Free vs. paid roofing leads: what each really costs

Price your own hour before you compare anything

Take your fully loaded cost as the person doing the marketing — owner, estimator, or office manager — and use that as the hourly price of any free channel. For this guide we'll use $75 an hour, a reasonable stand-in for an owner who could otherwise be selling, running a crew, or doing an inspection. Use your own number if it's different; the method doesn't change.

The mistake most roofers make is treating their own time as costless because no invoice shows up for it. It shows up anyway, in the jobs you didn't sell while you were writing a Google post or knocking doors. Ten hours a month on content and reviews at $75 an hour is a $750-a-month channel. Judge it the same way you'd judge a $750 ad spend: what did it produce?

This isn't an argument against free channels — it's an argument for pricing them honestly so you can decide where the next hour or the next dollar actually goes. See the pillar page at /pros/roofing-leads for the full breakdown of how paid leads are priced and capped.

What free channels are genuinely good at

Free channels compound. A Google Business Profile with steady reviews and a set of honest local cost pages keeps producing after you stop actively working on it. They are slow to start and nearly impossible for a competitor to switch off once you're established — nobody can outbid you for five years of five-star reviews.

The tradeoff is time-to-first-job. None of these channels produce a lead this week. They produce leads in month three, month six, and year two, which is exactly why most roofers should run them in parallel with a paid channel rather than instead of one.

• Google Business Profile and review velocity
• Job-site canvassing and yard signs
• Past-customer and referral outreach
• Local cost content on your own site
• Neighborhood Facebook groups and Nextdoor presence

What paid channels are genuinely good at

Paid channels turn on. When the schedule has a hole in three weeks, no amount of SEO work fixes it in time — buying leads does. The right use of paid is to smooth the calendar while the free channels mature, and to keep crews busy in the gap months free channels haven't filled yet.

Paid also gives you a number immediately: leads bought, leads reached, estimates given, jobs signed. You know your cost per booked job in week one, not month six. That speed is worth paying for even when the per-lead price looks higher than "free" on paper.

Pricing free channels in hours: the $75-an-hour rule

Log the hours honestly for 30 days. Every Google post, every review request, every door knocked, every hour spent shooting or writing local content. Multiply by $75. That's your monthly channel spend, even though no check went out the door.

Most owners underestimate this badly. Canvassing a subdivision for an afternoon — four hours, one Saturday — is $300 in owner time whether or not a single door answers. A weekly Google Business Profile post and photo upload, twenty minutes a week, is about $65 a month. Neither is wrong to do; both need to be counted.

• Canvassing: ~4 hours per 40-door block = $300 in owner time
• Google Business Profile upkeep: ~20 min/week = ~$65/month
• Review requests + follow-up: ~2 hours/month = $150/month
• Local cost-page writing: ~6 hours to draft one page = $450 one-time
• Referral outreach calls/texts: ~3 hours/month = $225/month

The 90-day ramp: what to expect, channel by channel

Free channels don't ramp in a straight line — they're flat for weeks, then start producing once reviews, rankings, or reputation reach a threshold. Paid leads ramp immediately and stay roughly flat unless you change spend. The table below is a typical shape, not a promise; your market and crew size move these numbers.

Break-even: when paid leads catch up to "free"

Break-even here means the lead volume (or job count) at which the two channels cost the same per booked job, once owner time is priced in. Below break-even, paid usually wins because the free channel hasn't produced enough volume to absorb its fixed time cost. Above break-even, free channels often win because their marginal cost per additional job keeps dropping while paid stays flat at a per-lead price.

Canvassing example: four hours ($300) knocking a block that produces 1 signed job a month has a cost per job of $300. Homeowner Henry coverage runs a flat $5 a month per county, whatever the lead volume — at even 2–3 booked jobs a month from that county, the cost per job drops well under $300, and it keeps falling as more leads come in. Paid wins on cost without the afternoon of knocking.

Google Business Profile example: $65/month in upkeep time producing 2 jobs a month by month four is $32.50 per job — far below any paid lead. The break-even point is one job every two months; almost any functioning profile clears that once reviews build past roughly 15–20.

• Break-even formula: (hours x $75) ÷ jobs produced = cost per job, compared against lead price ÷ close rate
• Coverage at a flat $5/month per county divided across jobs booked usually beats $125+/job once a county produces two or more jobs a month — and it only gets cheaper from there
• A mature Google Business Profile needs under 1 job every 2 months to beat almost any paid channel
• Referral outreach breaks even fast because the close rate on a referral is usually 2–4x a cold paid lead

The only number that matters: cost per booked job

Lead price on its own tells you nothing. What tells you everything is cost per booked job — lead price divided by your close rate — measured against your average ticket.

Run it honestly for one month. Count every lead you paid for, every one you actually reached, every estimate you gave, and every contract you signed. Most contractors are shocked by the reach rate, not the close rate: leads you never get on the phone are the real leak.

