The roofing industry, comprised primarily of small businesses, is growing. Forecasters predict that by 2033 the industry will achieve a value of $342.8 billion. As competition increases, small business owners must consider roofing marketing strategies to stand out from their local competition. Growing a successful roofing business starts with creating a business and marketing plan that focuses on reaching your target audience.
At Teamshares, we’re dedicated to helping small businesses, including local roofing companies, do something that’s never been done before: create a network of employee-owned small businesses that thrive together. Our model fosters an ownership culture that is reinvigorating small businesses across the country after their owners retire.
In this guide, we’ll help roofing business owners navigate key strategies to boost their small businesses and build brand awareness that drives revenue year over year.
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a tried and true marketing method for businesses of any size. For plumbing businesses, email marketing can help nurture and upsell existing customers with promotions and new products.
Many small business owners already use some form of email marketing. Still, chances are your current email marketing can be leveled up. Start by crafting a monthly or bimonthly email newsletter to keep your current customer base up-to-date on products, services, and promotions.
To make this strategy work best for your roofing business, think of specific topics or calls to action (CTAs) that will resonate with your audience
For example:
- Remind customers of required/recommended maintenance (e.g. limiting moss and algae growth)
- Share helpful information or roofing tips to build brand loyalty (e.g. how to clean out gutters)
- Offer seasonal reminders to help customers keep their roof in good condition (e.g. winterizing your roof)
These can be great ways to continually engage your audience and remind them that they need maintenance services at different points during the year.
If you’re stuck, leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT can help with content ideation, email copy, and editing.
2. Customer referral and vendor referral programs
The first step in starting a referral program and receiving customer referrals is providing exceptional customer service. Happy customers become loyal customers who are more likely to spread the word and help bring in new business.
However, it’s always helpful to give customers an incentive. Roofing businesses can incentivize referrals from loyal customers by:
- Offering referees money off their next maintenance service
- Offering a cash reward or credit for each new client they refer
- Running a contest where referring customers get a chance to win a grand prize, like a $500 gift card or a free service
With the right referral-tracking mechanisms, referral programs are inexpensive to run and easy to maintain. Referrals can be given traditionally (via word of mouth) or digitally, which is easier to track, through a referral link generated by referral software.
When a customer shares a unique referral link with family and friends, it traces every referral back to them. When a referred friend makes their first purchase, the customer earns the incentive as a thank you for bringing in the new business.
3. Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps potential customers discover and visit your website. For small businesses, this means optimizing your website content to target industry-specific keywords, making website improvements, and creating a good user experience so that your small business shows up higher than competitors on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs). The goal is to be top of the list when potential customers search for local roofing services.
Optimize for organic traffic
Small business owners should take several crucial steps to optimize their roofing website for SEO and improve their chances of being discovered organically through search engines like Google and Bing.
Conduct keyword research: Keyword research is the foundation of any small business SEO strategy. Determine the keywords your audience is likely to use in their searches and use them to ideate content, optimize your pages, build a site structure, and even curate your Google Business Profile listing. You can use these keywords to optimize your website so that both Google and your potential customers know that your business can provide what they are looking for.
Optimize on-page elements: Optimizing on-page elements, such as titles, meta descriptions, and headers is one of the quickest ways to get SEO wins for small businesses.
Find and fix any existing SEO issues: If you have an existing site, it’s probably worth looking at what needs to be updated. Beyond content, many technical aspects of SEO could negatively affect your rankings and visibility in the SERPs. These can include undiscoverable pages Google can’t crawl, broken links, slow site speed, sitemap errors, duplicate content, or schema implementation errors.
Even if you can’t fix everything, your improvements will only boost your SEO and search visibility.
Monitor your local listings
Local SEO allows small businesses to target local customers within a specific geographic location, improving their performance in local searches.
To improve your local SEO, your important business information (NAP — or name, address, and phone number) must be accurate and consistent. If this information is inaccurate somewhere — for example, on your website or your Google Business Profile — potential customers won’t be able to reach you. And you’ll miss out on business.
