Lead costs

What do roofing leads cost in South Africa?

Bradley Hartmann, Peak Leads · 30 July 2026

Lead pricing is the most common question we get from roofers. It is also the most common place they get burned. A vendor quotes a price per lead but rarely explains who else bought the same enquiry, how old it is, or what it turns into once you start dialling. Anyone who publishes one rand figure as the going rate for a South African roofing lead is guessing, and we are not going to add to that. What we can give you is the mechanism: what actually moves the price, how the sources differ, and what to ask before you spend anything. You do not need to hire us to use any of it.

How do roofing lead sources compare?

Every row moves with your trade, your area, the season and the job type. A leak repair in a small town and a full re-roof in a well-off Gauteng suburb are different products at different prices. Nobody can put a number on either without knowing where you work and how much work you can take. The sections below explain each row.

What are you actually buying with a shared lead?

Shared enquiries are the cheapest way in, and the reason is simple: the same homeowner is sold to several roofers, usually within minutes of the form going through. You are not buying a customer. You are buying a place in a race. The homeowner filled in one form and now four or five roofers are calling. The first company on the phone usually gets the conversation, and the rest paid for the privilege of dialling.

That does not make shared leads a scam. It makes them a specific tool with a specific requirement. If someone on your team can call within five minutes, every time, shared volume can pencil out. If your foreman gets to the list at seven that evening, most of the value is gone before you pick up the phone. We break down the full economics in exclusive vs shared leads.

What does exclusivity actually change?

An exclusive lead costs more because one lead goes to one buyer. Nobody else gets the homeowner's number, so the conversation is yours to lose rather than yours to win.

Exclusivity is only half of what you are paying for, though. The other half is quality: how the lead was generated, what was verified before it was sent, and how quickly it reaches you. A form fill harvested off a generic national directory is worth less than a homeowner who enquired on a branded local page about their own roof, even when both are sold as exclusive.

So ask two things of every vendor. Where did this lead come from? And does it stay exclusive forever, or only for the first 24 hours? Some sellers resell after a window. That is a shared lead with a head start, and it should be priced like one. This is the whole basis of how we run exclusive lead generation: the campaign runs under your brand, so the homeowner is enquiring with your business, not with a middleman who then sells the same enquiry on.

What does it cost to generate your own leads?

Running your own campaigns costs more up front and usually wins over time, because every lead is exclusive by definition and carries your name rather than a directory's.

Google search ads. Roofing clicks tend to sit at the dearer end of the trades, for the obvious reason that one re-roof is worth a lot of repairs. What decides whether an expensive click becomes an affordable lead is almost never the bidding. It is the page the click lands on. A site that takes six seconds on a phone, buries the number, or has no page for the suburb the person searched will double your cost per lead before the auction gets a say. That is why we treat web design and Google Ads as one system rather than two invoices.

Meta ads. Facebook and Instagram leads come in cheaper than search, and they come in colder. These people were not looking for a roofer. Demand generation works, but it needs a clear offer and follow-up within the hour, or you are paying for names that go nowhere. We compare the two channels properly in Google Ads vs Facebook Ads for contractors.

SEO. The slow channel. Months of work before it pays, then it compounds. Once you rank for your trade in the towns you work, the cost of each extra lead falls towards nothing, which no ad channel ever does. See what the work involves under SEO for contractors.

What about the pay-per-lead spot at the top of Google?

If you have read American advice on roofing leads, you will have seen Google's pay-per-lead product and its verification badge recommended as the first paid channel to try. Google does not run that product in South Africa. It operates in a short list of countries and we are not on it, so ignore that advice entirely and do not let a vendor sell it to you here.

What you have instead at the top of a local roofing search is ordinary Google search ads, the map results and the organic listings underneath. Two things decide how often you show up in the map results and whether anyone taps you when you do: a Google Business Profile that is actually maintained, with your service areas, real photos of finished roofs and correct hours, and a steady flow of recent reviews. Both are free. Both take consistent effort. Neither is optional if you want the local searches without paying for every click.

