Roofing Marketing: Why Most Leads Are Tire Kickers

Roofing leads cost $150-300 each depending on your market and channel.

That would be fine if those leads converted at a reasonable rate. They don’t. The average roofing company closes 15-25% of estimates, which means paying $600-2,000 in marketing costs for every actual job. HVAC contractors close at 35-40%. Plumbers running emergency services close over 60%.

The gap isn’t because roofers are worse at sales. Roofing has a structural problem: high ticket prices and long decision cycles create a buyer who shops more, compares more, and ghosts more than almost any other home service category.

Why roofing attracts tire kickers

A roof replacement runs $8,000-25,000 depending on size, materials, and region. That’s not an impulse purchase.

Compare that to the plumber who shows up when your toilet is flooding. The homeowner isn’t calling three companies to compare quotes while sewage backs up into their bathroom. They’re calling whoever answers first and paying whatever it costs to make the problem stop.

Roofing operates on the opposite dynamic. The homeowner notices their roof looks old, wonders if it’s time to replace it, and starts researching. They fill out forms on three different websites, maybe four. They talk to a neighbor who had work done last year. They check reviews, compare prices, and think about it for weeks or months before making a decision.

By the time you show up to give an estimate, you’re one of 3-5 contractors they’re evaluating. Your odds of closing are already lower than 50% before you open your mouth.

The lead source problem

Not all roofing leads are created equal, and the worst ones often come from the most expensive sources.

Lead aggregators like Angi, Thumbtack, and HomeAdvisor sell the same lead to 3-4 contractors simultaneously. You’re paying $200 for a lead that your competitor is also paying $200 for. The homeowner gets bombarded with calls, picks whoever sounds best in the first 30 seconds, and the other three contractors wasted their money.

Read more about competing with lead aggregators.

Google Ads produces higher-quality leads than aggregators, but the same buyer behavior applies. Someone searching “roof replacement cost” is probably getting estimates from multiple companies. They’re researching, not ready to buy.

The highest-quality leads come from referrals and organic search for branded terms. When someone googles your company name specifically, they’ve already decided they want to talk to you. Those leads close at 50%+ while your aggregator leads close at 10%.

The problem is you can’t scale referrals the way you can scale ad spend. So you end up buying leads that convert poorly because that’s where the volume is.

Identifying intent before the estimate

The difference between a tire kicker and a buyer often shows up in their behavior before they ever submit a form.

A tire kicker visits your homepage, clicks “Get Quote,” fills out the form in 30 seconds, and submits it without looking at anything else. They’re casting a wide net, collecting phone numbers to call later.

A buyer visits your service pages, reads about your process, checks your reviews, looks at your service area page to confirm you work in their neighborhood, and comes back to the site a second time before submitting the form. That behavior pattern signals someone who’s actually evaluating you as a real option.

Most CRMs can’t see this behavior. They only know a form was submitted. But when you can see which pages someone visited and how long they spent reading your content, you can prioritize the leads worth pursuing.

Read more about identifying high-intent website visitors.

Speed as a quality filter

Here’s something counterintuitive: responding faster actually filters out tire kickers.

78% of customers go with the first contractor to respond. When you call back in 5 minutes, serious buyers appreciate the responsiveness and often book on the spot. They were ready to move forward and you made it easy.

Tire kickers get annoyed. They weren’t ready for a real conversation yet. They were just collecting numbers to call back when convenient. The 5-minute callback forces them to either engage seriously or admit they’re not actually ready to buy.

The 5-minute rule matters even more in roofing because of the long sales cycle. If you’re one of five contractors that homeowner is evaluating, being first changes the dynamic. You set the anchor for pricing. You establish the relationship. The contractors who call back the next day are now playing catch-up against whatever impression you already created.

Qualification questions that actually work

Most roofing sales processes waste time on leads that were never going to close.

The solution isn’t avoiding all leads who might be price shopping. That would eliminate most of your volume. The solution is qualifying faster so you spend your selling time on the right opportunities.

