Getting roofing jobs ranks at the top of the list of challenges that roofing companies face—too few, and the company fails to generate sufficient revenue to stay open.
Regardless, some roofing companies still struggle to get jobs, even during the busy months of June to November, because:
They fail to stand out from the crowd.
They use strategies that don’t accommodate the unique operational model of roofing companies.
They try to copy and paste competitor marketing strategies without considering the nuances of their own company.
We are well aware of the roofer’s challenge of generating jobs, having interacted with roofing business owners. For this reason, we’ve compiled a list of the top 14 strategies roofing companies implement to keep generating leads, even during slow seasons.
1. Invest in Local SEO
Local SEO is a strategy that positions roofing companies to capture prospects in their service areas who search for roofing services online.
It involves optimizing your website for local-intent keywords (e.g., roof replacement near me) so you appear in local engine search results for high-intent queries.
When someone searches for roofing services in your area, they encounter two primary search features: the conventional blue links (organic search results) and the Google Map Pack.
It's not a bad idea to appear in both places. However, appearing in the Map Pack is more beneficial. It's more prominent and captures 44 percent of local SERPS clicks.
This means that websites featured in the Local Map Pack record more traffic than organic SERPS or paid ads (more on this later).
As expected, ranking in the Local Map Pack is no easy feat. Multiple companies jostle for the three spots available for any local-intent query.
Fortunately, you can use basic search engine optimization strategies to boost your local ranking and earn a place in the local map pack.
The most important is maintaining a well-optimized Google Business Profile (GBP). This entails the following.
Using your correct business name.
Linking to social media handles and your website.
Adding key business details—phone numbers, service descriptions, and visuals.
Filing up your profile with real customer reviews (not fake or paid ones to avoid Google penalties).
To save time and quickly collect multiple online reviews, use ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management platform to automate the review request and management process.
Roofing companies use the platform to create review request messages that are automatically delivered to customers once a technician completes a job.
This ensures customers leave authentic and sincere feedback since they still vividly recall every detail of the services rendered.
ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management platform also pings business owners whenever customers leave reviews on their business listings. They can then respond from the platform’s centralized review hub rather than switching between multiple windows.
Responding from a central hub saves you time and makes it painless to respond promptly to negative feedback before it escalates.
For example, Matt and Lori Swanson of Guardian Roofing credit the platform with seamlessly managing their online reputation. It helps them collect and manage Google, Facebook, and CitySearch reviews from one place.
Therefore, anytime a review comes in, they get a message with a link that redirects them to the central hub, where they can take action.
Other ways to boost your local SEO include:
Create location-specific pages and optimize them with local keywords.
Have different pages for each service you offer. For example, you can create separate pages for residential roofing, new roof installation, inspection, and roof repair.
Increase the number of times your company is mentioned online (citations).
2. Run Local Services Ads
These special paid ads feature three businesses and their contact information (name, address, and phone number), operating hours, and star ratings.
Local Services Ads (LSAs) are strategically positioned above paid search ads, granting the roofing companies featured in them beneficial local search visibility.
They are also a valuable and cost-effective lead-generation channel. Advertisers only pay when a lead is generated—when potential customers call or message them directly.
LSA spots are typically hard to come by. Unsurprisingly, no advertiser wants to miss such a valuable opportunity to generate purchase-intent, high-quality roofing leads.
That’s why Google uses criteria such as ratings, review response rate, and positive reviews to select just three roofing companies to fill the three available spots.
You can be one of them by optimizing your GBP profile, responding promptly to service inquiries, getting the verified badge, and keeping GBP details current.
Google also advises local service providers to use any of their integrated CRM partners to allow customers to book appointments. One such integrated CRM partner is ServiceTitan.
In conjunction with Google, ServiceTitan created Local Services Ads integration to streamline the lead generation process for companies using LSAs.
Roofing companies use the integration to add a click-to-book widget to their LSAs. Clicking on the widget redirects prospects to a Google calendar and smart form, where they can select an appointment date and explain their roofing issues without calling the company.
Once they are done booking, prospects receive an email summary of every detail they submitted when booking. Meanwhile, on the backend, CSRs can follow up with the prospect to confirm their booking and close the sale.
This seamless job booking process enables roofing companies to generate leads outside of working hours from customers requiring emergency roofing services due to storm damage.
