Roofing Marketing Agency - Progression Agency

Updated September 2026 · Written and maintained by the Progression Agency strategy team

What roofing leads cost by channel, why the free surfaces outperform the paid ones, how to run a storm response that was prepared before the weather, what to do about lead marketplaces, and how to judge a roofing marketing agency. Written by a New York City agency, with the numbers published rather than implied.

The short answer

$85-$210cost per qualified roofing lead through paid search

14%median close rate on roofing leads

21%of leads that arrive through the Google map pack, which is free

48 hourshow long a storm lead stays warm

$1,450effective cost per closed job through lead marketplaces

Roofing marketing, by the numbers — Roofing is one of the most seasonal, most competitive and most lead-expensive categories in home services. Everything on this page follows from those five numbers.

Roofing marketing is not complicated, it is simply crowded and seasonal. The two highest-return activities available to almost every roofing company are free, unfinished, and have nobody selling them. Everything else on this page is secondary to that.

Who this page is for

Residential and commercial roofing contractors doing between roughly $500,000 and $15 million in revenue, who are either buying leads and disliking the economics or spending on marketing and unable to tell what worked. If you are above that range, the arithmetic changes and some of this stops applying.

What we are not going to tell you

That there is a channel nobody has found, that we can guarantee a cost per lead, or that you should spend more before your phone is reliably answered. The most expensive marketing mistake in roofing is buying volume a business cannot service.

Where roofing leads actually come from

Referral is the largest and least scalable

Roughly a quarter of qualified leads at an established roofer, closing above fifty per cent and costing effectively nothing. It cannot be scaled directly, but it can be systematically increased through review generation, follow-up and simply asking, which almost nobody does deliberately.

The map pack is the biggest free lever

Around a fifth of leads, from a surface that costs nothing and is half-built at most roofing companies we audit. Categories wrong, services not listed, photos three years old, reviews unanswered. Fixing that is an afternoon of work and moves lead volume within weeks.

Organic search compounds and survives budget cuts

Slower than everything else and the only channel that keeps producing when you stop paying. For roofers this matters more than in most categories because cash flow is seasonal and the temptation to cut marketing in February is enormous.

Paid search is immediate, expensive and stops

Fourteen per cent of leads at a real cost. Worth running, particularly for emergency and replacement intent, and not worth treating as the foundation of a marketing program.

Canvassing still works and costs more than people think

Effective after storms and increasingly resented by homeowners. Once you cost the labor against closed jobs it sits mid-table rather than at the top, which surprises most contractors who have never calculated it.

$85-$210 — cost per qualified roofing lead. Paid search, residential, varies enormously by market.

$9,400 — average roof replacement, 2026. National figure. Northeast runs above it.

14% — median roofing close rate. Twenty per cent is good. Thirty is exceptional.

48 hrs — how long a storm lead stays warm. After that they have signed with somebody else.

3x — summer volume against February. And a materially worse close rate.

21% — of leads from the map pack. The free surface most roofers half-build.

Roofing seasonality, and why most roofers get it backwards

Roofing demand across a year — Close rate runs inversely to demand: winter enquiries are fewer, cheaper to acquire and far more likely to buy. Most roofers cut marketing spend in exactly the months where it converts best.

The close rate runs opposite to the demand

Winter enquiries are fewer, cheaper to acquire and materially more likely to buy — because the person searching for a roofer in January has a genuine problem rather than a summer project idea. Cutting marketing in the low season removes your cheapest and best-converting leads.

Summer is when you pay the most for the least

Peak demand means peak competition and peak cost per click, and the flood of enquiries includes everybody gathering quotes for a job they may not do. Volume looks good and the conversion rate does not.

What to do with the budget instead

Level it. Steady spend across the year outperforms a summer-weighted budget in almost every roofing account we have measured, because it buys cheap winter leads and avoids the worst of the summer auction.

