SummitPentagon Premier Roofing Business Plan — Customer Acquisition
How roofing leads are generated and converted, what each acquired customer costs, and why referral economics beat paid channels.
Customer Acquisition
Jump to section
- Overview & contents
- i. Important Notice
- 1. Executive Summary
- 2. Why Most Roofing Companies Fail to Make Money
- 3. Insurance Is the Defining Cost
- 4. The Economics of One Roof
- 5. SWOT and Competitive Position
- 6. Customer Acquisition
- 7. Service Mix and the Commercial Question
- 8. Crews, Subcontractors and the Certificate Trap
- 9. Funding: SBA and What Beats It
- 10. Working Capital
- 11. The Five-Year Build and Its Gates
- 12. Licensing, Bonding and Compliance
- 13. People and Production
- 14. Financial Projections
- 15. Break-Even
- 16. Sensitivity and Scenarios
- 17. Risk Management
- 18. Implementation Timeline
- 19. Returns
- 20. Key Performance Indicators
- 21. Key Assumptions
- 22. Conclusion
- A. Appendix A: Consolidated Financial Summary
- B. Appendix B: Capital Schedules
- C. Appendix C: Funding and Debt Schedules
- D. Appendix D: Risk Register
- E. Appendix E: Glossary
|
Year 1 |
Year 2 |
Year 3 |
Year 4 |
Year 5 |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Marketing spend, $’000 |
52 |
132 |
216 |
296 |
378 |
|
As % of revenue |
9.7% |
8.1% |
7.3% |
6.5% |
5.9% |
|
Replacements sold |
33 |
96 |
156 |
220 |
290 |
|
Cost per replacement acquired |
$1,576 |
$1,375 |
$1,385 |
$1,345 |
$1,303 |
|
As % of average ticket |
10.8% |
9.0% |
8.7% |
8.1% |
7.5% |
Customer acquisition cost falls from $1,576 to $1,303 as brand recognition, referrals and repeat neighbourhood work reduce the paid-media share of the mix. That improvement is not automatic. It requires the channels below to be measured separately rather than reported as one marketing number.
|
Channel |
Character |
What it needs |
|---|---|---|
|
Referral and past customer |
Lowest cost, highest close |
A structured referral program and a follow-up cadence on completed jobs, running from month one |
|
Neighbourhood density |
Low cost per second job on a street |
Lawn signs, door-knocking adjacent properties after a job, route-based canvassing |
|
Digital and paid search |
Highest intent, highest cost per lead |
Necessary, but the channel that most needs a measured cost per sold job rather than cost per lead |
|
Insurance restoration and storm response |
Closest thing to free demand when a market is hit |
Treated as upside, not base demand. Requires the ability to mobilise fast |
6.1 Why marketing is the largest overhead line
Marketing at $378,000 is the largest single overhead line in Year 5, ahead of sales commission at $307,000 and workers’ compensation at $276,000. That ordering surprises most first-time roofing operators, who budget insurance carefully and treat marketing as whatever is left. It reflects the structural reality of the trade: a roof is bought once every twenty to thirty years, there is no repeat purchase to amortise the acquisition cost against, and every job requires a new customer to be found.
The consequence for management is that marketing deserves the same scrutiny as any cost of goods line. A two hundred dollar improvement in cost per sold job is worth $58,000 a year at Year 5 volume — comparable to a full percentage point of gross margin, and considerably easier to achieve.