Roofing Marketing to Get More Leads and Boost Conversions

Roofing Marketing Strategies

Winning new clients is becoming harder in the current economy and the profit margins are shrinking. To keep your roofing business and grow your client base you need efficient roofing marketing strategies. Luckily, you are in the right place.

dNOVO marketing experts have collaborated to create this comprehensive guide for roofing business owners. You will learn how to strengthen your online presence, attract more leads, convert more customers, work with reputation, and make the most of social media.

Before we discuss the peculiarities of roofing marketing strategies, we’d like to discuss several important aspects that differentiate the roofing industry from other industries.

Understanding the Roofing Industry in Canada

The key talking points of this section are based on two major industry reports by IBIS World Report, BBB and Canadian Statistics.

The roofing industry in Canada has undergone dramatic changes in the past 5 years. During the pandemic in 2020, there was a temporary increase in renovation projects of residential housing while commercial projects were suspended. However, the increase in interest rates and pandemic aftermath hit the house owners and negatively impacted the demand.

This increase in commercial projects boosted by the post-pandemic growth cannot make up for the loss. Individual owners of residential housing (15M private dwellings) are the main clients for roofing services with 94% of projects being roof renovation.

The majority of Canadian roofing companies compete locally within their province or city for these projects. Few market players operate nationwide and participate in large commercial tenders.

Despite market saturation and a decrease in demand, the number of roofing businesses grew by 2.8% from 8,272 in 2021 to 8,506 in 2022.

We’ve seen disproportionate increases in worker employment (~1%) and wages (~1.7%). Still, Statistics Canada reported a worker shortage in 2022 with 4,935 unfilled positions.

Finally, the margin profits of roofing companies are expected to decrease by 0.4% points annually (from 8.2% in 2023 to 5.2% in 2028).

Key Takeaways for Your Roofing Marketing Strategy

Upon analyzing the current state of the Canadian roofing industry, we can make several conclusions.

First, the increase in roofing businesses alongside the decrease in roofing projects means that competing with other roofing companies will be harder for your firm.

Second, with the depletion of workers, you’ll have to compete for them too by increasing their wages and working conditions. It will shrink your margin profits and will limit your ability to grow.

Third, a good marketing strategy focuses on three main things:

1. Client acquisition
2. Client retention
3. Upsell.

Any business wants to retain as many clients as possible because the Cost of Customer Acquisition is always higher than the cost of retention.

Unfortunately, it’s extremely hard for a Canadian roofing business to retain clients since the majority of customers are individual owners. So, once the renovation project is over, you can most certainly forget you have had these clients for at least 15 years unless they decide to buy a new property in your area. Upselling is also hard to implement.

Summing up, to compete with other companies in the current industry state, your roofing business needs solid roofing marketing strategies that focus on customer acquisition. Luckily this guide will provide you with the best strategies to boost lead generation and conversion.

Marketing Materials for Contractors

Interested in other marketing materials for contractors? Check out our guides:

• Roofing SEO
• Contractor Marketing
• Contractor SEO
• Construction Marketing
• Construction SEO
• Landscaping Marketing
• Home Remodeling Marketing
• HVAC Marketing
• Plumbing Marketing

Business Website for Roofing Companies

Let’s start with the basis for your digital marketing – the roofing website. Today it’s hard to find a successful business without an online presence and roofing contractors aren’t an exception.

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A roofing website can benefit your company in multiple ways:

1. Provide essential business information for website visitors (from your contacts to your services).
2. Attract potential customers with high-quality SEO-optimised content.
3. Convert leads to clients.
4. Answer the frequently asked questions.

Essentially, all other online assets that you might have (like social media, business listings, YouTube channels, email campaigns, etc.) should lead people to your website.

We suggest that your roofing website contain the following types of content:

1. Home page
2. Service pages
3. Contacts & Book Consultation
4. Gallery with works
5. Operation locations
6. Blog
7. Proof of trustworthiness

Let’s quickly overview each element.

Home page

The main page is the centrepiece of your roofing website. In many cases, it’s the first page your potential customers will see. You need to make sure to put all the essential information on it. The first screen is the most critical part of your home page. Check out this example below:

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You can see that the first screen contains:

• the category of services the company delivers
• their location
• several critical selling points (like the promise of qualified workers, the speed of reply, the region, the competitive prices, etc).
• the ranking website icons for trustworthiness
• the book free inspection widget

Service pages

Services pages are essential roofing marketing tactics for two reasons. First, they inform your potential customers about the services you provide. You can provide all the essential information about a particular type of work right there. Your service page can address the main concerns of your clients, describe how the process will go, list the necessary roofing materials, etc.

