Roofing PPC: Benefits, Ad Types, Platforms & More

What is Roofing PPC?

Roofing PPC is a type of online advertising that companies can use to promote their roofing services on search engines or social media platforms in exchange for a fee. 

PPC ads can take multiple forms, like search ads or video ads, but they all have the same foundation: an auction process determining each ad's rank. 

Google’s ad algorithm ranks each ad using this formula:

Ad rank = the highest bid * quality score

The highest bid refers to how much the advertiser wants to pay per click. The quality score encompasses:

• Landing page performance 

• Ad relevance

• Expected clickthrough rate

To give you an idea of how much you may need to invest in PPC, the average cost per click is between $0.11 and $0.50. 

How does PPC differ from SEO for roofers?

Pay-per-click advertising for roofers differs from roofing SEO as they work on different time frames.

While PPC provides immediate visibility and precise targeting, SEO works for long-term authority and credibility. 

Also, SEO might prove to be less expensive over time since you don’t have to pay every time someone clicks on your website. 

On the other hand, SEO is time-consuming, while PPC delivers quick results without long-term effort. 

What Are The Benefits of PPC for Roofers?

PPC experts say one of the biggest benefits of roofing PPC ads is that they can generate high-quality roofing leads quickly. 

Here are some other benefits:

• Targeted reach: With PPC ads, you can target potential customers precisely based on specific keywords. 

The more specific your keywords, the more precise the search intent and the higher your chances of reaching qualified leads. 

For example, if you run an ad that contains roofing keywords like “roof repair in [your city]” or “residential roofing contractor near me,” you’re more likely to attract leads who are actively searching for roofing services. 

• Cost-effective: With PPC, roofing companies can set their budget and control how much they invest in this marketing strategy. 

Also, when you advertise to an audience with a strong buying intent, you’re more likely to turn them into paying customers. 

Another thing that makes the PPC strategy cost-effective is paying only when someone clicks on your ad.

• Immediate campaign launch: A PPC advertising campaign for roofing companies can be launched in a few days. 

Unlike organic search engine optimization, which can take months to show results, PPC ads can provide immediate visibility for your roofing business. 

Your ads are approved and activated as soon as you decide on target keywords, create content, and set bids. 

Then, it can take just days to appear at the top of search engine results. 

• Increased brand awareness: PPC ads do two essential things to increase brand awareness: top placement in search results and repeated exposure. 

Even if users don’t click on your PPC ads, they are exposed to your roofing company brand name and messaging, which helps build familiarity and recognition. 

• Low entry barrier: PPC advertising requires little effort. The minimum requirements are a small audience, keyword research, and targeted ad copy. 

What PPC Platforms Do Roofers Use?

Depending on your specific needs and audience, you can display your roofing services using popular platforms like Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Let’s look closer at each of them. 

1. Google

Google is the most popular search engine, and the statistics support its supremacy.

The Annual State of Marketing Report created by Hubspot revealed that 63 percent of people have clicked on a Google ad before.

Google Ads can be a promising investment for businesses, including roofing companies. The average return on ad spend is 200 percent.

When you advertise on Google, you pay to display your ad at the top of the search results. Remember that, given its popularity, Google charges more for PPC than other platforms. 

2. Facebook

Roofing contractors can also use Facebook for paid advertising that targets broad yet targeted audiences using demographic, geographic, and interest-based filters. 

Facebook ads appear in users' news feeds and the Stories section on mobile devices. 

As a roofing contractor, you can pay for the following types of Facebook ads:

• Photo and video ads: Use high-quality images to showcase your roofing services or engage potential customers with behind-the-scenes videos. 

• Carousel ads: Feature multiple images or videos in a single ad to highlight different roofing services you offer. 

• Slideshow ads: If you want to tell a visual story about your roofing services, go with slideshow ads. 

• Collection ads: Combine a cover image or video with product images to allow users to browse your services directly from their news feed. 

3. LinkedIn

For commercial roofing businesses, LinkedIn is a valuable advertising platform. 

While LinkedIn ads can be more expensive than those on other platforms, LinkedIn is a goldmine for B2B lead generation. 

Here’s how you can advertise your roofing services on LinkedIn:

• Sponsored content: Share articles, case studies, or product highlights directly in your target audience's LinkedIn feed. 

• InMail ads: Send personalized messages directly to potential clients' inboxes.

• Display ads: Use banner ads to increase brand awareness and visibility on LinkedIn. 

Like other PPC ads, you can buy LinkedIn ads on a cost-per-click or cost-per-thousand-impression basis. 

4. Instagram

As a highly popular social media platform with over 1 billion active users, Instagram provides multiple advertising options for roofing contractors:

• Photo ads: Use single, high-quality images to promote your roofing services.

• Video ads: Use short videos to promote your roofing services. 

• Carousel ads: Feature multiple images or videos in a single ad. 

