20 Roofing Marketing Ideas From Real Roofers (Put These in Next Year’s Budget)

Every fall I sit down and plan next year’s marketing budget for Owl Roofing. This year I did something different. I asked my Facebook feed: Planning our marketing budget for next year, what should I include? Crazy, basic or innovative ideas welcome.

Roofers showed up. Some ideas cost almost nothing. Some cost a free roof. A couple were jokes I’m still laughing at. Here are the 20 best, grouped by what they do for you.

Why your budget needs more than leads

Most roofing budgets are 100% lead buying: Google Ads, LSA, maybe some door knocking. That works until everyone in your market buys the same leads. The ideas below build the stuff ad dollars can’t buy: referrals, trust and a name people remember.

Referral partners

1. An “everything roofing” pamphlet for insurance and real estate agents.

Insurance agents are one of my highest close ratio referrals. I created a pamphlet called “Everything Roofing on the Space Coast.” It covers maintenance for each type of roof system, life expectancy, what to do after a storm and how to get the most discounts when replacing your roof. It has our logo all throughout and makes us the local professional. We also give them to real estate agents to hand out at closings.

Jeff Arnold

2. Home inspectors. Jeff added that home inspectors are great referral sources too. They’re on roofs every day and homeowners trust them.

3. A lawn care partner.

Partner with a lawn service. At every sale they get scheduled with the lawn service.

Michael Gogan

4. BNI. Jared McCloud put it simply: “BNI has been great for us.” A weekly room full of business owners who refer each other works for a reason.

Customer experience that markets itself

5. A branded thank-you box built to last.

On Top Roofing is really big on passing out a thank you box at the end, plus a shingle tomb. The boxes come with a YETI cup branded with the company name, because nobody throws away a YETI cup and they take it everywhere. A shingle tomb sits in the garage for 20 years. Between the two, you’re in their mind and in their conversations for 20 years to come.

Derick E Hihn

6. Zoo tickets and date nights during install.

Get Minnesota Zoo tickets for any family that buys a roof in the summer and will have kids at home during the install. Young couple buys a roof? Send them to dinner so the install is done before they get home.

Michael Gogan

7. A QR warranty sticker in the electrical panel.

Place warranty stickers in the electrical box or near it after the project is done. Put a QR code on the sticker that takes the customer to the website.

Matt Woods

Every future electrician, home inspector and buyer sees your name. Brilliant.

8. Free shirts. “Everyone loves a free shirt after a job is done,” said Alex Ahrenholtz. Cheap, and it walks around your neighborhood for years.

9. Old school customer service.

My humble opinion after 30 years in roofing: spend more time, money and communication with your potential, current and past customers. That paid dividends before SEO, Google Maps and websites were around. Of course we use them all now, but old school customer service still beats them all. All 3 of our projects this week are referrals.

Don Bassett

An offer that beats storm chasers

10. A transferable lifetime labor warranty, tied to annual maintenance. This was the most detailed idea in the thread.

Offer a transferable LIFETIME warranty on LABOR. Most offer lifetime deals on materials, but that’s meaningless without the labor. “The last roof you will ever buy” is how I’d position it.

They use a lifetime material, and they enroll in an annual maintenance program where you walk the roof once a year to check pipe boots and sealants. If they fail to pay the annual, the contract is void. Now you can make money on slow days inspecting 8 to 10 roofs in your dead season.

They won’t let a storm chaser on the roof when they already have a lifetime warranty with you. When you walk that roof and find damage, it’s a new claim. Agents will love referring you. And if a roof leaks, it leaks on the first rain. You’re already on the hook for callbacks the first year anyway.

Shane O’Dazier

Run the numbers with your accountant before you launch this. But the logic is sound: recurring revenue, a reason to be on the roof every year and a moat against out-of-town crews.

Community marketing

11. Christmas lights for schools and clinics, plus a lights tour.

If you do Christmas lights, I’m a huge fan of decorating elementary schools, pediatric clinics and dentists, then creating a fly-around lights tour so people can see all the places you hung lights. You can likely get traction through school newsletters and sporting events.

Michael Gogan

12. A school program with your name on it. Michael’s idea was a “Give a Hoot” package for students who complete community service hours. Tyler Matthew Rice took it further: make it a reading challenge and turn the double O in “Hoot” into owl eyes. Every company has a version of this. Find yours.

13. Sponsor the parade, and judge the floats.

We’re sponsoring our town’s Christmas parade again this year. We vote on the best floats and we’re the ones who give away the awards. My family loves it, it’s relatively inexpensive as far as marketing goes and we support the community. Win, win, win.

I’m a digital marketer, but I think traditional is becoming more and more important. Everyone has been pushed so far into digital that people are coming back out into the real world. The door is wide open out there.

Mark Cantrell

14. Event sponsorships, all year long.

We’ve been doing a lot of community event sponsorships and it’s been working great for us: car shows, concert events (8 weeks each year), roof and siding giveaways, local charities where we provide free labor, children’s hospitals, Thanksgiving dinners for veterans and law enforcement, and local sports team sponsorships.

Anatoliy Aponchuk

15. Invest in what your team cares about.

Do the opposite of what your local market is doing. Stay 10 steps ahead. Local community fundraising and events seem to be it, and they fill your team’s soul and give them ownership. What’s important to every team member locally? Invest the team in that. Make your company the lighthouse of your community!

Dan Suffern

16. Give away a roof and document all of it.

Consider giving away one free roof each week or month to a family in need. If you document the entire process well, this alone could become one of your most powerful forms of marketing. Look at the lawn care and pressure washing videos where owners offer free services to people who need them. They perform because they combine a good cause with a satisfying transformation.

Raju Karki

Proven channels

17. Direct mail.

We kill it with direct mail. It’s our main lead source. Just under $6M so far this year from mailers alone, and I’m in a super competitive area.

Kevin Robert

18. Local sports radio. Stephen Snyder’s vote for us here in the Twin Cities: “You gotta advertise on Skor North. I listen to those guys almost daily!” Find the show your buyers can’t stop listening to.

Turn your team into marketers

19. Teach reps to self-generate on social. Tera Dolan’s pick: “Someone to teach your reps how to self-gen leads with their social media accounts.” Ray Windell agreed: spend money on training and top talent, plus lead gen. Your reps’ personal networks are a channel. Most companies never train it.

The wild card

20. Go big and go weird. Jonathan Price brought the wildest list: TikTok live every day for a year, sponsoring a drive-in movie theater, interviewing hometown heroes for a podcast and throwing a massive free family event day. Not all of it fits every company. But one bold, weird idea per year keeps your brand from blending in.

The funny answers

Wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man.

Matt O’Dore

Buying leads from random cold callers is always a great idea!

Meelo Bayakly

Get an owl.

Tony Biondo

To be fair, Stephanie Daniel turned Tony’s joke into a real idea: a mascot for school visits and community events. Noted.

Takeaways: how to build your roofing marketing budget

1. Keep paying for leads, but don’t stop there. Ads fill this month. Referral partners, reviews and community presence fill next year.
2. Pick two referral partners and arm them. Insurance agents, realtors, inspectors or a lawn company. Give them something useful to hand out.
3. Make your customer experience worth talking about. A box, a shirt, a sticker in the panel. Small things that keep your name in the house for decades.
4. Own a few community moments. One parade, one school program, one giveaway you can film. Repeat them every year.
5. Create an offer storm chasers can’t match. A real labor warranty with a maintenance plan beats a lower price.
6. Train your team to market. Every rep has a network. Teach them to use it.

What would you add? I’m still building our budget, and the best idea I hear gets tested at Owl Roofing next year.