Blog: Marketing 101: Promoting Your Roofing Company Online

‍^‍“How did those roofers do it?” you whisper to yourself under your breath.

After the 14th door is slammed in your face, you hang your head, let your shoulders follow, and sulk as you walk away. Selling roofing services door-to-door is hard. Don’t take it personally when you’re left standing on someone’s porch alone. Any sort of roof work is a big purchase. It’s not you, homeowners just want to be educated before they commit to something of that size. 

And that’s what successful roofers have figured out.

There’s roofers that are doing millions in sales, but aren’t door-knocking. TJ McCormack is one of those roofers. His secret? Marketing his roofing business on social media.

On our podcast, The Roofr Report, TJ blew our mind when we learned that starting a TikTok account for his roofing business helped his revenue explode. He’s not alone, though. Across the nation, roofers are turning to online marketing to land more leads and grow their business.

We don’t want you to get left behind. Today, we’ll walk you through some of the first steps you can take to market your roofing company online. 

And don’t worry, you don’t have to know what an algorithm is or do any embarrassing TikTok dances.

You can save a ton of time and money by marketing your roofing company online. 

Have you done the math to see how much time you’ve spent knocking on doors? If you haven’t, don’t. It will break your heart.

Think about it like this– you can only knock on one door at a time. But your website and social media? Those can be visited hundreds or thousands of times daily all while you’re finishing up work on a customer’s roof. Effective online marketing allows your roofing company to connect with many potential customers all at once. The best part? No more walks of shame down driveways after another door gets slammed in your face.

Did you know? 93% of people search for reviews or information online before making a purchase. If you’re a stranger showing up to someone’s door and asking for their money, it’s not very likely they’ll trust you or become a customer. They want to learn more about you, at their pace, before you make an ask. That’s why you need to get your business online.

By building a professional website and posting helpful and personable content on social media, you give potential customers the opportunity to get to know you before they reach out. You get to develop a warm relationship with them. Now, neither of you are strangers to each other. They’re reaching out to you because they like what they’ve seen and feel confident in you.

All you have to do now is work your magic and close the sale.

The world of websites, digital marketing, and social media can feel intimidating. And we totally get it! It’s all changing everyday and sometimes even seasoned marketing professionals have a hard time keeping up. 

Focusing on just the basics of digital marketing, though, is enough to have leads lining up to work with your roofing company. Keep reading and we’ll guide you through digital marketing for your roofing business.

Start with a Website for your Roofing Business

We’ll spare you the lecture on design and branding. We know you’ve got a lot on your plate. Instead, let’s cover a few basic goals and benefits a strong website will provide.

Professional

Let’s be candid. A lot of homeowners are used to dealing with unprofessional contractors. They hardly answer the phone and don’t show up when they said they would. You know this isn’t you. But unfortunately, your customer doesn’t know you yet. 

It’s very important that your customer knows that you’re a reliable professional before they even become your customer. A strong website can really help you stand out from the pack.

Use your website to talk about how long you’ve been in the business for. Just started your roofing company? No problem. Talk about your process. Detail out the different services you provide. What separates you from your competitors? Showcase your roofing knowledge and how well you know what roofs in your area need.

Once you start getting a couple of customers, share testimonials from them on your website. You can talk about how great you are all day. But when homeowners hear about you from past customers– that holds a lot more weight.

Collect Leads

The great thing about a professional website is that it can work for you while you sleep. In addition to having your phone number and email address on your website, you should also setup some forms to capture leads.

Visitors to your website who are interested in working with you or learning more, can leave their contact information for you to follow up with. Imagine this– you come back to your desk at the end of the day and find a long list of more potential customers who want to work with you. And all of them came through your roofing website. How great would that feel?

Taking a bit of time to design these forms well can do wonders for you. Beyond the basics of asking for their name and phone number, you can add additional fields to your form. For example, you can ask for their address. This way you could generate a free roof report from Roofr and give them a detailed quote. Or you could ask when they last had their roof worked on. This could help you estimate how much work they might need done.

You can have much more productive conversations with your leads when you get the right information from them. They’ll take notice of it, too. Personalizing the conversation to their unique needs will help you tailor a signature-worthy roofing proposal. 

Search Engine Optimization

Think about the last time you set out to learn more about something before you bought it. Did you Google it? We see you nodding along.

Your potential customers are doing the same thing when they’re looking for roofers in their area.

Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is the practice of building your website with the goal of having Google rank it on the first page for relevant search terms. So, for example, a website with great SEO will show up on the first page when someone searches for “roofers near me.” It can be an uphill battle to get your website to show up on the first page of a Google search. But with 75% of people never clicking past the first page, it’s well worth your time to put in the effort.  

To get started with SEO, you have to focus on the keywords on your website. Google understands what a website is about by examining the content that’s on it. In order to rank your website for a search term like “roofing companies in Portland,” your website has to mention that you’re a roofing company in Portland. Beyond this, Google also wants to see that you talk about other aspects of roofing that people search. Some examples might include:

• When should I replace my roof?
• What kind of shingles should I use?
• How much does a roof upgrade cost?

The more written content you can have on your website that answers questions like these, the better your chances are of getting on that precious first page. But don’t take this as a license to build a spammy site. If Google sees that you just stuffed the bottom of your web pages with the keywords you want to rank for, they’ll actually penalize you and drop your ranking. Google will reward you for creating helpful roofing content online.

You have to naturally work the keywords into your website’s copy in a way that reads organically. Remember, you’re not trying to trick Google into recognizing your website. Your goal should always be to build an informative website for your potential customers.

Take the time to write blog posts on your website. Take some of those questions we listed earlier and create articles to answer questions you hear often from customers. Build trust with potential roofing customers by being an educator. 

The key with SEO is patience. On average, it can take at least 6 months for you to start seeing results with search engine optimization for your roofing business. Consistency is the name of the game. The more at-bats you get, the more likely you are to hit a homerun. 

How to Build a Website for your Roofing Business Without Hiring Someone

It’s important to pinch your purse strings when you’re just starting your business. Hiring a company to build you a roofing website can cost a lot of money– money you’ll wish you spent on getting your truck wrapped with instead. So, let’s avoid that regret and work on it yourself. 

You don’t have to know how to write code to build a website for your roofing business. There’s plenty of tools out there that you can use that are relatively inexpensive and can get you up and running in less than a week’s time. There’s a big variety of drag-and-drop website builders that are out there now. Some of the most popular ones include Wix, Squarespace, and Duda. These are known as what-you-see-is-what-you-get website builders. WYSIWYG for short. With any of these platforms you can simply drag and drop pre-built website elements from a large library onto a page and build yourself a website. They all also have in-depth tutorials and resources to guide you through the website building process, even if you’re a rookie.

The great thing about working with a website builder is that they come preloaded with dozens of templates for you to choose from. So, even if you’re not artistically inclined, you’ll have a professional website design for your roofing business. 

Now, one important thing to keep in mind as you’re building your roofing website is that you need to ensure it’s mobile friendly. This essentially means that your website is still readable and usable on a smartphone or a tablet. Today, the average American spends over 7 hours scrolling on their phone. You never know how or when someone might land on your website for the first time. These website builders have you covered, though. Any template you build off is usually already optimized for the most common smartphones and tablets. One less thing to worry about!

See, marketing your roofing business online isn’t that hard.

As you’re building your site it’s easy to get caught up in how it looks. We want to remind you that it doesn’t have to be a perfect work of art. What’s important is that your roofing business has a presence online. Besides, a pretty website is useless if no one’s visiting it.

Get your roofing website built and out of the way so you can start focusing on driving visitors to it. How do you do that? By doing some social media marketing for your roofing business.

Social Media Marketing for your Roofing Business

Your social media and website will work with each other. Think about it– unless someone knows your website and types in the URL directly, how will anyone find it? Great social media content helps generate leads for you. And your website can capture those leads and turn them into prospects. 

Potential customers are more likely to approach you if they see that you’ve been active on social media. More and more people today are actually using social media as their main search engine. Here’s what that means for you. Younger home owners are more likely to turn to Instagram or TikTok to search for “roofing contractors in (your city)” before they do a Google search. This change in behavior is happening because people want to see what it’s like to work with you before spending any of their time going to your website. 

But with so many different social media platforms out there, how can you choose the right place to market your roofing company?

Choosing the Right Social Media Channel for your Roofing Company

We already told you to be frugal with your money when it comes to building your website. The same is true for when you’re doing social media marketing for your roofing company. It’s not smart to be on every single platform when you’re just starting out. 

Instead, think about where your ideal roofing customer might spend time. For example, if you’re looking to sell your roofing services in a younger residential neighborhood, then investing your time on TikTok is a good idea. But if you’re targeting commercial roof work, then it’d be smarter to create content on LinkedIn to connect with business owners.

