A 12-Month Customer Acquisition Plan for Roofers

Short Answer

A 12-month customer acquisition plan for roofing is a written, dated roadmap that tells your company exactly where next year's jobs will come from, what each channel will cost, and who owns the work — month by month, quarter by quarter. It is not a list of "marketing ideas." It is a budget, a calendar, and a scorecard tied to one number: cost to acquire a closed job (CAC). A good plan starts from a revenue target, works backward to the number of signed contracts you need, then to the number of leads and appointments that produces, and finally to the spend and activity required to generate those leads in the months your market actually buys roofs.

The plan you build will be seasonal, because roofing demand is. Most markets see a spring/early-summer surge driven by storms and homeowner attention, a steady fall replacement window before winter, and slower winter months that are perfect for planning, maintenance contracts, and commercial work. Your acquisition mix shifts across the year: storm-response and direct mail when demand is hot, repair/maintenance and referral programs when it's cold, and an always-on layer of online reviews, local search, and past-customer follow-up underneath everything. The U.S. Small Business Administration's marketing and sales guidance and business-plan framework are the right backbone for the structure; the Census American Community Survey and building permits data tell you where the demand is; USPS direct-mail programs and the FTC's advertising rules govern how you reach homeowners legally. Sources checked: June 20, 2026.

The five pillars of the plan are: (1) a revenue-to-leads model so every dollar has a job to do; (2) a channel mix matched to your market and margin — referrals and reviews, local search, direct mail, door knocking, storm response, and paid ads; (3) a seasonal calendar that front-loads spend before peak buying; (4) tracking with a small number of honest metrics; and (5) a quarterly review that kills what's not working and doubles down on what is. Build it once in a spreadsheet, review it every month, and rebuild it every November for the year ahead.

Below is the full plan: the math, the channel-by-channel playbook, a month-by-month calendar, copy-paste worksheets and scripts, the benchmarks you should hold yourself to (as ranges, because every market differs), and the mistakes that quietly drain a roofing marketing budget. Whether you run a two-truck shop chasing $1.5M or a regional company pushing past $10M, the structure is the same — only the numbers scale.

Why a 12-Month Plan Beats "Whatever Works This Month"

Most roofing companies don't plan acquisition a year out. They react. A storm hits, everyone scrambles to canvass; the storm fades, the phone goes quiet, and somebody panics and buys a stack of leads at a bad price. That cycle has three hidden costs.

First, reactive spend is expensive spend. When you buy leads or ramp ads the same week everyone else does (right after a storm), you pay peak prices into a crowded auction. A plan lets you build pipeline before the rush — past-customer outreach, review velocity, and pre-storm direct mail are cheap insurance against an expensive scramble.

Second, you can't manage what you don't measure against a target. "We spent $4,000 on mail last month" means nothing on its own. "We spent $4,000 to book 19 appointments and close 6 jobs at a blended CAC of $667 against a $750 ceiling" is a decision you can act on. The plan creates the denominators.

Third, seasonality punishes the unprepared. Roofing is one of the most weather- and season-driven trades in construction. The Bureau of Labor Statistics roofer outlook describes work that is heavily affected by weather and concentrated in warmer months in much of the country. If your acquisition engine only runs when you're already busy, you've built a feast-or-famine business. A 12-month plan smooths the curve so your crews stay productive and your CAC stays sane.

A written plan also makes the business fundable and sellable. Lenders, partners, and buyers want to see a repeatable acquisition system, not a founder who "knows everybody in town." Codifying the plan turns tribal knowledge into an asset.

The Core Math: Revenue → Contracts → Leads → Spend

Every acquisition plan is built backward from a revenue target. Don't start with "how many flyers should we send." Start with the number you're trying to hit, then derive everything else. Here is the chain, with an illustrative example so you can see the arithmetic.