Plan content against the calendar, not the season you are in

Storm pages, gutter pages and ice dam pages need to be indexed before the weather that makes them relevant. A page published the week the hail arrives is competing against pages that have existed for two years.

What roofing keywords cost

Separate research intent from buying intent

‘Roof replacement cost’ and ’emergency roof repair’ are different businesses. One is a homeowner beginning a six-month process; the other has water coming through a ceiling. Running them in the same campaign, against the same target, guarantees one of them looks like a failure.

Roof inspection is the underused offer

Cheap clicks, an easy yes for the homeowner, no obligation, and it puts you on the roof before any competitor. As a top-of-funnel offer it consistently outperforms discount framing, and it costs a crew hour.

Emergency terms convert by phone

Call-only campaigns during hours you actually answer. A contact form for someone with an active leak is friction placed exactly where friction is fatal.

Commercial roofing is a different account

Lower volume, far higher contract value, longer cycles, and a buyer who is a property manager rather than a homeowner. It deserves its own campaign, its own landing page and its own target cost per lead.

Emergency repair — highest intent, highest CPC. Converts by phone, within the hour.

Replacement cost — research intent, cheap clicks. Long path. Do not judge on same-month conversions.

Storm damage — spikes and collapses. Pages must exist before the weather.

Roof inspection — the best top-funnel offer. Cheap clicks, easy yes, leads to everything else.

Metal roofing — high ticket, long consideration. Worth its own page and its own campaign.

Commercial — low volume, high value. Entirely different buyer and sales cycle.

Storm response, done properly

The advantage is won before the storm

Everything that decides how a storm week goes — indexed pages, ad copy ready, answering capacity, a review process — is set up in advance. The contractors who do well are not faster on the day; they prepared in March.

Answer rate is the whole game in week one

Storm leads go to whoever picks up. An after-hours answering service is worth its annual cost in a single storm week and is dead weight for the rest of the year, which is precisely why most roofers do not have one.

Insurance claim content positions you before the adjuster

Homeowners with hail or wind damage are about to have a confusing conversation with an insurer. Publishing an honest explanation of how the claim process works — including what a contractor can and cannot do — earns the call before the estimate stage.

The ninety-day follow-up nobody runs

A large share of storm enquiries get three quotes and then stall. One follow-up sequence at ninety days to those unconverted enquiries is routinely the cheapest source of signed work available to a roofing company, and almost nobody does it.

Storm chasing has a reputational cost

Out-of-state crews arriving after weather have made homeowners suspicious of every roofer who knocks. Local, licensed and permanently present is a genuine competitive advantage right now, and it should be stated explicitly rather than assumed.

Answer the phone — the real constraint in storm weeks. More leads make an unanswered phone worse.

Photograph everything — documentation and content at once. Your best marketing asset is a completed job.

Follow up at 90 days — the cheapest work available. Homeowners who got three quotes and stalled.

Publish before the season — not after the hail. An indexed page beats a fresh one every time.

Financing offers — widen the addressable market. Frequently the single highest-impact offer change.

Crew capacity — the limit on useful marketing. Selling work you cannot deliver costs reviews.

Your Google Business Profile is the highest-return asset you own

Rows one to four are free, take an afternoon, and are incomplete on most roofing profiles we audit. That is the cheapest available improvement in roofing marketing and almost nobody has finished it.

Category is the single most important field

‘Roofing contractor’ as primary. Not ‘general contractor’, not ‘construction company’. The primary category is the highest-leverage field you control and a surprising number of roofing profiles have it wrong, usually because the profile was created years ago for a different business.

Photos are a ranking factor and a conversion factor at once

Real job photos, uploaded weekly, showing work you actually did. Before-and-after pairs perform best. Stock imagery is recognized immediately by homeowners and does nothing for ranking.

Reviews: velocity beats total

Four genuine reviews a month, sustained, is worth more than forty in one week followed by silence. Ask by text the day the job completes. Respond to every one, and respond calmly to the bad ones — the next homeowner reads that exchange more carefully than the review itself.