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In the screenshot above, you can see all the roofing services a company provides plush extra services like siding, exterior renovations, etc. It’s readily available in the navigation menu for your potential customers.

Contacts & Book Consultation

The contact page is an essential part of your website visitors to be able to easily get in touch with you. In addition to that, we suggest having your phone number and book (free) consultation (inspection) widget on all the pages of your website.

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Such marketing tactics have multiple advantages. First, your website visitors don’t need to take extra actions while on your pages. Once they’ve decided to try you out, your widget is readily available for them.

Second, it’s always best to collect the contact information of people interested in your services. If you don’t close the deal now, you can use this data for targeted email marketing campaigns. You can also ask a person in charge of your roofing sales to get back to this customer later and potentially convert them.

Third, many people prefer minimizing contacts over the phone and choose other forms of communication like email or texts. It’s good to give them such an opportunity.

Gallery with your Works

Visuals are essential for successful digital marketing efforts. They attract and hold human attention for a longer period of time. Unlike written text, visuals can be reused across multiple marketing channels, including social media, email marketing, business directories, and PPC.

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Service Area

In the first section of this guide, we talked about how roofing firms in Canada are local businesses that only cater to a small area. It’s best to point that to your potential customers right on your website.

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In the screenshot above, the company provided the map for their potential customers to see the areas of service, scrolling down the page will take you to the list of counties and towns they operate in.

Additionally, this roofing company and many others create separate pages for each town it operates in. For example, this is a special page for roofing services in Niagara Falls.

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This decision has three benefits. First, they will get to the top of Google local search in this particular town more easily. Second, they can successfully compete against all local businesses, especially those that don’t have specific pages for the towns.

Third, they made the buyer journey of their local customers much easier. It is much harder for people in small towns to look for a roofing contractor that operates in their area. They’ll have to call multiple firms to find out their service area. You can solve this problem for them by providing a readily available answer right on Google.

Blog

The blog is essential for building a buyer journey for your customers and for your SEO strategy. Blogs contain longer articles that can educate your website visitors on the peculiarities of roofing services and answer their most frequently asked questions.

We’ll talk about the blog in great detail in our section dedicated to content strategy.

Proof of trustworthiness

A roofing project is pricy and inconvenient for a house owner. Many people prefer to move out during the repairment work especially if they have little kids or work from home. The failed project can have long-term damaging consequences to the client’s life and their house.

That’s why, potential clients will want to see some proof of the quality of your services. Customer testimonials and high rankings on websites for roofing contractors can help build trust.

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In the screenshot above, you can see the screenshot of a roofing company website featuring multiple ranking websites from Google reviews to GAF with high ratings for their work. They also have a five-star icon on the top of the page alongside the phone button. It’s present on all website pages.

Paid Advertising of Roofing Services

Paid advertising is one of the best ways to start aggressively marketing your roofing company. It can be especially helpful if you’ve just started your SEO strategy, the traffic to your website and your positions in search engines are is still low.

Google Ads and other banner ads can bring you new traffic and customers that you can easily convert. It will positively impact SEO and will give you a constant flow of new customers. It can also get you valuable backlinks from social media, news outlets and other websites.

The best part about Google Ads campaigns is your ability to get to the top of the ranking pages of search engines for the keywords that are very difficult to target. For example, check out these results for the keyword roofing companies Edmonton:

Google Ads also appear on YouTube, and all the users without a premium account will be able to see your ad in their search or even before the video begins. Here’s an example of

Apart from Google Ads, we highly recommend trying advertising on social media, like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

There are several types of landing pages for your PPC campaign:

1. Your main page
2. Your service page
3. Special landing page for the campaign (e.g., budget calculator for roofing project)

It will depend on the keyword that you will choose for your campaign.

SEO for Roofing Marketing

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one of the key drivers of digital marketing for a roofing company. Long-term SEO efforts can help you get your website pages at the top of a Google search. In this guide we’ll be touching on the basics of SEO as part of roofing marketing efforts and its 4 main components:

• Website optimization
• Keyword Research
• Link Building
• Local SEO

Website Optimization

With the abundance of websites and web pages on the Internet, Google can now choose between them to offer users the best ones in terms of both content and user experience. Those sites that are optimized for mobile devices, have great navigation and fast load are ranked higher than websites with similarly great content but lacking these qualities.

The goal of website optimisation is to analyze website performance, identify the errors and drawbacks and fix them. Luckily, there are plenty of paid and free-of-charge tools that can help you with website optimization. Check out this

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Keyword Research

Keywords are one of the most important parts of your roofing marketing campaigns. You’ll need them not only for SEO but also for content development, PPC and SMM.

