Your roofing business has strong word of mouth and you’ve got bookings in the calendar. But things have been slow lately and part of you thinks it’s just a “quiet period” after COVID-19 made it harder for your customers to spend their money.

But that’s not true – because the global roofing industry is worth $100 billion.

Get more quote requests, more calls, and more clients with these 10 proven roofing business growth tips. Plus, discover the WORST mistake you could ever make if you want to grow your business in 2021.

You’ve been on Google looking for tips to grow your roofing business before, but every article you find is frustratingly generic.

Tips that work for carpenters or builders won’t work for you, so you’re stuck wondering if you should apply the type of strategies used by other tradies, or wait for more specific advice.

At Tradie Digital we want to make it easy for you to grow your roofing business in 2021, so this guide is for you – and only you. If you’re a sparky or a painter, or you install bathroom tiles, then you should leave now.

Still here? Good.

In this guide, we’ll show you 10 ways to get more leads for your roofing business, explain some of the mistakes your competition is making, and show you what steps to take if you’re ready to grow.

If you want to grow your roofing company, you need to understand what type of customer you’re selling to.

Every contractor business has two types of customers:

• Maximisers = want the content to compare options and make informed decisions
• Satisfiers = want to save time and prefer to find the best deal or quality available

Satisfiers need help ASAP.

They have broken outlets, smashed shower screens, and cockroach infestations. These are the types of leads who Google their problem and pick one of the first businesses they see. They’re not focused on reading blogs or learning about the service. All they care about is a) can this business help me and b) is this business in my price range.

Maximisers are the opposite.

They need to stop and think about their choice and they won’t make a decision on the spot. They need to compare businesses, read reviews, and learn about you before they give you their money.

The majority of guides you’ll find online are written to help tradies get more Satisfiers. They provide tips to convince people on the spot, but your business is different. Your customer won’t pick you on a whim, or on your rankings, or on a price point.

Roofing customers care about their home – and they take great pride in choosing a trustworthy, reliable, and proven roofer.

Let’s face it, every customer has a horror story about a dodgy roofing company. Maybe they did thousands of dollars of damage while trying to replace tiles, maybe they picked someone without the right insurance, or maybe they went with a friend of a friend and got a shoddy job.

The point is, your customer ISN’T going to pick you without learning about your business first.

That’s why you need to apply different lead-gen and growth strategies to a plumber or an electrician or a handyman.

The following 10 tips are designed to help you attract more leads whether your roofing business launched 30 days ago, or 30 years ago.

If you haven’t launched a website for your roofing business yet, what are you waiting for?

30% of people won’t hire a business without a website. In 2021, your customers expect you to have a site – even if it’s a simple website with your contact info and a list of your services. The internet is central to everything your customers do, from online banking to online shopping; ordering food to ordering movies.

And your customers want to research and learn about possible home improvement businesses online too.

You don’t need to spend $10,000 on a fancy website if you don’t want to. Website builders make it easy to DIY your own site on a budget, so play around with a few website builders for free to find the platform that’s best for you.

Find out the best way to quickly build a roofing business website.

If you’ve already got a website, the next step is to optimize it.

‘Optimize’ is the type of term marketing salesmen love to throw around. Really, all it means is to make your website easier for customers to use.

Your site might have your contact info, and a few pictures of your best work to help people see how good you are with your hands, but there are plenty of ways to upgrade and make it easier for people to use.

Some of the foundational optimization strategies include:

• Helpful content on each page that solves your customer’s problems
• Separate pages for each service so customers with different problems can focus on their issue
• Fast loading times so customers don’t have to wait for each page to load
• Easy to find ‘contact’ buttons so people can request a quote or callback in seconds

Giving your website a makeover is about more than changing a few colors or fixing a few spelling mistakes. An optimized website will have a better conversion rate than a site that’s been built without a plan.

Keen to learn more about your conversion rate? Click here for our ‘Conversion Rate Guide’ (with bonus conversion tips)

You always want local customers because they’re easy to get to, and they’re more likely to spread good word of mouth buzz in your community.

