Roofing guide
How to get more roofing leads
Seven roofing lead channels ranked by what they cost and how fast they produce, the math behind a revenue target, a GBP posting cadence, canvass-radius numbers, and the storm-vs-retail mix.
Reviewed by the Homeowner Henry pro team · Updated August 17, 2026 · 9 min read
There is no single source of roofing leads. There is a stack: one channel that produces this week, one that compounds over a year, and one that costs nothing but crew time.
Most roofing companies build the stack backward. They buy leads first because it is the fastest lever, then try to bolt on Google Business Profile and canvassing later, when both would have been nearly free if they had started on day one. Build it in the right order and you spend less for the same booked calendar.
Homeowner Henry rents counties, not leads: $5 a month per county, every lead in it included, with only 3 roofers per county. Full details are on the roofing leads pillar page, and this guide covers the other six channels you need beside it.
Start from a revenue number, not a lead number
Before you touch any channel, work backward from what you actually need. Pick a monthly revenue target, divide by your average ticket to get jobs needed, then divide jobs needed by your close rate to get leads needed. Skip this step and you either starve the schedule or overspend on leads you can't service.
The formula is: leads needed = (revenue target ÷ average ticket) ÷ close rate. A company chasing $80,000 a month at an $8,000 average ticket needs 10 jobs. At a 1-in-4 close rate across all channels combined, that's 40 leads a month from every source — free and paid — not 40 purchased leads.
Run this math quarterly, not once. Average ticket and close rate both drift as your crew size, marketing mix, and season change, and a stale number sends you chasing the wrong volume.
- Jobs needed = revenue target ÷ average ticket
- Leads needed = jobs needed ÷ close rate
- Split leads needed across channels by cost per booked job, cheapest first
- Recheck the math every quarter as ticket size and close rate move
1. Google Business Profile, done properly
This is the highest-return free asset in roofing. Fill every field, list your real service area, and post job photos weekly with the city named in the caption. Ask for a review at the moment the homeowner is happiest — when the driveway is clean and the dumpster is gone.
The mistake most roofers make is treating GBP as a one-time setup instead of a weekly task. Google rewards profiles that show ongoing activity with better local pack placement, and homeowners scrolling through search results skip listings that look abandoned.
County coverage
$5 a month per county
Every roofing lead in your counties is included — no per-lead fees, no auction, no contract. Only 3 roofers per county, and when three are in, the county closes.
Claim your counties2. Review velocity, not review count
A steady drip of recent reviews outranks a pile of old ones. Two a month, every month, from real customers, beats twenty in one week and nothing after. Build the ask into your closeout checklist so it never depends on someone remembering.
A posting and review cadence you can actually keep
Most roofers know they should post and ask for reviews. Few have a schedule that survives a busy month. Put it on the calendar with a fixed owner — usually whoever closes out the job — so it happens whether or not the crew is slammed.
Google Business Profile cadence
| Task | Frequency | Who does it | Trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job photo post with city named | 1–2 per week | Crew lead or office manager | Every completed job or milestone |
| Review request text/email | Same day as final walkthrough | Whoever closes out the job | Payment collected, homeowner satisfied |
| Review reply (all reviews) | Within 48 hours | Owner or office manager | New review posted, good or bad |
| Profile audit (hours, service area, photos) | Monthly | Office manager | First of the month |
| Q&A section check | Monthly | Owner | First of the month |
Two to four new reviews a month, sustained for a year, outranks a burst of twenty reviews that stops.
3. Neighborhood saturation around every job
A roof going on is the best advertisement you will ever run. Yard sign, door hangers on the twenty nearest houses, and a text to past customers on the same street. Cost is near zero and the close rate is the highest of anything in this list.
Distance matters more than most crews assume. Knock too wide and you waste time on houses that never saw the truck; stay too tight and you miss the neighbors who watched the whole job from their porch.
Canvass radius after a job
| Radius from job site | Typical door count | Approach | Timing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immediate neighbors (2–4 doors either side) | 4–8 doors | In person, mention the job by address | Same day, while the crew is on site |
| Same street | 10–20 doors | Door hanger + yard sign left up 1–2 weeks | Day of completion |
| One block / cul-de-sac | 20–40 doors | Door hanger, no knock required | Within 3 days |
| Quarter-mile radius | 80–150 doors | Mailer or flyer drop, not door-to-door | Within 1 week, storm jobs only |
The tightest radius has the highest close rate because neighbors already watched the job happen — start there before spending on anything wider.
4. Insurance and adjuster relationships
Storm and claim work flows through people, not forms. Public adjusters, independent insurance agents, and property managers all field roof questions constantly and refer the roofer they trust. Building these relationships takes months, not a single phone call, so start before the next storm, not during it.
