Want more Roofing leads at a lower cost?

Of course you do.

Some contractors would be tempted to take out a bunch of roofing Facebook ads, hire a pay-per-lead service, or ramp up TV advertising.

If you’re looking to get more roofing leads at a lower cost, these strategies should not be your first choice. Yes, pay per lead services can have their benefits and Facebook Marketing for roofers is all the rage, but we have a few better ideas…

Below you’ll find five foolproof roofing marketing strategies proven to increase your leads while lowering your cost per lead. We use the same tactics on our roofing clients, so you can be sure they’ll actually work.

Have questions at the end? We’re a click away.

1. Make Your Roofing Website Your 24/7 Sales Representative

Your roofing website should be your 24/7 sales representative and should bring in massive amounts of new leads. If you want your website to work for you, it needs to be four things:

• It needs to be fast: The average customer expects a web page to load in three seconds or less.
• It needs to be functional: Websites should be properly coded for SEO, which means adding structure to the site with metadata such as schema, optimized images, and title and meta tags.
• It needs to be mobile-friendly: 57% of all U.S. online traffic now comes from smartphones and tablets. Having a site that is optimized to be mobile-friendly is a must.
• It needs to be secure: Over 40% of the sites on the first page of Google are HTTPS, which is not a surprise since Google has confirmed that they favor HTTPS sites.
• It needs to be full of helpful, quality content: A large ranking factor in search engines is the quality of your content. Not sure what that means? Learn about how Google categorizes quality content here.

If your website is missing one of those key components, you have your work set out for you.

Increase Your Website Conversion Rate with a Redesign

One of the best low-cost ways to get more leads is to increase your website’s conversion rate with a website redesign.

Here’s the truth of it: Yes, a good website can be expensive. However, the return you’ll get will eclipse the up-front cost.

I’ll give you an example. A roofing contractor in the Washington, DC area wanted more roofing leads at a lower cost. After looking at all the options, our specialists discovered a few problems with his website design that hindered quality lead growth.

We had two options: Spend less up-front by ignoring the website issues and going after “cheaper” roofing leads via pay-per-lead services, or invest in a website redesign to target higher-paying jobs and bump the conversion rate.

Many roofing contractors would go after the PPC and pay-per-lead strategy that “guarantees” more leads and costs less up-front. Here’s the problem most roofing contractors face when they choose that option—sure, they’ll get more leads at a lower cost, but you can’t control what kind of leads you get.

I’ll put it this way. Let’s assume your website gets 2,000 visits per month, has a visit-to-lead conversion rate of 2%, and has a lead-to-sale close rate of 25%.  

• You spend $5,000 on a website redesign focused on attracting higher-paying roofing jobs and increasing its conversion rate from 2% to 3%
• As a result, you get 60 leads for large roofing jobs over $10,000 = possible revenue of at least $600,000
• 60 leads x 25% sale close rate = 15 roofing jobs over $10,000 = minimum of $150,000 in sales
• $150,000 in sales – $5,000 website redesign investment = minimum of $145,000 total revenue

Now, let’s see the outcome of taking the pay-per-lead route:

• You spend $1,000 on a pay per lead service
• You get 100 leads for small roofing jobs $3,000 and under = possible revenue of no more than $300,000
• 100 leads x 25% sale close rate = 25 roofing jobs under $3,000 = maximum of $75,000 in sales
• $75,000 in sales – $1000 investment = maximum of $74,000 total revenue

Math wins.

The roofing contractor took our advice and agreed to put his budget into a website redesign.

Guess what happened?

JUST from the website redesign, they saw:

• 53% increase in organic traffic
• 922% increase in tablet conversion rate
• 33% increase in main contact form conversion rate

Show me a pay-per-lead platform that both increases HIGH-QUALITY leads and increases conversion rate and I will eat my hat.

2. Master SEO for Roofers

Above we mentioned that we made sure the roofer’s new website targeted higher-paying roofing jobs. Want to know how we do that?

Search engine optimization, that’s how.

Over 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine and 47% of individuals click on one of the first three listings in the search results page. Not only that, but there are also more than 1.2 million online searches for roofing services each month:

If you want these searchers to become quality, exclusive roofing leads you need to show up in the top of Google search results. The top listing commands 19.2% of total clicks, and the click-through-rate drops dramatically from there. Optimizing your website and local listings can make the difference between a customer in need calling you—or calling your competitor.

Here’s how it works: Google and other search engines crawl pages on the web, categorizing them and indexing them in what would be the universe’s biggest library. When you search for something, you’re putting in a request to the library. Google uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to decipher your search term and spit out web pages you’ll find useful.

Here’s where SEO comes in. Search crawlers speak a different language than we do—HTML. So, they need some extra help to determine what a web page is about so they can correctly index it.

