If you’re reading this, you already know that finding roofing leads is challenging.

If you feel overwhelmed, don’t worry. We’re here to help.

Although there might be a bit of a learning curve at first, learning what marketing strategies are effective for bringing in leads doesn’t need to be complicated.

In this post, we’re going to share some practical, proven roofing marketing ideas that any roofing contractor can use to take their business to the next level.

Starting with the most obvious…

Remember when you first started your business and were trying to get customers? You may have been canvassing and knocking on doors to try to get the word out.

Well, even in the digital economy, that kind of “face time” is still important and effective for generating roofing leads because it builds authority and genuine trust.

If this type of word-of-mouth marketing is working for you, great! Keep doing that alongside your digital marketing efforts.

Here are a few ideas to maximize the amount of face time you can get with your ideal prospects:

Check out this short Facebook Live that Daniel Young at Kingdom Roofing Systems did. The video is personal, helps create connection between the brand and the homeowners, and genuinely makes you like Kingdom Roofing! This video alone with surely generate a couple of roofing leads!

Your face is your brand, and transparency is key here, so showing your face is really one of the simplest ways to earn trust and connect with potential customers.

Also, remember that one of the best roofing marketing ideas is to use complimentary tactics strategically: face time and digital marketing can amplify each other!

For instance, if people have seen your Facebook ads and then see you at a local event, they already know your name, and thus they feel they already “know” you.

To get more roofing leads you need to show up in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), which means you should constantly be learning how to improve your SEO.

Here are some simple tips for boosting your SERP ranking:

A big component of this is knowing where your strength and pitfalls are. We recommend that all contractors self evaluate their online presence.

Check out our 9-step checklist to evaluate your online presence to get you supercharge your online presence and get you more roofing leads!

Before the digital age, sometimes it would take press coverage for the word to get around about exceptionally bad — or good — service (unless you’re in a small town where word travels fast).

But today, customers around the world can now talk about you in the blink of an eye, which is both a blessing and a boon.

For better or worse, business these days have to do more work in the field of reputation management.

While this phrase may sound like something an old-school HR manager might come up with (yikes!), knowing that — at least theoretically — anyone can write anything they want about you publicly is actually a good motivator to be totally transparent with your customers.

But with so many sites to constantly check, how are you supposed to really keep track?

Fortunately, there are plenty of tools that can do this for you!

We love to recommend both NiceJob for this fancy trick they like to call reputation marketing, and puleM for those loosing for reputation management.

Aside from tools, here are some tips to leverage the power of reviews for generating roofing leads:

Even further, nearly all major media platforms have their own hack to generate more testimonials. Here are 25 proven ways to get more customer reviews on social media.

Pro Tip: Want to take this a step further? Nothing sells better than a video of your customers telling others how great you are. Ask your next happy customer for a video testimonial, and follow this guide to knock it out of the park!

How you build and use your website will influence your marketing activities — but just creating one won’t automatically improve roof sales.

Hint: It doesn’t necessarily matter how “flashy” your website is; function should be your first consideration.

You can think of your roofing website like a static meeting place — a combination of a brick-and-mortar office and a business card — where you direct people.

Unless you use specific strategies (like a high-converting landing page) in tandem with specific marketing activities, it’s not guaranteed that your website will bring you traffic just by existing! (But it can — see point #2.)

That being said, your website needs to be in top-shape so that people stay awhile when they stumble upon it.

What we’re talking about here is basic user experience (UX). Beyond being SEO-friendly, it needs to be user-friendly, which means:

Pro Tip: With a plethora of information about there, we narrowed it down and created the 10 contractor website must-haves to generate quality roofing leads.

According to Smart Insights, video marketing can be extremely effective, with over 70% of customers choosing video as the most effective way to learn about your products.

A video — even a quick real-time “story” as you complete interesting features on your build or source new materials — can be one of the simplest but most engaging of all roofing marketing ideas.

Informative, niche-based videos like this one on YouTube show your authority, build trust, and give you high engagement on social channels. They are also great evergreen (forever) content that you can re-purpose time and time again.

Contractors like Epic Roofing, are even using this type of unique content creation to boost their roofing leads by 300%.

Creating any sort of content for roofing lead generation, can be nerve racking, especially when your face is front and center!

Here’s a great way to get started:

Create a 3-minute video on your mobile phone explaining the answer to a frequently asked question, then watch it and critique yourself. Is it “good enough” to post? If not, practice another the following morning, and so on.

For example, you could do something like Eagle Eye Roofing, and talk about the most common roof leaks.

If you’re nervous about sharing your video with clients, do a trial run by sharing with your friends and family and ask them for your feedback first.

These “quickie” videos are supposed to show your “real” face, so they don’t have to be perfect. With a little practice, you’ll see how quick and easy it is to create something useful and engaging on the fly!

Within no time you’ll see those roofing leads come pouring in! You may even get recognized at the grocery store as “that roofing guy”!