• Stories ads: Display ads of your roofing services in the Stories section of Instagram, where they are available for 24 hours. 

5. YouTube

According to a Wyzowl survey, 82 percent of respondents were convinced to buy a product or service after watching a video about it. 

With video marketing significantly impacting consumer behavior, YouTube ads can be a winning route. 

As a roofing contractor, you can use the following ads on YouTube:

• TrueView In-Stream ads: These skippable ads play before or during other videos and can be skipped after five seconds. They are cost-effective as you only pay when viewers watch 30 seconds or more. 

• TrueView Discovery ads: These ads show alongside YouTube search results and related videos, and are n the YouTube homepage. 

• Bumper ads: Six-second, non-skippable ads with short messages. 

• Sponsored cards: Display relevant content like product or service listings within videos. 

6. Bing

While often overshadowed by Google, Bing is the second-largest search engine. 

Roofing contractors who advertise on Bing typically have less competition than Google. As a result, they may pay less per click and have higher ad visibility. 

A great advantage of Bing ads is that they also appear on Yahoo and MSN due to Bing’s integration with the Microsoft ecosystem.

What Are The Different Types of PPC Ads Roofers Use?

Some key ad types roofers prefer are paid search ads, local services ads, and social media ads. 

We’ll look at six relevant ads for roofers in more detail below. 

1. Search ads

Search ads are text-based ads that appear on search engine results pages when users search for relevant keywords. 

Like traditional organic search results, search ads include the landing page title tag, meta description, and favicon with a sponsored tag. 

Search ads on Google or Bing have high conversion potential because they appear at the top of the result pages. 

2. Display ads

Display ads use images or banners to promote roofing services across websites within the Google Display Network. 

Display ads are particularly useful for retargeting users who have previously interacted with your brand. That’s because display ads appear based on a user’s browsing history. 

The downside of display ads is people may find them annoying since they appear when people interact with other content, resulting in low click and conversion rates. 

3. Video ads

Video ads feature audio and dynamic images on websites, apps, and YouTube’s search, home, and video feeds. 

These engaging ads have a broad reach and are great for building brand awareness. 

However, video ads, especially non-skippable ones, can sometimes frustrate users and cause ad fatigue. If the content is not engaging or relevant, people can build negative perceptions of the brand. 

4. Local Services ads

Roofing contractors use local services ads to connect with customers in their area. 

These ads appear at the top of search results and Google Maps when people enter terms like “roofing services near me.” 

Their straightforward structure, which includes the business's name, phone number, and customer reviews, encourages customers to contact businesses directly from local result pages. 

Roofing contractors can benefit greatly from using Local Services Ads. 

These ads appear when the intent to buy is high, so you’re more likely to get high-quality, qualified roofing leads. Moreover, since Google charges per lead generated, Local Services Ads have a high return on investment (ROI). 

Roofing contractors can use ServiceTitan’s Local Services Ads integration to further boost this ROI.

What is great about this integration is that it automatically adds your Local Services Ads leads information and job bookings into ServiceTitan. 

After people have booked your services with a click, you can see the job booking in your marketing scorecard report to help you monitor your Local Services Ads’ ROI. 

When asked what his favorite ServiceTitan features are, Robert Maier, Vice President of Laing Roofing, highlighted the following:

• Tech-friendly app that empowers technicians with on-the-go access to the Pricebook. “The way ServiceTitan has it set up to where there's a pricebook,and our techs can estimate and take care of stuff while out in the field,” he said. 

• An efficient dispatch system, which is crucial for a weather-dependent industry like roofing. 

• The customer history tool that lets technicians view the history of customer interactions. “Techs can access that customer history and see that we've tried to go out there two or three times, but the weather didn't cooperate. They know the backstory of the customer and what they've been going through. They're not going in blind.”

5. Social media ads

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram offer high-converting advertising options for roofing business owners. 

Social media ads target users based on demographics, interests, and behavior and can deliver high ROI if used correctly. That means roofing contractors must target their audience on their social platform. 

According to a Service Direct survey, 32 percent of respondents used Facebook to research a small business. So, maybe Facebook is a good place to start. 

6. Remarketing

As mentioned, remarketing ads target users who have previously visited a roofer’s website or interacted with related topics. 

Like social media ads, remarketing ads trigger based on behavior, which often results in higher conversion rates. 

How Do I Create a PPC Advertising Campaign for a Roofing Business?

Roofing businesses might find creating a PPC advertising campaign overwhelming. 

We’ve simplified the process by outlining 8 actionable steps for creating and running roofing PPC campaigns. 

1. Understand who you are serving

Get to know your potential customers so you can create relevant ads that serve them. This starts with their demographics, pain points, behavior, preferences, and which social platforms they use. 

A few key questions to ask here are:

• What’s the age, gender, and income level of my ideal customers?