Imagine a contractor — call them Imagine Roofing — targeting $3,000,000 in revenue next year with an average job value of $14,000. The chain looks like this:

1. Revenue target ÷ average job value = jobs needed. $3,000,000 ÷ $14,000 ≈ 215 signed jobs.
2. Jobs ÷ close rate = appointments needed. At a 35% close rate from appointment to signed contract: 215 ÷ 0.35 ≈ 614 appointments.
3. Appointments ÷ appointment-set rate = qualified leads. If 60% of qualified leads turn into a sat appointment: 614 ÷ 0.60 ≈ 1,024 leads.
4. Leads × CAC = acquisition budget. At a target blended CAC of $650 per signed job: 215 × $650 ≈ $140,000 acquisition budget (≈ 4.7% of revenue).

That single chain is the spine of your whole plan. Fill it in for your own numbers and you instantly know whether your goal is realistic. If the budget it implies is 12% of revenue, your close rate or job value is too low to support that target — fix the funnel before you spend more.

A few honest notes on the numbers. Close rates vary enormously by lead type: a referral or past customer might close at 50-70%, a cold internet lead at 8-15%, a storm-canvass lead somewhere between. So you don't really have one close rate — you have a different one per channel. We'll handle that in the channel mix. And marketing-spend-to-revenue for a healthy residential roofer typically lands somewhere in the 4-10% range depending on how reliant you are on paid lead generation versus referrals; treat that as a sanity band, not a law.

Know Your Market Before You Spend a Dollar

The same plan that prints money in a hail-prone Texas suburb will lose money in a coastal market with newer housing stock. Before you allocate budget, spend a day understanding your territory. Three free data sources do most of the work.

Age of the housing stock. Roofs on asphalt shingles generally need replacement somewhere in the 15-30 year range depending on product and climate (the Building America Solution Center on asphalt shingle roofs is a good technical primer). Neighborhoods built 18-28 years ago are entering their replacement window en masse. The Census American Community Survey publishes "year structure built" down to small geographies — use it to find the subdivisions where a wave of original roofs is aging out at once.

Storm and hail history. Hail and wind are the biggest single drivers of unplanned roof replacement. The NOAA Storm Events Database and NWS hail information let you see which parts of your market have taken recent hits — those are your near-term demand pockets.

New construction and permit trends. The Census building permits survey shows where growth is happening (newer homes mean fewer near-term replacements but more future demand and more re-roof referrals down the line).

Write a one-paragraph "market thesis" at the top of your plan: "Our primary territory is the north and east suburbs, dominated by 1998-2006 subdivisions now entering their replacement window, with recurring spring hail. Our acquisition plan over-indexes on age-of-roof direct mail and storm response in those ZIPs, with referral and review programs underneath." If you can't write that paragraph, you're not ready to budget.

The Channel Mix: Six Engines, Different Costs and Speeds

There is no single best channel. There's a portfolio, and the right blend depends on your margin, your market, and how fast you need leads. Here's how the six core roofing acquisition channels actually behave.

Read that table as a balanced portfolio. The bottom of the funnel (referrals, reviews) is your cheapest, highest-converting demand — but it builds slowly and you can't turn it up overnight. The top of the funnel (mail, ads, canvassing, storm response) is faster and more controllable but more expensive per job. A durable plan invests in the slow/cheap engines continuously so you depend less on the fast/expensive ones over time.

Engine 1 — Referrals and Past Customers (cheapest leads you'll ever get)

Your past customers are the single most underused asset in roofing. They already trust you, their neighbors can see your work, and a referral closes at multiples of a cold lead. Yet most shops do nothing systematic after the final invoice.

Build a simple, year-round referral motion:

• The 5-day thank-you. A handwritten card or a short call within five days of completion. No ask yet — just gratitude and a reminder of the warranty.
• The review request at peak satisfaction. Right after the homeowner sees the finished roof and the cleanup, ask for a Google review with a direct link. Timing beats incentives.
• The neighbor letter. With permission, mail the 8-12 closest homes: "We just replaced the roof at [street]. If you'd like the same crew and the same warranty, here's a neighbor rate good for 30 days." This is direct mail with a built-in trust signal.
• The annual touch. Once a year, contact every past customer — a maintenance reminder, a storm-season heads-up, a "refer a neighbor" note. The FTC's warranty guidance is a useful reference for keeping your warranty communications clean and honest.

Referrals should be a named line in your plan with a target (e.g., "30% of signed jobs from referral/past-customer"), not a happy accident.