3. Build a Referral Program
A referral program is a marketing strategy where customers are incentivized with rewards, such as gift cards and discounts, to recommend your roofing services to friends, family members, and neighbors.
Roofing companies benefit massively from referral programs, attracting high-quality leads with a great research-purchase ratio, meaning they are more likely to buy after researching the company.
Referred leads are also more valuable than leads from other sources, as research shows they are 16 percent more valuable than non-referred customers.
Even better, participants in referral programs can grow into loyal customers who recommend your services to others without seeking any incentive.
Profitable referral programs have one thing in common: an appealing incentive. Customers must find the incentive enticing enough to be motivated to stake their reputation and recommend your services to others.
Survey current customers and check the rewards established companies use for their referral programs to identify what incentive might appeal to prospects,
Once the incentive is sorted out, promote the program. Place it beneath invoices, discuss it on social media platforms, add it to your website’s homepage, and run special email promotions.
Check out this article to learn strategies for running profitable roofing referral programs.
4. Print Flyers
Flyers are simply glossy pieces of paper with printed promotional messages. Their tangible nature makes them ideal for growing local brand awareness and targeting specific neighborhoods.
Additionally, potential clients who don’t convert immediately can keep flyers and call whenever their roof is damaged. Plus, they are the perfect tool to connect with older demographics and non-internet users.
Printing a flyer requires minimal technical expertise. Select a template from digital design platforms such as Canva, then design it with your promotional message and company details.
When designing flyers, obey the following principles to attract leads:
Use high-quality paper to increase the flyer’s durability.
Stick to one core message and call to action.
Include your contact information.
Optimize the design for legibility. Leave sufficient whitespace between design elements and use complementary colors, legible font types, and sizes.
6. Get Listed in Directories & Listings
Directories and listings are the digital version of the Yellow Pages. Essentially, they are lists of roofing company websites along with their names, addresses, and phone numbers.
Getting listed in directories demonstrates your company’s relevance and credibility to Google. Search engine bots use information from listings to determine rankings.
Directories are also an excellent way to provide potential customers with a way to contact your company directly.
Roofing companies can claim or create listings in the following directories.
Yelp
HomeAdvisor
Better Business Bureau
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business)
Angie’s List
Nextdoor
Thumbtack
It’s important to maintain consistent information across your business listings or directories. This will help boost your SEO rankings and ensure customers can contact you directly regardless of the listing they land on.
ServiceTitan’s Reputation Management tool helps roofing companies easily manage their company listings.
The tool helps users change their listing information from one central hub whenever they change location, expand to a new region, or update business details.
This allows roofing companies to maintain consistent information across all listings easily.
7. Provide a Superb Customer Experience
It’s pointless to implement lead-generation strategies without providing a superb customer experience.
Keeping customers happy is the one way to generate word-of-mouth referrals and avoid spending massively on marketing campaigns. It’s also easier to close sales and upsells when customers have a positive impression of your company.
Delivering superb customer experience starts from the moment the customer calls.
How quickly do CSRs pick up calls? How well do CSRs understand customers’ complaints? Do they display empathy when answering the customers’ questions?
Though subtle, these things significantly impact the customer experience.
To consistently keep customers happy, train employees to empathize with customers during interactions and pick up calls early. You should also consider empowering employees with ServiceTitan’s Customer Experience platform.
The platform has an integrated SMS/text feature that allows roofing companies to message customers directly. Employees use it to confirm job bookings, and customers use it to ask questions and reschedule appointments.
ServiceTitan’s Customer Experience platform also has a web booking widget that allows customers to book appointments directly from roofing companies’ websites.
Such a connected system allows roofing companies to exceed customer expectations and deliver a positive experience across all touchpoints.
8. Partner Up with Other Businesses
Partnering with local businesses broadens your company’s reach. You can use the opportunity to capture market share and introduce your brand to audiences who may not know about your business.
Partnerships are also a nifty way to market roofing services. You can engage in cross-promotions, co-create service bundles, etc.
Ideally, any businesses you partner with must be complementary; they must serve customers and offer services that overlap with yours.
For example, partnering with a hospital or investment firm is useless because they serve a different customer base, which limits cross-promotion opportunities.
Ideal candidates for a business partnership include:
Real estate agents
Property management companies
Homeowners’ associations
Landscaping companies
Insurance companies
Local hardware stores
9. Try Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
Pay-per-click is an online marketing channel where advertisers compete for ad spots on digital channels like websites, Google Ads, search engines, and social media platforms.
