Case studies › Whalen Exteriors
Scaling Whalen Exteriors from $4M to $13M in annual revenue
Roofing contractor outside Pittsburgh, PA · Roofing · Pittsburgh, PA
Results at a glance
- Monthly organic traffic: <100 → 900+ clicks / mo
- Organic leads (90-day window): 50 → 512 leads
- Annual revenue: $4M → $13M
Background
Shawn Whalen is the second-generation owner of Whalen Exteriors, a family-run roofing and exterior replacement company based outside Pittsburgh. When Shawn took over the business from his dad, marketing had always been handled through word of mouth alone. There was never much need for anything else. The phone rang and the crews stayed busy.
As Shawn took over and set his sights on real growth, he quickly realized word of mouth had a ceiling. To scale the business, he needed reliable lead flow he could count on year-round, not just during busy seasons.
He hired a marketing agency to handle it.
The challenge
Shawn worked with that agency for 4 years and saw almost no progress. Worse, he couldn't get a straight answer on what they were actually doing or why results weren't showing up. Every report felt the same. Every call ended with vague promises. Meanwhile, his pipeline stayed inconsistent and his crews sat idle during slower months.
By the time Shawn reached out to Tradewinds Media, he wasn't looking for another agency. He was looking for full clarity on what was actually working, consistent leads to keep his crews busy, and a partner who would be honest with him.
What we did
Three moves drove the turnaround.
First, we rebuilt the foundation. Whalen's service pages were redesigned to convert, positioning was sharpened to set them apart in their market, and major technical SEO issues across the website were fixed.
Second, we launched an ongoing content and backlinking strategy that pushed Whalen into the top 3 rankings for their most important keywords. Monthly organic traffic climbed from under 100 clicks to over 900 clicks in 6 months, driving consistent high-intent visits into the business.
Third, we opened a second Google Business Profile when Whalen expanded to a nearby city, which compounded their lead growth across two service areas instead of one.
All of it was tracked in Shawn's custom performance dashboard. Every page, every keyword, every lead, attributed to the source that produced it. For the first time, Shawn could see exactly what was working and why.
3x revenue. 512 leads in 90 days. A hiring problem instead of a lead problem.
Whalen added $4M in new revenue in the first 8 months of 2025 alone, surpassing their entire 2024 annual revenue by that amount. Over 512 roofing leads came through in a 90-day stretch from organic Google search.
As of 2026, Whalen Exteriors has crossed $13M in annual revenue, more than 3x where they started. Because the majority of jobs come from organic inbound, profit margins stayed high throughout the growth.
Shawn's biggest problem today isn't lead flow. It's hiring fast enough to keep up with the demand.
- +$4M — New revenue, first 8 months of 2025
- 512 — Organic leads in 90 days
- +609% — Organic leads growth
- 3x — Annual revenue
What the client said
The things that you told me you were going to do, you actually did them and showed me that you did them, and we just saw results within like 30 to 45 days, which is pretty unheard of with SEO.
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