Engine 2 — Reviews and Local Search (the compounding asset)

When a homeowner has a roof problem, a huge share of them search online and pick from the local map results. Your standing there is driven by reviews, your Google Business Profile, and a website that answers real questions. None of this produces leads next week — but a year of consistent review velocity and helpful local content compounds into a steady, low-cost lead stream that costs nothing per click.

The discipline is boring and it works: ask every satisfied customer for a review, respond to every review (good and bad), keep your profile categories and service areas accurate, and publish genuinely useful local content. Google's Search Essentials is the authoritative guide to what "helpful content" means — write for homeowners, not for keywords.

Engine 3 — Direct Mail (the controllable demand tap)

Direct mail is the workhorse of proactive roofing acquisition because you control exactly who receives it and when. Two formats dominate:

• Targeted mail to a specific list — homes in the 18-28-year-old replacement window, or homes in a recently hailed ZIP. Higher cost per piece, far higher relevance.
• Every Door Direct Mail (EDDM) to saturate whole carrier routes — cheaper per piece, less targeted, good for storm response and brand saturation.

The math that matters: mail is a numbers game with a known cost per piece. If a campaign costs $0.68/piece all-in and you mail 2,500 homes, that's $1,700. At a 0.8% response rate you get ~20 leads; if you close 6 at a $14,000 average job, that's $84,000 of revenue against $1,700 of mail — a strong ratio if your targeting and follow-up are tight. Bad targeting (mailing new construction, or renters, or homes you just hit) is where mail loses money. Keep your mail honest and compliant with the FTC's advertising and marketing rules; don't imply storm damage you haven't verified.

Engine 4 — Door Knocking and Canvassing

Canvassing is the fastest way to turn presence into appointments, especially after a storm or in a neighborhood where you're already working. The cost is labor and management, not media. It works best when it's targeted (you're already on that street, or the ZIP took hail) and respectful — follow local solicitation rules and honor "no soliciting" signs. Pair canvassing with the job you're already doing: "We're replacing the roof three doors down; while our crew is on this street this week, we can look at yours."

Engine 5 — Storm Response

After a significant hail or wind event, demand spikes and the market gets crowded with out-of-town crews. Your edge is being local, licensed, and already known. Plan storm response in advance: monitor NOAA/NWS and the Storm Prediction Center, have an EDDM mailer and a canvassing route pre-built so you can deploy within 48 hours, and have your documentation process ready. The CFPB's guidance on working with contractors after a disaster is worth reading so your post-storm marketing positions you as the trustworthy, non-fly-by-night option.

A guardrail: your storm marketing should help a homeowner document and decide, never promise a claim outcome. You are not the insurer or the adjuster. Position around inspection, documentation, and quality work — not around guaranteed approvals.

Engine 6 — Paid Ads (search and social)

Paid search captures people actively looking for a roofer right now; paid social builds awareness and retargets. Both are fast and controllable but expensive per job and easy to waste. Use paid ads to fill gaps (slow months, new ZIPs) and to capture intent (high-value search terms), not as your primary engine. Set a hard CAC ceiling, watch it weekly, and turn it down when cheaper channels are producing.

Allocating the Budget Across the Six Engines

With your acquisition budget set (the $140,000 from the math section), split it across engines in a way that matches your market and stage. Here's an illustrative allocation for our $3M example — adjust to your reality.

Two principles make this allocation work. Hold a reserve. That 12% storm fund is not spent on a schedule — it sits until a qualifying event, then deploys fast. If no storm comes, roll it into Q4 mail and referral pushes. Bias toward the compounding engines over time. In year one you may lean heavily on mail and ads because your referral/review base is thin. Each year, as past customers and reviews accumulate, you should be able to shift a few points away from paid channels toward the cheaper engines — that's the CAC improvement that funds your growth.

The Month-by-Month Calendar

Now assemble the engines onto a calendar that respects how roofing demand actually moves. The pattern below assumes a four-season climate with spring hail and a fall replacement window; shift the months if you're in a milder or storm-different region (see the regional section). The core idea: spend before the buying, not during it.

Notice the shape: budget rises from February, peaks April-June, holds through the fall window, and falls in November-December. Two things never stop, in every month: review requests and referral motions. Those are the always-on layer beneath the seasonal waves.

