Online advertising is an evolving arena where it’s tough to beat the competition, but the prize is worthwhile: Unlimited audience reach and growing profits for your roofing company. Investing in pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is a tactic roofing businesses can use to reach a targeted audience and optimize conversion rates. The importance of roofing PPC ads cannot be overstated, as they are crucial for achieving rapid growth and high rankings in paid search results.
Research shows that paid digital advertising increases brand awareness by 80% and yields $2 for every $1 spent, equating to a profitable ROI rate of 200%. However, those unfamiliar with its mechanics can end up wasting money, simply because they lack the acumen to pull off successful PPC campaigns.
Any roofing business can benefit from PPC. So, roofing contractors interested in PPC—this blog is for you! We’ll teach you the basics of pay-per-click advertising to help you make every $1 count.
What Is PPC Advertising for Roofers?
PPC advertising is the online placement of ads on relevant digital platforms for which an advertiser pays. The cost is determined through a bidding process between marketers and ad space owners or ad platforms, with average prices ranging between $2.69 for search ads and $0.63 for display ads across all industries.
Although search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for your roofing company’s longevity, PPC ads are profitable solutions to boost business in the short term. Roofing PPC ads can be text, image, or video-based and appear on search engines, websites, social media platforms, or apps.
How Does PPC Advertising Work?
Because Google’s search engine market share is over 90%, Google Ads is the most used ad network, although it is possible to utilize Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn ads, Bing Ads, and Twitter Ads as well as Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram).
These platforms operate on a bidding methodology, whereby advertisers place the maximum bids they’re willing to place per click in an attempt to secure ad space for important keywords or keyword groups related to their roofing companies.
While the algorithms of these platforms vary, most consider the price you are willing to pay, the quality of your ad and your competition when determining where your ads are placed. Once ads are placed, there are two ways they’re triggered, depending on the ad type.
Search ads are triggered when users enter specific keywords that match your ads, and display ads are triggered when a user meets your targeting criteria when browsing other websites. The end goal of PPC for roofing contractors is to get the most clicks at the lowest cost-per-click to maximize budgets and drive conversions.
It is crucial to choose a specialized marketing company for roofing PPC ads to ensure effective campaign management and better results.
What Are the Benefits of PPC Ads for Roofers?
PPC advertising comes with a host of benefits, such as measurability, cost-effectiveness, low barrier to entry, and precise targeting. Let’s focus on the last benefit for a moment. A traditional marketing tactic might have you dropping off your roofing company’s pamphlets in mailboxes in the areas you service.
You’d likely canvas a couple of suburbs and only receive a few calls from a handful of prospects. In contrast, with PPC roofing ads, you only target clients already interested in your services. Therefore, your ROI and conversions are much higher. Essentially, you don’t waste time and money on interested prospects. When selecting a marketing team to handle roofing PPC ad campaigns, it is crucial to focus on statistics and previous results.
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Roofing PPC Marketing Offers Powerful Targeting Capabilities
Any roofing business’s clients can be divided into distinct segments. For example, let’s say you only work with residential and commercial clients, namely apartment blocks, office blocks, and shopping malls. Each of these clients’ online searches will be slightly different. For instance, “residential roofers near me,” “low slope roofing repair,” or “commercial roofing contractor,” etc.
The phrases or keywords these clients type into search engines vary. Doing keyword research will ensure you place the same phrases they use in your paid ads so that when these clients search for you online, your ads show up. This is called matching user intent, and why PPC campaigns are so powerful.
You can customize each roofing PPC campaign to appeal to each of your audience segments, increasing the likelihood of them entering your sales funnel. Think about it like this: Each keyword or keyword group can be assigned to a potential type of client. No other form of paid advertising offers such razor-sharp precision.
Important KPI’s for Roofing PPC Campaign
KPIs (key performance indicators) help you understand the data points that trigger conversions. With them, you can measure the effectiveness of your PPC advertising campaigns and optimize variables for the best results.
Clicks
While the number of clicks doesn’t necessarily indicate immediate success, it does reveal how many people clicked on your ad. This metric is a good starting point because it immediately differentiates performing from non-performing ads.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
This is the percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. For instance, if your PPC ad had 2,000 impressions, and 200 clicks, that’s a 10% CTR. A high click-through rate indicates your ads are relevant, whereas a low click-through rate means they’re not.
Conversions
The conversion rate is the average number of visitors who clicked on your PPC ad and converted into customers. For example, if your roofing website gets 50 clicks in a week, and you get 10 sales from them, your conversion rate will be 20%. Essentially, conversions track how well your ad copy and images produce a sale.
Number of New Leads
Leads are the first step in converting prospects into customers. You need a steady stream of leads to grow your revenue, so your digital marketing efforts should naturally attract highly qualified leads. If not, you may have to revise your strategy.
Generally, leads fall into two types:
- Marketing qualified leads (MQL): Prospects who have indicated an interest in what you have to offer but still require nurturing to become customers.
- Sales qualified leads (SQL): These are leads who have shown an intent to make a purchase and wish to talk to sales personnel.