Service areas by town, not by radius

A fifty-mile radius dilutes relevance in every town inside it. Listing the towns you actually work in produces better results and is also honest, which matters if a profile is ever reviewed.

What will get your profile suspended

Keywords in the business name that are not on your signage
Addresses in towns where you have no staffed location
A call tracking number replacing your real number in the profile
Review gating, where only satisfied customers are asked
Categories chosen for search volume rather than accuracy

A suspension can take weeks to reverse and sometimes takes your legitimate reviews with it. Nothing on that list is worth the risk.

Roofing contractor — the primary category to use. Not 'general contractor', not 'construction company'.

Weekly — how often to upload job photos. Recency is a ranking signal and free.

Same day — when to request the review. Conversion drops sharply after 48 hours.

Every one — reviews to respond to. Including, especially, the bad ones.

By town — how to set service areas. A wide radius dilutes relevance for every town.

Never — fake addresses for other towns. Suspension risk that takes your real listing with it.

Lead marketplaces: the honest arithmetic

Cost per acquired roofing customer, by channel — Lead marketplaces look cheap per lead and are the most expensive per customer on this chart, because the same lead is sold to three to five contractors and the homeowner is called five times in an hour.

Cheap per lead, expensive per customer

Marketplace leads look inexpensive until you divide by close rate. Sold to three to five contractors simultaneously, the homeowner receives five calls in an hour, and close rates frequently sit under eight per cent. The cost per signed job is the highest on the chart.

They are not useless

For a new company with no reviews, no ranking and no referral base, marketplaces buy time and cash flow while owned channels are built. Using them as a bridge is sensible. Using them as a permanent strategy means renting your customer acquisition forever at a price that never falls.

Local Services Ads are the better pay-per-lead product

Google Local Services Ads sit above regular search results, require background checks and license verification, and are charged per lead rather than per click. Leads are less shared and better qualified than marketplace leads, and the Google Guaranteed badge carries real weight with homeowners.

How to leave gradually

Do not cancel marketplaces on day one of a marketing program. Build owned channels for two quarters, measure the cost per signed job from each, then reduce marketplace spend as owned lead volume replaces it. Cutting first creates a gap that ends the program.

Owned marketing against lead marketplaces, over two years — Marketplace cost per job never falls, because you are renting access to a lead every single time. Owned marketing is more expensive for roughly two quarters and then stops being expensive.

Angi — shared leads, high volume. Close rate frequently under 8 per cent.

HomeAdvisor — same company, same model. Leads sold to three to five contractors.

Networx — pay per lead, roofing focused. Quality varies enormously by market.

Thumbtack — quote-based, price-competitive. Attracts the price-shopping end of the market.

Local Services Ads — Google, screened, pay per lead. Usually the best of the pay-per-lead options.

Nextdoor — neighborhood recommendations. Underrated, free, genuinely local.

What actually deserves the budget

Roofing marketing tactics by effort and return — The two highest-return activities are also the two cheapest, and both are unfinished at most roofing companies we audit. This is not a coincidence; free work has nobody selling it to you.

Free work first, always

The profile, the reviews, the internal links, the accurate service list. Roughly a third complete at most roofing companies. Paying for traffic while the free surfaces sit half-built is the most common sequencing error in this category.

Town pages: ten researched beats forty templated

A page per town works when each page contains something genuinely specific — the housing stock, the typical roof age, storm history, permit requirements, jobs completed there. Forty pages that differ only by town name are assessed as a pattern rather than individually, and the pattern is the problem.

Financing changes who can say yes

A $14,000 replacement and a $210 monthly payment are the same offer to different people. Promoting financing prominently is frequently the single highest-impact change available to a residential roofer, and it is a marketing change rather than a marketing spend.

Billboards, radio and truck wraps

Wraps are excellent and nearly free once the vehicle exists. Billboards and radio are brand spend with very poor attribution at this scale — defensible for a roofer with dominant local share and hard to justify for anyone else.