Quarter-by-quarter narrative

Q1 (Jan-Mar) — Build the engine. This is preparation quarter. Demand is low, so you're not trying to close a flood of jobs; you're loading the spring. Build your mail lists from age-of-roof and storm data, refresh your website and reviews, train your canvassing team, and launch the first one or two mail waves so leads are landing as demand wakes up. Use the slow weeks to lock in commercial bids and maintenance contracts that smooth winter cash flow.

Q2 (Apr-Jun) — Capture peak. Everything runs. Storm reserve goes live. Canvass aggressively in qualifying neighborhoods, run full paid search, mail the heart of your replacement-window list, and — critically — run neighbor mailers off every active job (a roof going up on a street is your best billboard). Push review velocity hard while satisfaction is high and crews are visible.

Q3 (Jul-Sep) — Steady and pivot to fall. Mid-year review in July: which channels beat their CAC ceiling, which didn't, and where does the back-half budget go? Then pivot your mail and ads toward the fall replacement window — homeowners who want the roof done before winter. This is a calmer, higher-intent buyer; lean into it.

Q4 (Oct-Dec) — Harvest, then plan. Push the last replacements in October before weather closes the window, then shift to repair, maintenance, and commercial work. November and December are when you do the annual past-customer touch, bank reviews, run holiday thank-yous, and — most importantly — build next year's plan with a full year of real data in hand. The cycle restarts.

Copy-Paste Artifact 1 — The Acquisition Plan Worksheet

Paste this into a spreadsheet or doc and fill it in. It's the entire plan on one page.

=== 12-MONTH ROOFING ACQUISITION PLAN ===
Company: __________   Plan year: __________   Owner: __________

--- MARKET THESIS (one paragraph) ---
Primary territory: __________
Dominant housing-stock age: __________
Storm/hail pattern: __________
Strategy bias: __________

--- THE MATH ---
Revenue target:              $__________
Average job value:           $__________
Signed jobs needed:          ______  (revenue ÷ job value)
Close rate (appt→sold):      ______%
Appointments needed:         ______  (jobs ÷ close rate)
Lead→appt set rate:          ______%
Leads needed:                ______  (appts ÷ set rate)
Target CAC per job:          $__________
Acquisition budget:          $__________  (jobs × CAC)
Budget as % of revenue:      ______%   (sanity check: 4-10%)

--- CHANNEL ALLOCATION ---
Direct mail:        __%  $______   target leads: ______
Reviews/local SEO:  __%  $______   target leads: ______
Referral program:   __%  $______   target leads: ______
Paid ads:           __%  $______   target leads: ______
Canvassing:         __%  $______   target leads: ______
Storm reserve:      __%  $______   (held until event)

--- ALWAYS-ON (every month) ---
[ ] Review request after every completed job
[ ] Referral/neighbor touch off every active job
[ ] Respond to every review within 48h
[ ] Update tracking sheet weekly

--- QUARTERLY TARGETS ---
Q1 jobs: ___  Q2 jobs: ___  Q3 jobs: ___  Q4 jobs: ___
Review (mid-year + year-end): __________

Copy-Paste Artifact 2 — The Weekly Tracking Sheet

You cannot manage CAC you don't measure. Track these few numbers every week — by channel, because blended averages hide the truth. Keep it small enough that someone actually fills it in.

WEEK OF: ________

Per channel (one row each: Mail / Referral / SEO-GBP / Ads / Canvass / Storm)
  Leads in:           ____
  Appointments set:   ____
  Appointments sat:   ____
  Jobs signed:        ____
  Revenue signed:     $____
  Spend this week:    $____
  CAC (spend ÷ jobs): $____   <-- vs ceiling: $____

ROLLED UP
  Total leads:        ____
  Total jobs:         ____
  Blended CAC:        $____
  Notes / what changed: ________________________

The single most important column is CAC vs. ceiling per channel. When a channel runs above its ceiling for two or three weeks running, you investigate or cut it. When one runs well under, you feed it more budget. That weekly discipline is what separates a plan from a wish.

