So you’ve tried Google Ads in the past, and it hasn’t quite panned out or worked out for your company. You blew through thousands of dollars and you just couldn’t see, you know, how this thing could be profitable for your company.
Well, I’m going to dissect what some of the common issues are, so that way you can see exactly where you probably went wrong, all right? So let’s dive right in.
For the best advice on generating roofing leads online be sure to subscribe to my channel, hit the notification bell so that you get notified every single time I release a new video, just like this one each and every single Wednesday.
For those of you guys who don’t know me, my name is Mats Moy and I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Google Ads, helping roofing companies do just that, generate roofing leads from me.
And so by the end of this video, I’m gonna share with you some common mistakes that I see roofing contractors making that’s blowing through their entire budget, spending thousands of dollars and to yield zero results whatsoever.
Alright, so let’s get started.
Now, the reason why this topic is coming up is that I spend a lot of time on the phone trying to learn, you know, the market, trying to figure out what people are doing to generate leads. I speak to a lot of roofing contractors. And a lot of them have this one thing to say about Google Ads: it just doesn’t work.
And one thing that I wanna set straight right at the beginning of this video here is to tell you that Google Ads works. It works.
Not having a basic understanding of Google Ads
I’ve seen companies generate tons and tons of quality leads from Google Ads. And so I can tell you personally tell you from my experience from generating those leads for contractors, that it works, right?
I was on the phone with a roofer the other day, and you know, he was explaining to me that, you know, he spent maybe $6,000 on Google Ads and he didn’t get a single call, right? And so I asked him, what were you using? Google Ads like the Expert Mode or Google Ads Express?
For one he didn’t know, but my guess is that he was using Google Ads Express, right? This is something that Google normally throws at you when you’ve signed up for a Google My Business listing, they’ll say, “hey, why don’t you try Google Ads to try and get more leads?”
And so if you don’t know much about the online digital marketing platform, right? You wouldn’t know that Google Ads is pretty much a money grab for Google, right?
In my opinion, that’s what it is because it doesn’t yield much result, right? You’ll see that some people are typing in something along the lines of, you know, garage door estimates, and that’ll trigger your ads. And Google will charge you whenever somebody clicks on your ad, right?
If you don’t have the level of control that you need to be able to run a Google Ad, then you’re pretty much losing right out the gate.
Don’t use Google Ads Express
So what is Google Ads Express? A lot of you might be a little bit confused. Well, isn’t Google Ads, Google Ads? Well, no, right?
For the people who don’t necessarily know how to use, you know, some of the more expert stuff on Google Ads, you’ll tend to lean more towards Google Ads Express. And again, as I’ve already mentioned, it’s a money grab, right? This is Google’s way of kind of just siphoning in your money.
It is not the best platform for you to start generating roofing leads, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing. So that leads me to my second point, right? What should you be doing to get a better grip on how this Google Ads platform works? Learn. You need to learn how Google Ads works, okay? You need to have a basic understanding as to how people go online and start to generate those leads.
Download my Google Ads Cheat Sheet for Roofers
What I wanna share with you right now is just a basic understanding of how the platform works, right? I’m not gonna dive into it right here. I’ve created a cheat sheet that’ll give you all of the definitions and give you a basic understanding as to how the platform works. That way you can kind of educate yourself, right?
It is 2020 guys. I can’t tell you how many business owners I see, right? With their marketing and they don’t have any form of understanding as to how this whole internet thing works.
You need at least a basic understanding as to how this works. Instead of you just saying, you know, I’m gonna hire this guy, I’m gonna hire that guy and kind of just, you know, leave it to them, right? This is how you get taken advantage of you need a basic understanding.
And so I created this one-page cheat sheet for you. It’s available for download in the description down below. Here’s what they, this is what it looks like. So this is what the cheat sheet looks like.
Again, I’m giving you some basic terms here, terminology, giving you an example. You know how to set up your campaign, how to write your ad, write your ad copy, how to optimize them over time. I’m giving you a basic understanding here. It’s available for download again, down in the description down below.
So learn how it works. Don’t be ignorant to this, right? This is extremely important, right? You’re letting someone else market your business. You at least wanna have a say in it, right? You at least wanna be able to, you know, pitch in. throwing ideas, ask why they’re not doing this or doing that, right? So get involved. Don’t take a back seat, get involved with your marketing and figure out how we can make this work, how we can make it better.
