In our last guide on Roofing SEO , we discussed bringing organic traffic to the website from search engines and then converting them into leads. 

In this guide, we will explain to you how you can make quality leads in less time with the Google Ads campaign.

Google Ads formerly known as Google Adwords is an online advertising platform powered by Google to display ads about your product or services in search results as well on Google display networks.

As a roofing contractor, Google Ads can be very useful for your business to find quality leads. With Google Ads, you can target people who are interested in roof repair, moreover, there is no budget limitation on campaigns from Google. 

Wondrous Benefits of Google Ads for Roofers  

Are you still using traditional methods of advertising to generate leads for your roofing business? Seriously? Is that still work for roofers in 2020? Certainly, you will leave all conventional methods of advertising after your first Google Ad campaign . It is quite certain that your very first $1000 Google Ads spend can bring you much more quality leads than traditional methods.

1.1 Google Ads work faster than SEO

In our last guide on Roofing SEO , we have discussed how to increase web traffic to your site and then convert them into leads for free of cost. But for boosting traffic inevitably you need endurance and time. 

1. On the other hand, Google Ads gives you instant visibility in search results and other display networks.  A nicely optimized Ad campaign can help you to covet the first position in search results. 
2. Google Ads appears on the very first position of the search results and provides you instant visibility.
3. You can target multiple keywords in a single campaign.

These benefits don’t mean that you should not focus on organic traffic. SEO and organic traffic resources have long duration interests. Also, it needs well-written articles and quality backlinks to rank your article in search results. 

SEO needs continuous efforts and competitor awareness to keep alive your website in search results. For better results, SEO and Google Ads should be run together for better leads and results.

1.2 Your Ad will be displayed when people search you

Your ad will be shown up in search results whenever a user searches for the term from your keyword list or such a similar phrase. The biggest advantage of Google search ads is they are displayed like organic search results.

Moreover, search ads cannot be blocked by ad blockers.

1.3 It is a Remedy for Poor Organic Traffic

Google Ads or Pay-per-click advertising solution can help you when you have a new set business or a website that has a  very poor performance in terms of organic traffic.

Google Ads can put up your poorly ranked website on top of the search results as soon as you launch your first Ad campaign.

1.4 Multi Parameters Targeting 

Conventional marketing methods are very widespread in terms of targeting options.  In conventional marketing, you cannot target a specific gender or age group or even target people on the basis of their interests. 

While with Google Ads you have various targeting options available like Contextual targeting, Demographic targeting, and Topic Targeting. 

-So What is Contextual Targeting?

Adding multiple keywords to a campaign can make your targeting very broad. Ads are displayed in Google Search results only when google’s algorithm finds the keyword directly or relates to the context on your page.

Google algorithm takes time to understand the theme of the page then rank your page with similar keywords. So for your first roofing campaign just start with 5 to 10 keywords at first which should be related to the theme of your page. 

  -What is Demographic targeting?

Unlike a traditional advertising campaign, Google Ads has very deep demographic targeting options available. You can target people in a specific country with precise parameters like age group, parental status, and gender. 

 -What is Topic-Based Targeting?

The topic is the essential parameter of Google ads without selecting any topic your ad will be displayed under “all topics” and no specific topic will be targeted. Like you are a roofing contractor company if your ad will be displayed under the restaurant or hotel category page will you get the leads.

The answer is no, you are not going to drive any leads. Nicely chosen topics can drive great success for your campaigns.

For a roofing marketing campaign , your topic can be like Roofing > Roofing Repair > Roofing Equipment / Roofing Contractors. 

1.5 Retargeting 

The biggest benefit while working with Google Advertising is that you can re-target your audience. Let me clear you what is retargeting :

As a roofing contractor company, what are the leads you are looking for from your website visitors? E-mail, Contact Number and his name. Right! These are the very first details you need from your visitors who are landing on your site after clicking on your ad. 

But are you getting this information? If your answer is no then google advertising has a perfect solution for you. Retargeting or redisplaying the ad to the same visitor who has clicked on the ad previously but didn’t convert as a lead.

Retargeting these visitors again can boost your conversion rate to 2x to 3x more.

 2. How does Google Ads work?

Google Ads are displayed on the basis of auction. Advertisers bid on the keywords for which they are eager to display the ad on Google search or Google display network.

Like for a keyword ‘best roofing marketing agencies,’ there are 3 advertisers who are bidding. Now you must be wondering how Google chooses the advertiser for displaying the ad. It depends on the Ad rank, quality score, and CPC Bid. 

How does Google Ad Auction work?

Keywords auction at Google is a bit different from the general auction you have seen. You can rank for a high keyword at a very low CPC, this is the way Google rewards advertisers who have a great quality score.

Google auction is a completely automated process and triggered billions of times every day. It all starts with the search query, whenever a user searches for something  Google looks at the advertiser pool and determines whether the advertiser is bidding on those keywords if no then organic search results are displayed.

If Google finds 2 or more advertisers bidding on the same keyword an ad auction is triggered. An auction decides at which rank your ad will be displayed in the search results. Here is how the auction works :

1. It all begins with a search query. Suppose a person is searching for ‘best roofing contractor in Houston’. Now Google will figure out the keywords in this query for which advertisers are bidding.
2. Google will filter all the ads which are not eligible or target different countries or disapprove of policy violations.
3. Now from the remaining ads, Google decides the position of the ads according to the ad rank. Ad rank is calculated by multiplying the CPC Bid with the Quality score.

The auction occurred in a way so that the top advertisers only pay 1 cent more than the second position holder.

