A roof repair click costs twenty dollars. A colorbond roofing click costs a dollar seventy nine, and it ends in a replacement rather than a patch.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per booked job looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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An eleventh of the price, and the bigger job of the two.
Leak and repair clicks are brutal and we will not pretend otherwise. Roof repairs is $20.03, replacement $18.26 and leak repair $16.92 on Google’s own figures. What we will say is that the material terms cost almost nothing by comparison. Colorbond is $1.79 on 12,100 searches a month, more than twice the repair term, and roof painting $6.51 on 2,900. Both are people who have already decided to replace rather than patch.
Average cost per click across Australia, from Google Keyword Planner. What your account pays will differ with location, competition and quality score. The gap between these rows is the argument, not the exact figures.
The expensive end is expensive because it rains. Water coming through a ceiling is an emergency, every roofer in the city bids at once, and the job is often a patch worth a few hundred dollars. Highest price, lowest value, and it disappears when the weather clears.
The cheaper end is people choosing a material rather than chasing a leak. Someone searching colorbond has decided what they want on the roof and is looking for who installs it. Almost nobody bids on it, which is why it costs a tenth as much.
Three numbers, and only the last one decides anything. It is the same chain our Brisbane digital marketing agency works through in every industry, only the dollar figures change.
We work it right to left. What a job is worth sets what a lead can cost, which sets what a click is worth bidding.
Cost per click is the easiest number to improve and the least useful one. Bid on cheaper searches and it drops immediately, whether or not those searches ever turn into work. That is why we will sometimes tell you to pay more per click rather than less.
Google Ads is the fastest of the three and the only one you pay for by the click. Here is what the other two do, and where the expensive clicks eventually stop.
THE SLOW ASSET
A real page per job type instead of a Services list, a Google Business Profile built properly, and reviews after every job. Slow to arrive, and the only thing that eventually takes the expensive leak clicks off your bill.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by job type so restoration never competes with leaks for the same budget, and the ability to lift spend hard in the week after a storm. Negative keywords so you stop paying for roofing supplies, tiles for sale and roofing courses.
THE ONE MOST ROOFERS SKIP
The cheapest reach on this trade and the one with the best material to work with. A tired roof beside the same roof restored, in a street people recognise, sells work to homeowners who were not looking for anything. It also fills the dry months when nobody is ringing about water.
We start from what a job is worth, not what a click costs. A roofer chasing leaks and one chasing replacements cannot afford the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO eventually takes the expensive clicks off your bill, and Meta Ads covers the planned jobs cheaply. We will tell you if one is not worth running.
Not a strategy document. These are the three campaigns we would build first for a Brisbane roofer, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “colorbond roofing”
The cheapest clicks in the trade attached to the largest jobs, which is a combination you almost never get. These people have chosen a material and want someone to install it. Tile against metal, what it does to noise and heat, and how long each lasts.
Built around “roof leak repair”
The most expensive clicks in the trade at $16.92 and worth running only if you can get on a roof quickly. Phone number, response time, whether you tarp today, and whether you deal with insurers.
Built around the searches we exclude
Roofing supplies, roof tiles for sale, roofing courses, roofer wages, roof racks, and everyone trying to patch a leak themselves. On broad match you pay full price for all of it, and at these click prices that is expensive.
Send us access to your Google Ads account and we will come back with what it is wasting, which searches are costing you the most for the least, and what we would change first. Fifteen minutes, no obligation, and you keep it either way.
Two clicks can cost the same and be worth completely different amounts. That gap, not the click price, is what decides whether an account works.
Under two dollars for the click and a full replacement at the end of it. This is the best value search in the trade by a wide margin, and it is available because the whole industry is busy bidding on leaks instead.
Your Google Business Profile, suburb pages, and local listings optimised so customers in your area find you first.
Technical fixes and service-focused SEO that make your site easy for Google to understand and trust.
Build your reputation through reviews, with monthly reports tracking rankings and leads from organic search.
Twenty dollars for the click, a job worth a few hundred, and a customer who will ring whoever is closest next time it rains. Worth having and not worth building an account around.
Site speed, crawlability, schema markup, and Core Web Vitals sorted so Google can index and trust your site.
Service pages and suburb landing pages written to rank and convert, not just fill space.
Backlink building and on-page optimisation that compounds month over month.
Three things come up in nearly every Google Ads account we audit for a roofer.
Leak work is the obvious buy so it takes the whole budget, at the highest price in the trade. It is also the least profitable, the least loyal, and it vanishes the week the weather clears.
Colorbond costs $1.79 a click against $20.03 for repairs, on 12,100 searches a month against 5,400. Roof painting is $6.51. Bigger jobs, calmer customers, and a cost per booked job the leak campaign cannot come near.
Roofing is booked by phone, and a large share of the accounts we audit have no call tracking. Without it you cannot tell which campaign produced the work, so the budget gets moved on guesswork and the leak campaign usually survives because it feels busy.
A re-roof and a patch are not the same job and cannot carry the same cost per click. We work out your average job value by type first, because that is what decides which searches are affordable. Most accounts have never had this conversation.
Restoration, replacement, leaks and gutters each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the cheap material terms never compete with leaks for the same dollar.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you cannot get on a roof within a day or two, do not buy leak traffic. At $20.03 a click a slow callback is money already spent. Put the budget on restoration and replacement instead, where the customer can wait and the job is worth more anyway.
Fast answers, clear decisions.
Spend, leads and trends at a glance.
Your data, your accounts.
Budget goes to what converts.
4+ years average client retention.
Specialists across each platform.
Yes, $1.79 against $20.03 for roof repairs on Google’s own figures. The whole trade is busy bidding on leaks, so material searches go almost uncontested. The people typing colorbond have already decided to replace rather than patch, which makes it the cheapest click attached to the biggest job in the trade.
Agency fees usually work one of three ways: a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a base fee plus a percentage above a threshold. Percentage models get expensive as you scale and quietly reward the agency for spending more of your money. Ask which model an agency uses and why before you ask for a number.
No, run it tightly. It is worth having if you can get on a roof within a day or two. Just do not let it take the whole budget, because it is the most expensive traffic in the trade attached to the smallest jobs and it disappears when the weather clears.
Leak work clearly moves with weather. We have deliberately not published a seasonality curve because our two data sources disagree on the shape and we have not verified it year by year. What is not in dispute is that restoration does not spike with rain, so holding budget back for the dry months is sensible.
More than on most trades, because roofing has the most dramatic before and after available to anyone and almost nobody uses it. Most sites we audit run stock photographs of roofs in other countries.
Roofing supplies, roof tiles for sale, roofing courses, roofer wages, roof racks, and people trying to patch a leak themselves. At these click prices that waste adds up quickly.
Yes, plainly, on the leak page. Whether you deal with insurers directly is one of the first questions someone with storm damage has, and most sites leave it unanswered. It is a cheap way to look like the easier option.
Yes. The leak page needs your number and response time above everything. The colorbond page needs material comparisons and photographs of finished roofs. Same trade, completely different readers.
Days on leaks, faster during a storm. Restoration and replacement enquiries arrive steadily and convert over weeks, because nothing is broken and there is no deadline.
We look at what it is wasting, how much of the budget is going to leak traffic, whether calls are tracked, and what your cost per booked job looks like by job type. You get it in writing and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