Think of it like this: you’ve gone to the world’s biggest library, but the librarian speaks Russian, and all the books are in English. By optimizing your website for search, you’re using specific tactics—like adding in extra bits of code and structuring your website a specific way—that act like subtitles and make it easier for crawlers to understand, categorize, and index each web page.

While there are more than 200 actual ranking signals, here’s what you should focus on if you want your roofing marketing plan to work:

• Secured sites (HTTPS vs. HTTP)
• Websites that are mobile-friendly
• Schema markup
• Webpage content quality
• Webpage content length
• Page speed
• Social signals
• Quality backlinks
• Optimized images
• Domain age

Get Your Roofing Company Ranked in Google’s Local Pack (Map Listing)

When you search for a service online (one with “local intent”, such as “roofing company Miami, FL”), an image of a map may appear below the PPC ads showing a few company listings:

This is what’s referred to as Google’s local pack. If you want to rank there, you need to:

1. Claim and optimize your Google My Business page
2. Optimize your website content for your local service area
3. Get reviews on Google My Business and other online platforms

Also, make sure you’ve claimed and updated all your listings on the following directories:

• HomeAdvisor
• Superpages
• Yellowpages
• eLocal
• Yelp
• BBB
• Yahoo Local
• DexKnows
• Nextdoor

When you create or optimize a listing, make sure the NAP (name, address, and phone number) information is consistent. Google needs this information to verify that your listings and your website match and present credible information.

3. Use Pay Per Click Ads to Increase Booked Roofing Jobs

Pay per click advertising (PPC) allows roofing contractors anywhere to be found on the first page of Google right away. It’s a type of internet marketing and advertising in which advertisers display ads in the search results and on different websites and pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked. Cost per click (CPC) can run anywhere from $0.05 to upwards of $50.00 for the most competitive keywords.

For high commercial intent searches (where a person is looking to buy a product), paid ads receive 65% of all clicks.

The two biggest benefits of PPC advertising are controlled visibility and relevance. Traditional advertising, which many contractors continue to rely on, interrupts people that may or may not be interested or in the market for roofing services. Pay per click advertising only puts your message or ad in front of people actively interested in it or ready to make a buying decision. 

Remarket Your Roofing Services

There’s one PPC strategy that you NEED to take advantage of: remarketing. Only 2% of website visitors, on average, will convert into roofing leads. Remarketing goes after the other 98%.

Have you ever visited a website and all of a sudden you see ads for it everywhere? That’s remarketing. It allows your company to seem like they’re “following” people around the web. Remarketing WORKS—customers who see retargeted ads are 70% more likely to convert on your website.

Another great reason remarketing is such a great source of leads for plumbers is that there are TONS of different kinds and platforms to choose from:

• Video remarketing (Google Ads)
• Search remarketing (Google Ads)
• Display remarketing (Google Ads)
• Social media remarketing: You can use LinkedIn remarketing, Facebook remarketing and Pinterest remarketing. LinkedIn is great for commercial roofing marketing.
• Customer list email remarketing

4. Test Google Local Services Ads for Roofers

Have you seen these in the search results?

Those are called Local Services ads. Local Services ads are pay per lead ads that appear at the very top of the search engine results page and receive 13.8% of local SERP clicks. Unlike traditional PPC search ads, you don’t target keywords, you target services. Google approves eligibility,  advertisers choose from a list of available services for their industry and their service area.  When a person’s online search query matches criteria for those services, their ad will be eligible to show.

From our tests, they work to increase quality, affordable leads for contractors. Check out the results a client of ours recently got:

• GLSA Revenue: $54,095
• GLSA Cost: $5,745.58
• ROI: 9:1
• CPL: $16.36

5. Take Advantage of Email Marketing

Email marketing can help you generate more sales by allowing you to:

• Keep in touch with customers
• Advertise specials, coupons, and exclusive rebates
• Improve brand awareness

Stay connected to your entire customer base and increase customer loyalty with the click of a button. Email marketing is one roofing marketing strategy you don’t want to miss—44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. If you want to generate and close leads with minimal investment, include email marketing in your online marketing strategy.

Having Trouble Executing Your Roofing Marketing Plan? We’re Roofing Marketing Pros. Let Our Roofing Marketing Agency Do the Heavy Lifting

If the above seems like too much for you to do on your own, you’re just like the hundreds of roofing companies we’ve helped over the years. You need to focus on running your business.

So—trust us to help you out. We market your business as if it were our business—meaning we strive to truly be your VP of marketing, tracking and measurably justifying your investment in our online marketing services.

To sweeten the pot, we have extensive experience helping roofers just like your get more roofing leads and sales from the web, and we have a roofer marketing playbook we KNOW works. Call us today and we’ll refer you to our happy roofing clients!