Are Roofing Leads Worth It? Do the Math Before You Buy

Every roofing lead passes through the same steps before it becomes revenue. Your team has to reach the homeowner, book an inspection and sign a contract, and some leads drop out at each step. The number of leads you need for one signed roof is 1 divided by your contact rate times your appointment rate times your close rate. Multiply that by the lead price and you have your cost per signed job.

Say you pay $100 per lead, reach 70% of the homeowners, book inspections with half of the people you reach, and sign 30% of those inspections. These are assumptions for the example, so replace them with numbers from your own lead records wherever you have them.

Now say the jobs from this source average $4,000 in gross profit. In this example, spending $952 to sign a job uses about 24% of its gross profit. Whether that's acceptable depends on your overhead and the profit you need to keep, so set an allowable cost per signed job before you look at any vendor's price.

Work backward from that allowable number to find your ceiling per lead. Say you'll spend up to $1,000 to sign a roof with $4,000 in gross profit. Multiply $1,000 by the combined 10.5% rate and your ceiling is $105 per lead. If your close rate rises from 30% to 40%, the combined rate becomes 14% and the ceiling rises to $140. If your contact rate slips to 50%, the combined rate drops to 7.5% and the ceiling falls to $75.

Use the average gross profit across every job a source produces, including repairs and small jobs, since a budget built on your best replacement will overstate what you can pay. For each job, start with the contract price and subtract materials, labor, disposal, permits and any sales commission. Office staff, trucks and other overhead stay out of job gross profit, and your allowable cost per signed job has to leave enough room to cover them.

Sales time belongs in the math as well. Every lead takes a call or two, and every inspection takes a trip and an estimate even when the job doesn't sign. The free job profit calculator helps you pin down gross profit per job before you set a lead budget around it.

A shared lead goes to more than one roofer. The FTC staff perspective on its lead generation workshop noted that consumers may not know their information can be sold and resold multiple times, and that they “may be contacted by numerous marketers that are unfamiliar to them” (FTC staff perspective). When several roofers call the same homeowner, each one has a smaller chance of getting through first, and every company that does get through ends up competing with the others for the same inspection.

Here's how that plays out with labeled assumptions. Say a shared lead costs $40 and an exclusive lead costs $120. Say your team reaches half of the shared leads, books 40% of those and closes 15% of the inspections, while exclusive leads convert at the rates from the first example.

In this example the shared lead costs a third as much and still costs more per signed roof. The break even rule is easy to remember: a lead that costs three times as much needs three times the combined rate to match. Change the assumptions and the result can reverse, since a team that calls every shared lead within a minute and closes well can beat these numbers. Keep each source's numbers separate so one strong vendor doesn't hide a weak one. For more on the tradeoffs, read exclusive leads vs shared leads and speed to lead when several providers receive an inquiry.

Published prices cover a wide range because vendors sell different things under the word lead, and the roofing lead cost benchmarks page collects published prices by channel if you want a starting range. In Google Local Services Ads, the price comes from bidding, and Google says that when similar local businesses bid on the same lead, “those bids determine how much the lead is worth” (How bidding works for Local Services Ads).

Read every price next to the vendor's definition of a lead. Google charges Local Services Ads advertisers for each valid lead, and its list of leads that won't be credited includes a lead received outside your business hours and a customer who “was researching potential projects or prices related to a service you offer” (How leads work). A homeowner who's only pricing roofs and calls after hours can still land on your bill there. Other vendors draw that line in different places, so compare definitions before you compare prices.

Two vendors can quote the same price per lead and produce very different costs per signed job once contract terms come into play. Ask about each of these and get the answers in writing.

Terms can also change after you sign. Google now says it “no longer supports credits for ‘job type not serviced’ and ‘geo not serviced’ leads” in Local Services Ads, and that charged leads get reassessed automatically, with credits applied within 30 days in most cases (About Automated Local Services Ads lead credits). If your profile lists a general service type and you don't do every job under it, those leads can stay on your bill, so keep service types and areas tight. The guide to lead refund terms and qualification rules has a longer checklist.

Pick a window of 60 to 90 days and a budget you're prepared to lose. The window has to be long enough for inspections and estimates on the test leads to reach a yes or a no, and the budget has to buy enough leads that one lucky contract doesn't decide the verdict.

1. Record your baseline. Write down contact, appointment and close rates for a source you already trust so you have something to compare against.
2. Tag every lead by source. Put the vendor name on each lead in your CRM or spreadsheet the day it arrives, including phone calls.
3. Keep your response process the same. Use the same response time target and callback schedule you use for other leads so any difference in results comes from the vendor. If you're testing Local Services Ads, Google says that if you regularly fail to answer calls or respond to messages, “your ad ranking may be affected” (Getting started with Local Services Ads).
4. Log every outcome. Mark each lead as reached or unreached, inspection booked, estimate sent, and signed or lost, with a short reason for each loss.
5. Return bad leads on time. File credit requests inside the vendor's window and track how many get approved.
6. Count late signings. Keep working test leads after the window closes and credit any contract they produce to the test.
7. Calculate cost per signed roof. Divide total spend, minus approved credits, by signed contracts and compare the result with your allowable cost per signed job.

If the test produces only a handful of leads, treat the result as a rough signal and extend it before you decide. Your lead response handoffs matter here too, because slow callbacks make any vendor's numbers look worse.

• Below your allowable cost per signed job: Add volume in steps and keep watching the rates, since extra leads from the same vendor may come from wider areas or looser filters.
• Close to the line: Find where leads drop out. A low contact rate points to response speed or bad contact details, and a low close rate points to your sales process or heavy competition on shared leads. Fix what's in your control first, then ask the vendor for tighter filters or better credit terms.
• Well above the line: Stop buying and move the budget to a source with better numbers once your credit requests are settled.

If the test shows your team closes well but shared competition drags the numbers down, an exclusive source may fit better. Our exclusive roofing leads membership sends calls and forms from sites that carry your company name to one contractor per agreed market, and it deserves the same 60 to 90 day scrutiny as any other source.

Before you talk to any roofing lead company, enter your average job revenue, job costs, close rates and sales handling cost in the free lead cost calculator to find your break even cost per lead, and bring that number to the sales call as your ceiling.