Read a roofing marketing contract by what you own at the end of it, not by what it promises at the start. Roofing pitches come in five deal shapes, and each answers the ad-account, website, and phone-number questions differently.
Quick answer
Before signing anything, find out which of five deals is on the table: a monthly retainer plus ad spend, a price per lead, a price per appointment or inspection, an exclusive-territory deal, or a done-for-you website on a lease. For any of them, get your own login as Admin on the Google Ads account, check who owns the Meta ad account rather than who merely has access, name the website files and domain you keep on exit, and find out whose account holds any tracking phone number. If "exclusive" appears anywhere, make it name a ZIP list or a radius, not a feeling.
What are you actually signing up for?
| Deal type | What you pay for | What you should own | What to get in writing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retainer plus ad spend | A monthly fee for the agency's work, plus media cost billed separately or through its account | Admin access on your own Google Ads account and Google Business Profile | Whether ad spend goes on your card or the agency's, and the notice period to cancel |
| Price per lead | A fixed amount for every call or form the agency's systems count as a lead | The lead records and the source tag on each one in your own CRM (customer records system) | The agency's own definition of a countable lead, and whether disputed leads get credited back |
| Price per appointment or inspection | A fixed amount only for leads that reach your calendar | The calendar entry and the inspection outcome in your own job records | How a canceled or no-show appointment is billed, and by when you can dispute one |
| Exclusive territory | A premium over a shared deal, for the promise of no local competitor through the same agency | A written description of the area and the roster it applies to | The ZIP codes or radius, and whether exclusivity covers the agency's future clients too |
| Done-for-you website with a lease | A monthly fee that bundles hosting, design, and sometimes ad management | The content: photos, job write-ups, and licensing detail specific to your company | What you keep if you cancel: files, an export, the domain, or nothing |
A pitch can combine rows; read each piece against its own row.
Who holds the keys to the Google Ads and Meta accounts?
Google describes a manager account as one Google Ads account that views and manages many others from a single place, and points agencies to it (Google, checked 2026-10-07). What matters is the access level your own login carries. Google Ads has five access levels: only Admin can give someone access, change access levels, or unlink a manager account; Billing and Admin can edit billing; Read only can view campaigns and run reports but change nothing; Email only just receives emails and reports (Google, checked 2026-10-07). Unlinking keeps the account's own campaign history, but if the agency's manager account pays Google under monthly invoicing, the ads stop serving once you unlink unless the billing setup was changed first (Google, checked 2026-10-07).
The owner's own access level is the first thing I check on any of these deals, a habit from my media-buying stretch on Google and Meta, October 2023 through September 2025, nearly $700K all told.
On Meta, an ad account belongs to a business portfolio, and whoever has full control of that portfolio can give a partner, such as an agency, full control or partial access; a partner with full control can manage everything but still cannot share the ad account with another business, because only the organization that owns it can (Meta, checked 2026-10-07). Ask plainly which portfolio owns your ad account; "the agency set it up" is not an answer.
What happens to the website when a "free" site is really a lease?
A done-for-you website that an agency builds and hosts for a flat monthly fee is a lease in every way that matters, even when the word never appears in the contract. The pages live on the agency's own servers, so the site can go dark once the invoice stops being paid. Settle one question before signing: on the day you leave, do you get a copy of the text and photos, or do you start over.
If an export is promised, name it: files, a content document, or a login to the platform for a set number of days. Check whose name is on the domain registration too. A spoken promise to "send everything" settles nothing once the account is closed.
Who owns the numbers that ring when someone calls an ad?
Two kinds of phone numbers show up in a roofing contract, and neither belongs to you by default. If the agency turns on Google's own call reporting, Google assigns a forwarding number that routes the call and reports its details, and Google says forwarding numbers tied to call reporting "are property of Google" and can change or be reassigned (Google, checked 2026-10-07). That number is on loan to the campaign.
A separate tracking number, the kind printed on a yard sign or used to isolate organic calls, lives inside whatever call-tracking account created it. If that is the agency's own account, the agency holds the number, so moving it to you takes the agency's cooperation. Ask whose account each tracking number sits in, and get it in writing that a number tied to your company can move to an account you control on request.
What does "exclusive" actually need to say?
An exclusive-territory pitch sounds like a guarantee; on paper it is only as strong as the words defining it. "Exclusive" with no boundary could mean one city, one ZIP code, or nothing enforceable. Before paying a premium for it, get three things written down: the exact ZIP codes or radius it covers, whether it binds the agency's future clients or only its current roster, and what happens if a competing roofer turns out to run through the same agency in an overlapping area.
In Canada, the Competition Act bars promoting a service with claims that are false or misleading in a material respect, judged on the literal words and the general impression, and an agency selling exclusivity is promoting a service like any other (Competition Bureau of Canada, checked 2026-10-07).
