The Ultimate Guide to Hiring a Revenue-Driving Marketing Manager

Dear Roofing Company Owner,

If you own or manage a roofing company, and you want to gain more control over your marketing and customer acquisition, so you can grow with more predictability and consistency, then please read this guide from start to finish.

My name is Joseph Hughes, and my team and I at Contractor Dynamics have worked with hundreds of roofing companies throughout the US over the past 8 years, providing marketing consulting, training, and agency services.

We are currently working with companies that range from $1 Million to over $80 Million in annual revenue.

All of our clients have a heavy focus on sales, and all of them are looking to build out more robust marketing systems in-house, so they can have more control and predictability over their growth.

In this guide, I am going to distill my experience into a step-by-step blueprint you can follow to find and hire a revenue-driving marketing manager for your roofing company.

Here’s what we’re going to cover:

Table of Contents:

1. How to Know When You’re Ready To Hire A Marketing Manager
2. The Common Mistakes Roofing Company Owners Make When Hiring Marketing Managers
3. What You Should Expect To Pay A Marketing Manager
4. How To Identify, Attract, & Hire Quality Talent
5. A Framework for Leading, Training, And Collaborating With Your New Hire
6. What Does a Marketing Manager Actually Do?
7. The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) You Should Track
8. Common Traits of Revenue-Driving Marketing Managers

How to Know When You’re Ready To Hire A Marketing Manager

Marketing is an essential business system. So take this hire seriously.

Take a few minutes to answer the questions below. And make sure you’re hiring a marketing manager because it fits the vision and plan for your company.

Don’t hire someone just because you think you should, or because you’ve seen other roofing companies make this hire.

Question #1: Does this hire fit my company’s vision and plan?
Hopefully you have a plan for where you’re taking your company over the next 5-10 years.

Most roofing companies who hire a marketing manager do so because their current methods of marketing and lead acquisition are not supporting their quantitative and qualitative growth goals.

In many cases, roofing companies are frustrated working with outside marketing agencies and freelancers who over-promise and under-deliver.

And in some cases where the marketing company is delivering good leads that turn into appointments and signed contracts, the roofing company is aware that they’re generating sales, but not building their brand at the same time.

At this point, you may be nodding your head in agreement. When you’re first starting out, you want leads. But after a while, you realize that you don’t just want leads.

You want to build a brand and consistently attract inbound inquiries from sophisticated homeowners and property managers who see your content, appreciate your value, are happy to pay you for that value, and are excited to refer you to their friends. 

If you believe what got me here won’t get me there, then you’re probably ready to invest in an in-house marketing manager. 

Question #2: Can I provide a great CAREER for a marketing manager?

As with any hire, we don’t just want to bring people in who are looking for a paycheck. We want to provide an opportunity that is big enough for each team member’s dreams.

Ask Yourself:

1. Can I or someone on my leadership team spend dedicated time every week to lead, train, and collaborate with my marketing manager?
2. Is our vision and plan exciting enough to inspire a talented, career-driven individual?
3. Is there an upward trajectory and earning potential for this position?
   
   

The Common Mistakes Roofing Company Owners Make When Hiring Marketing Managers

One of my objectives I have for all the content I publish is to help you shorten the learning curve and minimize mistakes. And this guide is no exception. 

Common Mistake #1: Waiting Too Long To Make This Hire

You might think that you need to be a certain size company in order to hire a marketing manager. 

However, when structured properly, this is a revenue-driving position. 

(More on that below). 

I know roofing companies at the $1 Million mark who have a full-time marketing manager. And I know companies at the $60-80 Million mark who don’t have someone yet. 

When a roofing company is first starting out, the owner wears all the hats. We’ve all been there! 

For a roofing company, it’s relatively simple to hustle to $1-2 Million in sales. 

My recommendation is to hire a marketing manager as soon as you can, after you get over that first $1-2 Million hump. 

Even today, very few roofing companies have any semblance of a marketing system in place. And even fewer have an in-house marketing person. 

So, merely by having someone who is doing the basics and learning along the way, you’re going to be able to stand out in your market and drive new business. 

For anyone just starting out, wear the marketing hat to $1-2 Million, and then look to hire someone. 

Common Mistake #2: Abandoning Your New Hire

Unfortunately, I see this every day.

Owner hires marketing person. 

Owner pats himself on the back because he filled that role. 

Owner leaves marketing person to fend for herself and figure it out. 

I probably don’t have to tell you – that’s a recipe for disaster, regardless of the position you’re hiring for. 

Marketing, just like customer service, is a team effort. It should be a part of every aspect of your company. 

