How to Get More Conservatory Customers and Roof Leads

How UK conservatory installers win more work: past customers' roofs, planning answers, window partners, roof-system schemes, Google and bought leads.

Hugo BibbyPublished 2 November 202619 min read

Conservatory installers get more customers by working the free routes first: past customers whose conservatories may now want a new roof, referrals and Google reviews, a website that answers the planning question straight, and window installers who pass on work. The paid routes, which are roof-system makers' installer schemes, marketplaces, your own ads and bought leads, fill the gaps those leave.

The Planning Portal notes that many homeowners replace a traditional polycarbonate conservatory roof with a solid tiled one. So the conservatories already standing, including the ones you built, are a market of their own, alongside new conservatories and orangeries. This guide takes each route in turn, compares them per signed job and ends with a first call for a roof enquiry.

Where do conservatory customers come from?

Here are the routes side by side, as each organisation published its terms on 2 Nov 2026.

How do you get conservatory customers without paying for leads?

None of these routes needs a lead budget. What they take is your time, and most need months before they pay back.

1. Go back to the conservatories you've already built

If you've been building conservatories for a while, your job files hold something no lead supplier has: the address, the style, the roof and the year of every one you fitted. Sort them by roof and age, and start with the polycarbonate roofs: the kind the Planning Portal says many homeowners are replacing. Those homeowners already know your name.

How you contact them is governed by marketing rules. The ICO's soft opt-in conditions for emailing and texting past customers are in our guide to getting more home improvement customers, and phone calls and the Telephone Preference Service are in our guide to buying leads legally. Keep a record of anyone who says no, and don't contact them again.

Make the message about their conservatory, not a sale: "We built your conservatory in 2006. If the roof's starting to show its age, we can survey it and tell you what's worth doing."

2. Answer the planning question on your website

Many homeowners want to know, before they book a survey, whether the job needs planning permission or building regulations approval. Give each job you do its own page (new conservatories, orangeries and roof replacements) and answer that question in the sources' own terms, with links:

• The Planning Portal says a conservatory falls within the same planning rules as any other home extension. It says those rules are judged on the total enlargement, counting earlier extensions; that they apply to houses, not flats or maisonettes; and that a planning condition or an Article 4 Direction can limit or remove them. It advises contacting the local planning authority if unsure, and its guidance is for England: Wales's policy may differ.
• Its building regulations page for conservatories says any new structural opening between the conservatory and the house needs building regulations approval.
• On changing a conservatory roof, it says planning permission may be required if the change significantly alters the roof's structure or appearance, and that a new roof must comply with building regulations: structurally safe, energy efficient and properly ventilated.
• gov.uk's guide to building regulations approval says approval is different from planning permission and you might need both. It lists replacing roof coverings on pitched and flat roofs among the alterations that may need approval, and says to check with a building control body if you can't decide. Without approval, it adds, a homeowner won't have the certificates of compliance they may need when they sell.

Then say what you do about it: which checks your surveyor makes, that you'll put in writing what applications the job needs and who makes them, and when. Never write, in a page, an ad or a reply, that a job won't need permission or approval. It depends on the house and the design, and it's for the local planning authority and building control to confirm, not an advert.

3. Set up your Google Business Profile for how you sell

If you sell from a showroom with show conservatories, check how Google classes you. Its help on service areas calls a business that serves customers at its own address and also goes out to them a hybrid business, which can show the address and its opening hours and set service areas. If the premises have no permanent signage, Google says they aren't eligible as a shop front: set up as a service-area business and hide the address. Google allows up to 20 service areas, and its guidelines say they shouldn't reach beyond about two hours' drive from your base.

The guidelines also bar unnecessary words in a business name. Trade as Hartwell Conservatories, and let your services list and photos show that you fit tiled roofs around Lincoln.

Google's page on local ranking says it depends on relevance, distance and prominence, and that nobody can pay for a better position. Relevance is how well your profile matches the search, so list each job you do as a service: roof replacements, solid-roof conversions, new conservatories and orangeries. Prominence includes your reviews and the websites that link to you.

4. Turn finished rooms into reviews and photos

Ask every customer for a review at handover, by sending the review link or QR code Google provides, and reply to what comes back, briefly and promptly. Google's contribution policy rules out:

• rewards or discounts in exchange for a review;
• soliciting only the happy customers, or discouraging unhappy ones from posting;
• requiring a review while the customer is on your premises, so don't ask for one at the showroom desk as the contract is signed.

The CMA's guidance on unfair commercial practices adds UK law: writing or commissioning a fake review, or one that hides an incentive, is banned under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, for practices from 6 April 2025. If you publish reviews on your own website, the guidance says you must take reasonable and proportionate steps to stop fake or misleading ones appearing, and to remove any that do.