What You Should Know about PPC KPIs
One thing that’s important to mention regarding PPC for roofing companies is that no PPC campaign is perfect. Even as digital marketing experts, we’re constantly optimizing our client’s ads throughout the duration of their campaigns to get optimal results.
This is where A/B testing becomes crucial to ensure a successful roofing PPC campaign because it uncovers which variable is leading to profit. For example, you might have a high click-through but not many leads, which doesn’t mean you need to bin your campaign.
It could be a sign your call-to-action isn’t strong enough, or your headline is misleading. Either way, you’ll need to separate a specific attribute of your ad into two different variables to test against each other.
You might use a different keyword for one test and a different call to action for another. Just remember A/B testing is only efficient if you isolate and test one variable at a time. You can run A/B testing for bidding strategies, device types, audience targeting, and roofing keywords.
Tools to Measure Roofing PPC Campaigns
When it comes to click advertising, there is no shortage of management and reporting tools available to optimize your ad spend and campaign variables.
Management tools are designed to help you adjust ad groups, ad budgets, and creative aspects, whereas reporting tools analyze campaign results to reveal successes, weaknesses, and trends.
Both roofing businesses and marketing agencies use the following pay-per-click tools to enhance performance and increase quality leads:
- Semrush: A comprehensive PPC advertising tool offering excellent keyword optimization, ad tracking, and in-depth competitive research
- Google Adwords and Analytics: As free tools, Google Ads and Analytics help you track campaign progress and provide tips for improvements. Google’s tools are best for beginners just getting started with PPC marketing. Professional marketers use them too, usually with other software for more in-depth analysis.
- SpyFu: Another popular PPC tool, SpyFu has impressive features like negative keyword matching and removal, and competitor analysis and integrates seamlessly with Google’s software.
- Report Garden: This multichannel dashboard and reporting solution generate automated PPC ad reports. You can even create custom calculations to better interpret data and align your analytics with your roofing company’s business goals.
- AdEspresso: As a full-service digital advertising tool compatible with Facebook, Instagram, and Google, Adespresso allows you to create, track and analyze campaigns across different platforms.
Comrade Digital Marketing Agency can help you with the above if you’re unsure how to go about it. Schedule a free consultation.
How to Create an Effective Roofing PPC Campaign
Below are a few tactics we employ to ensure successful ad campaigns for many roofing contractors.
Additionally, focusing on roofing PPC ads is crucial for ranking highly in paid search results and should be a key part of your overall strategy.
Determine Your Budget
A successful PPC campaign isn’t isolated. Hence, when working out your PPC ad budget, you must do so with your other marketing goals in mind. Some aspects to consider:
- What are the goals of your PPC campaigns? Lead generation or brand awareness?
- What is your roofing website’s lead-to-client ratio? In other words, how many leads do you need to achieve your ideal client intake?
- Are you running any complementary campaigns that support your PPC performance?
Once you know the answers to these questions, you can figure out how much you want to spend on pay-per-click advertising.
You should also be aware that historic campaign performance, location targeting, competitor’s strategies, and your bidding strategy can significantly alter your basic budget calculations:
- PPC Budget = (Number of customers / Close rate of leads) / Website conversion rate x Cost-per-click
PPC ads are continuous and evolving, as are their budgets. Therefore, you should regularly monitor how much you’re spending vs. your cost per acquisition. PPC ads campaigns also take time to scale and perform. Be sure to give your campaigns enough time before adjusting ads, bids, or your budget too early in the process.
Research Roofing Keywords
Search Engine Watch refers to keywords as the “nerve center” of every PPC campaign because their careful selection drives consumers to click your ads, and they set expectations around the services and products your roofing company offers.
When conducting keyword research and brainstorming roofing keywords, you should consider seasonality, competition, and geographic variance. These factors will help you take advantage of different keyword groups—it’s likely your advertising tactics will change, depending on the time of year.
Unlock the potential of your online presence by mastering the art of SEO keyword strategy. Discover actionable tips and tactics in our comprehensive guide.
Why Your Roofing Company Should Use Long-Tail Keywords
Of all the different types of keywords available, long-tail keywords are especially useful for PPC purposes. They usually have a higher click-through rate and Quality Score because customers using them are further along the marketing funnel.
For example, if a potential client searches for “roofing services, Chicago” in Google, it won’t necessarily end in a sale. However, if they type, “waterproof roofing services Chicago” it indicates they know exactly what they’re looking for and just need to find the right company that offers competitive pricing, high-quality work, and good customer service.
Long-tail keywords won’t draw as much traffic as top-of-the-funnel keywords; however, potential customers using them exhibit a strong intent to purchase. And the closer you capture customers at the bottom of the marketing funnel, the easier it is to convert them.
Choose a Bidding Strategy
With PPC ads on Google, you can choose between automated or manual bidding. Automated bidding sets bids for your ads based on their likelihood to result in a click or conversion, whereas manual bidding lets you set your maximum cost-per-click (CPC). Of course, the additional control comes with more admin.
The options within smart (automated) bidding include:
- Maximize conversions: Get the most conversions for your daily budget, regardless of their value.
- Maximize Conversion Value: Generate the highest conversion value for your given budget.