Not measuring results
Another common mistake that I typically see, right? Is not measuring results, not tracking the conversions, right? When I speak to, let’s use that same roofer that I spoke to, let’s call him Roofer A, right? When I spoke to Roofer A the other day, I asked him, “When you were using Google Ads, how many phone calls did you get?” He said, “well, none.” I’m like, “well, how do you know?” “I don’t know.” Right?
You need a way to track the results, you need a way to measure them, right? Set up the conversion tracking, give them a value, right? Don’t leave it at zero. Put it at least $1.
If you don’t wanna put a specific amount, and you can calculate this by the way. But if you don’t know how to calculate that, just put it at $1 so that Google’s algorithm can at least see that when a phone call happens or when a form submission happens, they can add a value to it. And that way Google can start to work to giving you more of that value, right?
Otherwise, if you leave it at zero, we can’t quite tell what’s worth what, right? If a roof repair’s worth, and I’ll use this as an example, or if a roof replacement is worth $5 to you, then a roof repair might be worth, I don’t know, $2 or $1, right?
Give Google an idea as to what’s, you know, what the value of each service is to your company.
Don’t be intimidated by the costs
And a lot of people might think to themselves, well, Google Ads is very expensive, right? It’s quite expensive.
Well, if you know what you’re doing on Google Ads, and you have a decent conversion rate, and for me decent is anywhere between 10 to 20% on the conversion side of things, right? And roofing clicks are not cheap. They’re quite expensive. I’ll tell you that compared to other industries, right. But the same thing goes with the value of a roof job, right?
So if you wanna compare the roofing industry to let’s say, I don’t know, landscaping, for example, right? For someone to get a yearly contract on, you know, fertilizing, you know, taking care of lawn care, then two completely different things, right? A package, a lawn care package for the year might cost you I don’t know what $300 for the year versus a roof, right? I can go anywhere between, you know, $4,000 on the super low-end to, you know, $20,000 on the high-end, right? It’s totally dependent on, you know, the price, right, how much you’re charging per square.
And so with that being said, understand that roof clicks are typically more expensive. And so you really need to understand what you’re doing on the platform on a day-to-day so that you can get a return on investment, right?
So looking at anywhere between 10 to 20% on the conversion rate. So that simply means for every, one out of every 10 clicks that you get should turn into a conversion or one out of every five clicks that you get should turn into a conversion, right?
And clicks can range anywhere between on average, maybe $6 on the low-end to as high as, you know, $20. If you’re in Texas or in Colorado, it’s a completely different story here, right? You might spend as much as $50 on a click, right?
But again, it has to be worth it, you have to see the return on investment. And this is why tracking everything, measuring results is extremely important, right?
Do the math
Let’s say I spent maybe $25 on a click. We do that times five, right? Five of those clicks before one of them turns into a lead, right? And so we take that five, multiply it by 25 because that’s how much a click is. That’s $125 for one conversion, right?
Five people clicked, one conversion. That one conversion is a quality lead. Someone who has a roofing problem because they came to you. They’re calling you saying, “Hey, hello, Mr. Roofer A, I saw you online, clicked on your ad. I want you to come out and give me an estimate.” You’ll go out and give that estimate. And the one thing that I hear all the time is if only I can get in front of more customers, right?
Everyone thinks they have a super high closing rate. And if that’s the case, if you really have a really good conversion rate, closing rate, you’re a good sales rep, then you should have no problems going in there and, you know, selling the roof. And so that one conversion, that $125 conversion going in there selling the job.
How much are you selling that job for? 4,000, 20,000? Is that not worth it? Right? Let’s even say that you got, it took you five of those, right? It took you five of those leads before you closed one job. What is that? Almost like 600, $600 for you to go in and close that job. What is the profit margin on that job for you? If you sold it for 4,000 or $20,000? Does it not make sense? Return on investment-wise, right?
You spent $600, you spent a thousand dollars to close that job. How much are you making on it? Are your profit margins thin? If they are, then you might be in trouble, but if you have decent profit margins, you’re a good sales rep, then this makes sense, right?
And so when I tell you that Google Ads works, it most definitely does. This is why I wanna push it out there.
If you’re currently using Google Ads, let me know in the comments how well that’s working for you, or if you’ve tried it in the past, what is your experience been with it? Did you know what you were doing? Right? Or did you just simply hand it off to a company that tanked your entire campaign? Right, let me know in the comments, I’m genuinely curious.
