FAQ: How Do I Use Adwords to Drive Roofing Leads

This is a question I run across quite often on forums and Facebook. Everyone knows roofing contractors tend to advertise and are in a very competitive market. They also have to face competition from outside companies that swoop into the local market after a storm.

 I'm not going to go through the obvious best methods to setup and structure an Adwords campaign. There are plenty of sources for that info and intend to address that question in another FAQ post. For our purposes let's suppose you have some basic Adwords skills.

Below are 4 key attributes of a successful Adwords campaign for a roofing contractor.

1. Segment Campaigns by Service - technically you could do this by separate ad groups in the same campaign. But there are benefits to separating your campaigns into the separate services you offer. Here are several potential campaigns you could build.
   
   Roof Repair - here's where you can add all your repair related ad groups, including "roof repair" and "leaking roof" (depending on how high up the marketing funnel you choose to go - "leaking roof" could be a search for causes, vs an urgent need for a roofer, but they do convert). 
   
   Roof Replacement - I like to keep these separate simply because of the potential revenue from a roof replacement vs fixing a few shingles. 
   
   Roof Types - sell metal roofs? Create a campaign around that. Do Commercial work - again, I might recommend a different campaign.
   
   All of the examples I mentioned above could be added to a single campaign - so why split them up? Three reasons - you can set budgets separately based on the value of the service and or the current weather conditions, some services (like Roof Replacement) may warrant a much higher cost per lead  and you can turn campaigns on and off with ease. The advantages are ease of measurement and management - not because the Adwords interface requires it.
   
   
2. Landing Pages - most advertisers send traffic straight to their home page. Without getting into how crappy, old and marketing unfriendly most contractor websites are I highy recommend you have separate pages for repair and replacement, specific roofing types (like foam roofs for commercial buildings) and for weather events.
   
   
3. Weather Events - what are the several things that happen after a major storm with high winds and hail. Roofs get damaged, home owners start googling for roofers and competitors rolls into your local market from out of town.
   
   Be prepared for weather events by...
   
   -> Increasing daily budgets to ensure you capture the max amount of search available.
   
   -> Enabling a pre-built Weather campaign that has ad groups around keywords like "hail damage" and "wind damage"
   
   -> Ensure your ads are all localized - your ads should contain the names of the primary city you services and it doesn't hurt to have ad groups that include the local communities name to trigger the search, emphasizing your time in the community and your local ties.
   
   
4. Branded and Competitor campaigns - I always recommend a branded campaign - that is a campaign where ads are triggered by a search for your company name. Yes, yes, yes - I know you rank #1 in organic listing for your name but you may not rank #1 for EVERY possible search phrase. The clicks are cheap, you will own more of the top of screen space and your competitors may be using your business name to their ads. 
   
   Which brings me to my final recommendation... create a competitors campaign where your competitors bsuiness names trigger your ads. Include a substantial differentiation in your ads to separate yourself from your competitors and don't use their names in your ad copy (an Adwords no-no). Need Fast Leads? Click the button directly below this article to generate a free AdWords Performance Projections report!