A roofer who does both insurance work and cash work is running two businesses under one name. The crews are the same, the shingles are the same, and the truck is the same. Almost everything else is different: what the homeowner searches, what you're allowed to promise, who pays, and when the money shows up.
Google Ads doesn't know any of that unless you tell it. Put both kinds of jobs in one campaign and the account learns a single, blended idea of what a roofing lead is worth. That idea is wrong for both jobs.
A Hail Claim Waits on the Insurer's Approval. A Cash Roof Only Needs the Homeowner's.
On the insurance side, a storm creates the demand. The homeowner didn't plan to replace a roof this year; hail decided for them. They want to know whether there's damage, whether insurance will cover it, and whether the roofer will stand with them through the claim. The insurer's approval decides the scope, and the insurer's checks decide the timing.
On the cash side, the homeowner decides. The roof is old, it's leaking, or they're selling the house. They're comparing bids and prices, and they may be asking about financing. Nobody else is at the table.
Roofers in our example market, Minneapolis-St. Paul, clearly treat these as separate conversations. Nine of the 12 advertisers we studied offer some form of insurance-claim help on their sites. Kaufman Roofing's free estimate form goes a step further and asks, as a required question, "Is this a storm related claim?" That one field is the start of splitting the two businesses in the account, because it tags every lead at the moment it arrives.
What share of roofing work nationally runs through insurance? We looked for a neutral source and didn't find one. Guesses online range wildly, so we're not repeating them. Your own lead tags will tell you your split within a season.
Homeowners Search for Insurance Work and Cash Roofs in Different Words
The searches split along the same line. In our example market's Keyword Planner data, the cash-side research searches are steady and cheap: "roof replacement cost" runs about 320 searches a month with top-of-page bids of about $5 to $20, and "new roof cost" about 140 at about $5 to $16. Those are homeowners doing homework.
The insurance-side searches behave like weather. "Hail damage roof" averages 170 searches a month with top-of-page bids of about $14 to $60, but it swings from 20 in December to 480 in June. Chapter 11 charted those swings. Nationally, "roofing insurance claim" draws about 1,000 searches a month, from homeowners trying to figure out the process before they call anyone.
Those differences are the whole case for separate ad groups at minimum. A cash searcher wants a price range and a way to compare bids. An insurance searcher wants to know if the damage is real and what happens next. One headline can't answer both, and one landing page from Chapter 4 can't either.
Five-Star Roofing Reviews Praise the Roofer Who Stood Up to the Adjuster
Insurance came up in 166 of the 635 Twin Cities roofing reviews behind Chapter 8. The praise wasn't "they helped with insurance." It was stronger than that. Twenty-seven reviews used language about the roofer handling everything, working the claim or fighting for the homeowner, and 26 of those were four or five stars:
- "basically my representative, my middle man between me and my insurance company." (Kaufman Roofing, Google review)
- "Not only do they do quality work, they are an advocate for the customer." (Four Point Construction, Google review)
- "We had a max of 3 conversations with our insurance company, Legacy handled everything else." (Legacy Restoration, Google review)
That's what an insurance homeowner wants: someone in their corner. But the same research turned up the other side, from homeowners who felt pushed. One Reddit thread was titled "Why do some roofers want me to use insurance so bad?" and a commenter wrote about telling a roofer, "I'm not doing insurance and that's final." Push too hard toward a claim and you lose the cash customer who never wanted one.
Meeting the Adjuster Is Allowed. Several States Bar Roofers From Being One.
Here's where the reviews and the law meet. Chapter 13 covered the state laws that ban advertising deductible help. The same statutes draw a second line, around the claim itself.
Colorado's roofing law says a contractor soliciting roofing work can't claim to be, or act as, a public insurance adjuster. It also says nothing stops a roofer from discussing the scope of repairs with the insurer on the homeowner's behalf, once there's a valid contract. Florida's statute bars contractors from interpreting policy provisions or advising homeowners on coverage unless they hold a public adjuster license.
So the help homeowners praise has a legal version and an illegal one, and your ads should only ever say the legal version. "We meet your adjuster on the roof and walk through the damage" describes real, allowed work in these states. "We handle your claim" and "we'll fight your insurance company for you" describe acting as the adjuster. Keep the second kind out of ads, headlines and pages, even when a five-star review says it for you. That split is our interpretation of two state statutes, not legal advice, and every state words it differently, so run your ad copy past counsel for each state where your crews work.
