Roofing Contractor Cuts Cost Per Lead from $87 to $34 with Google Ads

The situation

A residential and commercial roofing contractor in the Peoria, IL area had been running Google Ads for 14 months with a previous agency. Their $4,200/month ad budget was generating approximately 14 qualified leads per month at a cost-per-lead of $87. With an average job value of $8,500 and a 35% close rate, their return on ad spend was marginal — roughly 1.4x when fully calculated.

The owner came to Below Zero Media after noticing that competitors in their market were showing up more consistently in search results despite appearing to spend less on ads. They wanted to understand why.

What we found in the audit

The account had three critical problems. First, 62% of the ad spend was going to broad match keywords that were triggering irrelevant searches — "roof repair videos," "roofing nail gun," and "metal roofing installation DIY" were appearing in the search term report. None of these convert to leads from homeowners with damaged roofs. Second, the account had fewer than 40 negative keywords. A properly managed roofing account typically has 200–400 negative keywords blocking DIY searches, material-only queries, and competitor brand terms. Third, all seven ad groups contained 15–25 keywords each — a structural pattern that prevents Google from optimizing Quality Scores because ads cannot be relevant to all keywords in a large, mixed group.

What we changed

Week one: Converted all broad match keywords to phrase and exact match. Added 187 negative keywords targeting DIY content, material purchases, and geographic areas outside the service territory. Week two: Rebuilt the campaign structure from 7 large ad groups to 19 tightly themed single-keyword ad groups (SKAGs) covering the highest-converting keyword patterns identified in the previous 14 months of data. Week three: Rewrote all ad copy to lead with service guarantees and urgency triggers specific to storm-damaged roof scenarios. Deployed 3 ad variations per group for ongoing A/B testing. Week four: Identified that mobile traffic was converting at 40% of the rate of desktop traffic but consuming 55% of the budget. Applied a -35% mobile bid adjustment to reallocate budget to higher-converting desktop searches.

Results after 90 days

The same $4,200/month ad budget now generated 38 qualified leads per month — a 171% increase in lead volume with zero increase in spend. Cost-per-lead dropped from $87 to $34. Quality Scores on primary keywords improved from an account average of 5.2 to 7.8 over the 90-day period, further reducing CPC and improving ad position. The contractor's 35% close rate applied to 38 leads per month generates approximately $112,700/month in revenue from the same ad spend that previously generated $41,650/month.