Let's TalkLet's TalkA trade where one storm can supply a year of work, and where the competition arrives in a truck before your ad does.
Give us access to the ad account and a list of the last hundred leads with what happened to each. We will come back with what proportion were renters, out-of-area, repair-only or never reachable, what that cost you, and which campaigns produced the estimates that actually got signed. Recorded walkthrough, no call required.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
A hailstorm creates a fortnight of concentrated, high-intent demand in a defined geographic footprint, and most contractors start thinking about advertising after it has passed. The businesses that capture it have the campaigns, the creative and the geography ready to switch on within hours. Building from scratch after the weather means competing for the leftovers at the highest prices of the year.
A large share of replacement work is paid by an insurer, which makes the homeowner's actual question not "which roofer is best" but "who will handle the claim without me having to understand it". Marketing that leads with materials, warranties and crew photos answers a question that buyer is not asking, while a competitor explaining the claims process gets the call.
Renters, people who need a repair rather than a replacement, and homeowners outside the area you will travel to. They all fill in the same form and all appear in the same lead count, and without qualification in the funnel the reported cost per lead looks healthy while the cost per signed job quietly doubles.
A roofing estimate costs a crew slot and a drive, and no-shows come straight off the margin. The cause is usually upstream: a lead captured with no commitment, no confirmation sequence, and days between the enquiry and the visit. Campaign reporting counts that as a converted lead and the business counts it as a wasted morning.
Business outcomes rather than dashboard metrics. None of these is a guaranteed number - where we do guarantee something, it is written into the offer above.
The real deliverables, not a list written to make a proposal look thicker.
Not the general agency pitch. The reasons that only apply to this kind of business.
The work that captures a hail event is preparation, not reaction: campaigns paused and ready, creative approved, geography drawn, budget reserved. That is unbillable work in the months when nothing is happening, which is exactly why most agencies do not do it and why it is the single biggest difference in this trade.
An estimate is a cost to you and a conversion to most reporting tools, which puts the agency's number and your P&L in opposition. We reconcile to signed jobs and average job value, so the campaigns that produce cheap estimates nobody signs get defunded rather than celebrated.
Roofing accounts are frequently not underperforming on traffic at all - they are buying the wrong homeowners efficiently. Fixing that reduces lead volume, which looks like a worse month on every chart an agency normally shows you. We would rather have that conversation than quietly keep the volume number high.
The last hundred leads and what happened to each. The wasted share in this trade is usually visible in twenty minutes and invisible in the platform reporting.
Two buyers, two anxieties, two funnels. The insurance buyer wants the process handled; the cash buyer wants price and durability.
Ownership, roof age, repair versus replacement, location. Asked in the funnel rather than discovered on the driveway.
Campaigns, creative and geography built and paused, with a budget reserve. When the weather arrives the work is switching it on, not building it.
Call tracking and CRM reconciliation so reporting shows signed jobs and average value, which is the ranking budget should follow.
Storm months and normal months are judged separately. Blending them produces an average that describes neither and hides both.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
Storm demand follows a track, and that track rarely matches a circle around your yard. Targeting built on the actual affected footprint reaches homeowners who have a reason to call this week, while a standing radius spends the same money reaching people whose roofs are fine.
Deductibles, adjuster visits, supplements, what a homeowner should not sign - this is the material a claim-funded buyer is searching for, and almost nobody publishes it properly. It ranks, it earns links, and it arrives with the buyer already trusting whoever explained it.
Roofing has a predictable annual curve and an unpredictable event curve on top of it, and treating them as one number produces budgets that are wrong in both directions. Planning the baseline separately from the reserve is what keeps a storm month from consuming the year's spend.
Roofing carries more consumer suspicion than most trades, much of it earned by transient operators after storms. Review volume, recency and how complaints are answered do more work here than in any other trade we handle, and they are cheaper to improve than the ad account.
Our nearest comparable engagement is a multi-location service business rather than a roofing contractor, and we will not imply otherwise. What transfers is the part this trade usually gets wrong: the gap between a booked appointment and an attended one. Show-rate rose 44% across that network and cost per lead fell to $19, and the show-rate half came entirely from what happened between the enquiry and the visit - which is the same gap a roofing estimate falls into.
Read the full case studyBy building the campaign before it happens and leaving it paused. Storm demand is concentrated into days, and the contractors who capture it are the ones who can switch on prepared campaigns with prepared creative and redraw the geography in an afternoon. The unpredictable part is when; the preparable part is everything else, and it is where almost all of the advantage sits.
Yes, and it is the most commonly missed split in this trade. A homeowner whose replacement will be paid by an insurer is not comparing materials, they are deciding who will handle a process they do not understand. Content and landing pages that explain deductibles, adjuster visits and what happens if the claim is underpaid convert that buyer far better than warranty and crew messaging, which is written for the cash buyer.
Almost always lead quality. Renters, repair-only enquiries and out-of-area homeowners all count as leads and none of them can buy a replacement. The fix is qualification inside the funnel rather than on the driveway, and it makes your lead count go down - which is the right outcome and an uncomfortable chart. We show cost per signed contract alongside it so the improvement is visible rather than just the drop.
Shorten the gap, confirm actively, and make the appointment feel like a commitment rather than a form submission. A confirmation immediately, a reminder the day before and a simple way to reschedule recovers a large share of what otherwise becomes a wasted drive. It is unglamorous, it costs almost nothing, and in this trade it is frequently worth more than any change to the ads.
Both, for different reasons. Paid search and local visibility carry the immediate demand, including storms. Organic carries the claims-process content, which compounds and which brings buyers who arrive already trusting you - and unlike ads it keeps working in the months when you are not spending. The mistake is treating them as alternatives and funding only one.
We will, but we would tell you first that the economics are harder. Repair work has a much lower job value, so the tolerable cost per lead is far smaller and paid acquisition frequently does not clear it. For repair-led businesses the better investment is usually local visibility, reviews and rapid call handling rather than a paid budget, and we would rather say that than sell you media that cannot pay for itself.
This is one part of a bigger service. Here is the whole of it, and the closest neighbours.
No pitch deck, no discovery call you have to sit through. Tell us the situation and we will tell you whether we can help.