Roofing has the widest gap between what companies spend on acquisition and what they understand about it. A replacement is a five-figure sale, the decision happens once every twenty years, and the competition is in the driveway within hours of a storm. Here is what a roofing lead actually costs, which channels pay, and where the month quietly leaks.
In this article
- What a roofing job is actually worth
- Where roofing leads come from, ranked by what they actually cost
- The offer that separates you from the twelve other trucks
- Storm season is a response-time problem, not a lead problem
- From inspection to signed contract
- Insurance work and retail work are two different businesses
- A real month, in numbers
- The slow season is where the year is decided
- Five mistakes that cost roofing companies the most
- The five numbers to run the company on
- Frequently asked questions
What a roofing job is actually worth
Roofing has the widest gap between marketing spend and marketing understanding of any trade in the United States. A residential replacement is a five-figure sale, the buying decision happens once every twenty years, and the competition arrives in the driveway within hours of a storm. Companies routinely spend $40,000 a month on acquisition without being able to say what a signed job costs them.
Start with the unit. A residential replacement in most US markets lands between $9,000 and $16,000 depending on square footage, pitch, material and tear-off layers. We will use $12,400 as the average job and 32% gross margin, which is a realistic retail number — roughly $3,968 of gross profit per roof.
That number is the whole game. It tells you that a $300 lead is not expensive and a $90 lead is not automatically cheap. What matters is how many leads it takes to sign one roof, which is where almost every roofing company loses the plot.
Ask a roofing owner their cost per lead and you get an answer. Ask their cost per signed job and you usually get a pause. In the accounts we have rebuilt, that number ranges from about $600 to well over $3,000 within the same city, on the same channels, at the same spend. The difference is almost never the ad account.
Where roofing leads come from, ranked by what they actually cost
Five channels do the work in this trade. They are not interchangeable, and the ones with the cheapest leads are usually the most expensive customers.
Google Local Services Ads. Billed per lead, sits above everything on the page, requires a background and license check. In most metros this produces the lowest cost per signed job in the entire mix — leads commonly run $65 to $130 and the intent is as high as it gets. If you are eligible and not running these, that is the first thing to fix this week.
Google Search. Clicks in competitive roofing markets run high — $12 to $28 is normal and storm season pushes it further. Cost per lead typically lands between $180 and $320. Expensive per lead, excellent per job, because the person typed "roof replacement" and meant it.
Canvassing after a storm. The cheapest lead and the hardest business. No media cost, high labor cost, and a customer who did not choose you — they answered the door. Close rates are volatile and cancellations are high.
Meta. Cheap clicks, low intent. Works for storm-damage awareness and for financing offers, poorly for "I need a roof today." Best used for retargeting people who already visited.
Referrals and past customers. The highest close rate and the lowest cost, and the channel roofing companies neglect the most, because a roof is a twenty-year purchase and nobody bothers to stay in touch. That reasoning is wrong: the customer does not buy again, but their neighbor does.
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The offer that separates you from the twelve other trucks
After a hailstorm, every homeowner on the street hears the same four sentences: free inspection, we work with your insurance, family owned, licensed and insured. Every company says it, which means none of them are saying anything. Run your own website through the swap test in what makes an offer convert and you will almost certainly fail it.
What actually differentiates in this trade is specificity about the parts of the job the homeowner is quietly afraid of:
The mess. "We tarp the landscaping, magnet-sweep the yard twice, and you get a photo of the driveway before we leave." Nobody says this, and every homeowner is thinking about their gutters, their garden and their kids' feet.
The timeline. "Tear-off and dry-in the same day, or we cover the hotel." That is a promise you control, and it addresses the fear of an open roof overnight.
The unknown. "If we find rotted decking, the price per sheet is on page two of the estimate, signed before we start." Decking surprises are the single most common source of roofing disputes — putting the number up front removes the fear and, in practice, raises close rate rather than lowering it.
The paperwork. "We hand your adjuster a scope in their own format, and we do not ask you to be the go-between." For insurance work, this is the strongest promise on the list.
None of that costs money. All of it is falsifiable, which is exactly why it works.
Storm season is a response-time problem, not a lead problem
The week after a hailstorm produces more inbound volume than the previous two months. That is also the week most companies lose the most deals, because the leads arrive faster than anyone can answer them and the competitor two miles away is knocking on the door in person.
A roofing lead that waits four hours in a storm week is not a lead — it is a competitor's job. The First Hour Protocol described in speed to lead applies here with one addition specific to this trade: book the inspection on the first call, not the follow-up. "I can have someone on the roof Thursday at 2" converts dramatically better than "I'll have someone reach out to schedule."
Three preparations that separate the companies who profit from a storm from the ones who drown in it:
Overflow answering, arranged before the season. A service that books inspections rather than taking messages. Set it up in March, not the morning after the hail.
A pre-written text sequence. Confirmation, day-before reminder, post-inspection summary with photos. Written once, used for months.
An inspection calendar with real capacity limits. Overbooking inspections you cannot keep produces cancellations and one-star reviews that outlive the storm by years.
From inspection to signed contract
The inspection is the sale, and most roofing companies treat it as a formality that precedes emailing a number. Three things decide whether it converts.
Photos with captions, delivered on the spot. Not a folder of shingle close-ups — six to ten images with one plain sentence each: what it is, why it matters, what happens if it waits. Homeowners cannot read a roof. They can read a sentence.
Three options, not one price. Good, better, best — architectural shingle, upgraded impact-resistant, and a premium system with a longer manufacturer warranty. The presence of a middle option raises average ticket measurably, and it moves the conversation from "yes or no" to "which one."
Financing shown as a monthly number. A $12,400 roof is a hard cash decision for most households and a simple monthly one at $210. Present both, always, without being asked.