Storm page — built before the season. Hail, wind, and insurance claim guidance.

Town pages — for towns that actually generate work. Ten researched beats forty templated.

Service pages — repair, replacement, metal, flat, gutters. Each with its own search demand.

Cost page — the most-searched roofing content there is. Publish real numbers or do not publish it.

Insurance claim guide — what a homeowner actually needs. Positions you before the adjuster arrives.

Financing page — monthly payment framing. Changes who can say yes.

What a roofing marketing agency should actually do

Inside a roofing marketing engagement
Work	Frequency	Why it matters	What it looks like when skipped
Google Business Profile management	Weekly	Largest free lead source	Photos two years old, questions unanswered
Review generation and response	Daily to weekly	Velocity is a ranking and conversion factor	Twelve reviews, none in the last year
Search terms and negative keywords	Weekly	Where paid waste lives	Ads showing for ‘roofing jobs hiring’
Service and town page publishing	Monthly	Organic compounding	One blog post a month about nothing
Storm readiness	Seasonal	The window is short	Pages published after the hail
Call tracking and answer-rate reporting	Monthly	The real constraint is often the phone	Lead counts with no answered-call data
Follow-up sequences to unconverted leads	Monthly	Cheapest available work	Quotes sent and never mentioned again
Reporting on cost per signed job	Monthly	The only number that matters	Traffic and impressions

Questions to ask a roofing marketing agency

What is our current cost per signed job, by channel?
What percentage of our inbound calls are actually answered?
Which towns produce work, and which do we just rank in?
What happens to our storm plan in March, not in July?
Who owns the Google Ads account and the profile — us or you?
What would you tell us to stop spending money on?

The second question is the one that surprises people. In several roofing audits we have run, the constraint was never lead volume; it was that a third of calls went unanswered during working hours.

Red flags specific to this category

Selling more leads before asking about crew capacity
Guaranteed lead counts, which are volume promises rather than quality ones
Templated town pages produced at scale as the core deliverable
Owning your Google Business Profile or ad account
Reporting lead counts without close rates or answer rates
A twelve-month contract signed in May, when you are busy anyway

GAF — Master Elite certification. Genuine differentiator and a real trust signal.

Owens Corning — Platinum Preferred. Same. Homeowners search these by name.

CertainTeed — SELECT ShingleMaster. Worth stating on every relevant page.

License number — displayed everywhere. Required in most states and a conversion factor.

Insurance — general liability and workers comp. Homeowners ask. Answer it before they do.

Warranty — manufacturer and workmanship, separately. The distinction matters and is rarely explained.

What we would do in the first ninety days

What a roofing marketing program should produce, and when

Days 1-14: the free work

Profile completed properly, categories corrected, every service listed, photos uploaded, review process live by text, tracking verified. No new spend. Enquiries frequently move inside this window because the recovery is of visibility you should already have had.

Days 15-45: the paid and the pages

Local Services Ads applied for if eligible. Search campaigns built around emergency, replacement and inspection intent, with the research terms separated. Service pages drafted for the work you actually want more of rather than for every service you offer.

Days 46-90: storm readiness and the towns that matter

Storm and insurance content published and indexed ahead of the season. Town pages for the towns that genuinely produce work, each with real local substance. Follow-up sequence built for unconverted quotes.

What we would measure

Cost per signed job by channel, answered call rate, review velocity, and map pack position across a grid rather than a single point. Not traffic. Not impressions. Not rankings on their own.

Drone footage — increasingly expected. Cheap now and differentiates on the estimate.

Crew photos — trust, not vanity. Homeowners are letting strangers onto their roof.

Job site video — 30 seconds, phone camera, no edit. Consistency beats production value here.

Review screenshots — social proof, reused. With permission, on landing pages.

Stock imagery — the thing to stop using. Homeowners recognize it immediately.

Roofing in New Jersey and New York specifically

Housing stock decides the work

Older northeastern housing means more repair work, more layered roofs, more decking surprises and more chimney and flashing work than a newer market. Content that reflects that converts better than generic national roofing copy, because homeowners recognize their own house in it.

