How Much Should Roofing Contractors Spend on Google Ads?
How Much Should Roofing Contractors Spend on Google Ads?
“So… how much should we start with? $100? $500? I really don’t know.”
I hear this question from roofing contractors at least twice a week. They know they need Google Ads to compete. They know their competitors are running ads. But they have absolutely no framework for determining what they should actually spend.
So they guess. They pick a number that feels safe. Usually somewhere between $300-$500 a month. Their agency nods along and says “great, let’s start there and scale up as we see results.”
Three months later, they’ve spent $1,500, gotten maybe 4-5 leads, closed one job, and they’re wondering if Google Ads even works for roofing.
Here’s the problem: You didn’t fail because Google Ads doesn’t work. You failed because you approached budget planning backwards.
TL;DR: Most roofing contractors pick an arbitrary Google Ads budget and hope it works. The right approach is reverse-engineering from your desired outcome - how many jobs you want, your average ticket, your close rate, and your market’s average cost per lead. This tells you exactly what you need to spend to hit your revenue goals, and reveals whether you have an ad problem, a conversion problem, or a sales problem.
Why Your Google Ads Budget Actually Matters for Roofing Companies
When we audit roofing contractor marketing campaigns, the budget issue shows up in two ways:
Too low to work: The contractor is spending $300-$500/month in a market where the average cost per lead is $80-$150. They’re getting 3-6 leads per month, closing maybe one job, and concluding that “Google Ads doesn’t work for roofing.” Meanwhile, their competitor three miles away is spending $3,000/month, getting 25-30 leads, closing 8-10 jobs, and printing money.
Too high without strategy: The contractor is spending $2,000-$3,000/month across 5 campaigns, 40 ad groups, and 120+ ads. The budget is spread so thin that no individual campaign gets enough data for Google’s machine learning to optimize. They’re essentially running 120 tiny experiments simultaneously, none of which have enough budget to actually work.
Both situations waste money. But the second one is worse because it feels like you’re doing sophisticated marketing when you’re actually just setting dollar bills on fire with extra steps.
The real question isn’t “how much should I spend?” The real question is “how much do I need to spend to get the results I want?” And that question has a specific answer based on your market, your close rate, and your average job value.
Most roofing marketing agencies won’t walk you through this math because it’s easier to just start you at $500 and bill you monthly. We’re going to show you exactly how to calculate it yourself.
The 5-Minute Budget Reality Check
Before we get into the complete method, here’s something you can check right now:
Step 1: Log into your Google Ads account (or ask your agency for the data)
Step 2: Look at your average cost per lead over the last 90 days
Step 3: Run this simple calculation:
- How many roofing jobs do you want per month? (Let’s say 10)
- What’s your lead-to-job close rate? (Industry average is 20-30%, let’s use 25%)
- To close 10 jobs at 25%, you need 40 leads
- If your average cost per lead is $100, you need a $4,000/month budget
- If you’re currently spending $800/month, you’re not even close
Step 4: Compare what you’re spending to what the math says you need to spend
If there’s a huge gap, you now know why you’re not hitting your revenue goals. It’s not that Google Ads doesn’t work - it’s that you’re bringing a knife to a gunfight.
Want to see exactly how many leads you need to hit your revenue goals? Use our ROI Calculator to input your monthly revenue target, average job size, and close rate - it’ll show you the exact number of leads required to get there.
What Most Marketing Agencies Tell Roofing Contractors (And Why It Fails)
The standard advice you’ll hear from most agencies goes like this:
“Let’s start at $500 a month and scale up as we see results. We’ll test different campaigns, see what converts, and then increase the budget for the winners.”
Sounds reasonable, right? Except it ignores how Google Ads actually works in 2026.
Google’s machine learning systems need data to optimize. Specifically, they need conversion data - enough leads, calls, and form fills to identify patterns in who converts and who doesn’t. The algorithm learns from your conversions and gets smarter over time about who to show your ads to.