If you want to grow your roofing business in 2021, focus on your local SEO. And to focus on your local SEO, you’ll need to optimise (remember, that just means ‘make it easier for customers to use’) your Google My Business Listing (GMB) and your website.

If you’ve ever searched for a service in your local area on Google, for example ‘Florida shingle repair’ or ‘Sydney storm damage help’, you’ll have seen local SEO results in the form of a map with businesses listed below. Customers love these local results because they can see how far away each business is, and find the closest one to reach out to.

92% of customers will pick a business on the first page of local search results, so if you want local work, you need to optimize your GMB and website. Here are a few simple ways to boost your local SEO:

• Add location pages to your site so Google and your customers know what areas you work in
• Encourage your customers to leave reviews on your GMB and website
• Update your business info so it’s accurate and includes your full business name, address, and phone number (NAP)
• Make sure your business hours are accurate (especially if they’ve changed through COVID-19)

With changes like these, you’ll give local customers more ways to find you.

What’s the fastest way to grow your sales?

Get better at sales.

As a roofer you want to provide a premium service, but you need to be able to convince people to part with their money to hire you. It’s common for sales to get a bad rap, with roofers not wanting to put the ‘hard sell’ on their customers. Thankfully, sales isn’t about being pushy or aggressive.

Roofing sales is about understanding your customer’s problems and selling them a solution.

To change your sales approach you should look to act as an advisor whether you’re on the phone or on-site providing a new roof estimate. If your prospect has questions, answer them honestly – even if the answer doesn’t link to your business.

This is known as a ‘consultative sales approach’ and helps build trust.

When you prioritize building relationships over being pushy, you end up with more sales. And as you learn more about your customer’s wants, needs and desires, you’ll start to turn “I’m not ready yet” into “When are you available to work on my roof?”.

As a roofer, your business relies on word of mouth.

Whether it’s installation, repairs, or re-tiling, your customers don’t make decisions on a whim. They don’t pick the first business on Google like they might for an emergency plumber – because their roof is a MASSIVE investment.

If your word of mouth is positive, people are more likely to trust you, and that’s going to earn you more quote requests and call-outs. It’s great to have a face-to-face word of mouth, but conversations that used to happen at the shops now happen online.

Your reviews online are your word of mouth in 2021.

The more positive reviews you get for your roofing business, the more people will trust you to install or fix a major part of their home.

You can grow your business by asking your best customers to leave you a positive review on Google, Yelp, True Local – wherever your business is found.

“Give away FREE stuff. How will that help me grow my roofing business?”

That’s a fair question, but you’re not giving away your services for free – only information.

47% of roofing customers read 3 to 5 pieces of content before they choose their roofer. That could be your service pages or that could be blog articles. If your content is thin, light on value, and a glorified ad for your business, what reason are you giving people to choose you?

Giving away free value is at the heart of growing your roofing business because it helps build trust with your audience. If the 3 to 5 pieces of content your audience reads are all in-depth articles full of practical tips and tricks, they’ll start to see you as an expert who’s worth trusting.

When the time comes for those people to choose a roofer, who do you think will stand out to them?

• Your competition who fills their site with self-promotional content that doesn’t help people solve their problems?
• Or you, the business who gave away free tips and tricks and asked for nothing in return?

Make sure your content is full of value and given away for free, and you’ll see an increase in leads coming in the other direction.

Not a writer? NOT A PROBLEM. Click here to learn how ANYONE can create content for your industry that helps your roofing business grow

Any customer who needs help with their roof is going to turn to Google.

They’ll look for articles, reviews, comparisons – pretty much any resource that helps them see where to get the best deal, and what roofer brings the best quality.

You can use SEO to make sure your articles are at the top of Google, but SEO does take time. Instead, use roofing Google Ads to put your roofing business at the top of Google instantly. You can bid on certain keywords that will trigger your ads, for example, words like ‘roofing repair’, ‘metal re-roofing, ‘tile repair’, and ‘roof repitching’.