3. As a roofer, you need to understand the technical terms of Google Ads?

Your Quality Score and bid decide your Ad rank in the search results. You may not be familiar with terms like CPC, CPA, CPM & actual CPC. Let me elaborate on these terms for you:-

What is CPC?

CPC refers to Cost-per-click or Pay-Per-Click is the amount you are charged by Google for every ad click. Cost Per Click is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks with the total money charged.

CPC= Total Number of Clicks/Total Amount Charged

What is CPM?

On display Ad network CPM (Cost Per  Mile) refers to the cost for 1000 impressions of the Ad. The cost of the campaign in a CPM deal is calculated by multiplying the CPM rate with the number of CPM units.

CPM units are calculated by multiplying the total number of ad impressions with 1 thousand.

50000/1000 impressions= 50 Units

50 Units x $5 CPM Rate= $250 Total Cost of the Campaign

What is CPA?

Cost per Action or CPA is the cost you are paying for converting a lead into a conversion.

CPA is calculated by dividing the total cost of the campaign with the number of conversions.

CPA= Total Cost of the Campaign/Conversions= $250/25= $10

What is Quality Score?

If you want to make your first PPC campaign successful then you need a great understanding of Quality Score.

Quality Score has a great impact on the project costs and effectiveness of the PPC campaign. If you have a good quality score your ad ranking will be higher at a very low cost. There are several factors which determine your quality score:-

• Historical Performance of your Google Ad Account.
• Landing Page Quality and its relevance to the ad.
• The Ad text and landing page relevance.
• The relevance of Keywords to their Ad groups.
• Click-through rate (CTR)

  What is Ad Rank or Ad Position?

Ad rank in the PPC campaign refers to the order in which ads are displayed in the search engine results page (SERP). There are five major factors which affect the Ad Ranking:-

Your CPC bid: When you set your bid for a specific keyword you are telling Google this is the amount you are willing to pay for a click on your ad.  You can even change your Bid any time.

Quality Score and Landing Page: Google even checks how relevant is the landing page for the ad you are bidding. All this assessment is summarized in the quality score. This score can be monitored through Google Ads and can be improved.

Google the Final Decider: If two ads are competing for the same ad position having similar ad rank each will have a similar opportunity to rank first in the search results. Now here Google pervades the gap between both by inflating CPC automatically.

Search Context: Google determines the Ad Rank according to the search context of the person keeping in view of the device (Mobile, Tablet or Desktop), location and time of the search.

Impact of Ad formats and Ad Extension: The additional information rather than headlines and images such as a phone number or more links to your landing page are called as ad extensions. While processing an ad rank Google determines how your ad formats and extensions can impact your search results.

To increase your impression share on absolute top position in search engine ranking you can either raise your bid or can improve the quality of ads and landing page experience.

Research can make any Roofing campaign successful

Finding the right keywords for your PPC campaign can be remarkably valuable for your roofing business. We have seen many times people start with keyword research but in no time they succumb to the findings.

To make your understanding very clear let’s consider a roofing company ‘XYZ Roofers’. Now we explain to you how you can do proper keyword research for the XYZ roofing company.

There are lots of articles on the web around keyword research but most of these articles focus on keyword research for SEO.

The difference between keyword research for SEO and Google Ads is different in terms of the goal. 

For SEO keyword research,  aim for keywords that are valuable to rank and then narrow down the list with your potential and current resources. While for Google Ads we aim for all probable keywords and narrow down the list with keywords having the highest potential ROI.

Let me make this approach a bit practical with the help of following search queries:-

1. Best roofers near me
2. How to stop roof leakage 
3. Roofers
4. Cheapest roofing service

#1 Best roofers near me 

User Goal: Looking for the best local roofing contractor.

Find the intent before the query why the user is searching for roofers near to his location. How strong the intention to buy roofing service? You have to surmise the behavior of the user.

#2 How to stop roof leakage?

User Goal: Visitor looking for ways to stop roof leakage 

Here the search intent is very much clear user wants to stop the roof leakage himself. He is exploring methods to stop the leakage.

#3 Roofers

User Goal: Looking for a list of roofers.

In this search query users, the intention is very broad; he is searching for a single word ‘roofers’. See at No. 3 Google has displayed the results from Wikipedia. Google has determined this person is still looking for information about roofers.

Or he is still wandering information about roofers like cheapest roofers or best roofers which he can investigate.

#4 Cheapest Roofing Service

User Goal:  User looking for roofing service at very low prices.

Take a look and understand what the user is looking for, he is trying to find the lowest priced roofing service.

The user is trying to find the best deal in roofing services.

Understanding Keywords & User Intention

From the last section, it is very clear that you can derive a lot of information from a single word query. Furthermore, on the behavior of the user, it can be redivided in  3 categories:- 

1. Information Query ( How to, When, What does, How does)
2. Commercial Query(Buy, best deals, cheapest, prices)
3. Analysis Query ( Review, Comparison, top 10, best)

Remember every search has a different conversion value. For commercial query, the conversion rate is very high as compared with others. So if you are doing keyword research for your PPC campaign it is very crucial that you bid on high-value keywords.

If you were doing Roofing SEO then optimizing content for informational queries will be helpful but for Pay-per-click you should always bid on Commercial queries.

Summing up, Google ads account is quite easy to set up. Although, running these ads is not a big deal as it seems to be but scaling campaigns can be challenging.  From the perspective of a roofer, you have to analyze the technical terms and various ranking factors that affect the performance of the campaign. 

  Google ads are your rocket launcher towards getting better leads. All you need is to count on it and get your business aligned with it.