An Insurance Roof Pays in Two Checks, So Its Leads Take Longer to Prove Out
The money moves differently too. The Texas Department of Insurance explains it plainly: with replacement cost coverage, the insurer pays in two checks. The first is a partial payment, and the rest comes after repairs have started. The same page notes that as roofs age, some insurers switch to actual cash value, which takes the roof's age into account.
For the ad account, that means an insurance lead takes longer to become a known result. The click, the inspection, the adjuster's visit, the approval, the signed contract and the payments can spread out over weeks or months. A cash roof can go from click to signed contract much faster.
Chapter 1 set up the tracking for this: count the booked inspection first, then import later stages like the signed contract, and raise the conversion window from Google's 30-day default toward its 90-day maximum. Google keeps the click ID for 90 days, so insurance jobs that run longer need an earlier milestone imported inside that window. This chapter adds one step: tag every lead as insurance or cash at intake, the way Kaufman's form does, and carry that tag through to the imported conversion. Without it, you can't tell which campaign actually produced the roofs.
Judge the insurance campaign on its early milestones while the checks catch up: inspections booked, then claims approved, then contracts signed. If you only look at paid jobs, a good storm campaign looks like a failure for its first month.
One Campaign for Hail Claims and Cash Roofs Lets Storm Weeks Starve Retail Jobs
Put both jobs in one campaign and every number becomes an average of two different things. The cost per lead blends a steady cash lead with a storm-week insurance lead. The target from Chapter 7 ends up too high for one job and too low for the other. And the budget follows the weather: a hail week pulls every dollar into storm searches, and the cash leads that pay the bills in a quiet month go dark.
Split them. At minimum, separate ad groups with separate pages. Better, separate campaigns, each with:
- Its own budget, so a storm can't drain the retail work.
- Its own lead-cost target, built from its own history.
- Its own conversion values, from the job math in Chapter 3, since an insurance roof and a cash roof aren't worth the same to you.
- Its own conversion goal, so each campaign bids toward its own kind of signed roof.
Name them so anyone reading the account can tell them apart at a glance, and keep the same split in your CRM. When hail hits, the playbook gets simple: raise the insurance campaign's budget for the storm weeks and leave the cash campaign alone. The retail leads that carry you through a dry spring shouldn't pay for the storm.
A "$149 a Month" Roofing Ad Triggers Loan Disclosures That "Financing Available" Doesn't
The last reason to split is what each landing page has to say. Laws attach different fine print to each kind of job.
On the insurance page, storm-contract rules come first. Several states give homeowners a right to cancel a storm-related roofing contract: Florida allows 10 days after signing (or until the official start date) for contracts signed within 180 days of a declared state of emergency, and Colorado and Illinois require a 72-hour rescission clause. The federal Cooling-Off Rule adds a three-day right for many contracts signed at the homeowner's house, and our reading is that it applies even when the homeowner invited you out. Florida also requires specific disclosures on communications that encourage homeowners to call about a roof insurance claim, and Texas requires a deductible notice in contracts paid from insurance. Put the rights on the page. It builds trust, and it undercuts the "sign today" pressure homeowners distrust.
On the cash page, financing rules come first. Under the federal Truth in Lending rules, an ad that states a payment amount or a repayment period, like "$149 a month" or "0% for 12 months," triggers required disclosures: the down payment, the repayment terms and the annual percentage rate. "Financing available" on its own doesn't. And price transparency matters here in a way it doesn't on the insurance side, because the cash homeowner is comparing bids.
Again: our reading, not legal advice, and every state is different. The point for the ad account is simple. Two jobs, two pages, two sets of fine print.
Next: Your Leads, Not a Lead Seller's
Both kinds of roofing jobs share one competitor: the lead sellers from Chapter 7 who bid on the same searches and resell the homeowner. Chapter 15 covers how to compete with them, and when buying their leads makes sense at all.
The full guide is on the roofers guide home, and when a roofing company wants its insurance and cash work split cleanly in the account, that's part of our Google Ads management.
