THE SHORT ANSWER
For roofers, Google Ads costs EUR 60 to EUR 403 per enquiry and works out at EUR 240 to EUR 2,418 per signed job once you allow for 4 to 6 enquiries per customer. Sound arithmetic for roofers. At EUR 6,000 to EUR 15,000 per project there is enough gross margin to carry a four-figure acquisition cost and still be worth doing.
A channel that is a bargain for one trade is a money pit for the next one along, and the difference is arithmetic rather than opinion. What follows is Google Ads applied to one trade only, roofers: what it costs per enquiry and per signed job, where the ceiling sits, what it demands of you, and an unhedged answer at the end.
The numbers that govern the decision: projects run EUR 6,000 to EUR 15,000, the buyer is typically a homeowner with a leak or a roof past twenty-five years old, demand peaks after the first autumn storms and falls away in February, and 4 to 6 genuine enquiries are needed for each customer signed.
The numbers, at a glance
What one enquiry costs: EUR 60 to EUR 403, being clicks at EUR 4.20 to EUR 12.10 against a landing page converting at 3.0 to 7.0 percent
What one signed job costs: EUR 240 to EUR 2,418, after allowing 4 to 6 enquiries for every customer signed
Time from a standing start to the first enquiry: days, assuming you begin with nothing in place
Straight answer for roofers: Sound arithmetic for roofers. At EUR 6,000 to EUR 15,000 per project there is enough gross margin to carry a four-figure acquisition cost and still be worth doing.
The shape of Google Ads for this trade
Intent on Google Ads is the highest of any channel, because the person typed the problem into a search box. It captures demand that already exists. Nobody searches for a roofer on a whim.
The limit that rarely appears in a sales conversation: a minimum of around 30 conversions a month before the automated bidding has enough signal to work with. For a roofing business covering one metro, check that before anything else, because a channel you cannot feed will underperform its own benchmarks indefinitely.
The downside is worth stating plainly. You are bidding against every other installer in the postcode plus at least one lead marketplace with deeper pockets and better data than you. Skill required: Real. An untended account will spend a full budget on broad matches that were never going to convert.
Keyword clusters and negatives that decide a roofing account
Roofing is the one trade in this set where the account should be split by urgency rather than only by service, because emergency and planned work have different click prices, different close rates and different hours of the day.
Emergency campaign: emergency roof repair plus a place name, leaking roof, storm damage, roof tarpaulin, run with call assets and heavier bids during and immediately after bad weather
Planned campaign: roof replacement cost, re-roof quote, flat roof replacement, chimney and lead work, priced and measured as an entirely separate account
Negatives to load on day one: roof rack, roof box, roof tent, car, caravan, conservatory cleaning, felt for sale, jobs, apprenticeship, DIY
Watch the weather: click prices in the emergency cluster spike for roughly seventy-two hours after a storm, and budget caps set for a normal week will exhaust by mid-morning
The insurance path changes who you are actually selling to
Storm and escape-of-water claims put a third party into the conversation. The homeowner is still the customer but the loss adjuster sets the scope and often the timescale. Roofers who can produce a written scope with photographs, moisture readings and a clear separation between insured damage and pre-existing wear get approved faster and argue less. Roofers who submit a single-line quote get sent back. Administrative competence is worth more than pricing in this segment.
The full cost chain from click to signed job
Here is the full chain for roofing, with every assumption visible so you can substitute your own.
What a click costs: EUR 4.20 to EUR 12.10 on roofing terms, a range set by job value more than by the number of competitors.
What the page converts at: 3.0 to 7.0 percent, on a page built for this single service rather than a homepage listing everything.
What that makes an enquiry: EUR 60 to EUR 403, being the click price divided by the conversion rate.
How many enquiries per customer: 4 to 6 here, since some never answer, some never quote and some never proceed.
What a signed job therefore costs: EUR 240 to EUR 2,418.
Set the worst case of EUR 2,418 against a midpoint project of EUR 10,500 and acquisition is 23.0 percent of the contract. Whether that works is a question about your gross margin rather than your turnover, which is the step almost everybody omits.