Google places great importance on the accuracy and consistency of your local listings — specifically your NAP. This is why it’s essential to monitor your local listings anywhere your business appears online and ensure that all your information is up-to-date and consistent.
4. Location-based marketing
Geofencing is a location-based marketing tactic that allows roofing businesses to target potential customers with personalized advertising campaigns using GPS and virtual boundaries. When an opted-in person physically enters a geofenced area, it can trigger a notification or advertisement on their mobile device. For example, a roofing business may show a social media ad to a person who enters a local hardware store or to someone in a geographic area that recently experienced heavy flooding.
Competitor conquesting is a geofencing strategy that involves setting a geofence around a competitor’s location to turn their prospects into your customers. To succeed with this tactic, your advertisement should highlight what sets your roofing business apart from competitors. Maybe it’s a chapter service, more inventory in stock, or better reviews and customer service ratings.
5. Google Ads for roofers
Google Ads, Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising solution, allows businesses to bid on keywords for a chance to be displayed at the very top of Google search results. When using Google Ads, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad to visit your site or call your business.
Investing in PPC will put your roofing business in front of potential customers who need an immediate or emergency roofing service. For example, you can pay to be at the top of search results for “Phoenix leaking roof repair” during a storm, even if your website is not ranking for those terms organically.
This placement is valuable because the roofing businesses that appear at the very top of the search results are the ones a customer is most likely to contact first for an emergency repair.
PPC can be a cost-effective marketing strategy for small businesses, but it can also get expensive and confusing. Unless you’re working with someone who has experience with PPC, it’s best to start small with your campaigns. For example, you could launch a single campaign targeting local homeowners searching for “emergency roof repair” or “quality roofing services”. Monitor its performance, refine by tweaking keywords, and adjust your budget accordingly.
6. Lead generation tools
Listing your roofing business on lead generation websites can put you in front of consumers who are actively searching for roofing services—with little effort on your part.
Platforms like Angi, HomeAdvisor, and Thumbtack are designed to match customers with companies offering maintenance services, including roofing companies. Once you set up your account, you bid on the jobs you want and send quotes to prospective customers.
Most lead-gen websites run on a pay-per-lead or subscription model, and costs can add up quickly. Make sure to set a monthly budget and define your roofing service area and offerings to get quality leads for your roofing business.
Lead generation websites can also be used to collect customer reviews, which help improve your brand’s reputation and authority.
7. Positive online reviews
Reviews are critical for small businesses, as they can make or break a potential customer’s decision to use you as a provider. One of the best places to garner reviews is through your Google Business Profile since it is often the first impression potential customers will have with your roofing business.
It’s important to train your team on how to collect reviews from customers. Roofing businesses can collect reviews in several ways:
- Offer incentives for customers to leave reviews
- Ask customers in person to leave reviews after a service
- Leave business cards with QR codes that take customers directly to the review page
- Send post-service emails or SMS to thank customers and ask for a review
- Include a link to the review page directly on invoices
Google reviews are a key component of local SEO. Good reviews help ensure your business will show up in local search results, particularly when a customer mentions specific keywords within your review.
8. Social media marketing
Small businesses increasingly rely on social media marketing to reach customers, create brand awareness, and drive sales. To help boost the social presence of your roofing company, here are a few key tips:
- Decide which platform is best for your business: Facebook is one of the most popular platforms on the web for small businesses, so it’s worth experimenting with. Create a Facebook page for your company and post regular updates to it. You can also build a community on Facebook by liking other pages related to your work. Instagram and TikTok also offer great ways to drive engagement through short-form video content.
- Develop a social media calendar: Make a plan for how often you want to post and what kind of content (e.g. seasonal, promotional). This content can align with your other planned content on your blog or email campaigns. Additionally, research what competitor roofing companies are doing and map your calendar accordingly.
- Stay up-to-date on trends: Consider what’s going viral within the roofing industry. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here—tapping into what people are already talking about can be a winning strategy.
- Take advantage of live video: Live video is a great way to engage with customers, respond quickly, and provide a behind-the-scenes look at what goes on during your roofing jobs. It’s also a great way to offer quick tutorials or an inside peek at the day-to-day workings of your business.