But here’s the catch: If your budget is too low, the algorithm never gets enough conversion data to learn. It’s like trying to teach someone to play basketball by letting them take two shots per week. They’ll never develop any real skill.
In competitive roofing markets - and let’s be honest, most markets are competitive for roofing - you’re up against contractors spending $2,000-$5,000+ per month. Some are running their own accounts with no bid caps, which drives up costs for everyone. If you show up with $500, you’re not “testing the waters” - you’re just donating to Google.
The other piece of conventional wisdom you’ll hear is the “percentage of revenue” rule. Spend 5-10% of your revenue on marketing, allocate 30-40% of that to paid ads, and there’s your budget.
That advice works great if you’re a $5 million roofing company with an established brand and multiple lead generation channels already working. It’s terrible advice if you’re a $500K company trying to grow, because it anchors your ad spend to your current revenue, not your desired revenue.
Here’s what actually works: Start with your revenue goal, reverse-engineer the budget needed to hit it, and then decide if you can afford to play at that level. If you can’t, either adjust your goals or find a different strategy besides Google Ads.
The Rebel Ape Method: Reverse-Engineering Your Google Ads Budget
Stop guessing. Here’s how to calculate exactly what you should spend based on what you actually want to achieve.
Step 1: Define Your Monthly Job Target
How many roofing jobs do you want to close each month? Not “as many as possible” - give me a real number based on your crew capacity and revenue goals.
If your average job is $12,000 and you want to do $50,000 in monthly revenue, you need about 4 jobs. If you want $150,000, you need about 12-13 jobs.
Be realistic about your capacity here. If you’re a two-person crew, you probably can’t handle 20 residential roofing projects per month. If you overshoot this number, you’ll end up with leads you can’t service, which tanks your reputation and wastes ad spend.
A roofing contractor we worked with wanted “as many leads as possible.” We generated 60 leads in his first month. He closed 4 jobs and ignored the other 56 because he was slammed. Those 56 leads left negative reviews, called his competitors, and told everyone who’d listen that his company doesn’t return calls. Sometimes less is more.
Step 2: Calculate Leads Needed Based on Your Close Rate
If you don’t know your close rate, you need to figure it out before you spend another dollar on Google Ads. Pull your numbers from the last 3-6 months:
- How many estimates did you run?
- How many turned into signed contracts?
- Divide contracts by estimates
Industry average for roofing is 20-30%. If you’re closing higher than 35%, you’re probably not running enough estimates. If you’re below 15%, you have a sales problem that no amount of ad spend will fix.
Let’s say you need 10 jobs per month and your close rate is 25%. That means you need 40 qualified leads.
This is where most roofing contractors realize they actually need fewer leads than they thought. They’ve been chasing volume when they should have been chasing quality. A roofing company that closes 40% of their estimates needs way fewer leads than one closing 15%.
Step 3: Determine Your Market’s Average Cost Per Lead
This is the number that changes everything, and it varies wildly by market.
In a small market with low competition, roofing leads might cost $50-$80. In a major metro area with 50+ roofing companies running ads, you’re looking at $100-$200+ per lead. In ultra-competitive markets like South Florida or Southern California, we’ve seen costs hit $300+ per lead for quality roof replacement searches.
If you’re currently running Google Ads, you can calculate your cost per lead by dividing total ad spend by total leads over the last 90 days. If you’re not running ads yet, you can:
- Ask other roofing contractors in your area what they’re paying
- Run a small test campaign for 30 days and calculate it yourself
- Use industry benchmarks as a starting point (average nationally is $75-$150)
Here’s the part nobody tells you: Your cost per lead isn’t just about competition. It’s also about your website’s conversion rate. If your website converts at 2% and your competitor’s converts at 8%, you need 4X as many clicks to get the same number of leads. That means your effective cost per lead is 4X higher even if you’re paying the same per click.
