How to Market a Roofing Company with Google Ads

Google Ads is an affordable and scalable way to generate more leads, find potential employees, and sell more roofing services.

Whether you’re looking to get more business or hire new staff, this marketing strategy will work for you.

This beginner’s guide will teach you how to market a roofing company with Google Ads effectively and start getting real results within 24 hours.

Together, we will go over the following:

• What is PPC marketing and Google Ads?
• How Google Search ads work for roofers
• How to set up a proper roofing ad campaign
• Picking your budgets
• Choosing your keywords
• Creating your ads
• Optimizing your campaigns

Let’s get started!

The Beginners Guide to PPC Marketing for Roofing Contractors

In this guide, we will be going over some basics as well as tips and tricks to help grow your roofing company with PPC marketing using Google Search Ads.

If you are completely new to marketing your roofing company online, we will begin here.

PPC stands for ‘pay-per-click’ and is a form of digital marketing that allows you to pay for only the people who click on your ads.

This makes it an incredibly cost-effective way to advertise online and is especially useful for getting in front of customers actively looking for the products and services you provide.

While you can run PPC ads on other platforms, such as Facebook or LinkedIn, Google Search Ads are much more highly targeted and profitable for a roofing company.

Why Google Search Ads are the Best Option for Roofers

Using Google Ads for roofing contractors is the best option because of their targeting capabilities.

With Google’s Search Ads, you are able to target potential customers of many demographics in any locations that you choose.

When someone types in the product or service you provide, you can make sure your ads show up (as long as you have enough budget).

For roofers, you can set up your ads to show up when people type in things like:

• roof repair near me
• roof replacement company
• emergency roofing services

Unlike a billboard which just shows to every person who drives by (whether they want your services or not), your search ad shows up specifically to people who are actively searching for your service.

You entice them with your ad, and bring them to your website to get them to schedule an appointment, request a quote, or to call you directly for service.

Roofing Ads Examples

Looking at existing roofing ads can be a great resource for roofing contractors who are looking to start advertising on Google and need inspiration.

One of the best ways to learn about marketing strategies is to take a close look at what others are doing, and see how they are doing it.

Different companies can have different approaches, and they may use certain terms or phrases that also apply to your business but you hadn’t thought of.

However, it’s important to note that you should not be copying these ads directly; you just create your own versions of them.

Be sure to do your own research too; type in your ideal keywords in Google and see what ads come up.

Your results will be different, since ads depend on the users previous browsing history, which companies bid the most to appear at that time, your location, their ad scores, and many other factors.

The top of page results are the best ones to take inspiration from, as those get the most views and clicks, and most likely have better ad scores.

Consider what keywords, benefits, and eye-catching phrases your competitors are using to apply to your own.

Here are some existing roofing ads examples from companies running Google Search Ads that you can take inspiration from.

Emergency Roofing Ads

Roof Repair Ads

Roof Installation Ads

Before Setting Up Your Roofing PPC Campaign

Before you set up your online advertising campaign, first you must think about the objective.

Do you just want to show up to build brand awareness and visibility? Or do you want to advertise a particular product or service that you offer?

Here are some additional questions you should answer for yourself to decide what your Google ad campaign should be about:

• What / Who am I targeting?
• What do I want them to do or buy?
• Why are they looking for this information online?
• What is the purpose of the ad campaign?
• Is it a specific product or service, or a broad service or brand awareness campaign?
• What times and days should I run my ad campaign?
• What location(s) should I target?

Once you’ve got your answers to these key questions, you can move on to beginning to create your campaign to promote your roofing services.

Selecting the Right Keywords

One of the most important components of a Search campaign is choosing the right keywords to target.

Choosing the right keywords for a roofing company running Google Search Ads can be a difficult process. The keyword research process begins by investigating what potential customers are already searching for.

Conducting keyword research will help determine what keywords will work best for the company’s advertising campaign.

Which keywords are right for any given roofing company will depend on the company’s products and services, customer profile, target location, competition, and goals.

You can use a software like SEMrush, or Google’s built-in Keyword Planner.

Keep in mind that roofing keywords can be pretty expensive per click, which is why you need to make sure they are highly targeted.

Generally, keywords that cost more are simply worth more to ad buyers because there is more money to be made on them.

List of Starter Keywords for Roofing Contractors

To get you started, we’ve compiled a nice and tight list of starter keywords for a roofing contractor’s search ads.

Consider creating separate ad groups for each service that you offer, or even separate campaigns if you want to dedicate each it’s own budget. After all, installations are worth more than repairs.

This will make each of your ads cater to the exact search.