Each digital channel uses a set of criteria and algorithms to determine who takes the limited ad spots. Those selected pay a specific amount, determined by the competition, season, etc.
PPC advertising is an excellent way to get roofing jobs. You can appear at the top of SERPs for business-relevant keywords even before your SEO strategies have had time to kick in.
To be among the ads selected, research your target audience. Define their demographics, interests, and preferred content formats. Also, discover the phrases or keywords they use when searching for roofing companies If you’re running the campaign on search engines.
Then, use the information gathered from your research to create ads that grab prospects’ attention and target their roofing challenges.
Finally, performance should be consistently monitored and iterated based on the findings. Reallocate your ad budget appropriately, pause non-performing campaigns, and tweak ad creatives if necessary.
ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing platform allows roofing companies to see the exact revenue performance generated by each campaign.
Users can create and assign unique trackable numbers to each campaign with the platform. The system then uses these numbers to attribute and identify the source campaign for every call.
ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing platform also has intuitive dashboards that rank campaigns using generated revenue and display the zip codes responsible for the most calls.
Roofing companies that use these dashboards can optimize their campaigns for revenue, know precisely when to change strategy and reallocate their budgets accordingly.
10. Try Radio Advertising
This involves paying for ad spots to advertise roofing services to prospects, using live reads, jingles, straight reads, and storytelling.
Radio advertising allows roofing companies to reach prospects in their local service area. It’s also an excellent way to reach people who fit your ideal customer profile by advertising on the programs and hosts they listen to.
The effectiveness of every radio advert depends on the script and accompanying music or jingle.
If the promotional message is not compelling enough, the script will fall flat and fail to generate leads. Similarly, people may likely forget the message if the jingle is not catchy enough.
To that end, hire scriptwriters, voiceover artists, and sound production companies to handle the text and audio.
Here are other tactics for creating and running revenue-generating radio adverts:
Trackable phone numbers and attribution tools like Veritone Attribute can be used to track performance.
Avoid calling out phone numbers. Instead, use your website URL, physical location, and a popular landmark as a reference so prospects can contact you.
Ensure the sound quality is top-notch and that voiceover artists are audible.
Start with an attractive hook and end with a clear CTA.
11. Attend Trade Shows
Trade shows offer the opportunity to meet business partners and customers physically. This direct interaction allows you to strengthen relationships with existing customers and convince prospects to book a first roofing appointment with you.
Attending trade shows is also an excellent way to learn current customer behavior trends, which you can use to change your marketing and business strategy.
To get jobs from trade shows, hand out promotional materials such as business cards, branded merchandise, and flyers. These materials will remind people of your company, generating leads and referrals.
Furthermore, collect prospects’ email addresses and phone numbers so you can follow up on them using cold calls or email marketing campaigns.
12. Train Your Employees
Investing in employee empowerment can help generate roofing jobs.
Well-trained employees deliver top-notch customer service. And happy customers will recommend you to others organically and return to book more appointments.
Empowering employees begins with investing in their personal development. Provide online resources, enroll them in courses and roofing conferences, and create employee training programs.
In addition to upskilling, provide employees with the right tools to do their jobs efficiently. This will boost employee productivity, satisfaction, and retention.
Understanding the importance of empowered employees to the success of roofing companies, ServiceTitan created the Field Service App and Call Booking platforms.
The Field Service App syncs with office systems and centralizes customer information. Field techs can access all data that CSRs collect during intake calls, including customers’ names, addresses, property data, service history, and outstanding estimates.
It doesn’t stop there.
ServiceTitan’s Call Booking platform allows CSRs to record intake calls and take notes, which techs can access freely from their tablets.
Such unrestricted access to customer data empowers field techs to deliver personalized services and spot extra opportunities to provide value. It also allows CSRs to answer customer questions without waiting for techs to return to the office.
After empowering technicians with ServiceTitan, Laing Roofing grew from two to six trucks in just six months. This is because the software helped technicians close sales in the field.
According to founder Robert Maier, “This was the main thing for us; the way ServiceTitan has it set up to where there's a pricebook, and our techs can estimate and take care of stuff while out in the field.”
13. Engage in Door-to-Door Sales
As the name suggests, this involves visiting homes within a specific neighborhood to convince them to book a job.