Copy-Paste Artifact 3 — Scripts and Templates

Review-request text (send within hours of completion)

Hi [Name], it was a pleasure getting your new roof done — thank you for
trusting [Company]. If you're happy with the work, a quick Google review
helps your neighbors find a local crew they can rely on: [direct link].
And remember your workmanship warranty paperwork is in the folder we left.
— [Rep name], [Company]

Neighbor mailer (off an active job)

We're replacing a roof on [Street] this week.

If you've wondered how much life your roof has left, we'll take a look
while our crew is in your neighborhood — no pressure, no obligation.
Neighbors on [Street] get our same crew, same materials, and the same
written workmanship warranty. This offer is good for 30 days.

[Company] · Licensed & insured · [phone] · [website]

(Keep claims honest — offer an inspection and a quote, never a guaranteed insurance outcome.)

Annual past-customer touch (November)

Hi [Name] — [Company] here. It's been [X] year(s) since we did your roof.
Two quick things: (1) winter's coming, so if you've spotted any missing
shingles or interior staining, let us take a look before it freezes; and
(2) if a neighbor ever needs a roofer, we'd be grateful for the intro —
we still stand behind every roof we install. Happy holidays. — [Owner]

Storm-response door script (post-event, local and honest)

"Hi, I'm [Name] with [Company] — we're a local, licensed roofer and we've
been inspecting roofs on this street since the [date] hail. We're not the
out-of-town crews; you can check our reviews and license. If it's helpful,
we can document any damage with photos so you have it on record, and walk
you through your options. No charge for the look, and no obligation."

Benchmarks and Ranges (hold yourself to these)

Use these as bands, not promises. Every market, lead source, and sales team differs, and anyone quoting you exact universal numbers is guessing. These ranges reflect what well-run residential roofers commonly aim for.

Two benchmarks deserve emphasis. Speed-to-lead — how fast you contact a new lead — is the cheapest close-rate improvement available; minutes matter, and a lead contacted in five minutes converts far better than one contacted in five hours. And referral share is the metric that, more than any other, predicts whether your CAC falls over time. A company that pushes referral share from 25% to 40% over three years is building a structurally cheaper acquisition engine.

Common Mistakes That Drain a Roofing Marketing Budget

Mistake 1 — Spending during peak instead of before it. The classic error. By the time you're swamped, lead prices are highest and your crews are already booked. Front-load spend in Q1 and early Q2.

Mistake 2 — No CAC ceiling per channel. A blended CAC of $650 can hide a referral channel at $120 subsidizing a paid channel at $1,800. Set a ceiling per channel and enforce it.

Mistake 3 — Slow lead follow-up. You spent money to generate the lead; then it sits for hours. Speed-to-lead under five minutes is often the difference between a 10% and a 25% close rate on the same lead.

Mistake 4 — Ignoring past customers. The cheapest leads in roofing get no systematic attention at most shops. An annual touch and a real referral motion is nearly free money left on the table.

Mistake 5 — Bad mail targeting. Mailing renters, brand-new construction, or homes you just hit wastes the most controllable channel you have. Target by age-of-roof and storm exposure, suppress recent recipients, and clean the list.

Mistake 6 — Overclaiming in storm marketing. Promising insurance approvals or "free roofs" is both a compliance risk and a trust killer. The FTC's home-improvement scam guidance describes exactly the behavior homeowners are warned about — don't be the company they're warned about. Position around documentation and quality, not guaranteed outcomes.

Mistake 7 — No tracking, so no learning. Without a weekly sheet, every year you re-learn the same lessons. Track a few honest numbers and the plan improves itself.

Mistake 8 — Treating all leads as equal in the budget. A referral and a cold internet lead close at wildly different rates. If you model them with one average, you'll over-fund the expensive channel. Model per channel.

Regional and Seasonal Variation

The calendar above assumes a four-season, spring-hail climate. Adjust for your reality.

Hail-belt markets (TX, CO, OK, KS, NE). Storm response dominates and demand is spiky. Carry a larger storm reserve (15-20% of budget), keep an EDDM mailer and canvass route pre-built year-round, and watch SPC outlooks closely in spring. Your CAC swings hard with weather — plan for variance, not a smooth curve.

