1
Build the offer around an inspection, not a quote
A roofing ad lives or dies on what it asks the homeowner to do.
"Free estimate" asks them to admit they need a new roof. Most people with a small stain haven't admitted that yet, so they keep scrolling.
An inspection asks for much less. You look, you take photos, you tell them what you found.
Only advertise what you'd put in writing. If the ad says 24 hours, the report goes out in 24 hours.
The trade-off?
Inspection leads arrive earlier in the buying cycle than replacement quotes, so some turn into a repair or a "call me next spring."
That's the cost of meeting homeowners before the other roofers do.
2
Set up the accounts in the right order, in your name
This is about twenty minutes of setup, and you do it once.
- Business Page first. Current phone number, service area and recent roof photos. Homeowners check it before they call.
- Business portfolio second. Create it at business.facebook.com. It owns everything else.
- Ad account third. Set the time zone and currency, and add a payment method.
- Meta Pixel last. It goes on your landing page, so Meta learns which visitors became leads.
Build it in your own portfolio, even if you hire help later.
What happens if you don't?
Roofers who let someone else own the ad account lose its history when the relationship ends.
The click-by-click screens for this part are in our step-by-step guide to Facebook advertising for contractors, which covers any trade.
3
Decide where the lead lands before you build the ad
A tap on your ad goes somewhere. Pick that place first, because it shapes lead quality more than the ad does.
For roofing, send the click to a landing page that asks two or three questions before the phone number:
- How old the roof is
- What's going on
- Whether they own the home
Install the Meta Pixel on that page and fire a Lead event when the form goes in.
That's how Meta learns which visitors turned into leads and finds more people like them.
4
Create the campaign and pick the Leads objective
In Ads Manager, hit Create and Meta asks for an objective.
A lot of roofers go wrong here by picking Engagement or by boosting a post instead.
Pick Leads, then set the conversion location to your website so the Pixel from step 3 does its job.
Start with one campaign, one ad set and one offer. Add a storm ad set later, when the weather gives you a reason.
5
Draw the service radius, then add storm zip codes
Target the area your crews reach in a normal day and leave out the rest.
Why?
A lead 70 miles away costs the same as one down the street, and it's much harder to turn into a job.
Skip the stack of interest filters. Meta's delivery system finds homeowners well on its own when the area is right.
When hail or wind hits part of your area, load those zip codes into a separate ad set with storm-specific creative.
Those homeowners have a reason to look up today.
Storm ad sets wear out fast. Two or three weeks after the storm, fold those zips back into the main campaign.
6
Set a budget you can hold for 30 days
Pick a daily budget you can leave alone for a month.
Meta needs that long to settle, and pulling money in week two throws away what it learned.
A simple way to size it: enough to buy about one lead a day at your expected cost per lead.
At the $68.80 Bit House Digital measured on a roofing account, one lead a day comes to about $2,064 over 30 days.
Now compare that to the job:
Against a $10,000 roof, the low end of the ticket, one signed job covers that month almost five times.
7
Make the ad: the owner, the roof, the problem first
The roofing ads that hold attention look like they were shot between jobs, because they were.
Three kinds of footage carry most of the load:
- The owner on camera, explaining what an inspection involves
- A drone pass over a real roof
- Tear-off footage that shows what's under old shingles
Talk the way you talk in a driveway.
If you wouldn't say "protect your most valuable investment" to a homeowner's face, leave it out of the ad.
Make three versions with different first lines and let them compete for a week.
Not comfortable on camera?
Drone and tear-off footage with captions works as a first ad.
8
Launch it, then leave it alone for a week
Hit publish and don't touch it. Edits in the first week restart Meta's learning phase, and early costs swing a lot.
Week one has three jobs:
- Confirm money is moving.
- Confirm leads land in your CRM.
- Call each lead back.
Two days and $40 of spend tell you almost nothing about an ad.
9
Judge it on cost per lead, cost per booked inspection, and ROI
Ads Manager shows dozens of numbers. Three of them pay the bills:
- Cost per lead picks the winning ads.
- Cost per booked inspection tells you whether the leads are real.
- ROI tells you whether the roofs you sign pay for the ads.
So what return makes the ads worth it?
If the ads bring back at least 2 to 3 times what you spend on them, you can run them profitably. Most of Bit House Digital's clients do at least 5x.
In roofing, one signed replacement can carry a month of spend, so count signed roofs at the end of the month, not leads.
10
Call each lead within minutes
A roofing lead is warmest the minute the form goes in.
After a storm, that homeowner may be filling out forms for other roofers within the hour.
Call right away. If they don't pick up, text who you are, then call again later that day and the next morning.
Across Bit House Digital's contractor accounts, clients report booking 50 to 80% of the leads we generate.
Speed on the phone is the part of that number you control.
Book the inspection on the first call, while they're still looking at the stain.
A fast call books the inspection. Getting the lead in the first place comes down to the ad, and three kinds of roofing ads do most of that work.