• What are the common issues they face? (Roof leaks, storm damage, roof replacements, etc.)

• How are my ideal customers searching for roofing services? Do they use mobile phones?

• What social media platforms do they spend most of their time on?

• Are my ideal customers commercial, homeowners, or both?

Answering these questions is crucial for creating your highly targeted PPC ad and choosing a platform. 

2. Pick the right platform

You already know the importance of picking the right platform—it can make or break your PPC campaign. 

If you’ve done your homework for the previous step, you should now understand which platform to advertise on. 

Just a quick refresher: 

• Google: Best platform for reaching users actively searching for roofing services.

• Facebook: Best platform for targeted advertising and building brand awareness. 

• Bing: Cost-effective alternative to Google with less competition and lower CPCs. 

• LinkedIn: Best for commercial roofing business targeting B2B clients. 

• YouTube: Best for showcasing roofing projects and increasing brand visibility. 

3. Set your campaign’s goals

Successful PPC campaigns have one thing in common: they all have explicit goals. 

A roofing company or contractor may establish diverse PPC campaign goals, including:

• Generating quality leads

• Increasing website traffic

• Boosting brand awareness

• Promoting special offers

• Enhancing customer engagement

Whatever online marketing goal you want to achieve through your PPC campaign, make it clear. This will make the rest of the process easier. 

Your PPC campaign goal determines the ad type you select, the platform, and the campaign budget. 

4. Pick keywords

Keywords determine when and where your ads will appear. 

Your keywords should do two main things: resonate with your target audience and align with their search intent. 

Here are three quick tips for picking the right keywords:

• Do keyword research: Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush to find keywords relevant to your roofing services. 

Focus on a mix of broad keywords like “roofing contractor” and long-tail keywords like “affordable roof repair in Texas.” 

• Identify the user search intent: Keywords can be informational (“how to fix a leaky roof”), navigational (“best roofing contractor near me”), or transactional (“hire roof repair services”). 

Focus on transactional and navigational keywords for higher conversion rates. 

• Analyze what competitors are doing: Research what keywords your competitors bid on using tools like SpyFu or iSpionage. 

This may seem like a lot of work, but it’s an important step to ensure that your PPC ads reach the most relevant audience. 

5. Define your budget

One of the best things about PPC advertising is that it gives you control over your budget. 

How much you invest depends on your goals and budget allowance, but it also depends on your keywords and the time of year. Roofing PPC ads tend to be more expensive during spring, summer, and post-storm periods. 

You can use Google Keyword Planner to determine the average CPC for each keyword and calculate the entire campaign budget. 

6. Decide on your bidding strategy

You can choose from many types of bidding strategies based on your ad budget, PPC experience, and campaign goals. 

If your campaign budget is low, manual bidding is better. It offers complete control over your bids for each keyword, and you can set the maximum CPC for individual keywords based on their performance. 

Automated bidding does most of the work for you but can cost more. This bidding strategy automatically sets bids to help get as many conversions as possible at the target cost-per-acquisition you set. 

The automated option is better if you’re willing to invest and don’t have time to set bids to meet your goals manually... 

7. Create your ad

This is the creative process of your PPC ad campaign, where you design the actual ad for your roofing business. 

To create a high-performing ad, make sure to include the following elements:

• A compelling headline that grabs attention: Use powerful and relevant keywords in your headline, like “expert roof repair” or “affordable roof replacement.”

• A clear and engaging description: Although you don’t have much room here, make the most of it by being specific and addressing your audience’s pain points. For example, “Got a leaky roof? Our expert team fixes leaks fast to prevent further damage.” 

• Direct Calls-to-Action: Use action-oriented phrases and create urgency with CTAs like “Book Today and Save.”

8. Monitor your campaigns

Now that your ads are running, you might think the hard part is over. 

However, that’s not entirely true. To make the most of the working ads and improve those that aren’t, you must do what’s called PPC optimization. 

This monitoring process can involve changing your bidding strategies or adjusting your keywords to improve the performance of your ads. 

To effectively monitor your PPC campaigns, analyze the following metrics:

• The conversion rate shows the percentage of clicks that lead to a desired action. A low conversion rate might suggest changes in your target keywords are needed. 

• Click-through rate (CTR) measures how often people click on your ad after seeing it. A low CTR might indicate that you must edit the ad copy and design. 

• Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the revenue generated for every dollar spent on ads. A low ROAS indicates that your campaign is not performing well and you need to make some changes. 

Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager are great tools for monitoring these metrics and your PPC campaign’s performance. 

However, they have some limitations. For example, if someone clicks on multiple ads before making a purchase, these platforms don’t recognize which ad led to the sale. 

Also, Google automatically re-allocates your budget to the campaigns with the most clicks and calls, regardless of their contribution to revenue. 

