systems. Yet, as Schulte Roofing grew and expanded, they were missing out on a significant portion of the potential market because commercial project managers and large construction firms thought of them as “just another shingle banger.”

To create exponential growth for the brand, we knew we needed to tap into the highly competitive world of commercial roofing assemblies, Schulte Roofing partnered with us to help them create new whitespace and cast deep relationships in a whole new market.

Challenge.

Schulte Roofing may have excelled in the residential scene but the brand wasn’t known in the larger commercial market. The jingle that made them successful didn’t resonate in this ‘fix-your-tie, iron-your-suit’ realm, and the brand was cornered with low-brow terminology such as ‘shingle bangers’ or ‘fly-by-night roofers’.

The challenge was to reposition the brand and create frictionless touchpoints with a campaign conforming to the expectations of both the commercial and residential markets.

Campaign.

We built an ABM campaign with live events, corporate sponsorships, social media placement, and direct marketing, specifically targeting commercial firms in the A/E/C industry. From the onset, the campaign was successful as it showed the brand’s continual growth in the commercial world and set the tone for what really mattered among commercial customers, such as security, longevity, scaling, and perception. Additionally, by recruiting a highly trained workforce and bringing them into the brand’s training program, we signaled to large construction firms that Schulte Roofing was a reliable brand capable of executing big projects with the same high level of craftsmanship and guarantees celebrated in its residential market.

Finding the right message, however, meant creating a mold from a deep analysis of our commercial targets. Using an ABM strategy within the broader campaign, we set out to build brand awareness and authority among the commercial targets, thereby repositioning the brand for higher relevance among premium commercial accounts.

We developed hyper-targeted and personalized messaging based on our targets’ capabilities, references, expertise, interests, behavioral trends, and geolocation, and we accelerated the spread and impact of the brand’s reputation using all new creative, a revitalized website with a commercial focus, and key influencers in the A/E/C industry.

To maintain Schulte Roofing’s residential position while carving whitespace in the commercial market, we cast the brand architecture into 2 separate divisions with branding and messaging tailored for each channel and market, governed by communication guidelines and internal reviews to solidify a unified, yet separate, process.

With TV and radio broadcasts, editorials, press mentions, and social media executed all across Texas, we were able to strengthen brand awareness and loyalty in the residential market and dramatically increase visibility in the commercial market. For the programmatic ads and on digital channels such as OTT, OTV, CTV, Spotify, and Pandora, we aired both residential and commercial spots using artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize the scheduling and ad rotations. Residential spots focused on acquisition and awareness models. Commercial spots were incorporated into a larger ABM strategy. This part of the campaign also leveraged personalized messaging to connect with audiences at each stage of the buyer’s journey.

Results.

Over the next year alone, Schulte Roofing’s commitment to the commercial market grew, and the new opportunities served as a compounding, driving force behind the brand’s growth. That year saw a lift, not only in social media followers or Schulte Roofing’s inclusion in the commercial roofing conversation, but in revenue and prestige — the company moved from $16M the previous year to $23M, a record-breaker for Schulte Roofing, and the company earned yet another Top 100 Roofing company ranking.

FIVE

We produced three new commercial spots leveraging this residential relationship and transferring the previously established trust into the commercial message and campaign execution. The three new spots were created to work together as a singular, 60-second spot or independently as 30-second spots.

Secondly, we made sure that the website redesign targeted audiences separately using content-specific and relevant to the website visitor (residential customers would find residential content and commercial customers would find commercial content). To optimize our audience tracking and deliver the relevant content, we established an advanced audience tracking and CRM integration using both inbound and ABM strategies.

Online and offline, the campaign also included brand event activations to further build relationships with commercial targets, and we updated the brand identity and collateral to showcase Schulte Roofing’s commercial capabilities.

ONE

Weaving the touchpoints together in a unified approach, we created a strategy that would grow the brand organically, maximizing reach in the residential market and repositioning the brand for commercial accounts. We targeted specific commercial accounts because of their higher revenue, lower overhead costs, and long-term consistency (compared to residential projects of the same size). Along with finding new whitespace in the commercial realm, the strategy would also maintain the brand’s foothold in the residential market by using residential audiences synergistically, and not alienating them.

TWO

The campaign was specially designed to increase loyalty among residential audiences and then engage them as a referral engine for an ABM strategic approach. Through our efforts, we were able to build meaningful relationships with the commercial account targets that were already familiar with the residential side of the Schulte Roofing brand, such as from a past experience as a customer, seeing ads, or simply being familiar with the brand. By deepening and strengthening these relationships, we helped Schulte Roofing increase referrals for large commercial projects while simultaneously targeting commercial audiences with our ABM strategy.

Overall, the dual-prong approach to residential and commercial targets resulted in a 230% increase in referrals from project managers for commercial projects within the largest construction and infrastructure companies in the United States, and a 20% referral rate from commercial project managers for personal residential projects.