- Start from replacement slots your crews can install, not from last year’s spend.
- Fund dry months on purpose. Storms will fill the rainy ones whether you advertise or not.
- Keep repair work out of the budget math.
- Hold or cut when crews are booked out. Ads can’t add tear-off days.
Start with crew capacity
A roof needs dry days, a full crew, and a dumpster on site. Count how many more replacements your crews can actually install each month at the pace you want. That number caps the budget before any formula does.
Buying more inspections than you can install creates a backlog, and homeowners who wait too long go with someone else.
Worked example (example numbers, not a benchmark)
Illustration only. The calculator below takes your real numbers.
You want 3 more replacements a month at an average of $18,000. You close 30% of inspections, so you need 10 inspections (3 ÷ 30%). Your inspection booking rate is 40%, so you need 25 replacement leads (10 ÷ 40%). If a replacement lead costs you about $80, that’s $2,000 a month in ad spend (25 × $80).
Those 3 roofs bring in $54,000, so the ad spend is about 3.7% of the revenue it’s meant to produce. Agency fees sit on their own line on top of that.
Spread it across the year
Storm season fills the phone without much help. It also fills it with emergencies, insurance questions, and homeowners who will hire whoever arrives first. Spending heavily into that rush means bidding against every roofer in town for the same calls.
The quieter months are where a budget earns its keep. Homeowners with aging roofs are thinking about it, crews have dry days open, and fewer competitors are advertising. Many roofers weight spend toward late summer and fall to book replacements before the first rain.
- Late summer and fall: heavier spend on replacement ads to fill the dry-day calendar
- Storm season: hold steady, and point new spend at follow-up and booking rather than more leads
- After the rush: follow up on inspections that didn’t sign while the roof is still on their mind
Keep repairs out of the budget
If leak repairs come in through the same ads, they’ll make the budget look like it’s working when replacement inspections are flat. Tag repairs at the first question and size the budget on replacement leads alone.
When to change the number
Raise spend when cost per booked inspection is under your ceiling and crews have open weeks. Hold when the install calendar is full. If inspections are booking but bids aren’t signing, fix the proposal and the follow-up before adding another dollar.