And then the part that decides the month: the follow-up on estimates that did not close on the spot. In roofing, a large share of signed jobs come from the second, third and fifth contact — and the twelve-day sequence in the follow-up sequence is worth more here than any budget increase, because every one of those estimates already cost you an inspection.
Insurance work and retail work are two different businesses
They share a truck and nothing else. Mixing their economics in one report is how roofing companies convince themselves a bad month was a good one.
Retail. The homeowner pays. Shorter cycle, cleaner margin, you control pricing, and the sale depends on your offer and your financing. Cost per acquired job is what it is.
Insurance and storm restoration. The carrier pays most of it. Longer cycle, heavy documentation, supplements, adjuster meetings, and an approval that can die for reasons that have nothing to do with your sales process. Volume can be enormous after a storm and collapse the following quarter.
Two rules keep this honest. Track cost per acquired job separately for each — blending them hides which one is actually funding the company. And never let a salesperson promise a deductible waiver: in most states it is insurance fraud, it puts the license at risk, and it is common enough in this trade that homeowners now ask about it.
A real month, in numbers
A residential roofing company running retail and storm work together:
• Acquisition spend: $14,800 (Local Services, Google Search, retargeting, fees)
• Leads: 168 → cost per lead $88
• Inspections booked: 91
• Inspections actually held: 74 — the gap here is pure scheduling and reminders
• Estimates presented: 74
• Signed: 19 → cost per signed job $779
• Revenue: 19 × $12,400 = $235,600, gross profit $75,392
Now look at the leak. Ninety-one inspections booked, seventy-four held — 17 no-shows. At the same 26% close rate, those 17 were worth about 4 more roofs, or $49,600 in revenue that was already paid for. Fixing that costs a reminder text and a confirmation call. Nothing in the ad account comes close to that return.
Second leak: 55 estimates presented and not signed. If a written follow-up sequence recovers a conservative 12%, that is 6 or 7 additional roofs a month from work already done.
The slow season is where the year is decided
Roofing revenue is seasonal; roofing overhead is not. Payroll, trucks, insurance and rent arrive in February exactly as they do in July, and the companies that struggle are almost never the ones with a bad summer — they are the ones with an unfunded winter.
Three moves change that, and all three have to be set up before the season turns.
Sell the work that is weather-tolerant. Repairs, ventilation, gutter work, skylights, attic insulation and inspections for real-estate closings. Lower ticket, but they keep crews employed and they generate the reviews and referrals that feed the spring.
Book spring in the winter. A signed contract in January with an April install date is worth more than a June lead, because it costs less to acquire and it locks the calendar. Offer a scheduling incentive rather than a discount — priority dates, not lower prices.
Keep advertising while everyone else stops. Cost per lead in most roofing markets drops noticeably in the off-season for the simple reason that the auction empties out. Cutting spend then is buying at the highest price and refusing to buy at the lowest.
Five mistakes that cost roofing companies the most
1. Judging channels by cost per lead. Canvassing leads cost nothing and close at a fraction of Local Services leads. Measure cost per signed job or you will cut the channel that pays — the argument laid out in cost per lead is lying to you.
2. Cutting spend in the slow season. Winter is when cost per lead is lowest and your competitors are dark. Companies that stay on through the slow months own the spring.
3. Sending inspectors without a presentation. Six trained sentences and a photo template beat charisma every time, and they survive turnover.
4. Ignoring reviews between storms. Roofing is the trade where reviews carry the most weight, because the purchase is rare and the stakes are high. A steady flow beats a burst after a good month.
5. No follow-up on unsigned estimates. The most expensive habit in the entire trade, and the cheapest to fix.
The five numbers to run the company on
Cost per signed job, by channel. The only channel comparison that means anything.
Inspection show rate. Below 85% you are funding your competitors' second chances.
Estimate-to-signed rate, by salesperson. The spread between your best and worst closer is usually larger than the spread between your best and worst channel.
Average job value and option mix. If nobody ever chooses the upgraded system, the middle option is priced wrong.
Retail versus insurance split. Track them apart, always. A quarter that looks flat in total is often one business growing while the other collapses — and you want to know which.
Want your cost per signed roof, by channel?
Send us your spend, your inspection show rate and your close rate. We will tell you which channel is funding the company and which one is quietly costing you.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a roofing lead cost in the US?
It depends entirely on the channel, and comparing them by cost per lead is the mistake. Google Local Services Ads commonly run $65 to $130 per lead and usually produce the lowest cost per signed job in the mix. Google Search clicks in competitive roofing markets run $12 to $28, putting cost per lead between $180 and $320 — expensive per lead, excellent per job. Storm canvassing has no media cost but high labor cost and volatile close rates. What matters is cost per signed job, which in the accounts we have rebuilt ranges from about $600 to over $3,000 in the same city on the same channels.
How do roofing companies increase close rate without spending more?
Two leaks, both free to fix. First, inspection show rate: in the worked example, 91 inspections were booked and only 74 were held — those 17 no-shows were worth roughly four more roofs, or $49,600 in revenue already paid for, and the fix is a confirmation call and a reminder text. Second, unsigned estimates: 55 presented and not signed, where a written twelve-day follow-up sequence recovering a conservative 12% adds six or seven roofs a month. Both come from work already done, which is why they beat any budget increase.
Should roofing companies keep advertising in the off-season?
Yes, and it is usually the highest-return decision of the year. Revenue is seasonal but overhead is not — payroll, trucks, insurance and rent arrive in February exactly as in July. Cost per lead in most roofing markets drops noticeably off-season because the auction empties out, so cutting spend then means buying at the highest price and refusing to buy at the lowest. Pair it with weather-tolerant work — repairs, ventilation, gutters, skylights, real-estate inspections — and with booking spring installs in winter using priority scheduling rather than discounts.