Content is so much more than blogging! In order to improve roof sales, you’ll definitely want to test out video. But there are plenty of different ways to attract exclusive roofing leads via the written word (or a strategic combination of visual and written content).

Here are some examples of content you can create:

When you build a content base and ensure that it is relevant, useful and high quality, you can then help it spread like wildfire through your social media channels.

Not sure what to write about? Check out Google and your own FAQs to generate content topic ideas out of popular keywords and key phrases.

Think of your customers’ 5 biggest pain points related to the services you offer, then plan out 5 new pieces of content for the next 5 weeks.

Once you have that content you can write about it on your blog, put in in video form, and then share it on your social media channels.

Talk about a triple threat for generating exclusive roofing leads!

From chatbots to virtual reality demos, there’s always new technology to try out which has the potential to increase engagement and essentially improve roof sales, but only if you use it well.

There’s no need to dive headfirst into a multitude of high-tech tools, especially if you aren’t quite sure how to use them yet.

One simple way to get familiar with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology (if you aren’t already using it) is to try installing a simple chatbot and practice it with colleagues before you try it with customers.

In their capacity to answer simple questions, direct requests, and gather contact information (just to name a few functions), chatbots can be extremely useful when trying to generate more roofing leads.

You can easily install live chat tools like ManyChat, MobileMonkey or Zendesk, and test it out to get familiar with its capabilities and how it might fit into your marketing strategy.

Pro Tip: Check out some of our favourite contractor tech on our YouTube Channel.

You probably learned about co-operation in grade school, and then about competition in business class. Well these days in the digital marketing world, cooperation is more likely to get you more roofing leads.

Why?

When you market with similar companies in your niche, you have the potential to reach the right audience without having to spend time or money on targeting. What’s more, you can collaborate on all sorts of promotional activities: events, podcasts, social posts, etc.

For example, we teach and provide value to roofers on The Roofer Show Podcast, and in exchange, roofers get to learn about our PPC services and how we might be able to help them. It’s a win-win for both the podcast host (he gets expert content for his podcast) and us (leads!).

Co-marketing is a low-risk and high opportunity activity which helps you build your network, exchange ideas, and just have fun with like-minded people, to name just a few possible perks.

Plus, it shows you are generous and supportive with your business peers.

Wondering how to get started?

Write down the names of 5 people in your industry that you think might be able to send you roofing leads — think of painters who know homeowners, plumbers who might service businesses, etc., and reach out to them in order to discuss partnerships and co-marketing initiatives.

Have you tried investing in a paid advertising strategy like Pay-Per-Click? Or maybe you have but it wasn’t too effective?

It’s not right for everyone, but if you know your numbers, it may be an excellent strategy to help you grow!

Admittedly, we are a bit biased as this is our wheelhouse, but the success we’ve seen with contractors who invest in paid ads is HUGE.

They are able to generate predictable, qualified roofing leads that come to them!

Check out how this roofing contractor generates 300+ roofing leads per month with paid ads.

Looking to leverage paid ads for your contracting business? Here is your 5-step game plan:

Ever heard about Tim Ferris’ book The Four Hour Workweek and thought it was unachievable?

The most successful business people are the ones who develop innovative systems which allow their business to effectively run without them being present.

This doesn’t mean that you automatically get a “four hour” workweek, but it does mean that you can get to a point where you’re mostly hands-off, if that’s something you want (which I’m sure is the goal for a large portion of you)

Having systems and operations in place is going to be key to you shifting from being a doer of all things to a leader of great people.

We partnered with the folks at Breakthrough Academy as they help contractors create the systems so that they know how to run an efficient business before and after the roofing leads are generated.

“Snail mail:” does it still work?

Actually, yes! Putting a concrete, colorful, paper visual in someone’s hands is still one of the most effective ways to build brand awareness and get more roofing leads.

According to the ANA (2018) direct mail has a high response rate, and can be up to nine times higher than email.

A 2015 Gallup Poll suggests that some 41% of American Adults look forward to getting their mail daily.

For some people, having something tangible in their hands works. And tack a lead magnet or compelling offer onto this you may have a winner!

And plus, according to a 2013 report from The Direct Marketing Association, direct mail is the 3rd best tool to use in tandem with email, only losing out to online and social media marketing.

In fact, people are likely to open 90% of their direct mail, but only about 20-30% of their email.

The direct marketing association also states that 33% of consumers actually bother to hop on their computers in response to direct mail — a perfect example of how the two channels can work in tandem.

Here are some quick tips for making the most out of direct mail:

These days there are plenty of accessible digital marketing tools out there for people of all backgrounds and skills.

Trying out different roofing marketing ideas will help you understand your business and your clients while learning useful new skills.

If you start marketing your roofing business without a plan or a marketing expert by your side, you might very well become overwhelmed.

Don’t be afraid to hand over the reins to a contractor marketing expert. There’s a lot of value in learning the basics, but there comes a time when it makes more sense to focus on what you do best — operating your roofing business!