Roofing Marketing Guide From Broadly

Marketing is critical for any local roofing contractor or business. Roofers can consistently miss out on potential customers without a comprehensive roofing marketing plan.

The Importance of Creating an Online Presence for Your Roofing Company

Business owners in the roofing industry are often so busy with the day-to-day activities of running a small business that creating robust and effective marketing strategies can be pushed to the side. However, without digital marketing and lead generation tactics, small businesses risk missing out on new roofing job opportunities.

Homeowners in your service area are using search engines to find roofers to work on their houses. They want to read reviews and get referrals to figure out if you are a reputable firm.

Online testimonials are incredibly helpful in gaining new customers. Today’s word-of-mouth is happening online.

Additionally, they need to be able to quickly spot your phone number, email address, or roofing website to contact you. A solid online presence will ensure new customers discover you, find you trustworthy, and want to hire your roofing business.

Roofing Marketing Tools

Creating an online marketing plan for your roofing services will generate more leads and help you build your business. Here are a few roofing marketing tips for your marketing strategy:

Mobile-Friendly Website

One of the first and most important things you can do to market your roofing business is to have a mobile-friendly website. Often, new leads search for service providers on their mobile devices, and your website should be easy to use, quick to load and clean. Moreover, if your website is mobile-friendly, Google will show it higher in search results.

Blogging

Having a blog on your website is a great way to share helpful roofing information while creating better search engine optimization (SEO). Writing blogs that have essential, highly-searched keywords will help your website rank higher on search engines and directories.

The free tool Google Keyword Planner recommends keywords to use for your particular business. Creating a content marketing strategy for your roofing business can also include other channels, such as YouTube.

Social Media Marketing

Using sites such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, business owners can create roofer marketing campaigns that engage potential customers. Appearing in search results organically with helpful content is important, and roofers should aim to use multiple social media platforms, if possible.

Local Search Engine Optimization

As a business owner, you need a roofing website. Being searchable in your local area is one of the best ways to get discovered by new customers. When building or updating your website, make sure you’re building it for SEO.

If potential customers search for roof repair, roofing or roofing services in your area, you want to show up as one of the first options for them to choose from. Using local SEO, you can rank higher in the search results.

Google Business Profile

Make sure your roofing business is listed on Google using Google Business Profile. This helps you manage your business listing on Google and is free. If your business is already listed on Google, you should claim it so you can control the public information and respond to customer reviews.

SMS Marketing

SMS marketing, or text message marketing, has become a critical part of building roofing businesses in recent years. Almost every single person has their cell phone with them at all times. Using text messaging marketing, you’re almost guaranteed to reach your potential customers where they are, instead of hoping for the best when reaching out to them through other channels.

Email Marketing

Email marketing offers one of the highest levels of return on investment (ROI) of all the marketing tactics. Before you start email marketing, you’ll first need to focus on collecting emails from potential, current and past customers.

If you offer incentives, like discounts or free guides, you can ask for emails in return. When sending email campaigns, you’ll want to show up regularly in inboxes. Commit to a cadence that feels achievable for you and your team and stick to it.

Referral Program

A great way to get word-of-mouth referrals that are super-charged is to have a dedicated referral marketing program. Asking satisfied customers to leave feedback, reviews, or testimonials on review sites can foster a great online presence while also showcasing your business to potential customers.

Offering incentives for customers to refer their friends or families can also strengthen your customer base, and gain access to customers you might not have otherwise gotten the attention of. Referrals allow for praise that is always genuine, making it an easy way to get your roofing business new customers while keeping happy repeat ones.

Tip: Referral Program Ideas

Seasonal Offerings

During the slow season, offer some discounts! On the flip side, have a plan in place for when major weather events may harm roofs in the area. That way, no matter whether it’s peak season or slow season, you can use the different times of the year to your marketing advantage.

Advertise on Your Work Site

When someone walks by a house and sees roofing being done by a reputable team, they’ll likely want to know who the business is. Save them the trouble of asking by placing signage on-site during jobs so that the information is easily accessible. Be open to answering questions while working as well; that interest can turn into a new customer in a heartbeat.

Co-market with Other Home Service Businesses

Customers who are doing multiple renovation projects are quick to jump on deals that businesses have. Partner with a gutter cleaning company or other exterior service, such as landscaping companies, to share leads. Businesses that get drawn in by the partner business will get funneled your way and vice versa, leading to more business for both of you. Give discounts to customers that combine services as well to sweeten the deal.

Maintaining Strong Relationships with Roofing Customers

While a marketing strategy is important for future business, maintaining strong relationships with current and past roofing customers is just as important. Your past and current customers can be your best asset in finding new ones.

Importance of customer retention

It is much cheaper and easier to retain customers than it is to invest in finding new customers. If your roofing company provides great service, customers will want to come back when they have future roofing needs.

Because you have an existing relationship with the customer, trust and goodwill are already established. Providing excellent customer service and great communication will help you retain customers and spend less time searching for new business.

Online Reviews

As mentioned earlier, word-of-mouth and customer testimonials are crucial to take your business to the next level. Providing great service, and then asking your customers to leave reviews is an important practice to adopt. For some, this can be laborious but there are great companies out there to help you manage this process from start to finish.

Web Chat

Being available immediately when customers need help leads to higher customer satisfaction and thus, customer retention and referrals. Web Chat enables you to instantly answer questions about their current roofing job, a future roofing need, or billing and payment. It allows you to have direct conversations with your customers when you already have their attention.

Online Advertising

While online advertising does cost money, it can be a great strategy for business owners who want to ensure they rank higher than the competition on common search engine platforms. Online advertising should be used in conjunction with local SEO efforts. It should also be noted that when running ad campaigns, business owners need to create the ads themselves.

Google Ads

Roofers can use Google Ads to target specific search keywords and phrases that your leads may use while searching for a roofer on Google. Google Ads is a pay-per-click (PPC) model, which means you pay each time the ad shows up on a Google search.

Within the Google Ads platform, business owners can create a very specific target audience so that when your ad is served, it is only shown to high-quality, qualified leads.

Facebook Ads

Similar to Google Ads, roofers can use Facebook Ads to target specific audiences in their local area. Facebook is still a huge platform that many people use to search for local businesses. Facebook is a cost-per-click (CPC) model, meaning you pay a certain amount each time a lead clicks on your ad.

Roofing Marketing FAQs

How do I generate more roofing leads?

There are a lot of ways to generate more roofing leads, many of which are covered above, however, here are a few key tactics:

• Direct mail
• Local SEO
• Facebook and/or Google Ads
• Content marketing
• Email marketing
• Industry-specific directories

How do I improve my roofing business’s reputation?

Your business’s online presence and reputation go hand-in-hand. To improve your reputation, you should focus on trying to get more online reviews from your customers.

One way to do this is with a referral program incentive. This may mean the referrer gets a percentage of any confirmed customers they bring to your roofing business. You may also want to work with a company to help manage the review process, like Broadly.

Where should roofing companies advertise online?

If money were no object, it would make sense to advertise everywhere you possibly could. However, most businesses have budgets, so Google Ads and Facebook Ads are both great places to start advertising. Business owners can set spending limits on both platforms, helping them to manage their marketing budgets effectively.

Grow Your Roofing Business with Broadly

Broadly helps roofing business owners build a strong, lasting online presence and reputation. Supporting over 6,000 local businesses, Broadly helps businesses improve their customer experiences, online marketing strategies, and lead generation tactics to grow their business and maintain powerful customer relationships.