A roofing marketing plan for the year puts the setup work, like reviews and your Google profile, into the slow months and saves the ad and door-knocking money for the months when storms hit your area. Copy the calendar below and move the storm rows to match when hail reaches you.
This calendar is set for hail that peaks April to June
| Month | What gets done |
|---|---|
| January | Count last year’s signed jobs by lead source and write this year’s budget by month. Send the first referral email to past customers. |
| February | Print your Google review QR code on the final invoice. Start one post a month on your Google profile. |
| March | Build your Google Ads and leave them paused. Print contracts with the cancellation forms and look up your city’s door-knocking rules. |
| April | Switch the ads on when storms hit and the schedule has room, and knock the streets the storm hit. Second referral email. |
| May | Ads and door knocking. A review request and a yard sign on every finished job. |
| June | Same as May until the storms stop. |
| July | Pull the ads back once the schedule is full. Third referral email. |
| August | Reviews and yard signs on the storm jobs still finishing. |
| September | Point posts and ads at retail replacements. |
| October | Fourth referral email. Count this year’s signed jobs by lead source so far. |
| November | Ice dams and small repairs, if you work where it snows. |
| December | Make team and systems changes while it’s quiet. |
Every month: one post on your Google profile and a reply to every new review. On every job: the lead source written on the contract.
Slide the storm rows later if your hail comes later
Weather.com’s summary of NOAA storm reports puts the hail peak at April to June across most of the US. In the Great Plains it runs May to July, so slide each storm row a month later. Montana and North Dakota see little hail before June and peak in July, so center the storm rows on July there.
Along Colorado’s Front Range, June has historically been the most damaging hail month, so put the most ad and canvassing money into June. If most of your work comes from something other than hail, set your busy months by where last year’s signed jobs fell.
November to January: count last year’s signed jobs and write the budget
“Winter season is tough for me and didn’t get a single Roofing job this season,” one roofer wrote on Reddit, while he looked at other trades to keep his crew paid. Owners farther north on r/Roofing name ice dams and small repairs as their winter work.
One owner of a large roofing company posted that he plans to use the winter off-season to change his team and systems. Write the marketing plan in the same weeks, starting with a count: pull every job you signed last year and write down where it came from, whether ads, door knocking, a referral, your Google profile or a yard sign. If nobody recorded it, start with this year’s first job (How to Track Which Marketing Brings In Your Roofing Jobs).
Then write the budget month by month, heaviest in your storm months, and fund first the lead sources that signed jobs last year. How Much Should a Roofing Company Spend on Marketing? covers how big the total should be.
February and March: start reviews and profile posts before the storms
Google tells businesses to collect reviews by having customers open a Google review link or scan a QR code. Print the QR code on the final invoice so the request goes out with every bill.
Your Google Business Profile takes three kinds of post: updates, offers and events. Google archives a post after six months unless you set a date range on it, so a post every month keeps a current one on your profile. Google’s help page doesn’t say that posting more often helps your ranking, so write each post for the homeowner deciding whether to call: a roof you just finished, or an offer running this month.
Leave your phone number out of the post text. Google says it might reject a post with a phone number in the description if it can’t verify the number belongs to your business.
Before March ends, build your Google Ads and leave them paused, so they are ready the week storms reach you.
April to June: run ads and door knocking, with the FTC cancellation forms ready
One roofer on Reddit said his company would “turn on our Google advertising if we want a boost in leads.” He also said referral customers close at a very different rate than ad leads, so count the jobs the ads sign apart from the referral jobs and judge the ads on their own count. Another roofer on Reddit spends about $2,000 a month on Google Ads and says those leads plus referrals keep his company busy.
An owner doing insurance and retail work says door knocking works during storm season, and he wants another lead source “for when storms are dry.” Knock the streets the storm hit, and look up your city’s door-knocking rules before the first door.
A roof contract signed at the homeowner’s door is a home sale under the FTC’s Cooling-Off Rule, which covers home sales of $25 or more. The homeowner can cancel for a full refund until midnight of the third business day after the sale.
The rule makes you hand over two copies of a cancellation form, plus a dated contract or receipt with your company’s name and address that explains the right to cancel. Print that pack before April. State law may give homeowners a longer window, so check your state’s rules as well.
July to October: turn finished storm jobs into reviews and referrals
Ask for a review the day each storm job finishes, with the QR code on the invoice. Google’s review help page tells businesses to read and reply to their reviews, so answer every one, the bad ones included.
One owner on Reddit names yard signs on finished jobs among his lead sources, and another wants to send past customers a quarterly email asking for referrals. Put a sign in every finished yard while the storm jobs wrap up, and send the referral emails in January, April, July and October.
As storm work slows in September, point your posts and ads at retail replacements (Selling Retail Roofs When Insurance Work Slows).
Google bans trading a discount or free work for a review
Google strictly prohibits offering incentives, free or discounted work included, in exchange for posting, changing or removing a review, and treats those reviews as fake. A discount on the gutters for a five-star review breaks that rule.
The FTC announced its own rule on fake reviews on August 14, 2024. It bars buying fake reviews or getting them from people inside the company when the business knew or should have known they were fake. It also bans any reward tied to a review saying something positive or negative, and lets the FTC seek civil penalties.
A referral reward is a separate thing from a review. Keep any referral reward out of the review request, and never make it depend on a review.
Have these done before the first hail of the year
- Last year’s signed jobs counted by lead source.
- This year’s budget written by month, heaviest in your storm months.
- Your Google review QR code printed on the final invoice.
- A post on your Google profile, with no phone number in the text.
- Google Ads built and paused until storms hit.
- Contracts printed with the cancellation notice and two copies of the form.
- Your city’s door-knocking rules looked up.
Before the storm-season ad money goes out, see where the map ends for your Google profile today: pick your profile and a search in the free Google Maps heatmap, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.