- Host a contest or giveaway: Create a contest or giveaway that is centered around your roofing services. For example, offer a free gutter cleaning for one lucky customer from your Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter audiences.
- Take advantage of paid advertising: Social media advertising is a cost-effective way to drive traffic and increase conversions on your website. Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok ads are all great ways of reaching an audience that might not otherwise come across your content organically.
Each of these platforms allows small businesses to target based on location, interests, demographics, and more, allowing you to further personalize your content.
9. Short and long-form video content
TikTok, one of the most popular social media platforms for small businesses, is all about short-form videos. Roofing business owners should capitalize on this platform by making quick how-to videos for DIY roofing fixes and posting them to TikTok or Instagram reels. For example, a roofing business can create short-form videos that show viewers “how to replace a missing or damaged shingle.”
TikTok content is often low-fidelity, meaning even a novice creator without high-quality production equipment can make something that goes viral on the platform.
Reels and video shorts are a great way to boost engagement with existing followers and increase the chances of showing up on Instagram’s “Explore” feed or TikTok’s “For you” page, which helps you reach new audiences.
YouTube is a great platform to leverage for longer videos, such as DIY projects that take longer than twenty minutes. YouTube is also good for building brand awareness and improving your website SEO, as YouTube videos often appear in Google search results.
10. Yard signage
Putting signage outside the home you’re working on is a great way to get more eyes on your business. Many roofing and construction companies will create simple signs that can be placed in the grass of the front yard of a home.
Signage can be left outside for the duration of the job or longer if your client is willing. Roofing companies can give their clients bonuses or discounts in exchange for keeping a lawn sign up for an extended period.
11. Vehicle wrapping
Wrapping a business van turns your vehicle into a mobile billboard for your business. This traditional form of out-of-home (OOH) advertising works great for roofing companies that use a van to carry materials and tools from site to site.
Effective vehicle wraps include your business name, contact info, and a brief listing of services. This way, when people see your van parked outside a client’s house, they know which roofing company is doing the job.
Small business owners can further boost visibility by strategically parking a wrapped van in locations like busy shopping centers or neighborhoods when not in use.
12. Door-to-door promotion
Going door-to-door is one of the oldest methods of advertising, particularly for home services like roofing.
When knocking door-to-door, it’s important to focus your pitch on what’s in it for the potential customers. You’re there to solve a problem for them, so lead with what you’re offering and present a valuable and high-quality roofing job as something that they need.
Keep your pitch simple, introduce yourself, quickly break the ice, tell them why you’re there, and ask an open-ended question.
Here’s a template you can use to craft your perfect porch pitch.
Hello! My name is [YOUR NAME]. I love what you’ve done with your yard! I just worked on [NEIGHBOR’S NAME] roof over on [STREET NAME], and we’re continuing to offer the neighbors in the area free roof inspections.
Did you know that the older your roof, the more risk for leaks and exposure to inclement weather conditions?
When was the last time you had a roof inspection done?
13. HOA partnerships
Getting on the preferred provider list for local HOAs is a reliable way to generate repeat business. To do this, simply ask a neighborhood or small condo HOA in your area if they’d be interested in getting roofing services proposals now or in the future.
Pro Tip: To find homeowners associations in your area, use the ‘location:’ Google search operator in your search by searching: “HOAs location:[town/county]”.
14. Affiliate marketing
As a roofing business, you can also make money as a referral partner for other adjacent businesses. As an established company that offers roofing and siding services, you can sometimes rank in search results for products and services you don’t directly sell, like “best vinyl siding cleaners.” Linking to providers who do offer those products, known as affiliate marketing, is a good way to get more exposure for your business. Simply link out to product pages for the best cleaning products in exchange for a commission on each sale.
Ultimately, the more of these roofing marketing strategies a business implements, the more likely it will be to have visibility within a community and build a strong network of customers.
At Teamshares, we understand the importance of small business survival. Through employee ownership and a model of distributed leadership, we help small businesses with retiring owners continue to operate and create sustainable growth that improves the lives of both employees and communities.
If you’re a broker or a retiring business owner, find out if Teamshares is the right buyer for your small business.
