Estimate requests,
answered while you're on the roof.

I do, out of Aurora in York Region. I run social ads, search ads, the page they point to and the follow-up that texts every estimate request back, for roofing and other home-service companies across the GTA. It's one person, so the guy on your first call is the one in your ad account and, on packages with production, the one filming your crew on a roof.

Whoever you hire, check two things they can't fake from out of town. Can they get to your jobs to film, and do they know your season? In the GTA, shingle replacements bunch up between spring and late fall because shingles need warm weather to seal, so an ad plan that spends the same in January as in May is guessing. When I checked GTA home-service websites in October 2026, 1 of 16 roofing sites said anything about when a homeowner would hear back after asking for a quote, which is where I'd start on yours (the full study).

Both work, for different jobs. Search ads catch the homeowner typing "roof leak repair" with a bucket under the drip, and social ads sell replacements to homeowners with an aging roof who haven't started looking yet but will once they see a crew they trust on a street like theirs. I'd usually start a GTA roofer on search for repair calls and add social for replacements once leads are getting answered fast.

Where the social ads run decides a lot. In the City of Toronto, 52% of households own their home, against 82% in York Region, 79% in Durham and Halton and 75% in Peel, going by the 2021 census figures in York Region's housing report. I'd aim a roofer's social ads at the 905 and at Toronto's house neighbourhoods, and keep them off downtown condo streets where the roof belongs to a condo corporation.

Roofing companies get more jobs by running their own paid ads into their own page, so every lead is theirs alone instead of one of four or five copies sold off a shared-lead platform. Referrals and repeat business are real, but they are capped by how many homeowners you have already worked for, and they say nothing to the homeowner who just noticed a stain on the ceiling for the first time. Search ads catch that homeowner the moment they type "roof leak repair near me" or "roof replacement cost Toronto," and social ads put your finished roofs in front of homeowners who haven't started looking yet but will once they see a roof that looks better than theirs. Both point to a page you own, tracked with your own numbers, feeding a follow-up system that answers faster than the other four roofers competing for the same shared lead.

Yes, but roofing is one of the most expensive categories in local paid search, and pretending otherwise gets owners burned twice. Roofing search terms are some of the most expensive clicks in local advertising, because every roofer, every lead seller and every insurance-repair outfit in the GTA bids on the same few searches, like "roof replacement cost" and "roofing companies near me." That cost is real, and the answer is running ads properly instead of skipping them: tight targeting, negative keywords that block the DIY and job-seeker searches burning your budget, and a page built to convert an expensive click instead of wasting it. Social ads usually cost less per lead and work differently, showing your best finished roofs to homeowners who haven't searched yet. If your ads used to bring in jobs and then dried up, that's usually the ads going stale or the tracking never being set up right, and I broke that pattern down in why your ads stopped working.

Owning your leads means the ad, the page, and the data are yours, so a homeowner who fills out your form is talking to you and only you. Renting leads means paying a platform for a shared inquiry that landed in four or five other roofers' inboxes at the same moment, and the homeowner is now taking calls from a pile of strangers and picking whoever gets there first or sounds most convincing on the fly. Shared-lead platforms keep selling leads that way because volume is their business, not your close rate. When you run your own ads, every dollar spent buys a lead that is exclusively yours, your follow-up system can work it properly instead of racing four other companies, and every closed job and every dead end teaches your own account what a real buyer looks like for you. It costs more upfront than a shared-lead subscription, but it converts at a different rate, because you are not fighting four other quotes on the same kitchen table.

A small repair done right is the cheapest trust-builder in your marketing plan, because the homeowner you fix a leak for today is the same homeowner who calls you first when the roof comes due. Repairs run a few hundred dollars and put you inside someone's house, on their roof, at the exact moment a stranger with a truck could easily oversell them a tear-off they do not need yet. Do the repair, tell them straight when it is enough and when it is not, and you build the one thing shared-lead roofers never get a chance to: a specific homeowner's trust in a specific name. Your follow-up system should keep that homeowner on file and check back around the age their roof typically needs replacing, not just chase the next new lead. The replacement is worth many times the repair, and the repair is what earns you the call.

You compete on what a storm chaser can't fake: a local address, a crew that'll still be around next spring, and proof from streets near the job. After the May 21, 2022 derecho, the Insurance Bureau of Canada's first estimate put insured damage in Ontario at more than $720 million, mostly from wind, and storms like that are when door-to-door roofers turn up.

