Roffy vs Google Ads for roofing contractors

Google Ads sells you clicks. You convert clicks into leads at your own expense, in an auction that gets more expensive the moment a storm makes it worth winning.

Search is the highest-intent advertising channel available to a roofer. Somebody typing 'roof replacement near me' has a problem right now, and that intent is why roofing is one of the more expensive verticals in the Google Ads auction. Every contractor in your metro knows this, which is the source of the problem: you're bidding against them for the same handful of queries.

Two structural details get underweighted. First, Google sells clicks, not leads — the conversion from click to phone call is yours to fund, through landing pages, call tracking, and testing. Second, the auction is counter-cyclical to your needs: the week after a hailstorm, when search demand spikes, every roofer in the metro raises bids simultaneously and click costs climb exactly when you most want volume.

Roffy prices in the other direction. Leads originate from NOAA storm events plus AI roof scoring rather than from queries, each is sold to one contractor and locked 30-90 days, and the price is published in advance and doesn't move because your competitors got aggressive. Note this page covers Google's PPC search ads — the pay-per-lead product is different, and we compare it separately on Roffy vs Google Local Services Ads.

The auction works against you exactly when you need it

Think about what happens in the 72 hours after a hail event. Homeowner search volume spikes. Every roofing contractor in the metro — plus the storm chasers who just drove in — raises budgets on the same keyword set. Google's auction resolves that surge the only way it can: higher cost per click. You pay a premium for the traffic in precisely the window you were counting on.

Roffy's cost structure is indifferent to that dynamic. Your tier price is your tier price whether it's a dead February or the week after a supercell. Because leads come from storm-event data rather than query auctions, storm activity increases your supply instead of your unit cost — the opposite exposure to PPC.

This is the single most useful thing to understand about the two channels. It isn't about which is cheaper on average; it's that they respond to the same weather event in opposite directions, which is also why running both hedges you.

Clicks aren't leads, and the gap is your cost

A common mistake is comparing a cost per click to a cost per lead. They aren't the same unit. If your landing page converts a modest share of clicks into calls — normal for roofing — your true cost per lead is your CPC divided by that conversion rate, and it's a multiple of the click price, not a near-equal to it.

Then subtract further: not every call is a real prospect. Wrong numbers, repair calls you don't take, tenants who don't own the home, and competitors checking your pricing all consume the same budget. Roffy leads carry the owner's name and phone with the storm-event reference and roof score attached, so the qualifying work happens before delivery rather than on your dime afterward.

Do the arithmetic on your own account rather than trusting either sales pitch: total Google Ads spend for the last 90 days divided by jobs actually signed. Compare it to the same figure computed against Roffy's published tiers at your historical close rate. Our lead cost breakdown walks the full calculation.

What Google Ads does that Roffy can't

It reaches non-storm demand. Aging roofs, leaks, real-estate transactions, and remodels generate search volume with no weather event behind them. Roffy's origination signal is storm-driven, so that demand is invisible to us and available to you on search.

It works anywhere. The auction runs in every ZIP in the country. Roffy operates only in the storm-belt metros where our data pipeline is live.

It builds an account asset. Keyword data, conversion history, and Quality Score compound over time and belong to you. A lead subscription is rented capacity — real value, but not equity. That tradeoff is the same one covered on our agency vs buying leads page.

A sane way to split budget between them

Most contractors who run both settle into a version of the same split: Google Ads carries baseline non-storm demand year-round, and bought exclusive leads carry storm-season volume where PPC gets expensive. That way each channel does the work it's structurally good at instead of competing for the same dollar.

Two habits make the split legible. Tag lead source at CRM entry so you can pull cost per closed job by channel at 90 days. And when you compare, make sure you're comparing exclusive to exclusive — a lot of contractors conclude 'bought leads don't work' after buying marketplace leads that were sold to 3-4 roofers at once, which is a different product entirely (here's why the two get conflated).

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