Local Services Ads bill per lead, Google Search ads bill per click, lead companies bill per lead or by the month, and mail and radio cost the same whether or not the phone rings. What each brings in depends on how many of its inspections you sign: one owner reports signing about 8% of Google Ads inspections, and a referral-only roofer reports about 85%.
Local Services Ads charge per lead and are moving into Google Ads
Local Services Ads charge for each call, message or booking that comes through the ad, and every charged lead counts toward your budget. Google publishes no roofing lead price and says prices vary by location, job type, lead type and bidding mode, so you see yours only inside your own account.
Google screens each lead at first contact and does not charge for ones it judges invalid or low quality. Its models also recheck charged leads over time and can credit them automatically, in most cases within 30 days.
A roofing advertiser on r/PPC set a $2,000 weekly budget across a huge service area and 14 job types, and the budget never fully spent. Judge these ads by the leads Google charged you for and the jobs you signed from them, whatever budget you set. For budgets and disputes, see Google Local Services Ads for Roofers: Budget, Cost per Lead and Disputes.
In August 2026 Google started moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads, where they become Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals. They still charge per valid lead and still show only on Google Search and Maps. Roofing is named in the first phase, which covers select US home and storefront service advertisers. A roofer who serves an area with no storefront may not move until the second phase, in late 2026.
Google gives 14 days’ notice before an account moves. Your verification badge and past leads come across, but a weekly budget becomes a daily average and old performance reports don’t carry over, so download those reports now.
Every roofer we have measured on a Google Maps grid so far ranks well near their own office. Local Services Ads target by service and area with no keywords, so if you also show up well near your office, point them at the towns where your map ends.
Roofers on Reddit report Google Search clicks well above the home-improvement average
LocaliQ’s 2026 search ad benchmarks have no roofing category, and the closest one, home and home improvement, averages $8.33 a click across LocaliQ’s own customers’ Google and Microsoft campaigns.
Roofers on Reddit report paying $30 to $55 a click, and one paid up to $125 a click and got nothing from the spend.
A roof-replacement company on r/smallbusiness spent about $3,000 a month on Search ads for a couple of months and got zero calls. Another owner, on r/RoofingSales, spends about $2,000 a month and stays busy between those leads and referrals. For setting a Search budget, see Google Ads for Roofers: Budget, Cost per Lead and When It Pays.
An ad manager on r/PPC audited a roofer’s account and found $2,400 a month going to searches for other roofers’ company names. Those clicks brought four conversions and no customers. Before you raise a Search budget, look at the searches your clicks came from and cut the ones that name other companies.
Ask a lead seller where its leads come from and what bad ones cost
One roofer on r/Roofing pays $1,000 a month for Angi Ads, gets about 7 leads a week and made $3,500 profit on the first job, a cash replacement.
Another roofer wrote in a YouTube comment that Angie’s List calls fell from about 70 a month to about 10 after the HomeAdvisor merger, at roughly $1,000 a month, and quit.
One owner on Reddit says Angi now sells Angi Ads on a monthly contract alongside the old HomeAdvisor pay-per-lead side, which has an adjustable budget and ways to get money back for bad leads. A roofer on r/Roofing signed a 12-month contract at $1,000 a month, then found that the friend whose results sold him was on the other product. Ask which product you are signing, and get the contract length and the bad-lead terms in writing.
In January 2023 the FTC ordered HomeAdvisor, the Angi affiliate, to pay up to $7.2 million for deceptive tactics in selling home-improvement leads to service providers. The FTC’s complaint alleged that from at least mid-2014 many leads did not match the pro’s services or chosen area. The order bars HomeAdvisor from claiming its leads are people ready to hire unless that is true.
One post on r/RoofingSales puts the usual price from roofing lead companies at $80 to $120 per set appointment, paid up front, often starting with a trial of about 10 leads.
A contractor in Austin shopping for exclusive leads, sold to no other roofer, was aiming for about $75 each, with replacements for no-shows and homeowners who never answer. A YouTube commenter says these services only work with someone calling leads all day and a budget for a few hundred dollars per lead.
Before you pay any lead seller, ask whether the homeowner asked for a roofer in your area, and what you get back when they don’t answer.
Facebook ads bring one roofer dozens of replies and a lot of calling
One roofer on r/RoofingSales gets 50 or more replies and messages per Facebook ad. Calling them takes a lot of time, and about 1% or fewer go anywhere. Another says the ads sort of work but cost a lot. If you run them, budget the calling time before the ad spend.
An advertiser on r/PPC says Meta rejected a roofing ad offering “$100/month with $0 down” under its Discriminatory Practices policy, treating it as a credit offer. Keep monthly payment offers out of the ad, and save financing for the kitchen table.
Up-front ads cost the same whether or not the phone rings
A roofing company on r/Roofing went from word of mouth alone to about $8,000 a month on radio and local publications, and calls rose sharply.
The owner wrote, “I used to close 50% of my calls and now I range from 20-25%.” When a new source lifts your call count, check your close rate the same month.
USPS Every Door Direct Mail delivers to every address on the postal routes you pick, so you need no mailing list. The USPS page currently lists EDDM Retail postage at $0.26 a piece, and Retail takes 200 to 5,000 pieces a day per ZIP Code with no permit. Printing and design cost extra, so add them in before you compare a mailer with a per-lead price.
One owner paid Houzz Pro $400 a month and got no leads in 8 months. A roofer who put yard signs at intersections got a police warning that later signs would bring fines starting at $1,000 per sign. Check your city’s sign rules before you put one by the road.
Word of mouth is still the biggest source for one big marketing spender
A company spending almost $100,000 a year on marketing says word of mouth is still its biggest source. Another credits a small cash referral bonus with helping produce about $600,000 in sales.
A Texas residential roofer who gets 55% of sales from referrals is weighing a $25 gift card for each referred lead against $250 once the sale closes. Pick one reward and tell every past customer about it, after you check it against your state’s rules.
Compare lead sources by signed jobs before you renew any of them
A roofing owner on r/Roofing who spends over $15,000 a month puts every marketing source on its own phone number, then counts the leads and the cost per lead for each. The setup is in How to Track Which Marketing Brings In Your Roofing Jobs.
The same owner closes 50 to 60% of the appointments they run, and their best salesperson closed 35%. Compare sources using one person’s appointments, so a source isn’t judged by who ran its inspections.
Before you renew any ad:
- Ask how it bills and what you get back for a bad lead.
- Give it a phone number of its own.
- Count the jobs it signed, using one salesperson’s appointments.
- Save your Local Services Ads performance reports before your account moves into Google Ads.
- Keep monthly payment offers out of the ad.
- Point Local Services Ads at the towns where your map ends.
To see where your map ends before you pay to show up past it, run the free Google Maps heatmap. Pick your Google profile and a search, and in a few minutes you’ll see your rank at 49 points around your office.