Roofing is one of the most competitive local paid search markets in the country, for a simple reason: the job value is high, the decision is urgent, and the customer almost never has a preferred supplier already. That combination pushes click prices up and makes the difference between a competent campaign and a careless one enormous in absolute dollars. It also means the standard advice about paid search, which assumes steady demand and stable costs, is wrong here. Roofing demand arrives in bursts driven by weather, and a campaign structure that ignores that will overspend for months and then be capped exactly when the money is on the table. This page covers the query selection, the seasonality, the intake and the agency questions.
Which queries to buy, and which to exclude before launch
Roofing search splits into three groups that look similar in a keyword tool. Emergency and repair queries carry the highest intent and the fastest conversion, and a caller with active water ingress will take the first company that answers. Replacement and estimate queries convert more slowly, involve more comparison and are worth more per job. Informational queries about materials, lifespans and do it yourself repairs mostly reach people who will never hire anyone, and they are where careless budgets vanish. A campaign should separate the first two into their own campaigns with their own budgets, and exclude the third with a negative keyword list built before launch. Ask a candidate agency for that negative list and for an anonymised search terms report from a live roofing account. That single document tells you more about how an account is managed than any case study.
Storm seasonality, and why flat budgets lose money
Roofing demand is weather driven and extremely uneven. A hail event can multiply local search volume for a fortnight and then return it to baseline, and competitors will be bidding into the same spike. A flat monthly budget behaves exactly wrong in that environment: it wastes money in the quiet weeks and runs out mid afternoon during the surge, which is precisely when the highest value jobs are available. A campaign built for roofing needs a baseline budget plus a documented surge plan with pre-approved limits, so that spend can be raised the same day rather than after a meeting. Ask any candidate agency how they handled the last significant storm in a market they serve, what they changed and how quickly. An agency that has never had to answer that question is going to learn on your budget.
The pages behind the ads, and the local signals around them
Paid clicks land somewhere, and in roofing that landing page is usually the weakest part of the whole programme. The page needs one service, one area, a phone number that dials on a phone, evidence a person can check (license number, insurance status, real project photos) and a form short enough to complete standing in a driveway. Structured data helps the surrounding organic and map presence: Google documents local business markup that lets a site declare its hours, service area and contact details in machine readable form, which is worth having in place because a share of paid clicks turn into a name someone searches later. Most roofing companies buying paid search are also buying organic and map work from someone, and the two share the same landing pages and the same intake, so scoping them together avoids paying twice for the same fixes.
How to judge the agency, and what the fee should look like
Three fee structures dominate: a flat management fee, a share of media spend, and pay per lead. Flat fees are easiest to compare and put the budget decision in your hands. Spend based fees are common and workable provided you set the ceiling. Pay per lead moves risk to the agency and prices it in, and it requires a written definition of a qualifying lead, including area, job type and whether a homeowner insurance claim counts, agreed before the first month. Whatever the structure, the ad account must be in your company's name, the call tracking numbers must be yours, and you should insist on seeing the actual search terms report monthly rather than a dashboard summary. Advertising claims about warranties, financing and pricing also have to be substantiated, and the FTC's small business advertising guidance is the plain language reference for what that means.
Questions people ask about roofing ppc
What should a roofing company expect to pay per click?
Substantially more than most local trades, because job values are high and competition is dense. The figure varies enormously by city, by season and by whether a storm has just passed. Rather than budgeting from a national average, ask an agency to pull current estimates for your specific city and query set before you commit, and treat any number quoted without reference to your market as a sales figure rather than a forecast.
Should we advertise for insurance claim work?
It is legitimate demand, but it carries different obligations and different scrutiny. Claims about covering deductibles or handling a claim on a homeowner's behalf are regulated in many states and can create legal exposure. Have counsel review the offer language before it runs, and make sure the agency knows which claims it may not make in your state.
How fast do we have to answer the phone?
Minutes, not hours. Emergency roofing enquiries go to whoever picks up, and a missed call during a storm is a lost job at full value. If your office cannot cover the hours the ads run, either restrict ad scheduling to hours you can staff or fund an answering service. Buying expensive clicks that reach voicemail is the single most expensive mistake in this market.
How long should we run a test before judging it?
Long enough to accumulate real jobs, which usually means a quarter and at least one demand peak. Judge month one on whether tracking is correct and negatives were added, month two on cost per qualified enquiry, and month three on cost per signed job. Shutting a campaign down after four expensive weeks is common and usually premature.