Nor’easters, not just hail

Wind and water damage rather than hail dominates this market’s storm work, and the insurance conversation is different as a result. Storm content written for Texas hail markets reads wrong here and misses the actual questions homeowners have.

Licensing and permits vary by municipality

New Jersey requires home improvement contractor registration and most towns require permits for replacement. Stating your registration number and explaining who pulls the permit removes real friction from the estimate conversation.

Competition is dense and local

Bergen, Essex, Hudson, Middlesex and Monmouth counties are among the most contested home services markets in the country. Proximity is a large share of map pack ranking, which means a roofer with one location cannot rank everywhere — and should build organic and paid coverage for the outer towns instead of expecting the map to stretch.

The mechanics of that are on our local SEO services page, and the paid side is on PPC agency.

Roofing services, and which ones deserve their own page

Roofing service lines and their marketing value
Service	Search demand	Ticket size	Own page?	Note
Roof replacement	High	$8,000-$25,000	Yes	The core commercial term in every market
Roof repair	Highest	$400-$2,500	Yes	Volume and referral source; not where margin lives
Emergency roof repair	Moderate	$500-$3,000	Yes	Converts by phone within the hour
Metal roofing	Moderate	$18,000-$45,000	Yes	Long consideration, high value, less competition
Flat and low-slope	Low	$6,000-$60,000	Yes	Often commercial, far thinner competition
Storm and hail damage	Spiky	Varies	Yes	Must be indexed before the season
Gutters and downspouts	Moderate	$800-$4,000	Yes	Easy add-on with its own demand, usually ignored
Roof inspection	Moderate	Free or $150	Yes	The best top-of-funnel offer in the category
Siding and windows	Moderate	$8,000-$30,000	Only if you do it well	Adjacent, same homeowner, different trade
Skylights and chimneys	Low	$1,000-$6,000	Fold into repair	Not enough demand for a standalone page

The pattern worth noticing: the highest-demand service is the lowest-ticket one. A roofing site optimized only for replacement misses most of the searches, and a site optimized only for repair misses most of the revenue.

Repair — small ticket, fast decision. Highest volume, lowest margin, best referral source.

Replacement — the core job. Where the revenue is and where the competition is.

Metal — high ticket, long consideration. Deserves its own page and its own campaign.

Flat and low-slope — technical, often commercial. Different buyer, far less competition.

Gutters — easy add-on, own search demand. Frequently ignored and cheap to rank for.

Siding and windows — adjacent, same homeowner. Sold to a customer you already earned.

What to measure, and what to ignore

Roofing marketing metrics that mean something
Measure this	Not this	Because
Cost per signed job by channel	Cost per lead	Close rates differ by channel by a factor of six
Answered call rate	Call volume	Unanswered calls are worse than no calls
Review velocity per month	Total review count	Recency is the signal; totals hide dormancy
Map position across a grid	One rank position	Local rank changes street by street
Quote-to-close percentage	Quotes sent	Marketing cannot fix a broken sales process
Revenue by acquisition source	Traffic	Two channels with equal traffic can differ tenfold in value
Repeat and referral share	Social followers	One compounds; the other does not
Speed to first contact	Response time targets	Minutes decide storm leads and most emergency work

The metric that changes behavior

Cost per signed job, reported by channel, monthly. It is the only figure that survives contact with a roofing owner’s actual question, which is always some version of ‘what did this get me’. Once it is on the report, arguments about traffic stop happening.

Why answered call rate belongs on a marketing report

Because it is frequently the constraint, and because it is invisible to everybody except the person looking at call recordings. In several roofing audits the fastest available improvement was not more leads; it was answering the ones already arriving.

Answered calls — the metric nobody reports. A third go unanswered in many audits.

Cost per signed job — the only number that matters. Leads divided by close rate, by channel.

Review velocity — reviews per month, sustained. Recency decays; totals do not tell you enough.