Step 4: Do the Math
Now we put it all together:
Monthly job goal: 10 jobs
Close rate: 25%
Leads needed: 40 leads
Average cost per lead: $120
Required monthly budget: 40 × $120 = $4,800
Here’s the equation broken down:
Leads Needed = Monthly Job Goal ÷ Close Rate
40 leads = 10 jobs ÷ 0.25
Monthly Ad Budget = Leads Needed × Cost Per Lead
$4,800 = 40 leads × $120
That’s your number. Not $500. Not “whatever feels comfortable.” $4,800 is what you need to spend in this example to hit your goal of 10 jobs per month in a market where leads cost $120.
Can you get by on less? Maybe. You might have a killer landing page that converts at 15% while your competitors are at 3%. You might have incredible Google Business Profile optimization that generates half your leads organically. You might have Local Service Ads crushing it.
But as a baseline for Google Ads alone, this is your number.
Step 5: Validate Against Google’s Machine Learning Requirements
Here’s where the budget math intersects with how Google Ads actually works in 2026.
Google’s automated bidding strategies - which you should be using - need about 15-30 conversions per month per campaign to optimize effectively. If you’re running one tight campaign focused on roof replacement in your service area, and you’re getting 40 leads per month, Google has plenty of data to learn and improve.
But if you’re running 5 campaigns (residential roofing, commercial roofing, emergency repairs, gutter installation, roof inspection) and splitting that $4,800 budget across all of them, now you’ve got problems. Each campaign is only getting 8 conversions per month. Google can’t optimize on that.
This is why we typically strip down inherited Google Ads accounts. We recently took over an account that had 5 campaigns, 40 ad groups, and 120 individual ads on a $1,000/month budget. Do the math: That’s $8 per ad per month. If the average cost per click is $4, each ad gets exactly 2 clicks before the budget runs out. You need a 100% conversion rate and a 100% close rate for that to work. Neither of which exists in roofing.
We stripped it down to 2 campaigns with focused targeting and proper budget allocation. Performance went up 340% in 60 days.
This is exactly what we build for roofing contractors who are serious about lead generation. We strip out the waste, focus the budget where it works, and optimize for machine learning. See how we structure profitable Google Ads campaigns for roofing companies.
What We’ve Learned From Roofing Contractor Campaigns
After managing Google Ads for roofing contractors across multiple markets, here are the patterns we see consistently:
The $500-$800 budget dead zone: This is the worst place to be. It’s too much money to feel comfortable wasting, but too little to actually generate meaningful results in most markets. Contractors spend 3-6 months here, get frustrated, and quit - concluding that Google Ads doesn’t work when the real problem was insufficient budget for the competition level.
The “more campaigns = better results” myth: Most agencies inherit or build accounts with a campaign for every service. Residential, commercial, emergency, repairs, replacement, inspection, maintenance, gutters, siding. On a $2,000 budget, this ensures that nothing gets enough spend to optimize. One focused campaign on your highest-margin service will outperform 8 campaigns splitting the budget.
Conversion rate is the hidden budget multiplier: A roofing contractor with a properly optimized landing page converting at 12% can spend half as much as their competitor with a generic homepage converting at 6% and still get the same number of leads. Every percentage point of conversion improvement is effectively a budget increase.
The close rate reveals the real problem: When we run this budget calculation with roofing contractors, sometimes the math reveals they don’t have an ad spend problem - they have a sales problem. If you need 80 leads to close 10 jobs, your 12.5% close rate is the issue. Doubling your ad budget just means you waste twice as much money on leads you won’t close.
We had a surveying client come to us convinced they needed more leads. We ran the math and discovered their close rate was 8%. We paused their ads, rebuilt their sales process and proposal system, got them to 28%, then restarted the ads. They went from startup to over $500K revenue in two years, now projecting to hit $1 million. Same market, same services, better close rate = completely different business.