- Target CPA: Get as many conversions as possible at your pre-determined target cost-per-acquisition.
- Target ROAS: Set an average conversion value you want to achieve for each dollar you spend on your PPC ads.
Regardless of the bidding strategy, you decide on; it’s wise to set realistic minimum cos-per-clicks to prevent your keywords from fading into obscurity. The last thing you want is a campaign operating on $0.02 bids because the price won’t be competitive enough to yield results.
Optimize Your Landing Pages
When a person clicks on your paid search ad, you’ve managed to grab their interest, but the next stage, i.e., your landing page, is where decisions get made. The quality of your landing page determines whether they abandon the ship or travel further down the sales funnel.
This is why landing pages are so important. When optimizing your roofing company’s post-click strategy, your aim is to limit distractions and bring the user to the exact destination implied in your ad. This is called message matching and can make or break your PPC campaigns.
For example, if your ad copy is about fixing leaky roofs, don’t send visitors to your website’s homepage. It’s more effective if you create a specific landing page detailing how you fix leaking roofs with your contact details.
A good landing page should have an attention-grabbing headline, benefit-driven copy, and a clear call to action. In digital marketing, we also talk about content being above or below the fold. Any content you see before scrolling is above the fold.
Try to create landing pages that convey everything above the fold because this reduces friction along the path to conversion and sustains audiences’ attention. Case in point: Landing pages above the fold have 73% more viewability.
Ready to optimize your online presence? Dive into our guide on whether your website should have multiple landing pages and make informed decisions.
Make CTA’s That Work
A strong call to action (CTA) will grab a visitor’s attention even if they’re scanning your landing page. For readers who don’t know what a call to action is, it’s basically a prompt that encourages readers to act like “download free trial,” “buy now,” or subscribe.
CTAs that work tell readers exactly what you want them to do. The most effective ones start with verbs (action) words, and are short, and strategically placed on landing pages. Regardless of your PPC ad’s goal, its CTA should always support the act of converting.
Before publishing your landing pages, it’s a good idea to go through the questions below to check your CTAs align with your campaign:
- Does my CTA reflect my value proposition?
- Does my CTA include the action needed to convert?
- Is it easy to convert with my CTA?
- Does my CTA align with my conversion goal?
Obviously, your roofing ads need a clear goal to maximize conversions. It’s best to have one streamlined goal per ad campaign. If your goal is to increase brand awareness and sales, then rather run separate campaigns.
Track and Measure Results
Earlier, we spoke about important KPIs like clicks, CTR, conversions, and leads. Another essential metric to track is Quality Score. This is a diagnostic tool provided by Google to give you a sense of how well your ad campaigns perform compared to other advertisers.
The score is measured on a scale from 1-10 and is available at a keyword level. The higher your Quality Score, the lower your cost-per-clicks and the better your PPC ad positions. Thus, PPC campaign monitoring is essential.
Failing to keep constant tabs on your PPC ads means you’re missing out on the opportunity to improve them and increase their ROI. We advise checking your roofing PPC campaigns at least once a week to ensure you’re staying on budget and your ads are achieving the desired effect.
Google’s recommendation about your campaign and score provision is an essential feature that you can review. You don’t have to accept all of them, but it is beneficial to consider any new keywords it gives or features and tactics you were unaware of.
Comrade Digital Marketing Agency can help you with the above if you’re unsure how to go about it. Schedule a free consultation.
How to Choose the Best PPC Agency for Your Roofing Business?
For every decent PPC agency, there are a dozen “PPC roofing experts” who are merely looking to make a quick buck. So, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?
For starters, a trusted roofing PPC company will have a portfolio of clients similar to yours and case studies to substantiate their claims. They’ll be eager to learn about your advertising goals and spend time customizing a strategy. It is crucial to select a specialized marketing company for roofing PPC ads to ensure effective and targeted campaigns.
Don’t be bamboozled by advertising certificates like Google Partner or Meta (Facebook) Blueprint. These demonstrate an agency has done the bare minimum—real projects and real results are a better indication of their expertise.
The truth is, experienced roofing PPC experts know marketing strategy implementation takes time, and all top agencies follow certain processes. There is always room for innovation, but if a PPC management team claims they’re reinventing the wheel, it’s likely a red flag.
Really, you just need to follow tried-and-test PPC strategies in a customized manner that aligns with your roofing business’ goals.
Signs an agency can deliver a results-driven PPC strategy include:
- They want to know your roofing PPC strategy goals.
- They rely on data to shape your digital marketing strategy.
- They have experience working with roofing contractors and understand the roofing industry.
- They communicate clearly and are transparent, always offering realistic solutions.
Get Clicks with Comrade’s Roofing PPC Services
To get the most out of your roofing PPC marketing, you need to continually monitor and improve your ads. Following these steps will save you money and ensure your PPC campaigns are as effective as possible.
If you’re currently unhappy with your results, or you want to hire professionals for PPC management, then reach out to us at Comrade Digital Marketing. Our powerful PPC campaigns will put your roofing business in front of the right customers on Google, Bing, Facebook, and other high-traffic sites.
