Google Ads for roofers: the build order

For roofers the conversion that matters is a signed roofing contract, and it lives in your roofing CRM (JobNimbus, AccuLynx, ServiceTitan) — not in the ad platform. Google can only optimize toward what you send it, so whatever you pick here decides what the algorithm spends the next ninety days chasing. Pick the wrong one and every later step in this playbook is executed perfectly in the wrong direction.

This is the step we get called about most. If you do not have a developer for it, that is the normal situation rather than the exception — it is most of what we do, and it is worth fixing before the spend rather than after.

Google enables these on every new Search campaign, and none of them are keyword decisions — they are switches on the settings screen that decide where the money goes before a single keyword applies. Everything else in this playbook operates on whatever is left after they have taken their cut, so a reader who skips this step spends the rest of it optimizing a remainder.

For Roofing · Target ZIP codes drawn from where you have signed contracts, not a radius from the office, and keep storm response in its own campaign so it can be switched off on a date.

Roofing contracts are large enough to justify a wide area for replacements, but every inspection is a site visit by a salesperson, and an inspection that never signs costs the drive and the afternoon. Draw the replacement area from where you have signed contracts, keep repair calls closer, and decide in advance how far you will go after a storm, because the storm will not ask.

Roofing leads split between calls and forms more evenly than in emergency trades: a leak produces a call, a replacement often produces a form at night. Both have to count, and neither is the sale. The call conversion should mark a qualified enquiry, and the signed contract, imported from the CRM, should be what bidding learns from.

One flat keyword list is why most accounts in this vertical cannot tell which half of the budget works. Sorting terms by the intent behind them means you can bid, write and judge each group on its own terms — a problem-aware search and a competitor search convert at rates that have nothing to do with each other, and averaging them hides both.

Exact match includes close variants — misspellings, plurals, reordered words, dropped function words. Phrase match now behaves roughly like the old broad-match-modified. Broad match reaches as far as Google judges useful, which with a good conversion signal is genuinely valuable and without one is an open tap. Start narrow, prove the signal, then widen — in that order, because widening is reversible and a mistrained bidding algorithm is not.

For Roofing · Broad match on 'roof' drifts into car roofs, shed kits and shingle prices. Keep replacement and metal terms on exact and phrase until signed contracts are importing.

Every vertical has a set of searches that look commercial and are not. In roofers those are job seekers, students, people looking for free help, and DIY researchers. Broad and phrase match will find all of them for you. Add this list at the account level on day zero — the first week of an unfiltered account is the most expensive week it will ever have.

Ad groups exist so the ad can match the search. The moment a group holds two intents, the ad has to be vague enough to cover both, and vague ads lose the auction on relevance before budget ever enters the picture. Build these groups, each with its own ads and its own landing page.

Google rewards assets that match the search and the page behind it. It penalizes — and increasingly disapproves — copy that promises something the page does not deliver. Every line below is written to be provable on arrival. Character counts are shown because assets over the limit are rejected at upload, which is where most copied-from-a-blog ad copy dies.

Local Services Ads take the urgent end of roofing searches, leaks and storm damage, and charge per lead. Search is where you reach the replacement buyer who compares several roofers, reads about materials and financing, and wants a page before calling. After storms both channels fill with the same homeowners, so match leads to contacts in the CRM before deciding which channel earned the contract.

Roofing demand follows the weather twice. Storms create urgent repair and claim work in bursts, and the installation season, roughly spring through fall in much of the country, decides when replacements go on. Buyers still research replacements in the quiet months, which is when the schedule has room to book next season's work.

Position is not bought, it is earned and then paid for. Google ranks you on your bid multiplied by how good it expects your ad and landing page to be, plus your assets — so a relevant advertiser at half the bid outranks a vague one, and then pays less per click at the same position. This is the mechanism underneath everything above: tight ad groups and honest ad copy are not tidiness, they are the discount.

For Roofing · After a storm, out-of-town contractors and lead sellers bid on the affected ZIP codes and prices jump. Your price in those weeks is set by them; in quiet months it is set by regional brands.

Start on Maximize Conversions with booked inspections as the primary conversion, because signed contracts are too few at first for bidding to learn from. Import signed contracts with their value from the CRM as soon as they can be sent, inside the 90-day import window, and move replacement campaigns to value-based bidding once enough have imported. Insurance and retail jobs close on different timelines; tag them so each value arrives against the right click. Smart bidding is a data problem before it is a strategy problem: with thin or wrong conversion data it will confidently optimize toward noise, and it does that faster than a manual account can lose money.

For Roofing · Bid on booked inspections only until signed contracts import from JobNimbus, AccuLynx or ServiceTitan, then move replacement campaigns to value-based bidding and judge them over a full sales cycle.

Most accounts are killed or rescued on evidence that could not have meant anything yet. The bidding algorithm is fitting a model, and a model fitted on two weeks of data is fitted on noise. This is the shortest honest schedule: what to look at each stretch, and — more usefully — what to ignore.

For Roofing · Expect few signed contracts in the first month even when the campaigns are right. Judge month one on qualified inspections and month three on contracts.

An account left alone drifts toward the cheapest clicks it can find, because that is what the system is built to do when nobody corrects it. This is the shortest routine that keeps it honest. It takes about an hour and it is the difference between an account that compounds and one that plateaus at month three.

For Roofing · Compare inspections booked with inspections that happened, by campaign. A campaign that books many inspections that never happen is buying the wrong searches.