If you’re a roofing company advertising outside your service area, marketing can feel like a leaking roof. Whether you’re intending to or not, you may be looking for roofing leads you can’t service because these people are outside your region. Not only is this disappointing, but it’s also a waste of your precious dollars.
For most roofers, your ideal customer is someone whose home is relatively close to your business. Sure, you might cover a large service area, or be willing to send crews out for roofing jobs hundreds of miles away once in a while—but doing that on a regular basis will eat into your profits.
That’s why attracting local roofing leads is so important.
When the leads you attract are from your local service area, they’re better leads to begin with. You won’t waste time talking to people who are too far away to use your services. Instead, you’ll convert more prospects to customers in less time and grow your business.
In this blog post, we’ll cover why location matters to local lead generation strategies, and the four tactics you can use for local roofing lead generation (local search directories, local search engine optimization, pay-per-click advertising, and social media marketing).
Why is location so important?
The location of leads is important to a roofing business for many reasons. By focusing on generating roofing leads within a specific area close to your business, you’ll enjoy these advantages:
- You and your crew will waste less time commuting to distant job sites. Instead, that time can be spent working.
- You save wear and tear on your roofing business’ vehicles, as well as saving on fuel.
- When your roofing job sites are close by, it’s easier to visit your customers and monitor progress or troubleshoot problems as needed.
- Word-of-mouth referrals that come from local businesses will generate more leads in your local area.
- You will have a better work-life balance because you’re closer to home.
There are also some important advantages to targeting local leads in terms of building your business brand.
- When most of your roofing jobs are within local communities, it’s easier to build up a reputation there. Neighbors walking or driving by one of your roofing jobs will ask for your contact information.
- When you aren’t spread too thin across a region, your business can develop a stronger presence in the community. You can get more involved in local community events, charities, networking groups, and other community organizations.
- You can specialize in certain types of projects unique to the communities you work in. For example, you might focus on building tile roofs for Mediterranean-style homes or restoring flat roofs for mid-century modern homes. Specialization allows you to build up more expertise and offer more value to clients, so you can charge them more, too.
How to get roofing leads with local marketing
Now that you know why location is so important to marketing a business, let’s talk about how you can use local marketing to get more roofing customers.
There are four simple marketing tactics you can use to get more high-quality leads locally. They don’t take a lot of time or money, but they do make a lot of difference in the number of good leads you’ll attract.
Local search directories
Start by optimizing your listing on local search directories. The most important of these local searches, is Google My Business. Others include Bing Places for Business and Yelp. If you don’t already have a listing on these local search directories, you should because it’s totally free to “claim” your listing.
Once you’ve got your business directory listing set up, make sure to include as much detail as possible about your business. Homeowners who see the listing should have all the information they need to decide whether or not to contact you.
This includes:
- Your phone number
- Your address
- Your service area
- Your operating hours
- Your specialties (such as tile roofs, flat roofs, etc.)
- Photos
- Any promotions you are running
Here’s an example of a roofer that’s making the most of their listing. They’ve included details including their hours of operation and lots of photos of roofs they’ve worked on.
If setting all of this up on your own feels overwhelming, you can avail yourself of our business directories solutions. Our team will get your business directory listing up and running in no time!
Once you’ve got your local search listings online, keep an eye on them every month or so to make sure the information is still accurate. Update anything that’s changed right away. You don’t want a potential customer to find your listing and call an out-of-date business phone number. Some listing providers like Google My Business will also send you updates about your listing including customer reviews or stats on how many people asked for directions to your business for example!
Local search engine optimization (SEO) for your website
Another change you can make to your business’s website to get more leads is to optimize it for local and organic search engine results. What is local search engine optimization? It’s taking regular SEO one step further to help you get local leads.
To improve your general SEO, use keywords throughout your website that your target customers use when they’re looking for your type of roofing services. Google Ads Keyword Planner is a free tool you can use to find popular keywords. For instance, your keywords might be “tile roof repair” or “flat roof restoration”—whatever you find that people are using to search for your particular services. You can also check out our SEO guide for small businesses for the ultimate list of SEO best practices for your small business.
Related: Learn more about our professional SEO services.
Local SEO adds keywords related to your location, which can help attract more nearby prospects. You can use local keywords for the cities, regions, or neighborhoods where you offer roofing services.
For roofing contractors for instance, you could add “tile roof repair Newport Beach” or “flat roof repair Los Angeles” as location-specific keywords. When someone searches for roof repair in those areas—or even if they don’t specify those areas, but share their location with the search engine—your website will be more likely to show up in the search engine results.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for local leads
As with website SEO, PPC ads use targeted keywords on search engines that your ideal customers are likely to use. Your ads will appear along with search engine results when homeowners search on the keywords you bid on for your ads (you should use the keyword in the ad too and make sure the ad connects to a page related to the keyword to help with your quality score).
The Google Ads Keyword Planner can help you find keywords for your PPC ads and set up an advertising campaign. If you’re worried about your paid ads going over budget, don’t be. You can set limits on how much to spend on PPC ads so you can always stay within your price range.
Just as with website SEO, you can use location-related keywords in your PPC ads. That means an ad for your business in Long Beach, California, won’t show up to somebody searching for roof repair in Long Beach, New York. And that saves you money since you’re not spending money to show ads to people 3,000 miles away. To get more visits to your website, you can check out Web.com’s PPC services to get targeted pay-per-click advertising.
You can also check out our guide on the difference between SEO and PPC to better understand them both and how you can make these powerhouse strategies work smarter for your business.
Social media marketing
Social media platforms aren’t just for fun—they’re also a powerful tool to connect with local homeowners in need of your services. Through targeted posts and ads, you can reach potential customers right in your neighborhood. Share visual showcases of your roofing projects, offer expert tips, and engage with your local audience through comments and messages. By highlighting success stories and using targeted ads, you’ll be well on your way to attracting local leads like never before.
Generate leads for your business today
Local business owners need all the help they can get to get leads for their business. That’s why it’s important to employ different marketing efforts to reach them effectively. Although the tactics mentioned in this blog won’t give you overnight results, it will surely go a long way.
To ease your PPC efforts, check out Web.com’s PPC advertising. You’ll have a dedicated team of PPC advertising experts who will ensure that your campaign reaches the right target audience and generates positive results. By coupling Web.com’s PPC services with the marketing tactics mentioned above, you’ll get qualified leads in your local area which helps boost your reputation, productivity, and profitability.
What are you waiting for? Speak with our digital marketing experts now!
