Like most service and construction industries, residential and commercial roofing companies have found good success getting customers via search engine marketing. There are two parts of search engine marketing for roofers, SEO and PPC. However, PPC for roofers has become extremely expensive. Average cost per click trends can put keywords in the $30 to $50 range. This adds up quickly when determining cost per lead and cost per customer. Running an as efficient ad campaign as possible is important for roofing companies and their advertising budgets. Here are some things to think about when starting a PPC campaign.
Geography
Be very specific and only target the areas that you serve. Additionally, if you are in an area where a possible customer may commute for work and search for your services for their home that is in another city, be sure to use the advanced location targeting in Campaign settings:
Additionally, with geography, use it in the ad copy. Users will resonate with seeing where they live in ad copy, especially on smaller phone screen search engine result pages. “Serving the Rochester Area for 40 Years” as lead headlines demonstrate that you are in their area and can quickly solve their roofing issue. It will help you stand out in instances where you may be competing against national advertisers who are lead generators for local companies. Speaking to the users in local terms can go a long way in getting your click.
Also, be sure to use extensions. Call extensions, sitelinks, location, callouts, and even structured snippets are extending the real estate of our overall ad positioning and are also opportunities to use geography to your advantage, especially the location extension. Additionally, it helps with your optimization score in Google Ads, which increases your chances of having ads being served.
Seasonality
In roofing PPC, seasonality is king. Throughout much of the Midwest and the country, spring and early summer can produce violent storms that unfortunately cause damage to roofs. Plan your click budget wisely. You probably don’t need to be spending as much on PPC in January and February unless there are extreme weather events. Even with demand being lower in the slower or dryer months, every click adds up with the average cost per click that you do deal with in roofing. Properly allocating your budget throughout the year is crucial and I would recommend having a budget set aside only for major weather events so you are ready to be there when search demand kicks in.
Bidding and Competition
While you can occasionally see what other roofing companies are coming up near you in search results, get the data. It is poor practice to keep Googling your company to see it on your own and it lowers your click-through rate. The best way to do this is to look at the Insights tab in Google Ads. This data gives you insight and context as to what other roofing companies are bidding for your keywords, the percentage of time you overlap against them and what your average positioning against them is. This will give you a good idea of how aggressive your bidding strategy should be, as well as highlight areas where you will want to improve your ad rank and quality scores.
Bidding Options
Google now has several bidding options available to advertisers beyond Manual CPC. Some of the more popular options include Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, and Enhanced CPC. IF you have been able to work with the code and install it properly via Google Ads or Google Tag Manager, then you can look at conversion-based bidding options. Conversions can be tagged as a phone number of a lead form submitted. However, IF you have not gotten that advanced, these types of bidding options aren’t for you. When determining bids, you can initially look at the Google Keyword Planner, although you need an active campaign to use this. You can also use the Neil Patel Ubersuggest keyword planner tool for estimated CPC to start:
Once you are running your campaign, keep an eye on your impression share scores to determine how your bid and budget are stacking up. These percentages show how often your ads are showing as compared to when they are eligible to show, how often you are in the top 4 listings and how often you are on the absolute top search position. They will help you determine how competitive you need to bid against other roofing companies.
Hopefully, some of these tips help. Using Google Ads can be a great way to get customers that need roof repair. However, make sure you are keeping up with your campaigns and not spending too much on this expensive CPC playing field!
Leave a Reply