How to Grow a Roofing Business

Starting a business is one thing. Growing it is another.

The roofing industry is currently a $56 billion industry. It’s not a bad niche to be focused on. But simply launching your own roofing business doesn’t guarantee success.

Naturally, every ambitious entrepreneur wants to see their business grow. But business growth doesn’t happen automatically or overnight. Instead, it’s an ongoing process—if you add hard work, patience, a solid growth strategy, and commitment.

Said another way, there’s no secret sauce for business growth. (Any article or consultant who claims otherwise is gravely mistaken.) Rather, there are measures you can take to keep your roofing business on track to success.

And that’s what this article is about. In it, we’ll cover the critical basics you need to know to grow a roofing business.

What Is Business Growth?

Business growth refers to expansion in revenue, market share, or production. Unfortunately, there’s no universal formula for defining or creating business growth.

The definition varies depending on your business and target market. And the things you need to do to achieve growth can depend on those same two variables.

That said, it may be helpful to cover some common growth metrics your roofing company could use.

Sales and net earnings: Rising sales volume and profits.
Market penetration: Growing number of first-time or returning roofing customers.
HR size: Employing more workers to handle increasing workload.
Productivity and efficiency: Increasing the company’s throughput or doing more with less.
Coverage area: Expanding or branching out to new locations.
Service diversification: Increasing roofing services to reach more niches.
Investments: Building the company’s asset inventory. (Vehicles, equipment, real estate, stock options, etc.)
Business partnerships: Teaming up with strategic business partners.
Brand reputation: Increasing positivity and acceptance around the brand.

In short, business growth might be best defined as progress. You may define progress differently than other roofing business owners. And you may change your definition of progress at different stages in your company’s evolution.

The goal is just to be better next month, next quarter, or next year than you are today.

How to Grow Your Roofing Business

What does it take to grow a roofing business?

Below, we’ll outline 6 strategies that could work for you. With each, we encourage you to be thoughtful and strategic. Carefully consider what feels like the best fit for you and your business.

1. Establish Yourself as a Credible Roofing Authority Through Digital Marketing

Digital marketing uses digital technologies to promote a service or brand. This type of marketing is also called internet or online marketing.

It takes the first spot on our list because of its immense potential to grow roofing businesses. In fact, online marketing accounts for 57.1% of marketing budgets. It’s that dominant among professional marketers.

Not only that, but marketers plan to increase their digital marketing spend by another 16% in 2023. This shows a growing emphasis on digital marketing.

So now is the time to step up your marketing game to stay in the roof contracting race.

Digital marketing is a multifaceted marketing approach. Here are the most effective digital marketing techniques for growing your roofing business.

Create a Roofing Website and Optimize It for Local Search

Did you know that 86% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses?

A roofing website makes your business visible to these online searchers. You should work to optimize your site for organic traffic. Or better yet, partner with a qualified marketing agency that can help ensure you rank well.

Also, get listed on Google Business to boost your local online visibility.

Get on Social Media

Today, more than 223 million Americans use social media. That’s a massive audience that includes plenty of homeowners.

If you want to reach them, you need a strong social media presence.

Create business profiles on one or more of these leading social media channels:

Then grow your following through captivating posts and helpful information. Be yourself. Share photos of your work.

This is a great way to interact with a vast and diverse audience.

Inform and Intrigue Prospects with Online Content

Content marketing is a staple of digital marketing. Web content is a versatile marketing medium.

Just make sure your online content is relevant, engaging, and helpful. It won’t do you any good to launch a blog and fill it with information no one wants to read. But if you offer solid, free advice homeowners can actually use, you can develop a strong following.

Use blog articles (or videos) to inform, entertain, and intrigue.

Engage Roofing Prospects and Customers Through Emails

Email is a popular marketing strategy praised for its simplicity and effectiveness.

For example, consider these stats.

66% of SMBs use email to market their brand and communicate with old and new customers.
60% of the same SMBs rate email marketing as “effective” or “very effective.”

Email can be the most practical way to directly pitch new roofing prospects. It’s also successful for keeping in touch with existing clients.

Your email efforts begin with a list of relevant contacts—leads, past customers, referrals, etc. From there, you’ll need to craft informative, educational emails. Be sure to keep your emails short, direct, and useful.

No one wants their inbox cluttered with junk mail. Make your company’s email stand out by including information prospective customers actually want.

Invest in Online Ads

Paid ads are another great way to boost your roofing company’s online presence.

You can try several options, including:

Pay-per-click (PPC) Google Ads
Sponsored posts on Facebook (or other social media networks)

The size of your ad campaign will largely depend on your advertising budget and the target audience.

2. Grow Your Business Through Word-of-Mouth Marketing

Local contractors rely heavily on word-of-mouth marketing to score new customers. Word-of-mouth marketing happens when a customer recommends a product or service to others.

How do you make that happen? The easiest way is to simply ask.

Ask customers to leave reviews on your website. Good reviews (on Google, for example) are essentially free marketing. Not only that, but they’re very effective, too. 90% of customers are likely to trust and buy from a brand recommended by a friend.

What’s more, word-of-mouth impressions drive five times more sales than paid ads. That’s because word-of-mouth advertising capitalizes on a phenomenon known as social proof.

