Flashing success: 14 roofing marketing strategies for small business

Effectively marketing a local roofing business requires targeting the right audience at the right time. Building and optimizing a website, leveraging a Google Business Profile and 5-star customer reviews, creating referral programs, and leveling up your SEO are just a few marketing strategies designed to help roofing businesses stand out from the local competition.

TL;DR

The roofing industry, comprised primarily of small businesses, is growing. Forecasters predict that by 2033 the industry will achieve a value of $342.8 billion. As competition increases, small business owners must consider roofing marketing strategies to stand out from their local competition. Growing a successful roofing business starts with creating a business and marketing plan that focuses on reaching your target audience.

In this guide, we’ll help roofing business owners navigate key strategies to boost their small businesses and build brand awareness that drives revenue year over year.

1. Email Marketing

Email marketing is a tried and true marketing method for businesses of any size. For plumbing businesses, email marketing can help nurture and upsell existing customers with promotions and new products.

Many small business owners already use some form of email marketing. Still, chances are your current email marketing can be leveled up. Start by crafting a monthly or bimonthly email newsletter to keep your current customer base up-to-date on products, services, and promotions.

To make this strategy work best for your roofing business, think of specific topics or calls to action (CTAs) that will resonate with your audience.

For example:

• Remind customers of required/recommended maintenance (e.g. limiting moss and algae growth)
• Share helpful information or roofing tips to build brand loyalty (e.g. how to clean out gutters)
• Offer seasonal reminders to help customers keep their roof in good condition (e.g. winterizing your roof)

If you’re stuck, leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT can help with content ideation, email copy, and editing.

2. Customer referral and vendor referral programs

The first step in starting a referral program and receiving customer referrals is providing exceptional customer service. Happy customers become loyal customers who are more likely to spread the word and help bring in new business.

However, it’s always helpful to give customers an incentive. Roofing businesses can incentivize referrals from loyal customers by:

• Offering referees money off their next maintenance service
• Offering a cash reward or credit for each new client they refer
• Running a contest where referring customers get a chance to win a grand prize, like a $500 gift card or a free service

With the right referral-tracking mechanisms, referral programs are inexpensive to run and easy to maintain. Referrals can be given traditionally (via word of mouth) or digitally, which is easier to track, through a referral link generated by referral software.

3. Search engine optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) helps potential customers discover and visit your website. For small businesses, this means optimizing your website content to target industry-specific keywords, making website improvements, and creating a good user experience so that your small business shows up higher than competitors on Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).

Optimize for organic traffic

• Conduct keyword research: Keyword research is the foundation of any small business SEO strategy. Determine the keywords your audience is likely to use in their searches and use them to ideate content, optimize your pages, build a site structure, and even curate your Google Business Profile listing.

• Optimize on-page elements: Optimizing on-page elements, such as titles, meta descriptions, and headers is one of the quickest ways to get SEO wins for small businesses.

• Find and fix any existing SEO issues: If you have an existing site, it’s probably worth looking at what needs to be updated. Beyond content, many technical aspects of SEO could negatively affect your rankings and visibility in the SERPs. These can include undiscoverable pages Google can’t crawl, broken links, slow site speed, sitemap errors, duplicate content, or schema implementation errors.

Monitor your local listings

Local SEO allows small businesses to target local customers within a specific geographic location, improving their performance in local searches.

To improve your local SEO, your important business information (NAP — or name, address, and phone number) must be accurate and consistent.

4. Location-based marketing

Geofencing is a location-based marketing tactic that allows roofing businesses to target potential customers with personalized advertising campaigns using GPS and virtual boundaries.

5. Google Ads for roofers

Google Ads, Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising solution, allows businesses to bid on keywords for a chance to be displayed at the very top of Google search results.

6. Lead generation tools

Listing your roofing business on lead generation websites can put you in front of consumers who are actively searching for roofing services—with little effort on your part.

7. Positive online reviews

Reviews are critical for small businesses, as they can make or break a potential customer’s decision to use you as a provider.

8. Social media marketing

Small businesses increasingly rely on social media marketing to reach customers, create brand awareness, and drive sales.

9. Short and long-form video content

TikTok, one of the most popular social media platforms for small businesses, is all about short-form videos.

10. Yard signage

Putting signage outside the home you’re working on is a great way to get more eyes on your business.

11. Vehicle wrapping

Wrapping a business van turns your vehicle into a mobile billboard for your business.

12. Door-to-door promotion

Going door-to-door is one of the oldest methods of advertising, particularly for home services like roofing.

13. HOA partnerships

Getting on the preferred provider list for local HOAs is a reliable way to generate repeat business.

14. Affiliate marketing

As a roofing business, you can also make money as a referral partner for other adjacent businesses.

Ultimately, the more of these roofing marketing strategies a business implements, the more likely it will be to have visibility within a community and build a strong network of customers.