Your marketing manager can’t do his job in a vacuum. Put in the effort to provide structure, training, and a team environment for him to thrive. 

Here’s how one of our clients recently put it:

Your company is like one big puzzle. All of the individual pieces are the employees, customer service, culture, reputation, quality of work, etc. When you put all of the pieces together, it will be a visual that will produce a unique feeling and vision for your audience. ~ Kylie Boucha, Valcore Construction

What You Should Expect To Pay a Marketing Manager

There are different ways to structure this:

• Full Time vs. Part Time
• Dedicated Role vs. Split Role
• Straight Salary vs. Salary + Incentive
  
  

Let’s unpack each of those:

Full Time vs. Part Time
In general, I’m not a fan of part-time employees or team members. 

It’s difficult to get into a routine. You don’t always know when they’re working or when they’re not. You always seem to need them when they’re not working. You feel bad sending them things or asking them questions when they’re off the clock. 

I’d rather figure out a way to structure someone’s role so he or she can be All In.

Plus, with a full-time team member, it’s easier to integrate that person into your company culture and workflow. Sometimes I feel that part-time team members are on the outside looking in. 

And if you’ve got big plans for your company, you need everyone on the boat rowing in the same direction at the same time.

However, if someone is highly qualified and has a specific skill set, I am more open to a part-time role, because I know I likely don’t have to spend as much time to train that person. 

This could be a stay-at-home mom or dad. It could be someone who has a part-time role in another company. It could be someone who just doesn’t want a full time job, for whatever reason. 

But I would recommend against hiring a part-time person who doesn’t have much experience. There’s just not enough time for training and also for getting the work done. And thus, it’s not likely you’re going to see meaningful results. 

In nearly all cases, I recommend hiring a full-time person. You’re going to invest the time to hire, train, and collaborate with this person. You may as well make it a true win-win scenario. 

Expect to pay a part-time person around $25 per hour, depending on where you are in the country.

For a full-time role, there are several factors, including experience, where you are in the country and whether you offer benefits.

In general, expect to pay between $36,000 and $60,000 per year for a full-time marketing manager.

Dedicated Role vs. Split Role
In a growing roofing company, there is more than enough work to fill a full-time marketing manager’s week. 

I recommend making this a dedicated role, where the person is solely focused on and responsible for marketing. 

I know several companies who try to make this a split role, where the person is doing some marketing, along with answering the phone, sending emails, managing the CRM, and putting out various fires on a daily basis. 

In pretty much every split role situation, marketing nearly always gets pushed to the bottom of the list and becomes an afterthought, as answering phones and putting out the fire du jour take priority. 

Most people in a roofing company are focused on selling and producing jobs today. And that’s essential!

However, the marketing manager’s focus should not be on today. Her focus should be on producing sales and jobs tomorrow and for the future.

For these reasons, I do not recommend a split role at all.

Straight Salary vs. Salary + Incentive
There’s no right answer here. Feel free to get creative with how you structure this role. 

Some roofing companies do straight salary. 

Some have a base salary and tie an incentive into hitting targets and KPIs. 

And some companies have a base salary + a commission for any new business that the marketing manager is responsible for. In these cases, the marketing manager is also involved in some business development activities. 

Business development activities may include: networking events, building relationships with other businesses in town, building relationships with property management companies and commercial decision makers, and otherwise creating new contacts and referral partnerships.

If you have a goal of doing more commercial and multi-family business, structuring the marketing manager role to include some business development activities is smart. 

To add another twist, I know many roofing companies who have a full-time marketing manager and another person who is doing business development full time. In larger companies, you may find multiple marketing people and multiple business development people.

How To Identify, Attract, & Hire Quality Talent

Before we go out and try to find someone, it’s helpful (essential) to be clear on exactly what we’re looking for. 

Start With The End In Mind. 

Here are some considerations:

How Much Experience Am I Looking For?
In my experience, the sweet spot is someone who has 1-2 years of full-time experience marketing in an industry other than roofing or contracting. 

Every resume you get will cite social media experience and expertise. However, most times that experience is nothing more than posting TikTok videos and scrolling through Instagram 😉 

Look for someone who has real-world experience working for either a marketing agency or a small or midsize business (SMB).

Why not the construction industry? Well, to be frank, the construction industry is kind of a few years behind the times when it comes to innovation, technology, and marketing. 

Some of the top roofing companies we work with are pros at taking concepts and people that work well in other industries, and adapting them to their roofing company. 

Instant Innovation. 

Another option is to find someone who has experience working in a digital marketing agency, and who has a desire to go deep with just one brand. 

