What a roofing lead is actually worth to you
Nobody can tell you what a roofing lead should cost without knowing your numbers. Here is how to work it out in about fifteen minutes.
- Read time
- 5 min
- You need
- 4 numbers
- Output
- A ceiling
- Revisit
- Quarterly
Marketing arguments in this trade get stuck because both sides discuss price without a shared definition of value. This is the arithmetic that ends that.
The four numbers
- Average job value. Your real average, not your best month.
- Gross margin. After materials and labour.
- Lead-to-inspection rate. Of enquiries, how many become a booked inspection?
- Inspection-to-sold rate. Of inspections, how many close?
Work it through
Job value times margin gives gross profit per job. Lead-to-inspection times inspection-to-sold gives your lead-to-job rate. Then:
Maximum affordable cost per lead = gross profit per job × lead-to-job rate × the share of profit you will spend on acquisition.
That last figure is a business decision, not a formula. Some contractors spend 10% of gross profit acquiring work, some spend 30% because they are buying growth.
Job values swing enormously, and insurance work behaves differently from retail work — different close rates, different cycle length, different margin. A blended cost per lead hides which of those you are actually buying. Segment it if your CRM will let you.
Comparing channels honestly
| Channel | What it really costs |
|---|---|
| Local Services Ads | Pay per lead, Google-screened, sits above everything. Fastest to a phone call, and you are bidding against everyone. |
| Google Ads | Clicks in roofing run high. Immediate and controllable, stops the day you stop paying. See paid campaigns. |
| SEO | Retainer divided by leads. Looks terrible in month two and improves every month after, because spend is roughly fixed while output compounds. |
| Lead marketplaces | Per lead, usually shared with three competitors. Cheap-looking until you factor the close rate. |
| Storm canvassing | Labour-intensive, effective in the window, and it stops when the crew stops. |
The mistake to avoid
Judging SEO on month-two cost per lead. Divide a fixed retainer by a small early lead count and the number looks absurd. The same sum at month twelve usually looks very different. Set the review point at six months and hold to it.
Two numbers worth tracking that most do not
- Cost per booked inspection, not per enquiry. Enquiries that never become inspections are noise.
- Lead quality by source. A cheap lead closing at 5% costs more than an expensive one closing at 30%.
Once you have a ceiling, channel choice becomes arithmetic instead of opinion — which is where channel sequencing should start, and what the keyword map should be ordered against.
Want this done for your site?
The free audit applies all of this to your specific business — rankings, map pack, storm readiness and the fix list. No call required, yours to keep. These numbers decide whether roofing SEO that pays for itself makes sense for you.