Paid search is the fastest way for a roofing company to buy demand, and the easiest way to burn a month of margin without noticing. The queries are short, the intent is urgent, and every contractor within thirty miles is bidding on the same handful of terms, which is why a roofing click costs several times what a click costs in most trades. None of that makes the channel a bad buy. It makes the management the whole product. This page describes what a competent roofing PPC engagement actually contains, which levers move your cost per booked inspection rather than your cost per click, and the specific things to ask a candidate agency to show you before money changes hands.
Why roofing clicks cost what they do
Three things push roofing bids up. The job is worth a lot, so a competitor can afford to pay heavily for a lead and still profit. The intent is often emergency intent, and a homeowner with water coming through a ceiling clicks the first credible result rather than comparing five. And a good share of the searches are insurance restoration work, where a single approved claim can carry a quarter's overhead. That combination sets a floor under the auction that no clever bidding strategy will get under. What varies enormously between one roofer and the next is not the click price, it is what happens after the click. Two companies paying identical amounts per click can end up an order of magnitude apart on cost per booked inspection, because one answers the phone in three rings during a storm and the other sends callers to voicemail after five. Judge a candidate agency on whether they ask about your call handling in the first conversation. If they do not, they are selling you traffic, not jobs.
What the work actually is, week to week
A roofing account that is being managed rather than parked looks busy in the change history. Someone is reading the search terms report and adding negatives, because roofing attracts a torrent of irrelevant matches: roofing jobs, roofing supply, roof rack, how to roof a shed, students looking for materials pricing. Someone is checking that the service area radius still matches the crews you can actually dispatch, and tightening it when it does not. Someone is adjusting ad schedules so that spend concentrates in the hours your office is staffed, and splitting the mobile experience from desktop because most roofing enquiries arrive on a phone. Call tracking should be in place with recordings you can listen to, because the only honest measure of lead quality in this trade is hearing what the caller wanted. Ask for the last ninety days of change history from a candidate's existing roofing account, with the client name redacted. A thin history is the single most reliable tell of an account on autopilot.
Storm season, budget pacing and wasted spend
Roofing demand is not smooth, and a plan that spends the same amount every month is either underspending during the weeks that matter or overspending during the weeks that do not. After a significant hail or wind event, search volume in the affected zip codes rises sharply and stays elevated for a while, and the roofers who capture it are the ones who could raise budgets the same day. Agree in advance who has authority to increase spend, how quickly, and what the ceiling is. Agree equally clearly what happens in the slow months, because a flat retainer that assumes constant activity is a fee for doing less work. Watch the claims in your ads too. Free inspection offers, insurance deductible language and anything implying a guaranteed claim approval are exactly the sort of advertising representations the Federal Trade Commission expects to be truthful and substantiated, and the agency writing the ad copy is not the party a regulator or a state attorney general will come to first. You are.
How to vet a candidate before you sign
Insist that the Google Ads account is created under your own billing and ownership, with the agency granted access rather than holding the account. This is the single most consequential clause in the contract, because an account you own carries its conversion history and its learning into the next relationship, and one you rent starts from zero the day you leave. Ask for reporting that ends in booked inspections and signed jobs rather than impressions, and confirm which system supplies that number, because if it is not your CRM the number is an estimate. Check the term: month to month or a short initial commitment is normal for a well-run shop, and a twelve month lock with an early termination fee is a bet on your inertia. Finally, decide whether you are also buying organic work. Paid search rents attention for as long as you pay, so most roofers eventually want a roofer SEO company running the map pack and the service area pages alongside it, and the two engagements are priced and judged very differently.
Questions people ask about ppc for roofers
How much should a roofer budget for paid search?
Work back from a job rather than forward from a budget. Take your average job value, your close rate on inbound enquiries, and the number of extra jobs a month you can actually crew, then decide what an enquiry is worth to you. That number, not a round retainer figure, tells you the spend that makes sense and the cost per lead at which you should stop.
Should the agency fee be a percentage of ad spend?
Percentage fees are common and are not automatically wrong, but they pay the agency more when your spend rises, which is a conflict during storm season. A flat management fee, or a percentage with a stated cap, removes the argument. Either way, ask what the fee covers when spend is paused.
Do Local Services Ads replace regular search ads?
They complement them rather than replace them. Local Services Ads sit above the standard results and are charged per lead, so they behave differently from a click auction and require background screening to run. Most roofers end up on both, and a candidate who has never mentioned the difference has probably not run one.
How long before paid search shows whether it works?
Faster than organic search but slower than one week. Expect the first month to be spent building negative keyword lists and finding which terms convert, and the second month to be the first fair read. If an agency promises a verdict after fourteen days, they are describing luck rather than a method.