When choosing keywords for your website, you need to pick short-tail and long-tail keywords. Let’s take a closer look at both categories.

Short-tail Keywords

The short-tail consists of one or several words. Usually, they describe the type of services a person is looking for for example the keyword roofing services:

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It has a relatively low volume of monthly searches (210) and a low difficulty of 22%. However, it also has a commercial intent meaning that people looking up this keyword are considering various roofing professionals to hire.

Another category of keywords you’ll need to optimize for is the keywords that describe a certain type of roofing job. For example, roof repair in the screenshot below has a volume of 2.9K searches, fairly low difficulty, and commercial intent:

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A more specific keyword metal roof installation has a smaller volume, higher difficulty and informational intent, meaning that people are willing to learn more about this process.

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Long-tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are good for blogs and guides. Check out this one: How to install metal roofing is a ready-made title for a good content piece. You can start by sharing your knowledge with readers. Later in the content you can offer your roofing services and provide a link to a service page for metal roofing.

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Link building

In the example above, we offered to create a blog post about the installation methods for metal roofs with a link to a respective service page. Links play a major role in websites and SEO.

Internal Links

These links can help you shape the buyer journey of your website visitors from a first entry to a service page to the “book a free roof inspection” page. Internal links that help your website visitors navigate and provide a seamless experience on your website.

Google and other search engines analyze your internal links to assess how “easily navigable” your website is.

External Links

Apart from interlinking, Google keeps an eye on your external links. A good link would be to the website of organizations that have expertise and authority in your field, for example, the Canadian Roofing Contractors Association. This way Google will know that your content is credible since you cite the industry experts.

Backlinks

Getting links from them will also signify to Google that your website is recognized by industry leaders and trustworthy and authoritative.

In other words, backlinks are as important as the links on your website. You need to make sure that you only have backlinks from reputable sources and not shady businesses. Backlinks will also bring you traffic.

SEMrush has a tool to determine which backlinks your competitors have and offer backlink opportunities for your roofing marketing.

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Local SEO

In order not to compete globally over customers who are too far away, many local businesses choose to optimise their websites for a certain location.

In our Website section, we showed an example of a company, that created specific pages for each major town they operate in. To boost your local SEO, we suggest also getting a Google Business Profile.

Content Marketing Strategy for Roofing Business

Content marketing can greatly benefit your roofing marketing. Coupled with SEO it can boost your position in Google while simultaneously guiding your website visitors to a desired conversion.

Content Strategy

Content strategy is a long-term plan for content creation. It can encompass just your website or include other channels like email marketing campaigns, SMM, and video content.

Content strategy is usually built around the keywords that you want to target. It should also include information about the type of content you are creating (e.g., blog, white paper, infographic, etc.), its goals and KPIs, as well as the time frames for the content creation and publishing.

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Types of content

Content cannot be created overnight. It requires careful research of the topic, image search or creation, editing, proofreading, and publishing.

There are two types of content:

• temporary

This type of content is only fresh for a couple of days or months, for example, you have a special discount offer, your company has a major expansion, you launch a new service, etc.

• evergreen

This type of content will remain fresh for years, maybe even decades. These are educational materials, e.g., what roofing material is the best for your climate, how to pick a provider, etc.

Your major focus will be on evergreen content, but even this type of content needs refreshment from time to time.

How to Choose Topics for Content Marketing

There are several sources of content topics, all of them equally valuable:

1. Keywords
2. Your competitors’ websites and blogs
3. Your client’s questions (including the ridiculous ones).
4. Forums where people ask for tips

Check out the example blog post below:

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It answers one of the client FAQs: do we need to move out during roof replacement?

Content & SEO

It’s important to optimise your content when you’re writing and posting it. Tools like Surfer SEO can help you meet your SEO goals in terms of the number of words, images and keywords per content piece.

CMS like WordPress usually have some kind of tools to add SEO metadata like meta description, meta title, and alt texts for images.

Don’t forget that your target keyword must be present in all the major places like metadata, and headers.

Video Content

Roofing video content works exceptionally well. There’s something mesmerizing in witnessing humans working. No wonder, these videos get thousands of views and hundreds of comments.

Here are some tips for video content management:

• make long videos and cut out short episodes
• brightly highlighted text attracts more attention
• reuse videos across several marketing channels
• use hashtags
• post videos regularly
• show mistakes, people love them
• make videos with tips; they are sharable
• don’t forget humour.

Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is often used to warm up leads, as well as to retain and upsell to customers.

Since retention is limited once the project is done, we suggest you focus your efforts on sending emails to warm up your leads. You can get emails from your book appointment widget or your contact form.