When customers search for these keywords, your ads pop up, and you’re able to tap into the type of customer who’s out there looking for help with their roof – which makes it that little bit easier to earn a quote request or call-back.

Keen for FAST results? Click here to discover how many leads you’ll get through your own Google Ads campaign

Growing your business comes down to understanding where your customers spend their time online.

If your customers look for roofers on Google, you should consider investing in SEO to make sure your business is on Google. If your customers check out the social media profiles of roofers for a little visual research, consider investing in social media marketing.

This advice isn’t groundbreaking, but it is something plenty of roofers fail to take onboard. It’s common for Australian roofing contractors to say “I’ve got an ad in the Yellow Pages and it’s worked fine for me”. Instead of proving their marketing works, it proves our advice is correct.

5 to 10 years ago customers would have turned to the Yellow Pages to find roofers. That’s where customers spent their time, so it made sense for roofers to put themselves there.

In 2021, customers spend their time on Google and social media, making it crucial you pivot your marketing strategies to meet them there.

Let’s say a customer reaches out to you with storm damage to their roof…

What do you think they’re looking for from your business?

Most roofers would say “to fix their roof” but that’s not true. A customer with storm damage DOES have holes in their roof and they DO want you to fix it, but that’s not the problem they’re facing.

The problem they need help with is that the holes in their roof are letting water in, and that water is damaging their favourite chair, and that’s upsetting because they love their favourite chair.

If you want to grow your business you need to move away from ‘selling’ your services. And start ‘solving’ people’s roofing problems. In this example, you could create content that explains how you repair roofs quickly and under budget – and that means your customers can relax in their homes knowing their treasured possessions are protected.

With this approach, your website isn’t one big ad that you hope convinces people to contact you. It becomes a problem-solving resource for your customers who come to you not because you fix roofs, but because you understand why fixing a roof is so important.

What sets your roofing business apart from every other roofer in your suburb?

It’s great to tell your customers how long you’ve been in business, how many clients you’ve had, or what your values are – but you need to identify the ONE thing that sets you apart so your customers see you as different from the other roofers.

This is known as your Unique Selling Proposition, or USP.

There’s a good chance you’ll offer the same services as your competition, whether that’s re-tiling, re-pointing, or re-bedding. But you can stand out by adding value on top of your services, for example with a guarantee. Keep in mind, your guarantee should always help address your customer’s fears.

At Tradie Digital we offer a lead-beat guarantee – meaning you’ll increase your leads when you work with us or we’ll cut you a check for $300.

We know roofers have probably been burnt by agencies before, and losing money is a real concern. That’s why we address that concern and guarantee they’ll either make more leads or we’ll give them more money.

As a roofer, you could throw in a free annual inspection, offer some type of guarantee or offer a discount off the total bill if the customer isn’t 100% satisfied. There’s no right or wrong USP, but the more unique and more customer-focused it is, the better.

The reality of running your own roofing business means you become an expert in your trade – but that doesn’t leave time to improve the other necessary skills you need to grow, like sales and marketing.

Without any formal marketing education it’s tough to come up with a strategy that delivers more leads, and even tougher to implement it. You can pressure clean, replace and rebed a ridge cap…but selling yourself as the best solution to your customer’s roofing problems has been tough.

The worst mistake you can make is to assume your work will speak for itself.

It’s a harsh reality, but your customers don’t see your services in the same light as you.

Your work won’t speak for itself, especially if no one can find you.

Your customers need to know that YOU are the expert, they need to find you on Google through keyword-rich content, they need to spend time on a fast and mobile-friendly website, and they need to feel secure in spending their money before they’ll ever pick up the phone and ask you for a quote.

With the 10 tips we’ve outlined in this guide you’ll have a roadmap to grow your roofing business over the next 12 months and beyond. This approach takes time and patience, but it covers all the bases you need to secure more work going forward.

Interested in applying our proven strategies but don’t have the time?

Click here to find out if you’re eligible to work with Tradie Digital