At a marketing agency, account managers and other team members are pulled in a million different directions to work on campaigns for multiple clients. So it can be difficult for someone at an agency to really get into a rhythm and truly feel as if they’re moving the needle for any one client. 

So you may find someone like that who has a desire to apply his skill set and passion to really making a difference for one company.

How about someone who has many years of experience?

In most cases, this is going to be a generalist who knows a little about a lot of things. 

That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but if they have several years of experience, their salary requirement is going to be considerably higher. And, in my opinion, you don’t necessarily get a lot more value out of paying more, as that person is still going to have to learn what works in today’s modern marketing world.

To sum it up: the sweet spot is someone who has 1-2 years of full-time experience marketing in an industry other than roofing or contracting. 

Where Do I Find The Right Person?
No need to go into all of these in detail, so let’s go with a list format here.

Here are the channels I recommend, in rough order of priority:

1. Tap your local network: current team members, friends and family, post on your social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
2. Run ads on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn
3. Check with your local college or university’s career department 
4. Job boards such as Zip Recruiter and Indeed (note: you will have to sift through a LOT of resumes)
   
   

How Do I Know Who To Hire?
You may already utilize assessment tools such as DISC or Myers-Briggs. If so, trust your level of comfort with them. 

Regardless of whether you use hiring assessment tools, I value the following traits in a marketing manager:

• Energy
• Empathy
• Hunger to Learn and Make Mistakes
• Willingness to Collaborate With a Team
• Genuine Interest In The Industry
  
  

Ideally, this is someone who will be with you long-term and build a career at your company. Establishing fit is critical. 

A Framework for Leading, Training, And Collaborating With Your New Hire 

Leading
As with any new hire, educate them on your mission, vision, plan and culture. 

Educate them on the industry, your history, the current snapshot of your company, and paint a picture of where you’re going. 

A marketing manager is going to make decisions and do work that impacts the future of your company. So, it’s crucial for him to have as much context as possible.

Let your marketing manager know that he’s not on an island, that there will be plenty of support and collaboration. This is a total team effort.

Training
You own or manage a roofing company. You’re not a marketing expert. Even if you have a passion for marketing, you’re not in the weeds doing it every day, as you’re wearing multiple hats. 

Just as your sales team should have ongoing sales training and your install teams should have ongoing training and manufacturer certifications, your marketing manager should continuously be sharpening her skills. 

Facebook, Google, and Digital Marketer all offer courses and certifications. 

And of course my team and I run marketing training programs specifically for roofing companies.

The goals of training are to minimize mistakes, shorten the learning curve, and constantly improve. 

With training, I always recommend that you or someone else in your company go through at least some of the training with the marketing manager. 

The reason is because you want to build a marketing system and what I call “Marketing DNA” inside your company. 

You don’t want to invest in training only one person and have to rely on that person 100% for marketing. 

Plus, as much as we want to have zero employee turnover, the reality is that not everyone stays forever. 

A business that runs on systems has more value than a business that relies on people.

Collaborating
I use this word a lot. Because it’s important. 

You don’t hire a sales rep and expect them to magically produce signed contracts.

So don’t hire a marketing manager and sit back and wait for your phone to ring off the hook! 

The roofing companies that we work with that have the most success with marketing managers have regular meetings and check-ins. 

For example, Angelica Brager is the Director of Marketing for Young Construction in Iowa. 

Angelica meets with at least one of the owners daily, and has a longer weekly meeting with the owners. 

She also meets regularly with the sales team, so she can gain insights from the field and produce marketing to warm up their market and fill their calendars with appointments. 

As an owner, expect to spend 4-6 hours per week with your marketing manager. 

Naturally, this will be higher at the beginning, and lower as the marketing manager gets her feet wet and gets more experience inside your company.

Eventually, as you develop more systems, you may go down to a couple hours per week.

What Does a Marketing Manager Actually Do?

Great question! 

When you first hire your marketing manager, you might be scratching your head trying to think of a full week’s worth of work for her to do. 

Not to worry. That’s completely normal. 

But as she learns the ropes, gets some training, and discovers all of the opportunities to market your roofing company more effectively, she’ll soon have her hands very full. 

The General Role
In smaller companies, the marketing manager is doing all of the marketing (with collaboration from you and your team, of course). 

In larger companies (generally over $10 Million in annual revenue), your marketing manager will be doing a lot of marketing, and also liaising with outside marketing agencies or freelancers. 

In this role, your marketing manager is spending part of her week doing marketing work and part of her week playing project managing others, who are either inside or outside your company.