Does a hailstorm change what you should sign?
Roofing searches swing with weather and season. Google Ads Keyword Planner estimates for the US (October 2026) put monthly searches for "roof repair near me" between 60,500 and 135,000 from September 2025 to August 2026, highest in September and February and lowest in November and May; a national figure hides local storms. A storm-chasing push, with ads aimed at neighborhoods a storm just hit, can be a reasonable response to real demand.
The guardrail belongs in the contract, not in the agency's judgment alone: a cap on how far spend can rise without your sign-off, and an end date on any storm surge in budget.
If a storm push includes emailing past customers in Canada, the anti-spam law requires consent before sending, not just an opt-out link, though a purchase gives implied consent for up to two years (Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, checked 2026-10-07).
Should the report count leads or signed roofs?
Every deal shape above produces a lead count somewhere: calls, forms, or Local Services Ads leads, the pay-per-lead format where Google's US page lists Roofers among the categories and says a business pays only for leads tied to its business and the services it offers (Google, checked 2026-10-07). None of those counts is a signed roof, and the ad account's conversion count can drift away from what your own records show.
Ask for a monthly number pulled from your own job records instead: signed roofs by source, net of cancellations, and paid roofs once the claim or the final payment clears. Roofing leads covers tagging a lead's source so it survives to that count.
What to ask before paying the next invoice:
- How many signed roofs, net of cancellations, trace to this month's spend, counted in job records rather than the agency's lead list?
- Which leads, calls, or appointments got a credit or a dispute, and why?
- Did any insurance claim job close this month on a lead from two quarters back, and does the report still count it?
How do a retainer and a pay-per-appointment deal compare over a season?
Illustrative: every number below is made up; this three-crew residential roofer is imaginary, and nothing in the table comes from a client or a real contract. The roofer runs April through September under two scenarios with the same number of inspection appointments; in the per-appointment deal, the agency covers ad spend out of its fee.
| Retainer plus ad spend | Pay per appointment | |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $2,500 fee + $9,000 ad spend | $300 per appointment |
| Appointments over 6 months | 240 | 240 |
| Total paid | $69,000 | $72,000 |
| Cost per appointment | $287.50 | $300.00 |
| Signed roofs | 62 | 50 |
| Close rate (signed ÷ appointments) | 25.8% | 20.8% |
| Cost per signed roof | $1,112.90 | $1,440.00 |
The per-appointment deal looks safer on the invoice, since every dollar buys a calendar slot instead of a click that might not convert. In this made-up season it still lost on cost per signed roof, because its appointments closed worse. Run both formulas on your own numbers: total paid divided by appointments is what the deal costs on paper; total paid divided by signed roofs is what it actually bought.
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Frequently asked questions
What happens to my Google Ads account if I leave my roofing marketing agency?
If your own login has Admin access, you can unlink the agency's manager account yourself, and Google says the account keeps its own campaign history. One catch: when the agency's manager account is the paying manager on monthly invoicing, the ads stop serving after the unlink unless the billing setup changes beforehand, so settle billing first.
What should an exclusive territory deal with a roofing marketing agency spell out?
The word has no fixed meaning, so the contract has to supply one. Get the ZIP codes or radius written down, a statement of whether it covers the agency's future clients or only its current roster, and a date by which you can walk if the exclusivity turns out to mean less than you thought.
Should I pay a roofing marketing agency per lead, per appointment, or a flat retainer?
Each grows differently: a retainer stays flat until renegotiated, a per-lead bill grows with every counted lead whether or not it books, and a per-appointment bill grows only when someone gets on the calendar. Judge all three the same way, by total spend divided by signed and paid roofs from your own records, not by the price on the invoice.
Who keeps the website if I cancel a leased site from my roofing marketing agency?
Read the word lease literally. A website built and hosted on the agency's own platform for a monthly fee can go dark once you stop paying, because the pages live on the agency's servers under the agency's account. Ask up front what you get to keep: a copy of the files, the photos, the text, the domain, or nothing.
Should my roofing ad budget jump right after a hailstorm?
Demand can, so a budget increase can be reasonable, but a jump should still come with your sign-off and a stated end date. Google Ads Keyword Planner estimates for the US (October 2026) put monthly searches for 'roof repair near me' anywhere from 60,500 to 135,000 over the 12 months to August 2026, so an agency that raises spend every time that curve moves, without asking you, is managing to search volume instead of to your contract.
Written by
Alexander Cheberko
Marketing Analytics & Conversion Tracking Engineer, US and Canada, run remotely
- Media buyer on Google Ads and Meta Ads from October 2023 to September 2025, nearly $700K in spend.
- Set up patient conversion tracking for a New York medical practice (anonymized).
- Upwork Top Rated, 5.0 from 20 reviews.