Social proof is the idea that people will adopt the beliefs and behaviors of others when making decisions. We all have a natural tendency to look for cues from others when making big purchases. It often feels like a safe bet to learn from what’s worked well for others.

When happy customers tell friends, family, and neighbors about their experiences with your business, new customers will seek you out.

Here are some tips to ensure your word-of-mouth marketing yields the desired results:

Create epic first experiences for new roofing clients.
Ensure your roofing services are top-notch.
Go above and beyond with customer service.
Create meaningful talking points for customers to share with others.
Encourage clients to leave online reviews for your roofing business.
Include testimonials and case studies on your website.

From One of Our Partners

Word-of-Mouth Marketing: 3 Ways to Grow Your Business

3. Build a Quality Team of Employees

Employees can be powerful brand ambassadors. A team of qualified, committed folks can go a long way toward helping your company reach its full potential.

Richard Branson, the founder of the Virgin Group, is a firm believer in the power of employees. He once said, “Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.”

Hiring the Right Folks

As a growth-focused roofing pro, take the time to make careful hiring decisions. Below are five quick pointers to building the dream roofing team:

Only hire qualified candidates for each position.
Consider how well each candidate matches your company’s culture and values.
Offer competitive wages and benefits.

Keeping Your Employees Happy

Of course, you’ll also want to keep employees happy after they’ve been hired. Here are some tips to help you ensure employee satisfaction:

Encourage employees to give you real, candid feedback.
Provide your workers with all the tools, equipment, and information needed for the job.
Check each job to gauge and improve your team’s commitment to quality roofing services.
Allow for career advancement (promotions) when it makes sense.

4. Stay Up to Date with the Latest Roofing Trends and Customer Demands

The roofing industry—and the construction space as a whole—is dynamic. Drastic shifts are common. Planning for growth involves anticipating such changes and preparing for them.

Growing a roofing business includes:

Staying on top of industry trends.
Maneuvering around market dynamics.
Planning your next step to get ahead of competitors.
Adopting emerging trends as early as possible.

Business agility is an important aspect of growth. For example, take advantage of modern roofing trends. When a new roofing trend hits the market, embrace it. Learn all you can about it. If it makes sense, offer it to your clients.

At the same time, be careful not to invest in fads. Instead, test the waters and base your decisions on what your customers really want.

5. Offer Excellent Customer Service

A big part of growing your roofing business has to do with customer service. Good customer service results in good customer experiences. That’s crucial for a strong brand reputation.

Make excellent customer service part of your roofing company’s culture. Here’s how to do that:

Communicate clearly with customers.
Maintain a positive attitude in all communications.
Ditch the industry jargon and use a friendly tone when addressing customers.
Listen to customer complaints and address them promptly.
Take your time with each customer.
Keep your word, especially when it comes to deadlines, budgets, and results.
Follow up on clients after a roofing job to show that you care about their satisfaction.

6. Form Strategic Partnerships with Local Contractors

It can be a real challenge to generate leads for your roofing business. Even with all the digital marketing tools at your fingertips, it’s still difficult to find the right clients for your company.

But there’s one strategy you may not have considered. Not only does it work, but it doesn’t require any marketing budget or any time commitment. You just need to set up the initial partnership, and you’re good to go.

Partnering with other home services providers (like contractors, landscapers, remodelers, and more) can open all kinds of doors for your business.

The trick to making these kinds of partnerships work is pretty straightforward. If you want them to help you, you have to also be willing to help them.

If you’re on a job site and see an opportunity to suggest a landscaping professional, for example, recommend your partner. That will incentivize your partners to recommend you. Over time, you can generate a healthy flow of business from these kinds of referrals.

One of the great things about these leads is they aren’t cold. If the homeowners already trusts your partner, that trust will extend to you.

In other words, these will be easier deals to close.

Visualize Your Growing Roofing Company

Growing a contracting startup into a successful roofing business isn’t easy. But it’s certainly possible. It all starts with knowing what you want to achieve.

Take a hard look at your business plan. Identify the areas where you see real potential for growth. Start with the strategies that will yield the quickest results with the least investment of time and effort.

Also, be sure to track your company’s growth. Measuring progress gives you an idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Looking at the results, you’ll find reasons to celebrate, as well as new tactics to keep going.

And don’t worry if the growth seems slow at times. That’s completely normal in the roofing industry. Appreciate (and celebrate) the small wins.

Start Small with These Simple Steps

We’ve covered a lot of information. But the great news is that you don’t have to do everything at once.

Instead, start small. Add on new tactics as it makes sense. And focus on the easy wins.

One of the best places to start for many roofing companies will be word-of-mouth marketing. It’s inexpensive, effective, and even fun.

Here are some simple steps to get started.

Ask past customers to text you some quick feedback about their experience. Be sure to get their permission to use their feedback as promotional materials on your website and social feeds.
If you don’t have a website, put together a sheet with customer reviews. You can share this with prospects when you send your bid.
If you have a website, create a section just for customer reviews and share that link with prospects when you send your bid.
Also, be sure to ask customers for Google, Yelp, and other forms of online reviews. (The key to getting online reviews is to ask for them.)