Roofing is one of the most seasonal, storm-driven categories in Google Ads, and that unpredictability is exactly where budgets get wasted. A campaign that performs well in March can bleed money in July, not because anything about the account changed, but because nobody adjusted it. Here are five mistakes I see most often in roofing accounts, and what to do about each one.
You're Not Blocking DIY and Job-Seeker Traffic
Broad match keywords like "roof repair" or "roofing company" pull in more than homeowners ready to hire. They also pull in people searching "how to repair a roof yourself," "roofing shingles for sale near me," and "roofing jobs hiring" — none of whom are calling for a quote. A short negative keyword list covering DIY terms, product terms, job-seeker terms, and manufacturer names you don't carry can cut a meaningful chunk of wasted spend on its own, and it takes an afternoon to build, not a rebuild of the account.
The Campaign Doesn't React When a Storm Hits
Roofing demand doesn't move gradually — it spikes the day after hail or high wind rolls through a market, then tapers over the following weeks. A campaign running flat, unchanged bids and budgets through that swing either gets outbid by competitors who did adjust, or it caps out on daily budget by mid-morning and goes dark for the rest of the day the leads are actually coming in. Watching local weather and being ready to raise budgets and bids for a few days after a storm does more for lead volume than almost any other change you can make.
One Landing Page for Every Kind of Job
A storm-damage patch and a full roof replacement are different sales, but a lot of roofing ads send both kinds of clicks to the same generic homepage. Someone with a leak wants to know you can get a crew out fast. Someone weighing a full replacement wants to see financing options, insurance-claim guidance, and material choices before they'll pick up the phone. Splitting even two landing pages — one for repair and storm damage, one for replacement — usually converts better than asking a single page to do both jobs.
Blending Repair and Replacement Into One Cost-Per-Lead Number
If your reporting shows a single blended cost-per-lead, it's hiding more than it's telling you. A repair lead and a replacement lead are worth very different amounts to your business, and lumping them together makes a campaign look worse — or better — than it actually is. A number that looks expensive on cost-per-lead alone might be perfectly efficient if most of those leads are turning into full replacement jobs, but you can't see that from one blended figure.
Shutting Everything Off in the Slow Season
It's tempting to pause ads entirely during a quiet stretch to save money, but an account that goes fully dark loses momentum — impression share and quality score both take a hit, and starting back up from zero usually costs more than scaling down would have. A lower, steady budget through the slow months almost always beats flipping the account off and on.
What I Charge, and Why
I build roofing company websites for a flat $499 — no monthly fee for the site itself. If you want me running Google Ads on top of that, it's $750/month management, and you fund your own ad spend directly with Google — I don't mark it up or take a cut. Most roofing clients land in the $800-2,000/month ad spend range depending on how many calls they want and how competitive their market is, though that number often needs to flex up fast in the days after a storm. We set it together before anything goes live, and you can cancel the management side after month one with no contract holding you in.