A roofing company can have its best month of estimate requests and its worst month of signed contracts in the same thirty days, from the same account. The report celebrates the first number. The bank only sees the second.
Google Ads for roofing breaks in a specific place, and it is not the ad. It is the two weeks between a homeowner asking for a quote and a homeowner signing one.
Key takeaways
- An estimate request is not a conversion. In roofing it is day one of a two week sale the ad account never sees
- Leak repair, replacement and inspection are three different buyers. One campaign buys the cheapest one
- A $600 repair and a $28,000 roof look identical to Google until the signed value is sent back in
Why roofing leads go cold after the quote
Nobody impulse buys a roof. The homeowner who fills out a form on Tuesday has two more quotes by Friday, is waiting on the adjuster the week after, and is deciding on financing the week after that. The roofer who wins is the one still in the conversation on day twelve.
Most accounts stop caring on day one, because the form is what they were built to count. So they get very good at finding form fillers, and the estimator's calendar fills with fourth quotes and no shows.
In roofing, the lead is the cheap part. The job is won or lost in the twelve days after it.
Three buyers who type the same words
| What they typed | What they want | Where it belongs |
|---|---|---|
| roof leak repair, emergency roof repair, roof tarp | Someone on the roof today | Repair campaign. Phone call is the goal. Ads on around the clock in storm season |
| roof replacement cost, new roof, metal roof vs shingle | Two or three quotes, then financing | Replacement campaign. Booked inspection is the goal. Insurance and financing on the page |
| roof inspection, wind mitigation inspection, four point inspection | A report by Thursday | Small inspection campaign, or leave it to the inspectors |
| roofing jobs, roofer salary, roofing supply, how to shingle a roof | Not a customer | Negative keyword list |
In one campaign the leak caller wins, because he converts in ninety seconds and the replacement buyer converts in three weeks. Split them, and the replacement campaign can pay what a replacement click is worth.
The Florida storm problem
After a named storm the auction fills with companies that did not exist here a week earlier, and repair clicks can double in price in days. The accounts that survive were already running, with conversion data Google can lean on.
A brand campaign never turns off. When a storm chaser is the first result for your own company name, they are buying your past customers for a few dollars a click.
What to tell Google counts as a job
Automated bidding finds more of whatever you call a conversion. If that is a form, the account is rewarded for every tire kicker and never finds out which quotes signed.
The value matters more in roofing than in any other trade, because the spread is so wide. An account chasing conversion count will buy fifty small repairs before one roof, because repairs are easier to find.
The system after the click is where roofs get signed
A perfect account only produces an inspection. What signs the roof is speed and persistence afterward: a text in five minutes, a call within the hour, follow ups on day three, seven and twelve that nobody has to remember to send. Reaching a lead within an hour makes a real conversation dozens of times more likely than reaching them a day later.
Audit your own account in fifteen minutes
Search terms, last sixty days, sorted by cost Count the jobs, salaries, supplies, DIY and roof rack searches in the top fifty. That share of the budget never had a homeowner behind it.
Open the conversion actions If the primary conversion is a form, the account is chasing estimate requests. If contracts are not flowing back with a value, it cannot tell a repair from a roof.
Search your own company name on a phone If another roofer's ad is first, they are buying your past customers.
Ask which campaign produced your last ten signed roofs By name, from the account and the contracts together. A guess means the connection was never built.
Are Google Ads worth it for roofers, or should I buy leads?
Purchased leads are shared with several roofers and arrive after the homeowner has been called twice. A Google Ads lead is yours alone, but only pays if the account buys replacements rather than estimate requests and the follow up wins the two weeks after.
Why do my roofing leads never sign?
Because the account was built to produce estimate requests and nothing was built to win the twelve days after. Move the conversion to the signed contract and put a follow up sequence behind every inspection.
Google Ads or Local Services Ads for roofing?
Both. Local Services Ads win the emergency repair caller. Google Ads search wins the replacement buyer who needs the insurance and financing questions answered first. The comparison is here.
The ads are one wire in a bigger circuit
The ad account is the part you can see. What makes it pay is underneath: the tracking number, the inspection booked in the job software, the follow up that runs on its own, the signed contract, and the wire that sends that contract and its value back to Google. Metric Minds Marketing builds and runs that loop as one system, the Revenue Circuit. Google Ads is the first wire in it.
Reading the search terms, the conversions and the follow up together, then tracing them to the roofs that signed, is the first thirty minutes of a Revenue Forensic Audit on any roofing account.
Sources: Google Ads Help, About offline conversion imports · Harvard Business Review, The Short Life of Online Sales Leads