Google Ads for roofers
After the hail, you are bidding against strangers.
We manage Google Ads for roofers. Roofing demand arrives as a step function and so does the competition. The week after a storm your auction fills with out-of-market chasers who will overbid you, take the volume and leave before the warranty matters.
4.9 on Google30+ verified reviews
You cannot outbid a storm chaser. You can outlast one.
A chaser has no local overhead, no reputation to protect in your market and no reason to care what a lead costs. In the two weeks after a hail event they will pay more than the job is worth to you. The winnable ground is the intent they are not set up for: insurance questions, claim process, and the homeowner who is still deciding.
Three kinds of search, three kinds of budget
Roofing demand does not arrive as one thing, and a single campaign cannot bid correctly for all of it.
Storm response
Hail damage, missing shingles, emergency tarp. Enormous volume for a few days, then nothing, in the most expensive auction you will ever enter. Worth being present for, not worth winning at any price.
Insurance and process
Will insurance cover a roof replacement, how to file a claim, what to do when the adjuster disagrees. Steady all year, far cheaper, and almost nobody local bids on it because it does not look like a buying search.
Planned replacement
Roof cost, material comparison, financing. No urgency, long consideration, and the intent most likely to become a full-price job with a normal margin.
Chasers only compete on the first one. Build the account so the other two carry it, and the storm weeks become upside instead of the only thing keeping the lights on.
The standing work, between the storms.
Geographic exclusions that actually hold
Chasers bid wide and so do the lead resellers. Tight location targeting on location of interest, not just presence, plus exclusions for the metros that send you tyre kickers, is the difference between a service area and a wish list.
Budget headroom reserved, not spent
A campaign built the week after a storm has no history, no Ad Rank and no negatives, so it pays the worst prices at the worst moment. We keep an always-on baseline and a reserve that can be released in hours.
Insurance intent as the steady line
The claim-process searches cost a fraction of storm terms and they run every month of the year. They also build the account history that makes the storm weeks affordable.
Negatives for the work you do not want
Repairs under a threshold, commercial flat roof if you are residential, and the DIY and materials searches that read like demand and are not.
What drives a roofing budget.
There is no honest universal number for a roofing ad budget. These are the things that move it.
How crowded your metro is
A metro with several big replacement contractors and a steady flow of storm chasers costs more per click than a small market where you are one of a few real local names. The storm calendar in your region matters as much as the map.
How wide your job values run
A small repair and a full replacement are very different jobs. If most of your margin sits in replacements, you can afford to pay more to reach the researcher, and less to chase the cheap repair call.
How many calls get answered
A click that rings out to voicemail is paid for and wasted. Many roofers lose more to missed calls and slow callbacks than to anything in the auction, and we show you that before we raise a budget.
We price on booked work, not on clicks, which is why we do not quote a universal number. Our published plans show the management fee; the ad budget is sized from real click costs in your market.
How we structure a roofing account.
The structure follows the three kinds of intent above, so each one gets its own budget, its own message and its own page.
Campaigns split by what the homeowner wants
Repair, full replacement, insurance claim help and storm response each get a separate campaign. A leak search and a replacement-cost search should never share a budget or an ad.
Location settings that match your real territory
We target people showing interest in your service area, then exclude the towns and metros that send you calls you cannot take. That keeps out-of-market chasers and lead resellers from eating the budget.
Schedule and call handling that fit your office
Emergency tarp searches deserve answered calls at odd hours only if someone really answers. Otherwise the schedule and the call routing change so you are not paying for rings nobody takes.
Negative keyword themes for roofers.
Roofing has a lot of searches that look like demand and are not. We block them in themes, then add specifics from your own search terms.
DIY and how-to
Searches about patching a roof yourself, tar and sealant, or how to shingle a roof. These are people who want to do the work, not hire it.
Materials, jobs and training
Shingle prices by the bundle, supplier names, roofing jobs, hiring, apprenticeships and roofing school. They match your keywords and will never call you.
Wrong job for your shop
Commercial flat roof, industrial coatings, mobile home roofs or any service you do not offer, if you are a residential company. Add the ones you decline most often.
Negatives only work when somebody keeps reading. The search terms report is reviewed weekly, and every change is logged in plain English.
Local Services Ads versus Search for roofing.
