Should You Do Google Ads Yourself or Hire a Roofing PPC Agency?

“Can I do it myself?”

That’s the question going through your mind regarding a Google Ads campaign (especially when you start seeing some of the management fees agencies are quoting).

To save you from reading this entire article, yes – you can set up roofing Google Ads yourself. But (there’s always a but) you risk running a campaign that isn’t using the right keywords, targets the wrong customers, and burns up your budget without bringing a single new customer.

Hiring an agency will cost more. But (told you there was always a but) a professional PPC campaign is optimized to drive traffic and roofing leads – and ultimately recover your costs and start driving profit month after month.

Do you want to save money or make money?

It’s a simplified approach, but that’s what’s at stake when comparing doing your own Google Ads and hiring a PPC agency.

Whether you work in residential or commercial roofing, your week is full. From managing your time to the endless paperwork and finding time to provide your service, you don’t often reach Friday with a spare afternoon to play around with.

Managing your own Google Ads will add a few hours to your weekly to-do list. But you’ll save thousands of dollars in agency fees. The risk though, is that your self-run campaign will have holes in it. After all, you don’t know what you don’t know. So there’s no guarantee of results.

In contrast, hiring an agency will set you back thousands of dollars. But the ad campaign you get is 10x more likely to generate revenue than ads you set up and run yourself. The right agency will guarantee results (like we do at Tradie Digital) so you’re investing in long-term success.

In this article we’ll compare each option and break down the pros and cons so you can make an informed choice.

Running a PPC campaign to drive traffic and leads to a roofing website is a unique challenge.

Even if someone is using Google Ads to bring customers to their plumbing and electrician companies, their strategies won’t work for you.

Roofing customers have their own particular problems. Whether it’s faulty ridge caps or leaking roof sealant, you’ll need to know which keywords will put your ads in front of them on Google.

Roofing customers make decisions at a different pace to someone, say, dealing with a basement rapidly filling with water. So the timing and placement of your ads need to be perfect.

And the average cost-per-click for roofing keywords will differ from other trade industries, so you’ll need a custom budget strategy to make sure your money is going towards leads.

Now that you know Google Ads are unique for roofing contractors and companies, the next problem is figuring out who should manage your PPC campaign.

Curious if PPC would work for you? Test whether your roofing business has the ingredients to use paid ads successfully

Yep, you can run your own Google Ads campaign.

But a more relevant question is should you run your own ad campaign?

Many risks that come with handling a PPC strategy without experience – but it’s not all doom and gloom.

Any roofer can set up and run a Google Ads campaign. There’s no sign-up fee or online course to complete. As long as you’ve got a Google Account (this is free to set up, and if you’ve got a Gmail account you’re already sorted), you’re good to go. The problem with managing the entire process though, is that you’ll have a mountain to climb.

Google Ad experts spend years learning their craft, to meet the minimum threshold needed to set up a successful campaign – and by ‘successful’ we mean a campaign that doesn’t take your monthly spend and light it on fire with no results to show.

To come close to an agency’s knowledge you’d need to understand:

If that sounds like a lot of work…it is. There is good news though. You don’t have to learn about any of those features and you can still run your own Google Ads.

Google knows you’ve got better things to do on the weekend than read up on the latest PPC strategies. So they offer ‘Google Ads Smart Campaigns’ which run your campaign on auto-pilot while you run your business.

As a roofer it’s fair to say you’re busy. If you don’t have the three to five hours a week you need to manage a PPC campaign, you can hand the job to Google’s clever AI software.

Your task will be to choose your monthly ad budget and when you’d like your ads to run. For example, if you’re with customers between 9am and 5pm and can’t get to the phone, you might run ads after work hours to speak to leads that come in.

Google will take care of the rest, which covers all the core settings.

You only pay when your roofing ads get clicks. That’s how you generate targeted traffic“Sounds like Google does all the work. What’s the catch with a Google Ads Smart Campaign?”

With automation comes limitations.

Google does the heavy lifting, but they’ll only use a fraction of the tools and targeting options that come with a manually-managed ad campaign.

For example, you can’t filter out negative keywords. This could trigger your ads for irrelevant searches like ‘DIY roof cleaning hacks’ when you were targeting the keyword ‘roof cleaning’. You also can’t target customers based on their interests. This removes a powerful targeting option that would have let you show your ads to people interested in home improvement projects or renovation.

Since Google automates the process from start to finish, you’ll need to give their AI software as much data as possible.

If you’ve never run an ad campaign before then Google is driving blind. This can lead to your ad spend being wasted on the wrong audiences, and since Google has no data to tell it otherwise, your results don’t improve.

Whether you opt for a Google Ads Smart Campaign or you want to get behind the wheel and manually manage the entire process, you’ll save on agency fees.

Still, you risk running a campaign that’s shooting in the dark.

What could you do with the average roof that a customer couldn’t?

Could the average Joe inspect wood sheeting, renail wood decking, install drip edge, apply roof felt and add shingles?

Unlikely.

The same way a professional PPC expert or Google Ads agency can unlock benefits in an ad campaign that you can’t. That’s not saying you’re not capable of learning how. But what takes you months to learn, they can set up a campaign and start sending leads to your inbox within 48 hours.

• Target long-tail keywords that bring in qualified traffic
• Remarket to that same traffic to drive conversions
• Adjust bid by location to spend more on profitable customers
• Lower your cost-per-acquisition to increase your profit margins
• Add call extensions to drive more phone calls during the day
• Use dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) for more personalize ads

These probably sound like a bunch of marketing buzzwords. And they are. But they’re marketing buzzwords that describe advanced PPC strategies. These strategies will consistently outperform a Google Ads Smart Campaign, and that’s what you pay for.

No question that hiring an agency will cost more. But this cost always needs to be put in perspective.

Suppose you pay an agency $1,000 a month in management fees and their professional campaign generates $10,000 a month in revenue. In that case, you’re getting a great deal.

In the same way one of your clients might reject a $20,000 roof replacement quote because they want to save money. If a professionally-installed roof helped that property sell for $50,000 more on auction day, they would have been better off hiring you even with the upfront cost.

Don’t have the time to manage a campaign, and you’re serious about generating positive ROI? Hiring professionals can free up your time and set you up for profit down the line.

Wondering how many leads a Google Ads campaign will bring? Figure out EXACTLY how many leads you’ll have access to

That’s really the only question that matters.

Can you do your own Google Ads? Absolutely.

But your goal isn’t to upskill and spend your weekends in front of a laptop screen. Your goal is to increase your leads and have more flexibility over who you work with and when you work with them.

Paying for Google Ads is worth it because experts offer more value. Just as you can breathe life into a tired, old roof better than a DIY handyman with a couple of spare hours every weekend.

Are we biased because we are a Google Ads agency? That’s a fair question.

Put our skills to the test without paying a cent and decide for yourself. Click below to claim a free Google Ads consultation and walk away with a FREE ‘Google Ads Blueprint’ that we can apply, or you can use yourself.

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