Coastal and hurricane markets (FL, Gulf, Southeast). Wind and tropical systems drive demand, often later in the year. Your "peak" may shift to late summer and fall. The IBHS FORTIFIED roof program is a strong differentiator in these markets — homeowners increasingly ask for wind-resistant construction, and it's a legitimate marketing angle.

Mild/dry markets (much of the West Coast, Southwest). Less storm-driven demand means more reliance on age-of-roof targeting and referrals. Your calendar is flatter — fewer spikes, steadier mail and SEO, longer fall/winter working seasons. Heat and UV aging matter more than hail; the DOE cool-roofs and ENERGY STAR roof products angles resonate with energy-conscious homeowners.

Cold/snow markets (Upper Midwest, Northeast). A short, intense replacement season and a long winter. Front-load even harder; use winter for commercial work, repairs, ice-dam remediation, maintenance contracts, and planning. Ice and snow damage create a late-winter/early-spring repair surge worth a dedicated mailer.

Seasonal labor and safety overlay. Whatever your region, peak-season hiring and crew safety affect how many jobs you can actually fulfill — there's no point acquiring leads you can't service. Keep OSHA fall-protection requirements and residential-construction standards front of mind as you scale crews into peak, and respect wage/hour rules under the FLSA. Acquisition and fulfillment have to grow together.

A Decision Framework: Where to Put the Next Dollar

When you have an extra dollar (or have to cut one), this hierarchy keeps you honest:

1. Is speed-to-lead under 5 minutes? If not, fix that before buying more leads. It's free and it lifts every channel.
2. Is the referral/review engine running every week? If not, fund that next — it's the cheapest durable demand.
3. Which channel is furthest under its CAC ceiling? Feed it the next dollar.
4. Which channel is over its ceiling two-plus weeks running? Cut or fix it; move that dollar up the list.
5. Is it pre-peak (Feb-Apr)? Bias the dollar toward mail and list-building. Is it a storm week? Release the reserve. Is it slow season? Bias toward referral touches and planning, not paid ads.

This framework does something subtle but powerful: it makes "cut the worst-performing thing and feed the best-performing thing" an automatic monthly habit, so your mix improves continuously instead of staying frozen at last year's guesses.

Building the Plan in 30 Days (Your On-Ramp)

You don't need a perfect plan to start — you need a real one. Here's a 30-day build:

• Days 1-5: Pull your trailing-12-month numbers — average job value, close rate, lead-to-appointment rate. Write the market thesis using ACS and storm data.
• Days 6-10: Run the revenue-to-leads math. Set your acquisition budget and CAC ceiling.
• Days 11-15: Choose your channel mix and allocate the budget. Build the month-by-month calendar.
• Days 16-20: Stand up tracking (the weekly sheet) and the always-on motions (review requests, referral touches).
• Days 21-25: Build your first mail list (age-of-roof + storm ZIPs) and your storm kit (mailer + canvass route ready to deploy).
• Days 26-30: Launch the first mail wave, set CAC ceilings in writing, and schedule your monthly review meeting. Done — you have a plan.

Where RoofPredict Fits

Everything above you can do by hand for one neighborhood: pull the housing-age data, cross-reference storm history, build a mail list, track your CAC in a spreadsheet, and run your referral motions. The friction is scale and repeatability — doing it across a whole territory, every month, without it falling apart when peak season hits.

That's the gap RoofPredict is built for. It's software for roofing contractors that scores which properties in your territory are most likely to need roof work — combining property age and characteristics, storm and hail exposure history, and roof imagery signals into a prioritization ranking. From that scored list you can build targeted direct-mail campaigns (age-of-roof, storm-triggered, or neighborhood-saturation), generate professional, branded roof reports to hand a homeowner or rep, and organize the records and storm documentation behind each job so intake and follow-up don't slip. In plain terms: it operationalizes the channel mix, the targeting, and the tracking in this guide so your 12-month plan actually runs across a territory instead of living in a spreadsheet you forget to update.