The good news is that there is a better way to track and optimize your PPC campaign performance. 

ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro – Ads platform uses artificial intelligence to automatically tie calls and clicks to revenue, so you know exactly which ads bring in the cash. 

Senior account manager at Proximo Marketing, Liz Soto, uses the ServiceTitan Ads Optimizer feature to increase lead quality. 

“Lead generation is so important in the industry, and customer demand often drives a lot of the success of these businesses,” Soto says. 

“The most important aspect of digital marketing, especially the component ServiceTitan offers, is being able to link that directly to job details and all the way through to the revenue.” 

Once connected with your Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts, Ads Optimizer automatically analyzes campaign revenue data from Google to show which campaigns are the most profitable. 

“ServiceTitan's Ads Optimizer [...] just flows with the data that's being fed in and out. So I think that's what makes this such a profound way of using digital marketing,” Soto concludes.

Recommended watch: How to increase your Google ads revenue with ServiceTitan’s Ad Optimizer.

ServiceTitan also partnered with Scorpion to enhance Marketing Pro, enabling contractors to attract more leads while generating repeat business through marketing campaigns. 

This collaboration leverages Scorpion’s expertise in digital marketing solutions and enhances Marketing Pro to help roofing businesses achieve:

• Greater lead conversions

• Higher digital advertising ROI

• Improved reporting on marketing performance

“ServiceTitan did such a good job at building customer data in an SMB [small- and medium-sized business] market, and the trades have really never been able to do customer marketing at scale. So, there's a huge opportunity here,” says Kirby Oscar, Scorpion’s vice president of partnerships.

Lori Swanson, owner of Guardian Roofing, also used ServiceTitan to grow her business and reach more customers. 

“I can't even imagine going back to pre-ServiceTitan because of how archaic it was and not having real-time information,” Lori said. “Having to wait until the end of the month to know your metrics is just not scalable. It's really hard to grow that way. You find yourself really reactive.”

How Can You Optimize a Roofing Company’s PPC Campaign?

Sometimes, no matter how well you create your PPC ad campaign, there are still things to improve and optimize in the long run. 

Here are some optimization tips for your roofing company’s PPC campaign: 

1. Optimize your landing pages

Optimizing your landing pages to match the ad copy shows prospects that you keep your promise. 

After they click on your ad, they should see your experience and expertise, social proof, and a clear call to action that shows what to do next. 

You should also optimize the web design of your landing page for speed. Pages that load quickly offer a better user experience and can significantly reduce bounce rates. 

Let’s look at an example of an optimized landing page that matches the ad’s promise. 

This is a Google search ad by Enchanted Roofing LLC. 

And this is the landing page corresponding to the ad: 

This optimized landing page is clear and concise, making it easy for potential customers to get in touch. 

2. Include relevant CTAs

The CTAs you include in your ad and landing page should match the ad’s goal. 

For example, if your ad aims to generate leads, use CTAs like “Get a Free Quote” or “Schedule a Consultation.” 

By matching your ad’s CTA with its goal and search intent, you speak to potential customers directly and improve your conversion rates. 

3. Hyper-target your audience

This PPC management and optimization best practice is about getting highly specific with your ads. 

The better you target your audience, the more chances you have to be relevant and meet their needs. 

Hyper-targeting might involve focusing on specific locations, like cities, neighborhoods, or even specific zip codes where you operate. 

You can also customize your ads based on users' devices to hyper-target your audience. 

Another way to enhance audience targeting is to display your ads at specific times of day or days of the week when your target audience is most active. 

4. Choose negative keywords when needed

Negative keywords are terms you can add to your campaigns to prevent your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches. 

For example, a roofing contractor may add “DIY” as a negative keyword to avoid showing ads to users searching for “DIY roof repair.” 

Why use negative keywords? It increases your chances of avoiding unqualified traffic and spending your budget effectively. 

5. A/B test your campaigns

Running A/B tests helps you achieve your roofing marketing goals by revealing the best-performing keywords, CTAs, and landing pages. 

With A/B testing, you compare two versions of an ad to identify which performs better. 

Your ads might differ in the copy or link to different landing pages to show which elements have the best results. 

This optimization best practice might sound like extra work, but it provides insights to improve your ad performance and ROI.

Recommended reading: More Tips for Optimizing Your PPC Ads.

Over to You

The roofing industry is a competitive, and each marketing effort can make a difference. 

As we’ve seen, PPC advertising can help roofing contractors become more visible and reach more potential customers. 

However, your PPC campaigns don’t stop when your ads are online. They need monitoring and optimization to give the best results. 

Consider ServiceTitan as a trusted partner that helps you increase your PPC ad revenue. 

ServiceTitan is a cloud-based software built to help home service companies automate and streamline their business processes. Trusted by over 100,000 contractors nationwide, the software helps home service companies track customer interactions and marketing campaigns.