Implementation Roadmap: Getting Your Google Ads Budget Right
Here’s how to actually use this methodology:
Step 1: Calculate how many leads you actually need. Use our ROI Calculator to input your monthly revenue goal, average job size, and close rate. This tells you exactly how many leads per month you need to hit your targets. Then multiply that number by your market’s average cost per lead (if you don’t know it, use $100-$120 as a starting benchmark for roofing) to get your required monthly budget.
Step 2: Compare to your current spend. If you’re way under what the math says you need, you have three options:
- Increase budget to the recommended level
- Adjust your job target downward to match your current budget
- Invest in conversion rate optimization first to lower your effective cost per lead
Step 3: Audit your current campaign structure. If you’re running more than 2-3 campaigns on a sub-$3,000 budget, you’re spreading too thin. Consolidate to your highest-margin services and let Google’s machine learning actually work.
Step 4: Track the right metrics. Cost per lead is useful, but cost per job is what actually matters. If you’re spending $200 per lead but closing 40% at an average job value of $15,000, that’s $500 per job on a $15,000 sale. That’s printing money. If you’re spending $80 per lead but closing 10% at $8,000 average, that’s $800 per job on an $8,000 sale. The “cheap” leads are actually more expensive.
Could you do this yourself? Absolutely. You’d need to learn Google Ads campaign structure, conversion tracking setup, bid strategy optimization, negative keyword management, ad copywriting, landing page optimization, and ongoing performance analysis. Figure 40-60 hours to get it launched properly, plus 5-10 hours per week managing and optimizing it.
Or we can have it live in two weeks with conversion tracking properly configured, budget allocated for optimal machine learning, and ongoing optimization based on your actual cost-per-job metrics.
Most roofing contractors try the DIY route and come to us after wasting their busy season. If you’d rather get this right the first time, let’s talk about your specific market and numbers.
Common Mistakes (And How to Avoid Them)
Mistake #1: Starting with “what feels safe” instead of what the math requires
We get it. Spending $4,000/month on Google Ads feels scary when you’ve never done it before. But if the math says you need $4,000 to hit your goals, spending $1,000 doesn’t make you “safe” - it makes you ineffective. You’re still spending money, you’re just guaranteeing it won’t work.
Fix: Start with the math, then decide if you can afford to play. If you can’t hit the required budget, invest in organic strategies first and come back to paid ads when you have the revenue to support it.
Mistake #2: Confusing activity with results
That report showing 15 campaigns, 60 ad groups, 200 keywords, and 150,000 impressions looks impressive. Until you realize it generated 8 leads over 30 days and you closed zero jobs. Complexity is not the same as effectiveness.
Fix: Simplify ruthlessly. One campaign with proper budget allocation and tight targeting will outperform 10 campaigns splitting a limited budget. Focus on cost per job, not number of campaigns.
Mistake #3: Ignoring the conversion rate component
If your website sends traffic to your homepage with no clear call-to-action, a phone number buried in the footer, and no mobile optimization, your cost per lead will be 3-5X higher than it needs to be. You can’t ad-spend your way out of a conversion problem.
Fix: Before increasing ad budget, audit your landing page conversion rate. Every percentage point improvement in conversion is money saved on ad spend. A roofing contractor converting at 10% needs half the clicks (and half the budget) as one converting at 5%.
Mistake #4: Treating Google Ads as “set and forget”
Your agency set up campaigns six months ago, they’re running, you’re getting some leads, so everything must be fine. Except the competitive landscape changes, Google’s algorithm updates, seasonality affects costs, and without active optimization, performance degrades over time.
Fix: Google Ads requires ongoing management. Bid adjustments, negative keyword refinement, ad testing, search query mining, and performance analysis. If you’re not doing this weekly (or paying someone who is), you’re leaving money on the table.
Mistake #5: Not accounting for seasonality in roofing
Your required budget in November when every homeowner in a cold climate needs a roof before winter is 2-3X higher than your required budget in February. If you set your budget based on winter calculations and run the same spend in summer, you’re dramatically overpaying per lead.