Repair ads keywords

• [roof repair]
• [roof repair near me]
• [roof repair companies near me]
• [roof repair companies]
• [roof repair services]

Installation ads keywords

• [roof installation]
• [roof installation near me]
• [roof installation companies near me]
• [roof installation companies]
• [roof installation services]

Replacement ads keywords

• [roof replacement]
• [roof replacement near me]
• [roof replacement company]
• [roof replacement services]

Emergency ads keywords

• [emergency roof repair]
• [emergency roof repair near me]
• [emergency roofing services]
• [emergency roof leak repair]
• [24 hour emergency roof repair]

Starter Negative Keyword List

• “builders”
• “construction”
• “templates”
• “design”
• “materials”
• “drain”
• “skylights”
• “resume”
• “sample”
• “tools”
• “glue”
• “sealant”
• “ANY COMPETITOR NAME”
• “DIY”
• “what is”
• “how do i”
• “racks”
• “vents”
• “insulation”

You will need to keep building your negative keyword list by monitoring the ‘Search Terms’ that come through over time to avoid showing up for irrelevant terms.

How To Write Effective Ads For PPC Campaigns

Now, let’s go over how to write effective ads for our roofing PPC campaigns.

The ads should be engaging, informative, and persuasive to be effective.

The following are some basic overall tips on how you can write the most effective PPC ads:

• Do your research first
• Be specific with your keywords
• Include a call to action in the ad text
• Consider the search intent of your keywords
• Build trust with your customers by including company information

Let’s take a closer look at how to optimize the main parts of your ads; the headlines and descriptions.

Headlines

Headlines are the most important component of an advertisement, and as such, they need to be compelling.

A good headline will compel readers to click through to your ad, while a bad one will cause them to ignore it.

Alternatively, using a good and catchy headline that gets a user to click but leads them to a poorly designed web page will simply waste your advertising dollars.

There are many different strategies for writing effective headlines. Here are some tips on how you can write Search ad headlines that are proven to work:

• Use numbers in your headline
• Use words like “free,” “new,” or “now” in your headline
• Keep your headlines short and sweet
• Use your keywords in the ad text and headlines.
• Include a keyword or phrase in the display URL and destination URL if possible.
• Make sure your landing page is highly relevant to your ad text and headline.
• Keep your ads as short as possible for better performance.
• Make sure you have ‘Good’ to ‘Excellent’ ad quality

With headlines, you get up to 12 headlines with 30 characters per line. Up to 3 can show at any given time and will be split tested through Google’s algorithm.

Descriptions

The best way to write an ad description in Google Ads is to include a compelling offer and a clear call to action.

A compelling offer will encourage your potential customers to click on your ad.

A clear call to action will lead them to take the next step in the buying process. Show them that you’re ready and eager to meet their needs.

It is important to be specific with your ad text. Avoid vague claims, instead back up your claims with specifics.

Be sure to include your exact keywords in your ad descriptions as well to make them more relevant and get a better ad score.

You only have 4 sections with 90 characters each to get your message across, so use them wisely.

Picking an Advertising Budget

Digital marketing for roofers is a highly competitive game.

It’s also very important when you’re starting to choose a reasonable advertising budget for your campaign.

You should initially consider two things: how much you are willing to spend and how much return you expect on your investment.

The first will help you determine the amount of budget, and the second helps prevent overspending that could ultimately hurt your company’s financial performance.

The average online marketing budget for a roofing company is $6,000 per month in ad spend, which is $72,000 a year.

It is also suggested that companies that make under 5 million in annual revenue spend between 7% – 8% of that on marketing.

However, when you look at how much your return is over a year, you should have landed enough jobs to hit profits.

Considering that the average roofing job can net you from $5,000 to $12,000 each, you should be able to convert a few of those leads per month.

Getting even just one or two high-end roofing projects throughout the year can even pay for your entire yearly ad spend!

Even if you don’t have $6,000+ for ad spend in your budget, you can still start with something like $100 per day to test the waters.

Understand that it can take several months of ad spend before your campaigns are truly optimized and have learned from data before you are profitable.

Setting Up Call Tracking

The best way to track the performance of your ads is by setting up call tracking with software like CallRail.

Buy a set of phone numbers through CallRail (only $45 per month), and use that phone number on your PPC ads.

Every time someone calls from your ads, they will dial that number and it will be counted as a conversion.

You can also go back and listen to your calls and manually mark them as qualified or not qualified, and tweak your campaigns based on that.

Setting Up Conversion Goals

You’ll need to know if your ads are successful and if you are getting value out of them, and that is done with conversion goals.

For conversion tracking to be possible, conversion goals must first be set up in Google Ads.

To set up conversion tracking, do the following:

Select the “Tools and Settings” button at the top.

Select “Conversions” from the drop-down menu, under the ‘Measurement’ tab.

Click the blue “+ New Conversion Action” button to create a goal, whether that be a form submission, phone call, or other interaction on your website.

To track lead form submissions, simply create a destination goal for when a client visits your ‘thank you’ page after filling out a form.

For phone calls, just import your conversion goals from inside your CallRail account and it will be set up automatically.

Every time you get a form submission or a phone call from an ad, it will be properly counted as a conversion. You can assign a dollar amount to these as well to estimate their worth.

How To Optimize Your Google Ad Account

After you’ve got your ad campaign set up and running, now you’ll need to be keeping track of your ads and metrics, and optimizing it over time.

Here are some extra tips on how to optimize your Google Ads campaign for maximum performance.