What to send in an email?

• Reminders & follow-ups
• Special offers
• Links to your blogs or service pages
• Company news like launching new services
• Funny videos and other roofing marketing materials like photos.

Social Media Marketing for a Roofing Company

Not many roofing businesses have social media accounts. On the surface, it might seem that the content generated by such companies has no potential to become viral. Still, we think that having a social media presence can help develop your business.

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Benefits of Social Media Platforms for Roofing Marketing

SMM benefits to roofing marketing include:

1. Backlinks to your website
2. Traffic to your website.
3. Building community.
4. Ability to be tagged by satisfied customers.
5. Getting your content shared by users.
6. Earning the trust of your clients.

Which Social Media Platforms Should You Choose?

To understand which online platforms you should choose for your roofing marketing campaign, you need first to understand your target audience.

The infographic below demonstrates the homeownership rate in Canada (according to 2021 data by Statistics Canada):

As you can see, the homeowner rates are best among Gen X, Baby Boomers and Silent Generation. These are your primary target audience. That’s why we suggest creating a Facebook page since it’s the most popular platform among the older generations.

Choosing the Right Content

Registering an account on a social media platform is easy. Now you need to understand what to share. Below, we listed the number of topics for your SMM:

1. Photos of your work (with before and after images).
2. Customer testimonials.
3. Videos of roofers doing their work.
4. Roofing tips.
5. Links to your website.
6. Important company news.

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Roofing Marketing Ideas to Boost Your Lead Gen

The strategies we listed above are resource and time-intensive. In this section, we list five roofing marketing ideas that don’t require much effort and bring great results.

Google Business Profile

One of the top marketing ideas is to get Google Business Profile. It will help you put your roofing business name on the map, literally. Check out an example of a Google Business Profile of a roofing contractor appearing when searching for a roofing company on Google Maps. It contains essential business information like contact data, opening hours, and customer testimonials.

The benefits of a Google Business profile for your roofing company:

1. It’s absolutely free and won’t impact your marketing budget.
2. It boosts your local SEO
3. It provides backlinks to your website
4. Your Google Business Profile will appear when people are searching for your business online.

Referral Program

A referral program is a great way to source new clients through a third-party recommendation.

Types of referral programs:

• getting references from related businesses in exchange for referencing your clients to them.
• paid referral programs with bloggers and influencers.

The key benefit of a referral program is the trust that potential customers will have in your business since it has been recommended by someone they already trust.

Company types for roofing referral program:

1. Real estate agents.
2. Movers.
3. House construction companies.
4. House renovation businesses.
5. Building materials stores.
6. Construction waste disposal companies.
7. Blogs dedicated to construction.

Remember that the referral program works both ways and you’ll need to recommend these businesses to your clients in return.

Online Directories

To this day, business directories remain smart marketing tactics that many marketers recommend to their clients.

There are several types of online directories where you can list your business:

1. Roofing associations, like the Alberta Roofing Contractors Association
2. Specialised construction & renovation business listings, like HomeStars.
3. General listings for businesses like ThreeBest Rated.

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The benefits of directories for roofing marketing:

• Backlinks to your website from authoritative websites
• Traffic to your website
• People looking for contractors in these directories are your target audience
• People think that directories check businesses they list and thus have more trust
• Some of them contain online reviews that boost the trust of your potential customers

Reputational Marketing

As mentioned at the beginning of this guide, client retention in the roofing business is rare since one renovation usually is expected to last anywhere between 15 and 30 years. However, you can ask your former and current customers for referrals and testimonials.

Satisfied customers are eager to share their positive experiences with service providers. Obviously, not all people are ready to spend time on reviews. However, you can offer them a discount in return, especially if they go the extra mile (like registering on a directory website).

Encourage satisfied clients to live positive reviews on one or more platforms:

• Your Google Business Profile
• Your Facebook page
• Business directory where you are listed.

Hiring Marketing Agency

Digital marketing is a resource-intensive work. It requires full-time dedication from several specialists in various areas, like web development, content writing, search engine optimisation, and marketing management.

As a roofing company owner, you might not have enough time to run marketing on your own or hire and manage an in-house marketing team. That’s why we suggest hiring a marketing agency with expertise and experience in promoting other roofing marketing companies.

dNOVO Group marketing agency can provide all types of digital marketing services necessary to generate more traffic to your website, boost your lead generation, and increase conversions. We offer our clients:

1. Website
2. SEO services
3. Content Strategy
4. PPC
5. Email Marketing

Are you ready to take your roofing marketing to the next level?

Book a free one-hour consultation