How To Get Roofing Leads From Your Local Area

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 marketing 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 so much to online lead generation
• Three tactics you can use for local roofing lead generation:

1. local search directories
2. local search engine optimization
3. pay-per-click advertising

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 actually 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 business will generate more business in your local area.
• You will have 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 number.
• When you aren't spread too thin across a region, your roofing 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.

Of course, location is also important to your prospective roofing clients. Consider:

• Between 85-95% of consumer interaction with businesses takes place through local listings, local web pages or other local search results, Search Engine Land reports.
• Almost one-third of all online searches are related to location, according to Think With Google  consumer insights.

As these statistics show, location is key for all kinds of online searches — but given important proximity is for roofers, location is even more important for roofing businesses.

Customers prefer to work with local roofing contractors because it’s more convenient. They know you can get to their home quickly to deal with any problems, and they can feel confident that you know how to work with their type of home.

How to get roofing leads with local marketing

Now that you know why location is so important to marketing a roofing business, let's talk about how you can use local marketing to get more roofing customers.

There are three simple marketing tactics you can use to get more local roofing leads. 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 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 directory listing set up, make sure to include as much detail as possible about your roofing 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 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.

Do you need more motivation to fill out your full listing? According to internal Google research, complete Google My Business listings get 7X more clicks than listings that aren't complete.

One important tip you may not realize: Your businesses name, address, and phone number information needs to be formatted exactly the same on every local search directory where your business is listed.

Why? Search engines are smart, but not smart enough to recognize that Joe's Roofing Inc. and Joe's Roofing are the same company, or that Joe's Roofing at 122 North Jefferson Street is the same business as Joe's Roofing at 122 N. Jefferson St. for example.

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 roofing business’s website to get more leads: optimize it for local search.  What is local search engine optimization? It's taking regular SEO one step further to help you get not just more leads, but more local leads. Here's a closer look at how it works.

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 AdWords 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.

Local SEO adds in 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 to target your website to more relevant prospects. 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 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 AdWords Keyword Planner can help you find keywords for your PPC ads and set up an advertising campaign. If you're worried about 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 roofing 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. Paid search and PPC advertising  can help you get more leads.

Get your share of roofing contractor leads

Homeowners spending on home improvements and repairs are expected to increase at a steady pace through mid-2019, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. That means there's plenty of roofing business out there to come — you just need to know how to get it. Following the steps in this blog will help you get roofing contractor leads in your local area, boosting your reputation, productivity and profitability.

Image Credits
Feature Image: Echo Grid on Unsplash
All screenshots by author. Taken November 2018.