On cost, here's the honest model: your subscription/credits cover the roof reports — one report per home, no matter how many mail touches that home gets; credits are not consumed per mailer. Mailers are billed separately in real dollars per piece (roughly $0.68/piece), with volume discounts by send size (about 7% off at 1,000+, 12% at 2,500+, 18% at 5,000+). Nothing is charged for a mail campaign until you approve the proof and the pieces go to print. Lead with mailer counts if you like the psychology, but always show your team the real dollar total for mail.

The guardrail — read this twice. RoofPredict's score is a priority/targeting signal, not a verdict on any individual roof. The software does not climb or physically inspect a roof, it does not prove a roof's age or storm causation by itself, and it does not decide, approve, or guarantee any insurance claim or settlement. What a roof actually needs, what a storm actually caused, and what a claim is worth are determined by a licensed roofer, a licensed adjuster, the homeowner's insurer, and the local building department — not by software. RoofPredict tells you which doors to knock on first and helps you document and organize the work; the people on the roof and the people on the claim make the calls.

Key Takeaways

• A 12-month acquisition plan is a budget, a calendar, and a scorecard, not a list of ideas. Build it backward from revenue.
• The core math: revenue ÷ job value = jobs; jobs ÷ close rate = appointments; appointments ÷ set rate = leads; jobs × CAC = budget. Healthy marketing spend lands roughly 4-10% of revenue.
• Run a portfolio of six engines — referrals, reviews/local search, direct mail, canvassing, storm response, paid ads — and model close rate and CAC per channel, not blended.
• Spend before the buying, not during it. Front-load Q1-early Q2, capture peak in Q2, pivot to the fall window in Q3, and harvest then plan in Q4. Review requests and referral touches run every single month.
• Hold a storm reserve and deploy it fast on qualifying events; roll it into Q4 if no storm comes.
• Track a few honest numbers weekly, enforce a CAC ceiling per channel, and grow your referral share every year — that's what structurally lowers CAC over time.
• Keep storm and mail marketing honest and compliant: offer inspection, documentation, and quality work — never guaranteed insurance outcomes.
• Acquisition has to grow with fulfillment, hiring, and safety — don't book leads you can't service well.

FAQ

What is a 12-month customer acquisition plan for roofing?

It's a written, dated roadmap for where next year's roofing jobs will come from, what each channel costs, and who owns the work — built backward from a revenue target. It defines your acquisition budget, your cost to acquire a closed job (CAC), a month-by-month calendar matched to seasonal demand, the metrics you'll track, and a quarterly review to reallocate spend. The point is to replace reactive, feast-or-famine marketing with a repeatable system.

How much should a roofing company spend on customer acquisition?

A common healthy band is 4-10% of revenue, depending on how much you rely on paid lead generation versus referrals and reviews. Referral-heavy companies sit at the low end; companies buying a lot of leads or running heavy paid ads sit higher. Rather than copy a percentage, run the revenue-to-leads math (jobs × target CAC) and check that the resulting budget lands inside that sanity band.

How do I calculate how many leads I need for the year?

Work backward: revenue target ÷ average job value = signed jobs needed; jobs ÷ your close rate = appointments needed; appointments ÷ your lead-to-appointment-set rate = leads needed. For example, $3,000,000 ÷ $14,000 ≈ 215 jobs; at a 35% close rate ≈ 614 appointments; at a 60% set rate ≈ 1,024 leads. Use your own trailing-12-month rates, not industry averages.

What is a good cost per acquisition (CAC) for a roofer?

There's no single right number, but a useful frame is keeping blended CAC around 3-8% of your average job value — so a $14,000 job comfortably supports a CAC roughly in the $450-$1,100 range. CAC varies hugely by channel: referrals might cost under $150 to acquire while a cold internet lead can cost well over $1,000. Track and budget per channel, and set a written CAC ceiling for each.

Which marketing channels work best for roofing companies?

A portfolio of six: referrals and past-customers (cheapest, highest-closing), reviews and local search (compounding, low-cost), direct mail (controllable, seasonal), door knocking (fast, labor-cost), storm response (spiky, post-event), and paid ads (fast, expensive). No single channel wins — the durable strategy is to invest continuously in the cheap, compounding engines (referrals and reviews) so you depend less on the expensive ones over time.

When should roofers spend their marketing budget during the year?