Grid rank — map position across your service area. A single position is not a measurement.

Quote-to-close — your sales process, measured. Marketing cannot fix a 6 per cent close rate.

Repeat and referral rate — the compounding number. Rises with review process and follow-up.

A twelve-month roofing marketing calendar

What to do, and when
Period	Priority	Specific work
January-February	Convert cheap demand	Keep spending; emergency and planning intent; publish cost content
March	Storm readiness	Publish storm and insurance pages; arrange after-hours answering; pre-approve budgets
April-May	Capture spring planning	Inspection offers; financing promotion; town pages live
June-August	Manage the expensive season	Tight negatives; capacity-aware spend; review generation at volume
September-October	The underrated window	Pre-winter urgency; gutter and inspection content; strongest close rates of the busy half
November-December	Build for next year	Follow-up sequences; content published for spring; profile photo backlog cleared

Why the calendar matters more in roofing than in most categories

Because demand swings by a factor of three and cost per click swings with it. A budget spread evenly buys far more work than a budget concentrated where the demand is, which is the opposite of what intuition suggests and the opposite of what most roofers do.

March — when to build storm pages. Indexed months before the weather.

June-August — peak cost, worst close rate. Level your budget instead of chasing the season.

September-October — the underrated window. Homeowners fixing things before winter.

November-December — cheap clicks, real intent. Emergency work and planning for spring.

January-February — the best-converting month. And the one most roofers stop spending in.

90 days — after every quote. The follow-up almost nobody runs.

The roofing website, specifically

What a roofing website needs, and what it usually has
Element	What it should be	What we usually find
Phone number	In text, on every page, tap-to-call	An image in the header only
Photography	Your completed jobs	Stock roofs from a photo library
Service pages	One per service with real depth	One ‘Services’ page listing eight things
Town coverage	Ten researched pages for towns that produce work	Forty templated pages or none at all
License and insurance	Stated plainly with numbers	Mentioned vaguely or not at all
Financing	Prominent, with monthly framing	Buried on a sub-page or absent
Forms	Three fields, working on mobile	Nine fields, broken on iOS
Reviews	Pulled through and displayed	A static screenshot from 2021
Speed	Under three seconds on 4G	Eleven seconds, mostly uncompressed images

The mobile form is worth checking today

Most roofing traffic is mobile and a substantial share of roofing forms are effectively unusable on a phone. Fill in your own form, on your own phone, on mobile data. It takes two minutes and it is the single most common silent failure we find.

Phone in text — on every page, not an image. Tap-to-call on mobile is most of your traffic.

Real photos — your work, not stock. Homeowners recognize stock instantly.

License number — stated plainly. Required in NJ and a conversion factor.

Financing — monthly payment framing. Changes who is able to say yes.

Separate pages — repair and replacement. Different intent, different searcher, different page.

Mobile form — three fields, working. Most roofing forms fail on a phone.

Commercial roofing marketing is a different business

Property managers, facility directors and building owners buy differently from homeowners: longer cycles, formal procurement, references that matter more than reviews, and contract values ten to fifty times higher. Running commercial through a residential campaign means one of them always looks like a failure. Separate account, separate landing pages, separate target cost per lead, and a case study library rather than a photo gallery.

Hiring in-house versus using an agency

A roofing company above roughly $5 million in revenue can justify a marketing coordinator. Below that, the salary buys one person’s partial attention across six disciplines. The arrangement that works best in this category is usually a hybrid: somebody internal owning photos, reviews and follow-up, with outside help on paid media, content and technical work. Photos and reviews are the two things an agency genuinely cannot do without you.

What we will not do for a roofing company

Build forty templated town pages, create profiles for towns you have no presence in, guarantee a lead count, sell you more volume while calls go unanswered, put a tracking number into your Google Business Profile, or take a twelve-month commitment for work that should prove itself in a quarter. Each of those has cost us work, which is the only reason the list is worth publishing.

