He Spends $660K on Marketing. He Can't Tell You What's Working.

I had a conversation this week with a roofer doing $5.5 million a year. Built the company from a truck. Hundreds of reviews. Legit operation.

He's spending roughly 12% of revenue on marketing. That's $660,000 a year across Meta, Google, LSA, Yelp, lead aggregators, YouTube — you name it. And when I asked which channel produces his best jobs, he said what every roofer says.

"I think it's Meta."

Think.

$660,000 a year. And he thinks.

Here's what I keep seeing with roofers in the $3M to $8M range. There's a pattern — and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Stage one: you're storm chasing. Door knocking. Referrals. You don't need marketing because you've got hail damage and hustle. Revenue grows. Life is good.

Stage two: you decide to go retail. You start spending on ads. Facebook lead forms. Google Ads. Maybe LSA. The phone starts ringing. Revenue jumps. You hire sales reps. You're scaling.

Stage three: the wheels start to wobble. You're spending $30K, $40K, $50K a month on marketing — but you can't connect a single dollar to a closed job in your CRM. Your office manager tags every lead as "Google" because it's the fastest dropdown option. Your reps say Meta is working. Your agency says the same thing. But nobody can show you the actual path from ad click to signed contract.

You're flying a $5 million plane with no instruments.

Here's the thing that stops most roofers from fixing this. They think tracking means changing every phone number on everything — including the truck wraps they just paid $4,000 each for.

It doesn't.

You keep your main number on the physical stuff — trucks, yard signs, business cards. The places where it's easy to swap — your website, your GBP listing, your LSA, your Yelp page, your Facebook ads — those get tracking numbers. It's not a massive overhaul. It's a Tuesday afternoon.

But because nobody explains this, contractors keep spending $50K a month without a scoreboard. For years. Because they think the fix is harder than it is.

That roofer spending 12%? His goal is 8%. On $5.5 million, that's the difference between $660K and $440K in marketing spend. A $220,000 gap.

He doesn't need to spend less. He needs to spend smarter. But you can't spend smarter when your CRM says "Google" for everything.

Here's what I typically find when we actually wire up attribution: one or two channels are doing most of the heavy lifting, and at least one channel is barely breaking even. I've seen contractors discover that Facebook was producing 40% of their booked jobs at half the cost per job — and they were about to cut it. I've seen others realize their Yelp spend was returning $1.20 for every dollar spent. Not exactly a growth engine.

The moves become obvious once you can see them. The problem is you can't see them yet.

Pull up your marketing invoices from last month. Write down each platform and what you spent. Then — without guessing — try to put a closed-job revenue number next to each one.

If you can do it, you're ahead of 90% of the roofers I talk to.

If you can't, that's the single highest-ROI problem to solve in your business right now. Not more ads. Not a new website. Just knowing where your money is actually going.

Take the 2-minute diagnostic: rivetops.io/f/revenue-leak

Or let's look at the numbers together: calendly.com/hello-rivetops/30min

P.S. That $220,000 gap between 12% and 8%? It doesn't require spending less. It requires knowing which half of your budget is building your business — and which half is just keeping your agency busy.