Google's ranking help also suggests telling your story with photos and videos. For a roof replacement, take the before shots from inside, looking up at the old roof, and from the garden. Take the after shots from the same spots, then add the ceiling finish, the join with the house and the gutter line. Caption each set with the job, the style and the town ("Tiled replacement roof, Edwardian conservatory, Grantham"). Ask the homeowner first, and keep house numbers and neighbours' gardens out of shot.

5. Partner with window installers

Window and door firms that don't build conservatories or fit roofs are in homes with old conservatories all the time. They see the leaking roof panel and the room nobody uses in July, and homeowners ask them about it. Bifold and patio door fitters, builders and extension firms, and landscapers laying a new patio meet the same homeowners at the same moment.

Make it work both ways: you pass them the window and door jobs you don't do, and they pass you the roofs and new builds. Agree in writing who contacts the homeowner, who the contract is with, any referral fee and when it's paid.

Agree, too, who signs off which part of a job that mixes the two trades. gov.uk lists replacing windows and doors among the work that may need building regulations approval, and says an installer registered with a competent person scheme can self-certify its work and give the homeowner a certificate within eight weeks. A homeowner shouldn't discover at the end of a job that nobody owned that step.

Which paid routes bring conservatory leads?

Roof-system makers' installer schemes

Some makers of conservatory roof systems pass homeowner enquiries to approved installers. Ultraframe's find an installer page asks a homeowner for a postcode and contact details to find their local Ultra Installer, and says members must pass a stringent assessment. Its trade page for the scheme lists, as published on 2 Nov 2026:

• a £350 application fee for the initial inspection, written report and setup, after a day-long visit to assess how you work from sale to installation;
• a £600 annual membership fee;
• leads paid per branch, by a £65 monthly subscription or £750 a year;
• an online dashboard for managing leads, a profile page homeowners can use to check your status, and use of the scheme logo;
• follow-up assessments throughout membership.

Guardian Building Systems runs a search for its certified installers, where a homeowner enters a town or postcode and filters by product, including Warm Roof, Home Extension and Roof Lantern. It doesn't publish installer fees on that page, so ask.

The trade-off is commitment to one maker's systems. Before you join, ask how many members share each area and how enquiries are split between them, because neither Ultraframe page we read says.

Marketplaces

On Checkatrade's pricing page, a free profile collects reviews, Approved costs £30 a month and adds the Checkatrade tick and a directory listing, and Growth starts at £59 a month. Fixed plan memberships run for 12 months. Bark sells credits, and you see the credit cost of a lead before you respond to it. Credits last three months from purchase. Its terms let a general request reach as many as five professionals, and an invalid phone number reported within seven days earns your credits back, as credits rather than cash.

A homeowner who posts a job will hear from several firms. Win there on speed and on the first conversation. Our Bark, Checkatrade and MyBuilder cost guide works out the cost of one won job on each.

Your own Facebook and Google ads

Ads let you choose the job, the postcodes and the message. Run roof replacements and new builds as separate campaigns, each landing on its own page with photos of your real jobs.

Watch the wording. The ASA's lead generation advice says lead generation ads must make their commercial intent clear where the context doesn't, and lists rulings against window and double glazing ads that offered "funding", "scrappage" or "grants". Leave out promises you can't back for every house, such as a room you can use all year, lower bills or a guaranteed temperature.

Ask on the form what's there now, the roof it has, a rough size and a timeframe, and whether the home is listed or in a conservation area, as far as they know. Our guide to lead qualification questions covers what belongs on the form and what belongs on the call. Then reply in minutes, not hours (speed to lead), and tell the ad platforms which leads booked a survey (the lead feedback loop).

When should you buy conservatory roof replacement leads?

Buy when your surveyors have gaps the routes above can't fill, someone can ring every lead the same day, and you know roughly how many surveys it takes you to sign a roof and a new build. Hold off if the diary's full, or if you can't tell which source each signed job came from.

Ask every supplier the same questions. Is each lead sold once or shared? Does it say what's there now, including the roof and its age? Are roof, new-build and orangery leads priced and labelled apart? Does the consent name your business? Our comparison of conservatory lead suppliers answers these for 11 UK suppliers, from their own websites. Our guide to what conservatory leads cost sets a ceiling per lead for each job type, and exclusive vs shared leads covers how to check the answer to the first question.

Which route costs least per signed conservatory job?

Because the survey is where you win or lose the job, count surveys as well as signed jobs, and put money and hours on the same footing:

Cost per signed job = (spend on the route + hours on it × your hourly rate) ÷ jobs signed from it

Here's Hartwell Conservatories, an invented firm, over six months of roof replacements, valuing an hour at £45. Every figure is invented to show the method: none is POCKLA or Ultraframe data, and none is a forecast.