When a roofing company should not hire a marketing agency

When crews are already booked six weeks out and the constraint is labor rather than leads. When the close rate is under eight per cent, because that is a sales problem and more leads will not fix it. When calls go unanswered during working hours. And when the free work has not been done, because that produces more than any retainer a small roofer can afford and it costs nothing.

How roofing marketing changes as you grow

Under $1 million, everything is the profile, reviews and referral. Between $1 and $5 million, paid search and service pages start earning their place and the constraint moves from visibility to capacity. Above $5 million, multi-location and commercial work change the arithmetic entirely, and brand spend that made no sense earlier starts to be defensible. Buying the strategy that fits the next stage rather than the current one is a common and expensive mistake.

The honest summary

Roofing marketing is won on things that are mostly free and mostly boring: a complete profile, steady reviews, real photographs, answered phones, and following up on quotes nobody followed up on. Paid media accelerates that and does not replace it. If you do the free work for one quarter and it makes no difference, the constraint is somewhere else and an agency should tell you so.

Reviews are the roofing marketing lever most under-used

Roofing is a category where homeowners are letting strangers onto their house, frequently after a stressful event, for a five-figure sum. Reviews carry more weight here than in almost any other trade and are treated more casually than in almost any other trade. Ask by text the day the job completes, ask everybody rather than only the pleased ones, respond to all of them, and treat four a month sustained as the target rather than a total to reach once.

Answering the phone is a marketing decision

It sits outside what most agencies will discuss and it decides the outcome of most roofing campaigns. A third of calls going unanswered during working hours is a common finding, and every additional lead bought while that is true makes the loss larger. Call recording, an answered-rate report and an after-hours service during storm season are cheaper than any increase in ad spend and produce more.

Questions roofers ask us

Watch before you hire anyone

SEO for small businesses — Google Search Central. The free foundational work, from Google. Almost all of it applies directly to a roofing company.

Analyzing performance on Google Search — Google Search Central. How to read your own data, so you can check any report an agency sends you.

How AI Is Changing Google Search and SEO — Google Search Central. Context on AI answers in search, which increasingly sit above local results.

Want to know what your roofing leads actually cost?

Send us your Google Business Profile and ad account. You will get your current cost per signed job by channel, your answered-call rate if we can see it, and the three things we would change first — before any proposal.

Get a free roofing audit

Getting found in search

AI, AEO and what is changing

Paid media and lead generation

Websites and design

Choosing and working with an agency

Social, content and brand

By industry and by situation

Frequently asked questions

What does a roofing marketing agency cost?

Typically $1,500 to $5,000 a month for a residential roofer, plus ad spend. Below about $1,200 you are buying maintenance rather than a program. Anything above $6,000 should come with multi-location or commercial scope to justify it.

What is a good cost per roofing lead?

$85 to $210 through paid search in most US markets, higher in dense northeastern counties. The more useful number is cost per signed job — divide by your close rate. At a 14 per cent close rate, a $150 lead is an $1,070 customer.

Are Angi and HomeAdvisor worth it for roofers?

As a bridge while you build owned channels, sometimes. As a permanent strategy, no. Leads are sold to three to five contractors, close rates frequently sit under eight per cent, and the cost per signed job never falls because you are renting access every time.

How long before roofing SEO produces leads?

Map pack and profile work can move within two to four weeks. Organic service and town pages take three to six months. Anyone promising organic roofing leads in thirty days is describing profile work and calling it SEO.

Should I run Google Ads or Local Services Ads?

Both, if eligible. Local Services Ads are pay-per-lead, appear above regular ads, require background and license verification, and generally produce better-qualified leads. Search ads give you control over specific intent that LSAs do not.

What should I do first if I have no marketing at all?

Complete your Google Business Profile properly and start asking every customer for a review by text the day the job finishes. That is free, takes an afternoon plus a habit, and outperforms most paid campaigns a small roofer could afford.

How many reviews do I need?