Though ‘old school,’ door-knocking is still a cost-effective strategy to generate roofing jobs since it costs nothing. Roofers also use it to speak directly to homeowners without the interference of ads, banners, etc.
For starters, know the composition of any neighborhood before canvassing it. Find out people’s demographics, pain points, and income levels. This will help you to create a compelling sales pitch and proactively prepare for objections.
Lastly, track key performance metrics regularly to know when to improve your pitch.
This includes close rate, knock-to-deal rate, and number of door knocks.
Check out more door-to-door sales strategies and ways to overcome common objections.
14. Try Outdoor Advertising
Outdoor advertising is any marketing targeted at people on the go or outside their homes. This includes car wraps, banners, and yard signs.
Pros of outdoor advertising include visibility, broad reach, and boosted brand recognition.
However, there’s also the possibility that people may not pay attention to your promotional material because they’re in a hurry, deep into conversation, or so busy on their phones.
Some ways to overcome these problems include the following.
Strategically place outdoor signs in areas synonymous with high foot traffic and low competition.
Emphasize your primary message using design elements.
Prioritize visuals over text.
Consider your target audience when crafting your message.
Where to Find Roofing Jobs in Your First Year as a Roofing Contractor
New roofing companies often find it difficult to get their first job. They have to battle for customers with accomplished roofing contractors who have already acquired market share and a recognizable brand.
Additionally, property owners are often skeptical about doing business with newly established roofing companies. They don’t trust them and think the company may close suddenly.
New roofing companies should use strategies that help them reach prospects without competing with established companies.
Examples of such strategies include the following:
Request for referrals from members of your personal or professional network.
Attend events and conferences to connect with prospects.
Put all your effort into building visibility. Strategically distribute flyers within your neighborhood, hand out business cards to complementary businesses, etc.
Offer exceptional services to your first set of customers so they return and bring in referrals.
Grow your knowledge of the roofing industry to explain issues to customers expertly.
Start building an online presence from the day the company is launched.
Build relationships with general contractors in your neighborhood.
Why Roofing Businesses May Not Get Enough Jobs
Some roofing companies still fail to get jobs despite implementing marketing strategies. Knowing why they don’t get enough jobs will help you avoid being among the businesses that fail in their first year.
Here are some of the reasons:
Failing to deliver exceptional services: No customer will return after a poor experience. Worse still, they may advise others to stay away.
Neglecting employee empowerment: Poorly trained employees will deliver low-quality services and chase customers away.
Poor digital reputation: One bad review can persuade customers to ignore your company.
Discover seven other reasons roofing companies fail and how to avoid them.
The Bottom Line
Getting roofing jobs in peak and slow seasons starts with implementing the right strategies. Build online and offline visibility, deliver superb customer service, and take advantage of business partnerships.
Consider investing in roofing software like ServiceTitan to keep track of all lead-generation campaigns and empower employees to exceed customer expectations.
ServiceTitan offers a full range of solutions roofing companies use to grow. The software streamlines everything from estimating to invoicing and customer service to job management. Increase your roofing company’s efficiency. Book a free demo.
ServiceTitan Software
ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built specifically to help service companies streamline their operations, boost revenue, and substantially elevate the trajectory of their business. Our comprehensive, cloud-based platform is used by thousands of electrical, HVAC, plumbing, garage door, and chimney sweep shops across the country—and has increased their revenue by an average of 25% in just their first year with us.
5. Be on Social Media
To do business in the 21st century, roofing companies must have an active online presence by creating a website and cultivating a social media following.
No company can afford to ignore social media. Doing so goes against the fundamental marketing ethic of reaching target audiences where they are.
That’s because 70.1 percent of the United States population uses social media. Plus, customers say they use social media platforms to read customer reviews and evaluate local businesses.
Additionally, social media posts are an excellent way to demonstrate roofing expertise. Take this behind-the-scenes video from CR3 America Exteriors, for example.
Since its posting, the video has garnered over 32k interactions, which equates to broader local brand awareness for the company.
Roofing companies use social media in two ways: either run paid ads (social media advertising) targeting specific demographics or post content to their profiles. Both are excellent ways to generate leads and build awareness.
Here are some valuable tips for growing a solid social media presence:
Use the platforms your target audience frequents. It could be Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or TikTok.
Monitor key performance metrics such as reach, shares, and engagement.
Use different content types: behind-the-scenes, how-tos, and before-and-afters.
Prioritize providing value over selling your services.
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