As "Roof Cleaners" our greatest marketing challenge is "educating the public". By our national estimates only 1%, that is only one homeowner out of every 100 are informed that a roof can be cleaned effectively and without damage. The roof material manufacturing companies are not going to recommend cleaning because obviously they want to sell more products. Roofing contractors will never mention cleaning because obviously they want the replacement job. So the "word" that a roof can be safely cleaned is spreading but very, very slowly.

Roof Cleaning is so unknown that in the bulk of the country there is not even a heading in the phone book that states "Roof Cleaners" so we are faced with an uphill battle to attract customers. In order for a roof cleaner to attract new business we are forced to rely on very costly newspaper ads, direct mailing pieces, radio spots, tradeshows or time consuming "door knocking", resulting in a very high cost/per lead ratio. There is a better way,the internet is the roof cleaning industries largest advocate, here people come to learn about roof cleaning and to find "roof cleaners".

The problems a roof cleaning company faces if it were to advertise by itself on the internet:

• It is very difficult to position your company's website on the first page or first ten pages for that matter of any search result, on any search engine. It would take a serious financial commitment and the hiring of a search engine optimization firm to work on your placement to even attempt to overtake the websites that have retained those top positions for the past decade.
• You could start a "Google Adwords" campaign which is "pay per click" advertising but you will be going up against the roof cleaning equipment and chemical manufacturing companies at a cost of about $1.50-2.00 per click for the top positions and you are looking at potentially spending $2,000.00 plus per month.

What the RCCA is trying to accomplish with our "lead program" is to use to the membership proceeds to place the RCCA website in the top 10 search engine results and to manage and effective "pay per click" program that could compete with and realistically out bid any manufacturing firm or any company in our way to the top.

Currently our membership is a measly $20.00 per month, so that in effect is your advertising expense for the month with the RCCA. Let's look at what other forms of advertising cost:

• Newspaper: the smallest print ad allowed in most newspapers is 1"x1" at a national average cost of $100.00 per ad, that's for 1 day! That could pay for your RCCA membership for 5 months!
• Radio: The national average for one 30 second radio ad is $60.00, that equals over 3 months of an RCCA membership.

Ok, we assume you get the point, it would be virtually impossible to match advertising costs with any venue against the RCCA, it's the "power in numbers" theory, we all give a little and we get a lot.

State Page Placement Program

This is how we decided to determine the order in which your company will be placed on the state page where your company is located. The RCCA came up with this program to make it fair to all members. The program was based on the following criteria:

• An alphabetical listing would not have been fair.
• The order in which a company joins would not have been fair.

The RCCA has decided that the only fair way is to open up each position on every state page for bid.

• Initially your company will be positioned below the other members in your state but once you are a member you can request by email, a position bid chart for your state and for your state only.
• Each position will have a value determined by the current bid, the lowest positions on the page is the $20.00 monthly membership fee or the minimum.
• Position bids go up in $5.00 increments.
• Positions will be updated on the 1st of each month; you have until the 25th of the current month to bid for position the following month.