Not having enough or having too many keywords
Another common mistake that I typically see is not having enough keywords or having too many keywords, right?
So when you don’t have enough keywords, you might not get enough impressions, enough clicks, and ultimately not enough phone calls from the whole platform.
And when you have too many keywords, maybe you’re getting too many clicks, too many impressions, and too many irrelevant phone calls, right? And so you really have to have a good balance between keywords, right?
The keywords that I find work the best are the ones that have a location within it. So for example, you know, roofing companies in New York, let’s use New York as an example, right? In New York City, right. Or in Manhattan, right. Let’s use Manhattan as an example.
So whenever somebody types that in, that gives me information that I need to know to make sure that, hey, this is probably someone who is looking for a specific roofer within a specific area. versus if you don’t have the right keywords such as targeting, going after something like roof repair for example.
Well, what about roof repair? There are so many different variables that come into play here, right? And so targeting a keyword like “roof repair,” you could have had someone that looked for best materials for roof repair, right?
Now that might not necessarily speak directly to you as a contractor, but you’re still bidding on that keyword, right?
Start with keywords that would attract people to your business
So when you’re first starting off for Google Ads, it’s best to go after the keywords that show the most buyer intent, right? The keywords that you think would attract phone calls and form submissions to your business because they’re looking for a roofer to provide them with a service.
Once you’ve established yourselves on those keywords, you can then start to add some of the more broad keywords such as roof repair, right? Metal roof, right? So start adding some of those slowly into the account so that you’re starting to scale and grow that Google Ads campaign.
So like I mentioned to you in this video, Google Ads works. And I wanna give you an example as to what a pretty good campaign looks like. So this is an example of a pretty good campaign. This is a roofing contractors campaign, and they have a decent conversion rate. This is what I’m looking for, right?
19%, 17 conversions at $30 a piece. These are quality leads. These are homeowners who are calling this specific roofing company to come out and give them an estimate, right? At $30 a piece. Now we have 17 of these and they’ve spent a total of $523. What do you think the return is? Assuming you have a really good salesman. What do you think the return is on this $500 that they’ve spent here? 17 estimates to go out and give, right?
Even if they close just one, one, one, just one lead out of those 17, is the return there? You tell me is the return there?
If I got you in front of 17 homeowners who all needed a roofing-related service. Now this could be a combination of repairs and replacements, right? But even if I got you just one, let’s say one of those were replacements, right? If I got you just one and I’m gonna keep saying it just one, right? What would that return look like for you? Now imagine doing that month after month after month, right?
That campaign was over a span of 30 days, right? So we’ve got one lead from their Google Ads campaign every other day or so, right? And so this is a profitable campaign.
Start scaling once the numbers are in your favor
Once you have these kinds of numbers, you can then scale, right? You can scale that campaign to start targeting the areas, to start adding more keywords, to increasing the daily budget, right? There’s so many things that you can do with this, right?
On top of that, we wanna add remarketing, right? Display network.
There’s so many different things that you can do with your Google Ads to scale it and start getting more of those leads. And this is why I am telling you that it works. If you know what you are doing, you have a basic understanding, right? You can make something like this work.
So if you like this video, please give me a thumbs up to let me know that, hey, this is good quality content, and you liked what you saw. And ultimately you would like for me to keep making videos like this. Give me a thumbs up, subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell so that you get notified every single time I release a new video just like this one each and every single Wednesday.
Also, if you wanna join a community of roofers, just like yourself who are learning about this forever-changing space called the internet, then be sure to join my free Facebook group Mastermind, where I share strategies, up-to-date strategies that are working and helping numerous roofing contractors generate roofing leads online.
All right, so that’s it for today’s video guys. I will see you next Wednesday. Peace.
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Book A Call With Mats:
https://matsmoy.com/apply
Google Ads Cheat Sheet for Roofers:
https://go.matsmoy.com/google-ads-cheat-sheet/
Be sure to join the secret Online Roofing Leads Mastermind Group here:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/onlineroofingleads/
TWEET THIS VIDEO: https://ctt.ac/GD4q0
Let’s connect on social media!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MatsMoy
Instagram: https://instagram.com/matsmoy/
Facebook: https://facebook.com/matsmoy/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matsmoy/