Fix: Build seasonal budget flexibility into your plan. Higher spend during peak season when lead intent is high and close rates are better. Lower spend during slow season when you’re competing for scarce demand. Your annual budget might be the same, but monthly allocation should flex.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Can I start with a lower budget and scale up as I see results?
You can, but understand the trade-off. If the math says you need $3,000/month and you start at $800, it might take 3-4 months to gather enough conversion data for Google to optimize effectively. You’ll spend $2,400-$3,200 in testing before the campaign actually starts performing. Sometimes it’s actually cheaper to start at the right budget and get results in month one than to spend 4 months “testing” with insufficient budget.
Q: What if my competitor is spending way more than I can afford?
Then you either need to compete on a different channel (SEO, Local Service Ads, referrals, door-knocking) or get better at conversion optimization so your dollars stretch further. Google Ads isn’t the only way to generate roofing leads, and if you’re dramatically outspent, it might not be the best way for your situation.
Q: How long before I see ROI on my Google Ads spend?
If your campaign is set up correctly with proper targeting, conversion tracking, and budget allocation, you should see leads within the first week. Whether those leads turn into jobs depends on your sales process. Most roofing contractors see their first closed job from Google Ads within 30-45 days. If you’re three months in with no jobs closed, something is wrong with either the targeting, the landing page, or your sales process.
Q: Should I pause ads during slow season?
Depends on your business model. If you have a crew to keep busy year-round, running ads at lower cost-per-lead during slow season can be profitable. If you shut down entirely in winter, pausing makes sense. The middle ground - drastically cutting budget during slow season - usually backfires because Google’s algorithm loses optimization data and you have to rebuild momentum when you scale back up.
Q: What’s the difference between Google Ads and Local Service Ads for budget planning?
Local Service Ads work on pay-per-lead instead of pay-per-click, which gives you more budget predictability. You set a weekly lead budget, Google delivers that many leads, you pay a fixed price per lead. Traditional Google Ads gives you more control but requires more sophisticated management. Many roofing contractors run both - LSA for consistent baseline lead flow, Google Ads for scaling up and down seasonally.
Q: How do I know if my high cost-per-lead is normal for my market or if my campaign is broken?
Compare your current cost per lead to the benchmarks mentioned earlier ($50-$80 for small markets, $100-$200 for competitive metros, $200-$300+ for ultra-competitive markets). If you’re dramatically above those ranges, check your website’s conversion rate first - that’s usually the culprit. If your conversion rate is solid (8-12% or higher) and costs are still high, your market might just be expensive, or you might have quality score issues that need optimization.
Q: Can I run effective Google Ads for roofing without a dedicated landing page?
You can, but you’ll pay more per lead. A roofing contractor sending ad traffic to a homepage converting at 3-4% needs 2-3X the budget of a competitor using optimized landing pages converting at 8-12%. The landing page isn’t mandatory, but it’s the difference between needing $2,000/month and needing $5,000/month for the same number of leads.
The Bottom Line
Stop guessing your Google Ads budget. The right number isn’t “$500 to start” or “10% of revenue” or “whatever the agency recommends.” The right number is exactly what you need to spend based on your desired monthly jobs, your close rate, and your market’s average cost per lead.
Run the calculation. Compare it to what you’re currently spending. If there’s a massive gap, you now know why your Google Ads aren’t working. And more importantly, you know what it actually takes to make them work.
Most roofing contractors never run this math. They spend years bouncing between agencies, testing different budgets, wondering why they can’t crack the code. The contractors who figure this out stop competing on budget and start competing on conversion rate, close rate, and operational efficiency. Those are the ones who scale.
Ready to see exactly how many leads you need to hit your revenue goals? Use our ROI calculator to run the numbers based on your monthly revenue target, average job size, and close rate. Then schedule a call if you want us to build and manage the campaign that actually delivers those leads.