Why your roofing quote is double the other one
It is the most common objection in the trade and it usually has a factual answer: the other quote is a repair where yours is a replacement, or it assumes the existing battens and felt are sound. Rather than defending the number, set the two scopes side by side and let the household choose. Roofers who itemise win a share of the jobs they would otherwise lose on price, and stop competing against work they were never quoting for.
Response time is the cheapest improvement available in this channel
Before touching bids, creative or suppliers, measure the median time between an enquiry arriving and your first call attempt. For roofing work, moving that figure from an hour to under five minutes typically lifts contact rate by a quarter or more, which is a larger effect than any realistic improvement in cost per enquiry.
Make it a named person's job rather than a shared responsibility, and report median time to first attempt weekly alongside volume. Teams that report only enquiries received have no visibility of the failure that costs them most.
Match types are the whole game and broad match is not free
An account left on broad match with automated bidding will find the cheapest conversions available, which in the trades means form fills from outside your area, outside your service list or outside your price range. The search terms report is the only honest record of what you actually bought. Reading it weekly and adding negatives is not optimisation, it is maintenance, and an account that has had no negatives added in a month is leaking budget by definition.
The conversion volume floor is a hard constraint, not a guideline
Automated bidding needs a meaningful number of conversions per month before it beats a competent manual bid. Below that threshold the system is guessing, and it guesses expensively. A single-branch contractor in one metro frequently cannot reach the threshold on a realistic budget, which is an argument for manual bidding with tight negatives rather than an argument against search.
Work through this before committing to Google Ads
Start with your gross margin on a typical roofing job as a percentage. Not turnover, margin.
Divide your maximum acquisition cost per customer by 4 to 6, the enquiries this trade needs to sign one, and you have the most you can pay for a single enquiry.
Name the person responsible for the first call attempt and the target time. Every number on this page assumes contact inside minutes rather than hours.
Make sure there is a page about roofing alone before you send anyone to it. A homepage covering everything roughly halves what follows.
How these figures were built
These figures are a benchmark model, not a survey. They combine an industry base range observed across Western European home-improvement campaigns with a country multiplier for local auction pressure. Treat them as a band to negotiate against, not a quote.
How Flock Leads prices this
For comparison, this is what exclusive roofing enquiries cost outright, with no retainer and no contract term:
Starter - 10 leads for EUR 750, which is EUR 75 per lead
Growth - 25 leads for EUR 1,750, which is EUR 70 per lead
Scale - 45 leads for EUR 2,925, which is EUR 65 per lead
Pro - 70 leads for EUR 4,340, which is EUR 62 per lead
Max - 90 leads for EUR 5,400, which is EUR 60 per lead
No retainer, no contract term, and no lead sent to a second business. Unused volume rolls over under the Flock Lead Promise.
Want leads like this in your pipeline?
Flock runs the campaigns, screens the enquiries and hands you only the ones that match your service area, job size and capacity. You pay per lead, not per month.
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Frequently asked questions
How much should a roofing business budget for Google Ads?
Work backwards from a signed job rather than forwards from a budget. At EUR 240 to EUR 2,418 per job and a typical target of one to two jobs a week, the monthly figure follows arithmetically. Setting a round number first and hoping it produces work is the most common and most expensive mistake in this channel.
Should roofers use this channel or a different one?
Sound arithmetic for roofers. At EUR 6,000 to EUR 15,000 per project there is enough gross margin to carry a four-figure acquisition cost and still be worth doing. The wider point is that these are not competing options. Local search is the long-term asset, purchased leads cover the gap while it matures, and paid advertising is the accelerator you switch on once you know your numbers well enough to calculate what a click is worth.
What is the single biggest mistake in Google Ads for this trade?
Sending traffic to a homepage instead of a page built for roofing alone. It typically halves the conversion rate, which doubles the cost per enquiry, and no amount of bid management recovers that.
Does seasonality change the answer for roofers?
Materially. Demand peaks after the first autumn storms and troughs in February, driven by visible damage and insurance claims. Paid channels follow that curve and get more expensive at the top of it; local search ignores it; purchased volume can be aimed deliberately at the trough, when fewer competitors are bidding for the same households.
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