They catch different roofing buyers. Most accounts do better running both than picking one.
| The difference | Local Service Ads | Google Ads Search |
|---|---|---|
| Who it catches | Homeowners ready to call a local roofer now, often right after damage | Researchers, claim questions, replacement shoppers and storm searches |
| What it does badly | Gives little room to explain insurance help or compare materials | Needs ongoing work to keep junk searches and chasers out |
| How budget behaves | You set a weekly budget and a bidding mode, and pay per lead | You pay per click and control keywords, match types and negatives |
Where Local Services Ads is available for your category, we run both and keep them from competing with each other.
Leads are charged by Google under its bidding rules, and ranking comes from bid and profile quality. Our Local Services Ads management covers the profile, reviews and disputing leads that should not be charged. Google is also moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads, so the line between the two is shifting.
Want storm campaigns built and parked before the wave?
We audit your account against the storm calendar and the chaser dynamic, and map the plan. Free either way.
- 01Your homepageMocked up on your brand
- 0260-point auditWhat the current site is losing
- 03Growth planBuilt around your market
No obligation, no pushy sales call. Month to month if you start.
The trade is named because this figure comes from an adjacent trade, not yours. Evidence of method, not a forecast.
How the work runs
- 01 Baseline always on A modest steady budget so the account has history before it needs it.
- 02 Own insurance intent The claim and process searches nobody local is bidding on.
- 03 Reserve for storms Headroom released in hours, not a campaign built from scratch.
- 04 Fence the geography Location of interest, exclusions, and weekly term review.
What we track and report.
A roofer needs to know which money produced a roof, not which click produced a visit.
Calls by source, recorded
Every call is tied to its campaign and keyword, and recorded so we can hear what the homeowner asked and whether your office handled it well.
Qualified call, booked job, then revenue
A call is not a job. We separate qualified calls from booked inspections from signed work, and report by job type so repairs, replacements and storm work are not blended.
Search terms and lost impression share
We show whether you are missing volume because the budget ran out or because your rank was too low. Those need different fixes.
Local Services Ads charged leads and credits
Where you run Local Services Ads, we track charged leads and request credits under Google's lead credit rules.
We review all of this weekly and report monthly in plain language, with the weak spots included.
How long until results.
Roofing is lumpy, so judge it in stages and not on the first slow or busy stretch.
Clean and collect
We fix the structure, block the junk, wire up call tracking and gather real data on which searches ring your phone.
Bidding learns
Once booked jobs feed back into the account, bidding starts to favor the searches that become roofs. Local Services Ads also needs a learning period, per Google.
Judge the cost
Only then does cost per booked job mean something. A storm or a dry spell can distort an early read.
It is month to month, so if the account does not earn its keep, you can leave.
What roofing contractors ask
Q.01Should we spike the budget after a storm or hold it?
Release reserve into a campaign that already has history, rather than building a new one. A cold campaign in a hot auction pays the most for the least. If the account has been running quietly all year, the spike is affordable.
Q.02How do we compete with out-of-town storm chasers on cost?
You mostly do not, on the storm terms themselves. You compete on the intent they ignore, on the profile and reviews they cannot fake locally, and on being the result that was already there before the hail.
Q.03Is it worth bidding on insurance questions if they are not ready to buy?
Yes, and it is the most underpriced intent in the trade. Someone working out whether their claim is covered is choosing a roofer while they read. The click costs a fraction of a storm term.
Q.04How do we keep leads inside our actual service area?
Targeting on location of interest rather than presence, explicit exclusions, and call tracking so we can see where the waste actually comes from. Radius targeting alone reliably leaks.
Q.05Do we pause between storms?
No, and that is the most expensive habit in roofing PPC. Pausing throws away the account history that makes the next spike affordable, and the planned-replacement demand that runs all year.
Q.06What does a roofing lead actually cost here?
It depends entirely on which of the three intents you are buying, which is why a single blended number is not useful. We report them apart, because storm leads and insurance leads are different products at different prices.
Q.07Should I answer storm leads differently from other roofing calls?
Yes. Storm callers are comparing several roofers fast, so speed to answer decides who wins. We set up call routing and tracking so storm calls are flagged, and we show you how many went unanswered, because that loss is usually bigger than the click cost.
Q.08Will you bid on my own company name?
Usually yes, on a small budget. Chasers and lead sites bid on local roofer names, and a branded campaign keeps your listing on top for people searching for you. We report it separately so it does not make the account look better than it is.
Q.09Why did my roofing leads drop after a quiet stretch?
Roofing demand follows weather, so a drop is often the market and not the account. We check search terms, lost impression share and call answering before changing anything, so we can tell a weather lull from a real problem.
Get your free growth plan.
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