Roofing marketing is one of the most essential components of a successful business in 2024. Still, the question of How to market a roofing company yields a complicated variety of answers.
Roofer’s Guild has dedicated its life to the cause. Based on our decade-plus of marketing experience, we help roofing contractors find the best methods to promote their services for long-term success.
What is Roofing Marketing?
Roofing marketing is the venture or commerce of vending and promoting roofing services and products through publicity and advertising.
Marketing can materialize in various forms, including online endorsement and traditional print advertising.
Frequently Asked Questions About Marketing for Roofers
How Do You Market a Roofing Company?
You market a roofing company with various promotion forms, including search engine optimization, Google and Facebook advertising, and content marketing.
You can also utilize traditional methods like door knocking, billboard placements, newspaper ads, and radio / TV spots.
What are Roofing Leads?
Roofing leads are potential consumers who initiate inquiries or interest in a roofing service or company.
A lead may represent a consumer at varying points in a sales funnel, from someone ready to purchase immediately to someone seeking introductory information about a company, service, or material.
What About Commercial Roofing Marketing?
Commercial roofers sometimes question whether marketing techniques apply only to residential campaigns. The answer is no.
While you must alter campaign elements to target retail consumers specifically, the framework remains unchanged.
The same methods (SEO, PPC, SMM) work for commercial roofing companies. Most importantly, research your audience and understand who you’re targeting for services.
18 Marketing Tips for Roofing Companies
Roofer’s Guild will separate modern marketing techniques (digital marketing specifically) from traditional marketing ventures for organizational purposes.
Modern marketing can be fast-paced and intimidating to roofing contractors across the world.
Still, the possibilities introduced by online promotion are limitless and provide roofers with various channels to grow their business. Let’s review them.
1) Search Engine Optimization
SEO for roofers provides the highest ROI of any competing marketing technique. However, it comes with caveats that sully its reputation.
First, SEO is much like the Wild West because regulations are sparse, and con artists dilute the industry.
Since Google conceals its ranking algorithm, some SEO elements are nothing more than an educated guess. Choosing the right SEO agency to implement your SEO strategy is critical to long-term success.
SEO produces the lowest cost per lead but takes time to implement and develop.
2) Email Marketing
Roofing email marketing remains an effective strategy for internet promotion. With email blasts, there is a right and wrong way to execute the method.
For instance, blindly sending out email blasts to every one of your subscribers is ineffective and provides negative ROI.
In contrast, personalized and custom emails (based on the subscriber’s behaviors) regularly boost sales for roofing companies throughout the U.S.
Email marketing for roofers is a great strategy to earn repeat business from former customers.
In addition, email campaigns can close new customers who previously entered your sales funnel.
Email marketing keeps leads warm and increases the lifetime value of customers.
3) Content Marketing
Think of content as a currency for roofing lead generation. More prospects materialize as more users interact with your content, whether blog posts, YouTube videos, or even podcasts.
Marketing your content requires two primary steps.
First, content creation can be challenging for roofers with limited experience on-camera or behind a computer.
The second is content distribution, which demands an understanding of syndication platforms, including various social media channels.
Google’s algorithm update, “The Helpful Content Update,” cleans up search results laden with low-quality spam copy and replaces it with content that demonstrates clear expertise.
Helpful roofing content demonstrates expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness.
4) Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing for roofing companies is often left unattended despite its documented benefits for properly implementing brands.
Facebook and YouTube, in particular, are goldmines for roofers.
We’ve witnessed countless examples of outgoing roofing owners generating engagement through videos distributed through social media platforms.
Most roofing professionals have sales experience, which can easily translate to video with trial and error. Furthermore, video content works for most social media.
A social media presence helps roofers maintain their exposure to potential customers.
5) Pay Per Click (PPC) / Online Advertising
Roofing companies looking for quick responses often invest marketing dollars into paid advertising through platforms like Google, Facebook, and other digital media.
In particular, Google Ads and Facebook Ads have grown in popularity over the past decade.
Though PPC is a worthwhile venture for most roofers, it’s ineffective for long-term branding.