• Cost per booked job = (leads bought x price per lead) ÷ jobs signed
• At $5 a month per county with leads included, one booked job pays for years of coverage
• A $15 shared lead at a 1-in-20 close rate costs $300 per job — and eats four times the phone time
• Compare that number to your gross profit per job, not to your revenue

Speed to lead beats everything else you could change

The single highest-return change most contractors can make is calling faster. A homeowner who fills out a form is in buying mode for a window measured in minutes, not days. If you call back the next morning, you are quoting against someone who already walked the roof.

Build the habit into the crew's day: whoever is nearest a phone calls within five minutes, texts if there's no answer, and calls again that evening. Three touches in the first 24 hours, then weekly for a month. Most jobs that look dead are simply un-followed-up.

• Call within 5 minutes, text immediately if there's no answer
• Three contact attempts in the first 24 hours, at different times of day
• Every lead gets a written estimate or an explicit no — never silence
• Log the outcome of every lead so you can price your channels next quarter

How Homeowner Henry does it differently

Henry is a homeowner-facing site: people arrive from local roofing cost guides and city pages, describe the job, and verify their phone number by text before the request is released. There is no auction and no resale to directories.

Every job goes to a maximum of three roofers, and only 3 contractors per county hold the trade at all. When three are in, the county closes. Coverage is $5 a month per county and every lead in your counties is included — no charge per lead, no contract, cancel any time.

Your first week: pricing and choosing your mix

Don't try to run every channel at once from a standing start. Pick one free channel to build steadily and pair it with a paid channel to cover the calendar while it ramps. Here's a concrete week one.

• Day 1: write down your real hourly rate and log hours for every marketing task this week
• Day 2: claim or clean up your Google Business Profile — hours, photos, service area, no gaps
• Day 3: pull your last 24 months of customers and send the first referral/reminder message
• Day 4: claim your counties and start coverage at $5/month per county, so you see a real cost-per-job number as leads arrive, not in month three
• Day 5: knock the block around your current job site, log hours and doors, price it at $75/hour
• Day 7: total the week's hours x $75, plus paid spend, against jobs signed or estimates set — that's your baseline to beat

Free vs. paid roofing leads: 90-day ramp and monthly cost

Ramp speeds vary by market size, review count, and how consistently you work each channel. Owner-time costs use $75/hour; substitute your own fully loaded rate.

The five-minute callback script

Say this on the first call, before anyone else reaches them.

Time-tracking text to yourself (log every marketing hour)

Send this to your own phone or a shared note after any marketing task — it takes ten seconds and gives you real data in 30 days.

Referral / past-customer reminder text

Send twice a year to your full customer list — this is the cheapest lead source you have and it costs almost nothing beyond the text itself.

Questions contractors ask

How do I put a dollar value on free roofing leads?

Log the hours spent on the channel and multiply by your fully loaded hourly rate — $75/hour is a reasonable owner rate to start with. That total is your real monthly cost, even though no invoice arrives.

Which free channel pays back fastest?

Past-customer and referral outreach usually breaks even fastest because close rates are 2–4x a cold lead and the time cost is low — a batch of texts, not hours of content work.

Is canvassing worth $75 an hour of owner time?

Only if it's producing close to one signed job per four-hour block. Below that, a capped paid lead usually costs less per booked job — do the math in the example above with your own close rate.

How long until a Google Business Profile actually produces leads?

Typically 60–90 days to see the first consistent trickle, and it keeps improving as review count and photo freshness build. It's close to zero cost per lead once mature, which is why it's worth running even while paid covers the gap.

Should I stop paid leads once free channels ramp up?

Most contractors are better off keeping a small standing paid order even after free channels mature — it covers seasonal gaps and gives you a lead volume dial you can turn up on short notice, something reviews and content can't do.

What's a fair close rate to use in these calculations?

Use your own, tracked over at least 30 leads. Industry ranges for a decent-quality, exclusive roofing lead are roughly 1-in-4 to 1-in-6; shared or resold leads run lower. Never assume a rate — measure it.

What does a roofing lead cost on Homeowner Henry?

Leads are included. You pay $5 a month for each county you cover, and every phone-verified homeowner in those counties comes to you at no extra charge. No contract, cancel any time.

Are the leads exclusive?

A job goes to no more than three roofers, and only 3 roofers hold a county at once. They are not resold to directories or bidding sites.

What if a lead is bad?

Wrong number, out of area, or not a real project gets a replacement credit. You tell us, we credit it — no dispute forms.

Sources and further reading

• BLS Occupational Employment and Wages, Roofers
• Google Business Profile help: get more reviews
• SBA: marketing and sales for small businesses
• IRS: deducting business expenses (record what you spend on marketing)