Spend before the buying season, not during it. Front-load list-building and the first mail waves in Q1 and early Q2 so leads land as demand wakes up, run all engines hard at peak in Q2, pivot mail and ads toward the fall replacement window in Q3, and shift to repair, maintenance, and next-year planning in Q4. Two motions never stop: review requests and referral touches, every month.

How do I plan for storm season in my acquisition budget?

Hold a dedicated storm reserve (around 12%, or 15-20% in hail-belt markets) that isn't spent on a schedule — it sits until a qualifying hail or wind event, then deploys within 48 hours via a pre-built EDDM mailer and canvass route. Monitor NOAA/NWS and the Storm Prediction Center in spring. If no storm comes, roll the reserve into Q4 mail and referral pushes so it never goes to waste.

How do I use my past customers to get more roofing jobs?

Run a year-round motion: a thank-you within five days of completion, a review request at peak satisfaction, a neighbor mailer to the closest homes off every active job, and one annual touch (a maintenance or storm-season reminder plus a referral ask) to every past customer. Past customers and referrals close at far higher rates than cold leads, so growing referral share from ~25% toward ~40% is the single biggest lever for lowering your CAC over time.

What's a realistic close rate for roofing leads?

It depends entirely on the lead source. Referrals and past-customer leads commonly close in the 40-70% range; cold or internet leads often close at 8-18%. That's why you should never plan with one blended close rate — model each channel separately, or you'll over-fund the expensive cold channels and misjudge how many leads you actually need.

How much does direct mail cost for roofing, and does it work?

All-in costs commonly land around $0.68 per piece, with volume discounts as send size grows. It works when targeting and follow-up are tight — mailing the 18-28-year-old roof-replacement window or recently hailed ZIPs, suppressing renters and recent recipients, and contacting responders fast. Response rates typically run 0.5-2%; at a strong average job value, even a low response rate can return many multiples of the mail cost. Bad targeting is where mail loses money.

How do I track whether my acquisition plan is working?

Keep a simple weekly sheet, broken out by channel: leads in, appointments set and sat, jobs signed, revenue signed, spend, and CAC versus that channel's ceiling. Roll it up to a blended CAC and a few notes. The key column is CAC-vs-ceiling per channel: when a channel runs over for two or three weeks, investigate or cut it; when one runs well under, feed it more budget. Review monthly and reallocate quarterly.

How is a roofing acquisition plan different in a hail market versus a coastal market?

Hail-belt markets (TX, CO, OK) are storm-driven and spiky — carry a larger storm reserve, keep your storm kit pre-built, and expect CAC to swing with the weather. Coastal/hurricane markets (FL, Gulf) peak later in the year around wind events, and wind-resistant construction (like IBHS FORTIFIED) is a strong angle. Mild/dry markets rely more on age-of-roof targeting and referrals with a flatter calendar. Match your reserve size and calendar shape to your region's demand pattern.

Should a small roofing company even bother with a formal annual plan?

Yes — arguably more than a big one, because a small shop can't absorb a wasted quarter of spend. A formal plan turns a founder's tribal knowledge into a repeatable system, prevents the expensive feast-or-famine scramble, and makes the business more fundable and sellable. You can build a real (not perfect) plan in about 30 days using the on-ramp in this guide, then improve it every month with a few tracked numbers.

What are the biggest mistakes roofers make with acquisition?

The top offenders: spending during peak instead of before it; running no CAC ceiling per channel; slow lead follow-up (speed-to-lead over five minutes); ignoring past customers; bad mail targeting; overclaiming in storm marketing; and not tracking results so the same lessons get re-learned every year. Fixing speed-to-lead and standing up a referral motion are usually the two highest-return changes a shop can make.

How does RoofPredict help with a 12-month acquisition plan?

RoofPredict scores which properties in your territory are most likely to need roof work (using property age, storm exposure, and roof imagery signals), turns that into targeted direct-mail campaigns, generates branded roof reports, and organizes storm documentation and records — so the targeting, channel mix, and tracking in this plan actually run across a whole territory. Important guardrail: its score is a priority/targeting signal, not a verdict on any roof, and it never decides, inspects, or guarantees a roof's condition or an insurance claim — a licensed roofer, the adjuster, the insurer, and the building department make those calls.