More than the roofers ranking above you in your town, and arriving steadily rather than in bursts. Four genuine reviews a month sustained beats forty in a week, which looks exactly like what it usually is.

Do town pages actually work?

Yes, when each contains something genuinely specific to that town — housing stock, roof ages, storm history, permit process, jobs completed there. Forty pages differing only by town name are assessed as a pattern and the pattern is the problem.

How do I market a roofing company in winter?

Keep spending. Winter enquiries are fewer, cheaper and convert better because the person searching has an actual problem. Cutting the budget in February removes your best-converting leads and hands the cheap auction to a competitor.

What is the best offer for a roofing ad?

A free roof inspection, in most markets. It is an easy yes, it costs a crew hour, and it puts you on the roof before anybody else quotes. Discount framing attracts price shoppers and trains the market to wait for a sale.

Should I promote financing?

Almost always. A $14,000 replacement and a $210 monthly payment are the same job to different people. Promoting financing prominently widens who can say yes and is a marketing change rather than a marketing cost.

How do I prepare for storm season?

In March, not in July. Storm and insurance claim pages published and indexed, ad copy written, budgets pre-approved, after-hours answering arranged, and a review request process already running. The advantage in a storm week was earned months earlier.

Is door knocking still effective?

After storms, yes. Generally, decreasingly, and homeowners have become suspicious of it because of out-of-state crews. Once labor is costed against closed jobs it is mid-table rather than top, which surprises most contractors who have not calculated it.

What is a realistic close rate on roofing leads?

Fourteen per cent is the median across channels. Twenty is good. Thirty is exceptional and usually means either strong referral weighting or a sales process better than the market’s. Referral leads close above fifty.

Why are my Google Ads not producing leads?

Most commonly: no negative keywords so you are paying for ‘roofing jobs’ and ‘roofing supplies’; location targeting set to ‘presence or interest’; ads pointing at the homepage; or research terms judged on same-month conversions. All four are free to fix.

Should I bid on competitor names?

Legal, common, and expensive. It works best when you have a genuine differentiator to state in the ad. Expect them to return the favor, and expect your own branded costs to rise as a result.

How important is the website compared to the profile?

The profile generates more leads for most local roofers. The website converts them. A strong profile with a weak site produces calls that go nowhere; a strong site with a neglected profile produces very little traffic to convert.

What should my website actually have?

Phone number in text on every page, real job photos, license and insurance details, financing information, separate pages for repair and replacement, and a form that works on a phone. Most roofing sites fail on at least two of those.

Do manufacturer certifications matter for marketing?

Yes. GAF Master Elite, Owens Corning Platinum Preferred and CertainTeed SELECT ShingleMaster are searched by name by homeowners doing research, and they are genuine differentiators rather than badges. State them on every relevant page.

How do I handle a bad review?

Respond within a day, calmly, factually, without arguing, and offer to resolve it offline. The response is read by the next homeowner far more carefully than the review is. A defensive reply does more damage than the original complaint.

Can I do this myself?

The free work, yes, and you should. The profile, the reviews, the photos and the follow-up are all yours to run and cost nothing. Pay somebody when the paid channels, the content and the technical work stop fitting into your week.

What is the biggest mistake roofers make in marketing?

Buying more leads while calls go unanswered and reviews sit unrequested. More volume through a constrained process makes the loss larger, not smaller. Fix the process before increasing the spend.

How should I judge a marketing agency after a year?

Cost per signed job by channel, against what it was before. Not leads, not traffic, not rankings. Agree that number in writing before you start, or the twelve-month conversation becomes an argument about what counts.

Do I need separate marketing for commercial roofing?

Yes. Different buyer, different cycle, different keywords, different contract values. Running commercial and residential in one campaign against one target means one of them will always look like it is failing.

What happens if I stop paying for marketing?

Paid leads stop the same day. Profile and review advantages persist for months. Organic rankings decay slowly over quarters. That asymmetry is the entire argument for building the owned channels even while you are buying leads.

Sources and further reading

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