Past customers are cheapest per job, but that list shrinks as you work through it: each roof gets replaced once. The scheme looks dearest here, yet one more signed job would bring it to £713, below the bought leads. And the bought leads took the most hours, because every lead needs a quick call. Leave the hours out and they'd look like £400 a job.

Keep job types apart when you run this on your own numbers. Three signed roofs and three signed orangeries aren't the same result, so set each route's cost per signed job against the margin on the jobs it actually signed. Log where every enquiry came from, the hours each route takes and the job type of every contract. Our guide to cost per lead vs cost per job shows how to find the stage where the money leaks.

What should you say when you call a conservatory roof lead?

Whichever route an enquiry came from, the first call decides whether you get to survey it. Here's a short script for Hartwell Conservatories, the invented firm above, for a roof enquiry. Put it in your own words. Where the form already answers something, read it back instead of asking again.

1. Open

"Hi, is that Graham? It's Priya from Hartwell Conservatories. You asked on Monday about a new roof for your conservatory in Lincoln. Have you got ten minutes now, or is there a better time?"

If it's a bad time: "No problem. Would tomorrow at six work, or Saturday morning?" Book it and let them go.

2. Check what's there now

"Your form says it's a Victorian-style conservatory, about four metres by three, with a polycarbonate roof, and you're thinking about a tiled one. Is that right? Do you know roughly when it went up, and who fitted it?"

The age and the original installer tell the surveyor what to expect, and whether there's any paperwork from the build.

3. Ask what the form couldn't

1. "How do you use the room now, and what stops you using it more?" Heat, cold, leaks and rain noise each send the survey somewhere different.
2. "Has anything been changed since it was built, like a door or a wall taken out between the house and the conservatory?" The surveyor needs to know before the visit.
3. "You said it isn't listed or in a conservation area. Is that right, as far as you know?" Their answer is a starting point, not a check.
4. "Are you also weighing up a new conservatory or an extension instead?" If they are, the survey should price both.
5. "Is it just you deciding, or will someone else want to be there?"
6. "Have you had other quotes yet?" Yes or no, the answer tells you how to pitch the survey.

4. If they ask about planning permission or building regulations

"We'd rather not guess on the phone. It depends on your house and the roof you choose. Our surveyor checks, and before you sign anything we'll tell you in writing what the job needs, planning or building regulations, and who applies for it."

Never say on a call that a job won't need permission or approval. The Planning Portal's answer on changing a conservatory roof is the one to point them to if they want to read ahead.

5. If they ask whether a tiled roof will make it warmer

"We won't promise a temperature over the phone. What a new roof changes depends on the walls, glazing and floor it sits on, and the surveyor will tell you straight if something else needs doing too."

6. Book the survey

"What happens next is a home survey. Our surveyor measures up, checks the base, walls and frames can take the roof you want, and goes through the options with you. Allow about an hour, and it's best if everyone who's deciding is there. Would Wednesday at five or Saturday at eleven suit?"

"If you've got any paperwork from when it was built, keep it handy. You'll get a WhatsApp from us in a minute confirming the time and who's coming."

7. If they're not ready

"No rush. Shall I give you a ring in the new year, or would the spring be better?"

Put the date in the diary, ring once, and take a no as final. Notice what the script leaves out: no price, no temperature, no promise about permission and no deadline to decide.

Where POCKLA fits

Buying from POCKLA is one of those paid routes. We find homeowners adding a conservatory or orangery, or replacing a conservatory roof, through our own Meta and Google campaigns aimed at your postcodes, and you choose which of those jobs you want, in any mix. Each of our conservatory leads says which job the homeowner asked about, and is sold once, to one buyer. Invalid numbers are returned, with no time limit.

We check the phone number live and the postcode against your area. The rest is the homeowner's own answers on the form: the property, what's there now and its roof, the style and rough size they want, their timeframe, and whether the home is listed or in a conservation area, which is what they told us, not a view on planning. Finance-dependent enquiries and commercial projects aren't sent.

You choose the follow-up: WhatsApp from your brand's number, or free SMS nurture with a personalised link. Leads arrive in your CRM or in POCKLA Desk, and calls made from Desk get free call analytics. Live transfers are priced on your criteria. Our indicative price is £20–£50 per qualified web lead. That's a range, not a quote: the exact figure is agreed on a call, and there's no setup fee, monthly fee or minimum term (pricing).

Bought leads sit beside your past customers, your reviews and your partners, not in place of them. Run the cost-per-signed-job sum above on us too, alongside every other route.