Your marketing should answer the suspicion before the homeowner says it out loud. Put your town, your insurance, your WSIB coverage and your licence where a homeowner sees them without digging (Toronto licenses building renovators, roofing companies included), and use reviews with first names and neighbourhoods plus photos of your own crew and trucks. Know the rules better than the door-knocker does. In Ontario, a homeowner who signs a contract at home gets a 10-day cooling-off period to cancel and get the deposit back, the City of Toronto doesn't require a building permit to replace roofing when no structural work is involved, and in Markham's heritage conservation districts exterior changes need a heritage permit. A roofer whose ads and website answer those questions sounds like a roofer from here.

Within minutes, because a homeowner asking for a roofing estimate usually asks two or three roofers at once and goes with whoever answers first. In my October 2026 check of GTA home-service websites, 15 of 16 roofing sites had a quote or contact form and 1 of 16 told the homeowner when they'd hear back. Your reality makes this hard: you are on a roof, in an attic, or driving between job sites, and a request that sits until you are back at the truck has usually already been answered by someone faster. I broke down what a slow reply costs in speed to lead and the cost of a missed call. The full count is in the GTA lead-handling study. A follow-up system covers that gap by texting and emailing a new lead back within seconds, booking a next step on your calendar, and texting back any call you miss while you are up on a roof with no signal. It does not replace the actual inspection or the actual conversation. It buys you the minutes you need to have that conversation before the homeowner books whoever answered first.

Yes, and treating them as the same sale is a common mistake, because insurance-claim work and retail replacement work are two different conversations with two different buyers. Insurance work follows storm damage, so the homeowner is filing a claim, an adjuster is involved, and the sale is about being straight with them through that process and getting approved for what the roof needs, without talking them into wanting a new roof. Retail work is a homeowner who decided on their own, no storm, no adjuster, just an aging roof or a leak, and that sale runs closer to any other home-improvement purchase: proof, price, and trust carry it. Insurance-focused content should show you understand the claims process and will not push work the insurance company will not cover. Retail content should sell the roof itself, the material options, and the finished look. Most roofing companies do a mix of both, and the marketing should say so up front instead of blurring the two into one generic pitch.

In Ontario, wind is the big one. The Insurance Bureau of Canada said most of the 2022 derecho damage came from wind, which home insurance typically covers, so a roofer who can walk a homeowner through a wind claim has a different ad to run than one selling a retail tear-off. Condo townhouse complexes are their own buyer. In many of them the roof is a common element, so the condo board hires the roofer and the sale looks more like a commercial bid. On a freehold house the homeowner usually signs alone, with no association to wait on.

Shingle replacements in the GTA bunch up between spring and late fall, because asphalt shingles need warm days to seal down. Owens Corning treats 4°C and below as cold-weather installation, and IKO tells roofers to hand-seal shingles that won't have time to seal before winter. Winter work still happens, but it leans toward leak repairs, ice dams and emergency calls.

I'd start replacement ads in late February or March, which gives the platform its testing weeks before the May rush, and keep them running into October so the last replacements of the year get booked. Repair ads run all year. If a storm hits, the budget goes up for repair work that week and comes back down after.

What you spend should track the size of the job you are trying to win, and in roofing that math has to account for some of the highest click costs in local advertising. A single roof replacement can be worth several thousand dollars in profit, which is why roofing can carry expensive clicks and still pay off, but a small budget gets eaten by a handful of them before the platform learns who your buyers are. For most single-location roofing companies I would start in the range of a few thousand dollars a month in ad spend, on top of management, and let your mix of repair and replacement work guide how far that stretches. I wrote a fuller breakdown of the logic in how much should you spend on ads. In the GTA I'd hold one budget from March through October and raise it for repair work in the week after a storm, because shutting ads off for the winter starts the account learning over again in spring.

A lot, because a roof is a five-figure decision most homeowners make once every fifteen to twenty-five years and they have no personal experience to judge you by. A page of recent reviews with first names and neighbourhoods (Leaside, Thornhill, Bolton, wherever your jobs are) answers the "can I trust this roofer with my house" question before you ever show up for the inspection, and it is one of the fastest ways to separate yourself from both the shared-lead pack and the storm chaser who blew through last spring. Your follow-up system should ask for that review automatically right after the job wraps, while the homeowner is still standing in the driveway looking up at the new roof. Referrals work the same way neighbor to neighbor, especially after a storm when three houses on the same street all need work, but they are unpredictable and slow on their own. Ads bring the volume of new homeowners into the pipeline, and a strong page of real reviews is what makes that volume pick up the phone.

Month one is the build, plus the shoot if your package has one, and ads usually go live 1 to 4 weeks after you sign. A cost per booked job you can plan around takes about ninety days, and in roofing it moves around more than most trades because of weather and season, while the platform learns who your buyers are at these click costs and your team learns which lead sources turn into signed contracts. A slow month right after a big storm season is normal, and it usually means the homeowners who needed work got it from someone else that week. My first term is ninety days for that reason. If you want a booked calendar by next Tuesday, this isn't that.