Consumers attribute your service to a third-party platform (like Google) rather than your company, limiting the likelihood of repeat business.
In contrast to SEO, which takes months to impact your bottom line, PPC ads can yield immediate leads if you target the right keywords.
By the same token, PPC ads also drain your budget quickly.
Paid Ads can supplement your long-term marketing efforts initially as you wait for tactics like SEO to mature and deliver ROI.
Traditional Marketing for Old-School Roofers
Though digital marketing is now front and center for roofing marketing campaigns, old-school methods are still useful in many cases.
Traditionalists may favor old-school techniques over contemporary tactics, but combining traditional and modern marketing practices can produce spectacular results in 2024.
Let’s review some of the more conventional roofer marketing methods below.
6) Billboard Promotion
Promoting your roofing company on a billboard can generate interest, particularly in high-traffic areas. Its impact can occur quickly, but tracking precise results is a significant challenge.
Billboard advertising works on consumers’ psyche, often unconsciously creating ambiguity regarding its ROI.
Additionally, billboards are very costly and can run roofers up to $15,000 in expenses.
Billboard promotion may seem obsolete, but its impact is still valuable.
However, expect to pay substantially to advertise your roofing company using this method.
Billboards impact the consumers’ psyche in ways that digital marketing does not.
7) Print Advertising
Print and newspaper ads, particularly, remain useful for reaching local consumers. Unlike billboards, newspaper ads are affordable and flexible with changes.
The primary downside to print advertising is the increasingly limited amount of viewers.
Most newspaper subscribers have migrated to online versions of the news, contributing to the rise of digital marketing for roofers.
Print advertising represents a more affordable alternative to billboards. However, impressions generated from magazines, newspapers, and other print materials have increasingly decreased in the past decade.
Older customers still value print advertising in their buying decisions despite the landscape shifting significantly toward digital.
8) Radio / Television Spots
There was a time when roofers relied heavily on radio and TV spots to gain notoriety within their local community.
For example, towns hit with hail storms often heard roofing company ads on their local radio stations, which helped maximize lead generation for roofers.
Like with print ads, a large share of radio and TV platforms have been replaced with podcasts and streaming services, emphasizing the importance of digital marketing ventures.
TV spots are now primarily reserved for the largest brands as newcomers shift to digital exposure through podcasts and YouTube.
9) Door Knocking
Door knocking remains one of roofing contractors’ most effective marketing techniques. Door knocking is simply a numbers game with an even greater closing rate than telemarketing.
Despite its upside, door-to-door sales present a set of unique challenges.
Perhaps the most poignant is that it’s too time-consuming.
Roofers often hire canvassers to scout neighborhoods while focusing on other business aspects.
10) Direct Mail
Think of direct mail as traditional email marketing that, when properly implemented, still works.
Some older clients respond to conventional mail more favorably than email and may leave promotional materials around their house or apartment for later viewing (unlike emails).
Measuring open rates and other micro-targeted metrics is impossible with direct mail.
Furthermore, response rates are typically lower than email marketing.
Direct mail can still be an effective promotional tool, particularly for the older demographic within your customer base.
Roofing Marketing Ideas To Consider in 2024
Successful roofing companies all utilize some form of marketing. Finding unique ways to increase visibility can be competitive and challenging.
Roofer’s Guild works with various contractors across the United States to identify innovative measures for lead generation.
Let’s take a look at some of the most effective roofing marketing ideas your company can invest in right now:
11) Custom Website Design
Most roofers have a website, but how many of them are custom? With prominent website builders like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace, custom websites stand out among the crowd.
A custom WordPress website can appeal to a greater cross-section of users and please Google’s algorithm in areas where template-based designs fall short.
Most companies don’t understand how much traffic they lose by using a template website instead of a custom design.
Multi-page websites perform much better on search results and conversions.
Roofing websites are essential to marketing success in 2024.
12) Social Proof
Generating traffic is the first step, but converting it into a sales funnel entry requires additional measures. Users repeatedly cite social proof as one of the essential factors in informing a purchase decision.
