A storm-season plan is a set of pages, campaigns, scripts and rules you prepare months in advance, so a severe-weather week becomes a busy week instead of a lost one. This service builds that plan for your company and your service area, and keeps it within Google's advertising policies and Canadian consumer-protection law.
What the service is
It is a written playbook plus the assets it calls for, built and tested before you need them. When a storm passes through, you follow a checklist: confirm the damage area, switch on the right campaign, change the voicemail, start triage.
Without a plan, most roofers lose storm-week work in three ways. Calls go unanswered while crews are on roofs. Ads aren't ready, so out-of-town companies with prepared campaigns take the clicks. And panicked messaging ("act now before it's too late!") scares off the careful homeowners who become your best customers.
Who it is for
Roofers whose service area gets regular wind, hail, ice or heavy-snow events. That covers most of Canada in one form or another, from coastal windstorms to prairie summer storms to the freeze-thaw cycles that cause ice damming.
It fits best if you have a crew big enough to take on extra repair work for a few weeks, or a reliable partner for temporary tarping. If you can't add capacity, the plan focuses on triage and booking ahead rather than generating more demand.
What is included
- Storm landing pages. One per damage type you handle: wind and missing shingles, hail, ice damming, fallen trees. Each explains what you inspect, what you document and how scheduling works.
- Paused campaigns. Search campaigns written, approved and switched off, with geographic targeting by town or postal area so you can turn on only the areas affected.
- Call and text triage script. Questions your office asks in the first ninety seconds: active water inside? safety hazard? address? insurance claim already opened?
- Voicemail and auto-reply text. Honest wording about wait times, written ahead and ready to switch on.
- Trigger rules. Who decides to activate the plan, based on what: damage reports in your area, your own call volume, and Environment and Climate Change Canada's public alerts as an early signal only.
- Shut-off rules. When to pause the campaigns again, so you don't keep paying for clicks once the demand fades.
The rules we hold the plan to
Storm marketing draws scrutiny, so we write it to stand up to it. Google's misrepresentation policy bans ads that use negative life events to create fear or pressure, claims that present unlikely results as typical, and misleading statements about who you are or who you're affiliated with. Canada's Competition Act prohibits false or misleading representations, and the Competition Bureau enforces it.
In practice, our storm plans never include:
- ads formatted like weather warnings or emergency notices
- "insurance approved", "approved by your insurer" or similar unless that is literally and provably true
- offers to cover, waive or absorb a homeowner's deductible
- fake scarcity, such as "only 3 inspection slots left" when that isn't the case
- texts to people who haven't given consent under Canada's anti-spam legislation
Timeline
Build it in the off-season: four to six weeks. We prefer to start in winter for spring and summer storms, and in late summer for autumn windstorms and the snow season. Campaign approval, landing-page writing and staff training all take time you won't have once the weather turns.
How results are measured
We judge a storm week on answered calls and booked inspections. We track the share of calls answered live, average time to call back, inspections booked per day and the cost per booked inspection from paid campaigns. After each event, you get a one-page review: what worked, what broke and what to change before the next one.
Mistakes to avoid
- No one owns the trigger. Decide in advance who switches the plan on.
- Targeting the whole region. Storm damage is patchy. Target the affected towns or postal areas.
- Promising same-day service you can't give. Under-promise wait times and beat them.
- Leaving campaigns on. Clicks get expensive and less useful after the first week or two.
For the do-it-yourself version, read our storm-season playbook guide. To make sure storm-week callers see a trustworthy listing, pair this with the Business Profile service. If missed calls are your biggest leak, our sister site Roofing.Chat covers instant text-back for roofing leads. Prices are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Isn't storm marketing just storm chasing?
Not when it's done properly. Storm chasing usually means out-of-area crews, pressure tactics and vague promises about insurance. A good storm plan serves your own community, tells the truth about wait times and never implies a link to an insurer or the government.
Should I run ads the moment a weather warning goes out?
Wait until there is real damage in your service area. Searches for leaks and missing shingles usually rise after the event, not during the warning. Ads switched on too early waste budget on curious clicks.
How do I handle more calls than my crew can take?
Triage. Put active leaks and safety issues first, offer temporary protection where you provide it, and give everyone else an honest inspection window. A plan that says 'we can be there Thursday' beats a voicemail box that's full.
Can I text everyone who called me last year after a storm?
Only if you have consent that still applies under Canada's anti-spam law. Existing customers may fall under implied consent for a limited time, but check the CRTC guidance and keep records of consent.