For example, it’s typical for a $10+ Million roofing company to have a full-time in-house marketing manager, and also be paying a monthly retainer to an SEO company, Google Ads company, Facebook Ads person, or any combination thereof. 

In larger companies, your marketing manager is also project managing any print ads and billboards, radio, TV, and other media. 

The Specifics
Let’s go with a list format here, as there are many possible things for your new marketing manager to do:

• Posting content on your social media channels
• Running Facebook & Instagram ads
• Making sure your LinkedIn business page is up to date and all team members have LinkedIn profiles linked to your business page
• Working with your sales team to guide them on what pictures and videos she needs
• Going out in the field and taking photos and videos
• Running Google Ads
• Working on your SEO
• Making changes and updates to your website or, more likely, liaising with your website company to get changes made
• Adding photos to your Google My Business page
• Monitoring your online reviews
• Tracking KPIs on a dashboard
• Meeting with you and your team weekly
• Having a brief daily meeting with you (at least at the beginning)
• Attending networking events
• Scheduling video testimonials from your clients
• Taking photos of your team members for your website and social media
• Project managing any involvement in local home shows and events
• Reviewing reports from any outsourced marketing people or agencies
• Email marketing
• Direct mail marketing
• Helping to organize and manage your CRM

As you can see, there is plenty to do. Don’t get overwhelmed and think your company has to do all these things. 

Focus on building systems and processes over time.

The Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) You Should Track

Most people would look at the obvious, such as Facebook Likes and Leads. 

While those can be part of the equation, the marketing manager is much broader and more impactful than that. 

Look at this role as a key driver of growth for your company. It’s not about how many leads this person can add to your calendar in the next 90 days. 

It’s about how your marketing manager can help you achieve your 1, 3, 5, 10 year targets.

And while some results are attributable to specific actions (i.e. we ran this FB campaign and generated 10 sales from it), much of marketing is not black and white. 

For example, a good marketing manager will help strengthen your company’s brand awareness in your local market(s). That increased brand awareness means more people in your market know about you, which makes your door knocks and appointments warmer, increases your closing percentage, and drives profitability up.

So, think macro, not micro. 

While it can be helpful (and fun) to track vanity metrics such as Facebook and Instagram followers, don’t obsess over that.

Here are some recommendations on what to track:

• Monthly appointments
• Lead-to-appointment conversion ratio
• Appointment-to-contract conversion ratio (Closing Percentage)
• Lead-to-contract ratio
• Monthly revenue
• Cost per appointment
• Cost per contract
• Average profit per job
• Commercial appointments
• Commercial or multi-family decision-maker relationships established

The combination of metrics you decide to track will be specific to your company and your goals. 

Establish those metrics, establish clarity around them, and keep a visible dashboard to provide transparency and hold everyone accountable. 

A good marketing manager will help you move the graph up and to the right for each of these metrics. 

A great marketing manager will produce a 10X ROI on your investment in him or her.

Common Traits of Revenue-Driving Marketing Managers

This section can probably apply to any position in any company!

The most important thing I look for in a marketing manager, and any other position for that matter, is someone who thinks and makes decisions, as opposed to someone who just does labor.

You can grow linearly by delegating labor. 

You can grow exponentially by delegating decision-making.

Beyond that critical component, here are some things to look for:

• The person is not tied to pushing her own ideas; she pushes whatever will get the best result for the company.
• The person does not get too emotionally attached to ideas. There is creativity in marketing, but much of marketing is data-driven. The data will tell you what works and what doesn’t.
• The person is constantly coming up with ideas and presenting them to you and your team.
• The person can openly collaborate with other marketing people, whether inside your company or outside. Some marketing people can get territorial and defensive when another marketer is introduced to the equation. Be aware of this.
• Abundance Mindset. I look for this in every team member. When we operate from a place of abundance, we make sound decisions that align with our long-term vision. When we operate from a place of scarcity, our judgement is clouded and we make decisions that may benefit us in the short-term but not support us in the long-term.
  
  

What’s Next?

While Contractor Dynamics is not a staffing or recruiting company, feel free to email me or message me with any specific questions on this guide. I will always do my best to answer and/or point you in the right direction. 

When you hire a marketing manager and you want him or her to have access to the roofing industry’s leading marketing training platform and get hands-on, step-by-step guidance from my team and me, book a call with our team to learn more and to get started.

I hope that this guide has opened your eyes to the opportunities for creating more predictable growth for your roofing company!

And I wish you the best of success in building your dream team!

Joseph Hughes

Owner & Marketing Director

Contractor Dynamics