10 questions to ask before hiring a roofing marketing agency

Here is the number that should be on a warning label: when Backlinko surveyed 1,200 business owners about their SEO providers, the industry scored a Net Promoter Score of zero, and only 30% of small business owners said they would recommend their current provider.

Zero. The industry that sells trust measures dead last in earning it.

I run a roofing marketing company, so I have skin in this game. But the fix for a low-trust industry is not a slicker pitch. It is better questions from buyers. Ask these ten, in roughly this order, and the bad fits eliminate themselves before you have spent a dollar.

1. Who owns everything if we part ways?

The website, the domain, the content, the ad accounts, the tracking data. Ask it first because the wrong answer ends the meeting. Plenty of agencies build your site on their platform and keep it when you leave, which means every check you wrote was rent, not investment.

The answer you want: “You own all of it, and it is in the contract.” Nothing less.

2. What are the contract and exit terms?

Interesting fact: there is no published survey data on how long agency contracts typically run. The 6-to-12-month contract you keep seeing is convention, not law of nature. So ask: what is the term, what does leaving cost, and what happens to the work in progress?

The answer you want: short terms or month to month, no exit fees, clean handoff. An agency that needs a year of your money guaranteed is telling you how confident it is in month three.

3. Who exactly will do my work?

The person selling you is almost never the person doing the work. Ask who writes the content, who builds the pages, where they are, and how many other accounts your account manager carries.

The answer you want: names, or at least an honest structure. “A senior strategist plus our production team” is fine. Vagueness is not.

4. Do you work with my competitors?

Most agencies will happily rank three roofers in the same metro against each other and collect from all three. You cannot win a race when your coach also trains the other runners. It is why we take one roofing company per service area, and any agency should at least answer this cleanly.

The answer you want: “No,” or “yes, and here is exactly how we handle it.” Surprise is the only wrong answer.

5. How do you track leads, not rankings?

Rankings are how the work gets measured internally. Leads are why you are paying. Ask whether calls are tracked and recorded, whether forms are logged with their source, and whether you can see it all yourself.

The answer you want: dedicated tracking numbers, form tracking, and a dashboard you can open at 6 a.m. without asking permission.

6. Can I see a real monthly report?

Not a sample deck. An actual (anonymized) report a client received last month. You are checking whether it leads with business outcomes (calls, leads, jobs) or hides behind impressions and vanity charts.

The answer you want: a report you can read in five minutes that a non-marketer would understand. If you need a translator, that is the product working as designed.

7. What happens in the first 90 days?

Setup’s 2024 Marketing Relationship Survey found the single biggest disconnect in the industry: 48% of clients cite delivery issues as the number one reason they fire an agency, while only 18% of agencies see delivery as a top problem. Agencies think the relationship is fine right up until the client leaves.

Close that gap before it opens. Ask for the 90-day plan in writing: what ships in month one, what you will see by month three, and when you talk.

The answer you want: specific deliverables with dates, plus honesty that SEO results take months even when the work is on schedule.

8. What do you need from me?

Marketing fails quietly when the agency needs photos, job details, and review requests and the owner goes dark. Good agencies tell you upfront what they need; bad ones let the silence become their excuse.

The answer you want: a short, concrete list. Photos from the crew, a monthly 20-minute call, fast answers on service-area questions.

9. How do you price, and what is actually included?

Ahrefs’ survey of 439 SEO providers found 78.2% charge a monthly retainer, so the model itself tells you little. Scope is everything: is the website included? Content? How much? Local SEO? Tracking?

One more number worth knowing from the Backlinko data: small businesses spend an average of $497 a month on SEO, and clients spending over $500 a month were 53% more likely to be extremely satisfied than cheaper spenders. The bottom of the market is where the NPS-of-zero lives. We published our own answer to scoping in what roofing SEO costs, and our entire price is public.

The answer you want: a number, a scope, and no flinch when you ask what is not included.

10. Why should I believe you?

Case studies with real numbers, clients you can call, and specific familiarity with roofing: storm seasonality, insurance work, the difference between repair and replacement intent. The 4As and ANA’s 2025 tenure study found the average client-agency relationship now lasts seven years, more than double the 2016 figure. Good agencies keep clients for years. Ask to talk to one who has been around that long.

The answer you want: proof, offered without defensiveness. In a zero-NPS industry, the burden of proof is on us, not you.

The quick red-flag list

Any one of these ends the conversation:

• They own your website or domain
• Guaranteed rankings or guaranteed lead counts
• A 12-month contract with no exit
• No call tracking, or reporting that leads with impressions
• They cannot name another roofing client
• The price has no written scope attached

Use this list on us

Genuinely. Take these ten questions into every sales call, including one with me. Our answers are already public: one flat plan, everything included, month to month, you own everything, one roofer per market. If you want to test how we handle the rest, book a free audit and ask away. I will give you straight answers, and if we are not the right fit, I will tell you who might be.