Once you’ve gotten a better understanding of who your customers are, the next step is to identify your own creative strengths. Each social media network leans more towards one style of content than the other. Instagram, for example, highly favors beautiful photography. If you consider yourself a bit of a shutterbug, that’s where you might want to spend your time. If you’ve got the gift of gab, then you might want to record videos for TikTok. If you love writing then consider spending more time on Twitter. 

Where you focus your social media marketing efforts for your roofing business will depend on where your target customers hangout and which communication style comes naturally to you. Our advice, though? Roofing is a highly visual craft. Because of that, we’d lean towards a video/photo sharing platform. This is why a lot of the roofers that we work with swear by Facebook. You can share all different types of roofing content there. But the bottom line is, fish in the pond where you wanna eat from.

Creating Roofing Content for Social Media

Starting a new social media account is kinda like staring at a blank piece of paper or a canvas. Typing those first words and landing those first brushstrokes seem impossible. Take a deep breath. We gotchu.

Approach social media with the mindset of a teacher. Your students are homeowners who don’t know a lot about roofing. As their teacher, you’re going to use social media to share little tidbits of your roofing knowledge. To get you started, we’ve put together a list of 10 roofing content ideas you can make this weekend.

1. Frequently asked roof questions. What are the questions customers keep asking you over and over again?
2. When to get your roof replaced. How long after someone’s bought a house should they wait to upgrade their roof?
3. How much does a roof upgrade typically cost? List out some of the factors that can affect price.
4. If you live in an area that gets a lot of hail, create content that prepares homeowners for hailstorms.
5. If your region is expecting a hurricane soon, how can homeowners protect their roofs?
6. What if they live in a very sunny and hot area like Los Angeles? Educate homeowners on how they can protect their roof from the sun.
7. Share your past work! Show off the projects that you’re working on right now.
8. Walkthrough current projects. Outline how you’re going about upgrading a customer’s roof.
9. Testimonials! If you’ve got a customer that was blown away by your work, get them on camera. Homeowners are proud of their homes. Put the spotlight on them.
10. Share before and after pictures. Transformations really help you flex your roofing expertise.

Creating content for social media is like a muscle. The more you do it, the stronger your content chops get. If you make it through that list of 10 roofing content ideas, we know you’ll naturally start to brainstorm more and more. As you keep posting, sit back, and watch the Likes roll in.

Mistake #1 – Relying on the Algorithm

These social media apps won’t do all the work for you. Unfortunately, the content you make has a short shelf life. You’ll find that when you post something, it’ll get a lot of likes within the first few days but then it won’t see much activity after that. You need to create content consistently so it keeps showing up in people’s feeds. This will help you stay top of mind for when someone does need a great roofer like you.

Mistake #2 – Using Too Much Roof Speak

Remember who you’re selling to. If you’re working with residential homeowners they likely don’t understand what a hip or a ridge vent is. That doesn’t mean you need to dumb it down. You just need to be considerate of speaking to them rather than at them. Don’t forget our social media tip– you’re a teacher. Take the time to educate your audience on roofing. This will help them trust you. Trust = sales. 

Mistake #3 – Not being patient

Social media marketing and search engine optimization won’t work for your roofing company overnight. It takes time for these marketing efforts to pay off in a meaningful way. Don’t give up if you’re a few weeks into marketing your roofing company online and you’re not seeing results. Instead, pay attention to how your content is doing. Are you getting a lot of comments? Did one particular post get a lot of likes? Keep experimenting with your content to see what clicks with people. Marketing takes a lot of time investment up front, but if you’ve got the stomach to ride it out then you’ll reap the benefits of it down the road.

Marketing doesn’t have to be hard, but it can be intimidating. In 2022, there seems to be new social media platforms popping up everyday. Not to mention the amount of tech that’s always coming out. The great news is that your roofing business does not need to be marketing everywhere. Pick a couple of spots where you want to be and get really good at sharing your work and connecting with your target neighborhoods. To succeed in marketing, it’s key that you stay on top of new trends that matter to your customers.

The world of digital marketing is huge. This blog post is just meant to be a starting point for marketing your roofing business online.There’s an endless amount of tactics and strategies your roofing company could use to generate leads and land customers. Looking for some more pro advice? Tune into this episode of The Roofr Report where we dive into online marketing for roofing companies like yours. 

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