Before you drive to an estimate, you should know the age of the existing roof, whether there’s visible damage or this is proactive replacement, if they own the home, their general timeline for making a decision, and whether they’re getting other estimates.

None of these questions are disqualifying on their own. A homeowner getting three estimates might still choose you. But knowing they’re actively comparing lets you adjust your approach. You might follow up more aggressively. You might offer a discount for same-week commitment. You might skip the elaborate presentation and focus on differentiation.

The leads you want to filter out are the ones collecting estimates with no real timeline, renters who can’t authorize work, homeowners whose spouse hasn’t agreed to the project, and people who are obviously just fishing for insurance claim ammunition.

Why “cheap leads” cost more

The instinct when lead quality drops is to find cheaper lead sources. If 80% of leads don’t convert, maybe paying less per lead makes the math work.

This usually backfires.

Cheaper lead sources typically have worse intent. The $50 lead from a random aggregator costs less because it converts at 5% instead of 20%. You pay less per lead but more per job.

The real fix is improving conversion on the leads you already have, which is the core argument behind why more leads don’t equal more jobs. When your funnel leaks, adding more volume just increases the leakage.

Every percentage point of improved close rate at a $200 cost per lead and $15,000 average job value drops your customer acquisition cost significantly. Going from 20% to 25% close rate effectively reduces your lead cost from $1,000 per job to $800 per job. That’s a bigger impact than finding leads that cost 20% less.

The follow-up gap

Roofing’s long sales cycle means follow-up matters more than in most trades.

A plumber who doesn’t call back might lose a same-day job. A roofer who doesn’t follow up loses a deal that was going to take six weeks anyway. The homeowner hadn’t decided not to hire you. They just needed more time, and you disappeared.

Only 27% of leads ever get contacted at all according to industry research. In roofing, where decisions stretch over weeks or months, that gap is even more costly.

The contractors who close at the higher end of the 15-25% range typically have systematic follow-up sequences. They call back on day 2 if the estimate wasn’t accepted on the spot. They email on day 5 with a “just checking in” message. They send a handwritten note on day 10. They call again on day 21.

This feels aggressive if you’re used to giving an estimate and hoping for the best. But 60-70% of roofing estimates don’t close because the homeowner went with someone else. They don’t close because the homeowner procrastinated, got distracted, or forgot to call you back. Persistent follow-up captures those deals.

Building a qualified pipeline

The roofing contractors who escape the tire kicker trap build systems that attract better leads and convert faster on the leads they get.

Better leads come from referral programs that incentivize past customers to recommend you, organic rankings for your company name and location-specific terms, retargeting that keeps you visible to homeowners who visited but didn’t convert, and post-storm outreach that reaches people with immediate need.

Better conversion comes from faster response times, qualification calls before dispatching estimators, follow-up sequences that stretch over 30+ days, and CRM tracking that tells you which lead sources actually produce jobs rather than just leads.

Read more about measuring marketing performance properly.

The goal isn’t eliminating tire kickers entirely. Some percentage of every roofing pipeline will always be price shoppers, just-lookers, and homeowners who aren’t actually ready to buy. The goal is spending less time on those leads and more time on the ones who will actually sign a contract.

Where the math gets interesting

The best roofing companies track cost per job, not just cost per lead.

When you know your aggregator leads cost $200 each and close at 10% while your organic leads cost $80 each and close at 35%, the decision about where to invest becomes obvious. But most roofers don’t have that data. They see the aggregator producing 50 leads a month and assume it’s working because the volume is high.

Proper marketing attribution reveals which channels produce tire kickers and which produce buyers. That visibility changes everything about how you allocate budget.

The structural challenge of roofing lead quality doesn’t go away. High ticket prices will always create comparison shoppers. Long sales cycles will always attract people who aren’t ready to commit. But the contractors who measure the right things, respond faster, and follow up systematically capture more of the real buyers hiding in that sea of tire kickers.