How to choose a marketing agency as a roofing contractor
Nine questions that separate an agency worth paying from one that will hold your accounts hostage, and the answers you should expect.
Most roofing contractors have already been burned once. That is the actual starting point of this conversation, and any agency pretending otherwise is not listening.
So instead of a pitch, here are the nine questions worth asking, and what a good answer sounds like.
1. Whose name is on the Google Ads account?
Good answer: yours, opened under your business, with your card on it. They get access through a manager account, which you can revoke from your own login.
Bad answer: anything involving "our account" or "we handle all that."
An ad account accumulates months of learning about which searches produce calls. If it belongs to them, leaving does not cost you your ads. It costs you the learning, and your next agency starts from zero with your money.
2. Who owns the website and the domain?
Good answer: you, registered in your name, and you can log in today.
Bad answer: "we build on our proprietary platform." That means the site only exists inside their system and turns off when you stop paying.
3. Whose phone number is on the ads?
Tracking numbers are genuinely useful. The account holding them should be yours. Otherwise, when you leave, every truck decal, yard sign and old invoice with that number becomes a dead end.
4. Can I export every lead, any time, without asking?
That list of names and addresses is your customer base and the source of every re-roof in eight years. If exporting requires a support ticket, it is not yours.
5. What is the minimum term, and why is it that long?
Twelve months is a red flag — not because long relationships are bad, but because of what a long contract is for. If the work is good you stay anyway. A twelve month lock exists to protect the agency from the consequences of month four.
Ask directly: "If you're confident, why do you need a year?" The answer is informative.
6. What exactly is the fee, and what is the ad budget?
Two separate bills. If the quote bundles them, you cannot tell whether the work got cheaper when the clicks got more expensive.
⚠️ Be careful with percentage of ad spend pricing. It quietly rewards the agency for spending more of your money, which is the wrong incentive at the worst moment.
7. How will I know which ad produced which phone call?
If the answer is "we send a monthly report with impressions and clicks," they are not measuring what matters. Impressions do not pay payroll.
You want call tracking that attributes a specific phone call to a specific search term, and you want to see it yourself.
8. Do you work with my competitors?
An agency running ads for three roofers in the same city has all three bidding against each other. Their revenue goes up. Your click price goes up too.
One per service area, in writing.
9. What happens if I leave in month four?
The most important question, and the one that most reliably produces vague language.
What you want in writing:
All accounts, domains, phone numbers and data created for the client are registered in the client's name and remain the client's property. Upon termination, the provider will transfer administrative access within X days and retains no ownership interest.
If they will not write that, you have your answer.
Two things that are not signals
Case studies with big numbers. "340% ROI" is unverifiable, and since the FTC tightened its rules on testimonials and endorsements in 2024, the fact that a claim is printed does not mean it was earned. Ask what the client's average job value was, and whether the number is revenue or profit.
A big client list. A logo wall tells you they sold a lot of contracts, not that those contracts worked.
What is actually a signal
- They publish prices. It means they are not deciding your quote based on your truck.
- They let you see the product before the call. Confidence, and respect for your time.
- They put ownership in writing without being pushed.
- They tell you what they cannot do. An agency that says "if you don't answer the phone this will not work" is describing reality rather than selling.
And the one you should ask about us
We publish everything above because we are new and cannot lean on a decade of referrals. You should ask how many roofing clients we have, and the honest answer today is that we are building this.
That is exactly why the minimum is three months, why the demo is open without a form, and why everything goes in your name from day one. When leaving is cheap, the work has to hold the relationship together.
That is the correct amount of pressure for us to be under, and you should expect it from anyone you hire.