Explore Recommendations

Every once in a while, Google will provide suggestions for your campaigns under the ‘Recommendations’ tab on the left sidebar.

Based on data and insights that Google collects, they will provide several tips and ideas to change in your account.

Take each of these with a grain of salt, as these are robot recommendations that may help, but they could also harm your account performance if you don’t know what you’re doing.

As a Google Partner, we need to keep all of our accounts above 70% Recommendation Score to keep our partner badge.

If a recommendation seems like a waste of money or something that could mess up your account, feel free to click the 3 vertical dots and dismiss them.

Keep Your Ads and Keywords Tight

Google loves to spend your money, and they will spend every last penny in any way they can.

Try to use only exact match or phrase match keywords in your account and do not overdo it.

Use one batch of related keywords for each ad group, so you can get the most out of Google’s advertising system.

If you are promoting roof repair services, make sure that’s what your ads are about.

Likewise, if you’re trying to get more roof installation jobs, have that in a separate ad group and have all of those ads about installations.

Be aware that Google is constantly experimenting with what works and what does not work when it comes to search ads and keywords (they are constantly tweaking their algorithms).

A good way to test if your ads and keywords are matching up properly is by using the ‘Ad Preview and Diagnostic’ tool.

Monitor Your Search Terms

If you use broad match keywords, you will notice many search terms that aren’t exactly matching to keywords in your account.

We highly suggest sticking to exact match and phrase match based keywords to avoid wasting money on irrelevant keywords.

Even with highly targeted keywords, Google will still show your ads for ‘similar’ terms.

If you see search terms in your account you don’t want to show up for, make sure you are adding them to your negative keyword list and constantly be monitoring these searches.

Strive for a High CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

You’ll want to make sure that your campaigns, ad groups, and ads all have a high click-through rate (CTR). This lets you know that your ad copy is performing well and searchers are receptive to your ads.

The CTR of an ad group or campaign is calculated by dividing the number of clicks you receive by the number of impressions it has gotten.

You will want your CTR for these campaigns to be above 3% at least, however, some of our contractor clients have had CTRs as high as 20%+.

Watch Your Conversion Rates

Similar to how CTR can help show the performance of ads, conversion rates help determine the effectiveness of your landing pages.

A high conversion rate means that more clicks to your pages turn into leads.

A lower conversion rate could mean that your landing page is not selling your service well enough and people are not following through. It could also mean that your messaging or keywords do not match.

The conversion rate is calculated by dividing the number of clicks your page receives by the number of conversions you got.

Conversion rates vary by industry and offerings, but you can be sure that 3% and above is decent, however, we have some contractor clients with 20%+ conversion rates.

Turn Off Poorly Performing Ads

If you’ve been running your campaign for a while and you notice one of your ads has a low click-through rate or conversion rate, you should consider turning that ad off and replacing it with a newer ad to test.

As stated earlier, a CTR below 3% should be concerning. Tweak the ad itself or create a new one to split test them.

Use as Many Ad Extensions as Possible

Ad extensions are extra features you can add to each of your campaigns or individual ads.

All of your extensions will not show every time, instead, they will be rotated around and selected on Google’s whim and based on what performs best.

These ad extensions come in the form of:

• Sitelink extensions – links to additional pages on your site
• Callout extensions – salesy text you can append to the end of your ad
• Structured snippets – showcase brands, styles, and types specific to your service
• Image extensions – use pictures of roof damage, your company, awards, etc
• Call extensions – includes a clickable phone number on your ad
• Location extensions – you can tie this to your local Google Business Profile to show on your ad, and your ad will show in Google Local searches in your area

Use as many of these ad extensions as you can fill out.

Google will reward you for being thorough by lowering your average cost-per-click, and you will generally have a higher click-through rate than without.

Audience Targeting & Demographic Targeting

For a roofing company, you can also consider targeting certain demographics that would be more likely to need your services.

You can target certain in-market audiences such as:

• Business Services
• Home & Garden > Home & Garden Services > Roofing Services
• Home & Garden > Home & Garden Services > General Contracting & Remodeling Services
• Real Estate > Commercial Properties

You can also target certain demographics that describe your customer like:

• Homeowners
• Married
• Large Employer (250 – 10k Employees)
• Ages 35 – 65+
• Female
• Parent
• Top 10% Household Income

You can start your ad campaigns in observation mode and bid more on these specific targets, or you can choose to only target people who match these specifications.

Successful PPC Campaign Can Increase Sales & Make Your Roofing Company More Profitable

It is undeniable that running Google Ads can help increase sales and make your roofing company more profitable when done correctly.

There are many ways to do this and some of these ways include: advertising the business to new potential customers, reminding people of the services you offer, and showing customers what they can do with their homes after using your services.

By using Google Ads, you can decrease the time it takes to get new customers and make your company more productive.

Now that you know more about how to market a roofing company with Google Ads, it’s time to get to work setting up a profitable campaign.

If you want us to take over and manage your digital advertising campaigns for you, reach out to us and request a quote.