Why is cost per lead the wrong number?

Cost per lead is what vendors sell on. Cost per booked job is what you bank.

Here is the shape of it, without prices. Say you have a fixed budget for the month. Shared leads are cheaper, so that budget buys you 20 of them. Exclusive leads cost more, so the same budget buys 8.

• Shared: 20 leads, each sold to several roofers. You reach 8 people before someone else has already been out to quote, you quote 5, you book 2.
• Exclusive: 8 leads, nobody else calling. You reach 6, you quote 5, you book 3.

Same money. More jobs off the smaller list. Your contact and close rates will differ from these, and some high-volume roofers with a dedicated caller do beat this on shared volume. The point is the shape of the arithmetic, not the numbers in it. Contact rate and close rate move your real cost per job far more than the price per lead does, so work out yours before you compare a single quote.

The other lever is speed, and it is the bigger one. Homeowners tend to hire whoever calls first, not whoever calls best. Whatever you buy, get the first call happening within minutes and the same leads quietly get cheaper per job.

What moves the price of a roofing lead?

• Where you work. A busy metro suburb with a dozen established roofers prices higher than a quiet town where you are one of three. Province matters less than the competition inside your actual service radius.
• Season. Leak enquiries follow the rain, so your busy months in the winter-rainfall Cape are not the same as the summer storm season inland. Demand and competition move together, and prices move with them.
• Job type. Full replacements and waterproofing contracts cost more to buy than small repairs, because the job is worth more to whoever wins it.
• Freshness. A lead generated an hour ago is worth several times one recycled off last month's list.
• Verification. A lead with a confirmed number, a real address and a stated job costs more and wastes far less of your week.
• Exclusivity. How many other roofers get the same enquiry, and whether that changes after the first day.

What should you ask before you buy?

Take this list to any lead vendor, us included. The answers tell you more than the price does.

• Where was this lead generated, and under whose brand?
• How many other roofers receive it, and does that change after 24 hours?
• How does it reach me, in real time or in a daily export?
• What has been verified before it is sent: the number, the address, the job they want?
• Is it scoped to the suburbs and towns I actually work, or to a whole metro?
• What happens when a lead is plainly junk, and how long does a credit take?
• What is the minimum commitment, and how do I stop?

What do Peak Leads packages cost?

Managed lead generation runs on fixed monthly packages, and every one of them is published in full on the pricing page. Nothing is hidden behind a call. Exclusive campaigns, websites, SEO and ad management are scoped on the call rather than sold off a rate card, because the honest answer depends on your trade, how many suburbs you want covered and how many leads you can realistically work in a week.

Here is the straight answer on what a Peak Leads lead is, because it is a different product from a booked appointment. These are homeowner enquiries generated under your own brand, verified before they reach you, delivered in real time, and exclusive to you. They are contacts to work, not jobs already sold. Roofers who treat them like a pipeline, with fast calls and a proper follow-up sequence, get work out of them. Roofers who want the phone to ring on its own are better served by ads or SEO, and we will tell you that on the call rather than take the money.

No upfront payment on websites, SEO or ad campaigns, and if you are not happy you do not pay. Websites go live in 2 to 3 weeks. Managed lead generation retainers are prepaid monthly, with no lock-in. We have helped South African businesses generate over R114 million in sales, and we are rated 4.9 out of 5 across 70+ client reviews.

What should you do with all this?

Compare every offer on cost per booked job, not cost per lead. Ask who else gets the enquiry and when it was generated. Get your first call happening within minutes, because that single habit changes your numbers more than switching vendors will. And before you spend anything on traffic, make sure the place the lead lands, your website and your phone process, can actually convert it.

If you want the deeper reasoning on exclusivity, read exclusive vs shared leads. If you are choosing between ad channels, start with Google Ads vs Facebook Ads for contractors.