Showcasing positive reviews or jobsite check-ins can help humanize your roofing company and instill the necessary trust in future clients as they make a final decision.
Google’s Helpful Content Update has placed a more significant premium on expertise, experience, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T), which social proof embodies.
Showcasing recent jobs is essential to building trust with website visitors.
13) CRM Software
Organization is critical to every aspect of your roofing company, including marketing. Clients improve your reputation through online endorsements as you close more sales and perform efficient jobs.
A CRM that requests reviews on Google, Facebook, and other platforms helps your marketing efforts and expands your reach.
Roofing Advertising Ideas To Ponder in 2024
There’s a saying in business that you have to spend money to make money.
Since its inception, advertising has been part of American culture, and roofing companies with substantial profit margins almost certainly engage in some form of advertising.
Intelligently allocating advertising resources to the proper channels often separates top-rated roofing businesses from their inferior competitors.
Let’s spitball some ideas.
14) Hail Storm PPC
Some contractors might cringe at the thought of targeting towns recently hit by significant hailstorms but believe it or not, hail storm PPC is one of the most popular advertising ideas for roofers.
Sometimes, local roofers can strike gold when their primary service area gets hit with hail.
You may already have a local reputation, and investing in timely PPC ads can bring you to the next level.
If you choose this route, ensure you work only with a qualified and competent PPC campaign manager.
Hailstorms are often a goldmine for roofing companies willing to advertise to affected areas.
15) Ad Retargeting
If you’ve browsed the web and noticed similar or identical ads on multiple websites, an advertiser is retargeting your IP address. Roofers can utilize the same strategy for potential customers.
Facebook and Google Ads support retargeting mechanisms that allow you to get in front of qualified prospects while browsing the internet.
Repeated visibility often makes a difference in large ticket items like roofing services.
Consumers are more willing to pay as they grow more comfortable with your brand.
Ad Retargeting works on warm leads as opposed to initial advertising, which targets cold leads.
16) Industry Influencers
Not every roofer is an email or social media marketing expert or has a large enough audience to warrant considerable ROI.
Rest assured that people within your industry have a larger audience than you, and many are willing to promote your services on their platforms.
Whether someone has a popular roofing YouTube channel or a massive Instagram following, you can pay them to plug your company.
Of course, most social platforms now have rules that require the influencer to tag the post as #sponsored so that users know about money changing hands.
Networking with social media influencers and podcasters can create marketing opportunities in 2024.
Source: YouTube
Bonus Marketing Techniques for Roofers
Most blogs are going to cover the same types of marketing techniques for roofers.
While they may put an innovative spin on some of their suggestions, they aren’t going to tell you anything you haven’t already considered.
Roofer’s Guild will present ideas you probably never even thought about for the following two strategies.
Though these methods are only viable if you properly execute other parts of your marketing campaign, they can take you to the next level if properly executed.
17) Neuromarketing
Neuromarketing targets neural signals to gather customer insights and projects their behaviors, responses, and other activities.
There is some controversy surrounding the concept since it can manipulate consumers without them realizing their motivations.
In other cases, however, neuromarketing can increase brand appeal without breaking ethical boundaries.
For example, designing your logo with red, white, and blue can activate patriotic responses from potential customers.
18) Affiliate Marketing
Selling services is not the only way for roofing companies to make money. Did you know you can make money as a referral partner for other companies?
Let’s say your website ranks for a phrase like best vinyl siding cleaners.
As an authoritative company that does roofing and siding services, you do have a chance to rank for terms like these.
You can link out to product pages for the best cleaning products in exchange for a commission on each sale.
Final Thoughts
Marketing your business is a challenge in 2024. While more options exist, choosing the right strategies takes understanding the roofing industry and your business’s growth trajectory.
Some methods work better than others, depending on your personality, region, and experience.
Still, it helps to understand all the options available for your business.
If your competitors use a specific technique, you should research what they are doing.
Contact us at Roofer’s Guild if you need help optimizing your roofing company marketing strategy in 2024.