Storm work versus retail work: get the mix right
Storm and retail are different businesses wearing the same tool belt. Storm work arrives in a spike, pays through insurance, and disappears for months at a time. Retail work — repairs, replacements sold on their own merits, no claim involved — trickles in steadily and is what keeps payroll funded between storms.
A company that is 100% storm-dependent is one quiet season from laying off half the crew. A company that is 100% retail misses the highest-ticket work in the market when a storm does roll through. The right mix depends on your region's storm frequency, but most stable roofing companies run something close to 60–70% retail and 30–40% storm on an annual basis, shifting toward storm in active years and backfilling with retail and bought leads in quiet ones.
Track the split monthly. If storm work is above half your revenue for two consecutive quarters, start pushing harder on the free and paid retail channels in this guide before the storm work dries up and leaves a gap.
- Storm work: high ticket, insurance-paid, unpredictable timing, referral-driven
- Retail work: steady ticket, homeowner-paid, predictable timing, marketing-driven
- Target roughly 60–70% retail / 30–40% storm on an annual basis for stability
- Capped county leads are built for filling the retail gap between storms
5. Local content that answers cost questions
Homeowners search cost before they search contractor. A page on your site that honestly answers what a roof replacement runs in your city, with real ranges, will out-produce a decade of generic blog posts.
6. Paid search, only with tracking
Roofing clicks are expensive and competitive. Run it only when you can attribute booked jobs, not just calls, and only with a landing page that matches the search — not your homepage.
7. Bought leads, but capped
Bought leads fill the gaps the other six leave. The rule is simple: buy where the number of competitors is capped and the phone number is verified. Uncapped auction leads make you the seventh call and turn your day into voicemails.
This is the model behind the roofing leads pillar page: no auction, a verified phone number before the request goes out, and a hard cap so you are never one of ten roofers calling the same homeowner.
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
Worked example: backing into a monthly lead budget
A two-crew roofing company wants $60,000 in monthly revenue with an $7,500 average ticket and a 1-in-4 overall close rate across every channel combined.
- 1Jobs needed: $60,000 ÷ $7,500 = 8 jobs a month
- 2Leads needed: 8 jobs ÷ 25% close rate = 32 leads a month, from all sources combined
- 3Free channels (GBP, canvassing, referrals) are already producing about 18 leads a month
- 4Gap to fill with paid leads: 32 − 18 = 14 leads a month, from your covered counties on Homeowner Henry
- 5Coverage costs a flat $5 a month per county, whatever the lead volume — no per-lead charge, so the more of those 14 leads that show up, the cheaper each one gets
- 6Claim your counties and start coverage before you need the leads, since they arrive as homeowners call in, not in a burst
The five-minute callback script
Say this on the first call, before anyone else reaches them.
"Hi {name}, this is {you} with {company} — you just asked about {job} on Homeowner Henry. Is now an okay minute?"
"So I quote it right: what's going on with it, and how long has it been like that?"
"I'm out that way {day}. I can look at it between {window} or {window}. Which is easier?"
"I'll text you a confirmation now and again the morning of. You'll have a written price the same day I'm there."
If no answer: "{name}, {you} with {company} about your {job} request — I have {day} open. Text me a good time and I'll lock it in."
Post-job neighbor door hanger copy
Leave this at the four to eight closest doors the same day the crew wraps up.
"We just finished the roof at {address} — thought your neighbors should know while the crew's still in the area."
"If you've been putting off a repair or replacement, we're offering neighborhood pricing through {month} for anyone on this street."
"Call or text {phone} for a free look — no obligation, and we can usually get you a written price the same day."
"{company} — licensed, insured, and we'll leave the yard as clean as we found it."
Review request text
Send this the same day as final payment, while the job is still top of mind.
"Hi {name}, {you} here from {company} — thanks again for trusting us with your roof. If you have two minutes, a Google review helps us a lot more than you'd think: {review link}."
"No pressure at all, but if anything about the crew or the cleanup stood out, that's exactly what to mention."
Questions contractors ask
- What's the fastest way to get roofing leads this week?
- Canvass around your current job, text your last hundred customers, and buy a small capped batch of verified leads. Everything else in the stack pays off over months.
- How many roofing leads do I need per month?
- Work backward from revenue: divide your monthly revenue target by your average ticket to get jobs needed, then divide jobs needed by your close rate. Most companies land between 20 and 40 leads a month across every channel combined.
- How wide should I canvass after finishing a roof?
- Start tight — the 4 to 8 closest doors, same day, in person — and widen to the street and block with door hangers over the following week. The closest neighbors close at the highest rate because they watched the job happen.
- Should a roofing company chase storm work or retail work?
- Both, but not in equal measure. Most stable roofing companies run roughly 60–70% retail and 30–40% storm annually, using retail and bought leads to fill the gaps between storm cycles.
- 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
Claim your roofing county for $5 a month.
Every phone-verified homeowner in your county comes to you at no charge per lead. Only 3 roofers per county, and you can cancel any time.
Claim your counties