The honest answer for most roofing and HVAC companies in the Austin metro is somewhere between $2,000 and $5,000 a month in ad spend, with the number moving through the year rather than sitting still. That is the spend. Management is a separate flat fee. The rest of this post is how to pick a number inside that range and when to move it.

Why Google and not Meta for these two trades

Roofing and HVAC are emergency trades more often than not. The roof leaks during a storm. The AC quits on a Saturday in August. Nobody scrolls Instagram looking for a roofer with water coming through the ceiling. They type “roof repair Round Rock” into Google and call the first company that looks real.

Google Search ads sit exactly where that search happens. Meta works for these trades too, but for a different job: replacement and upgrade work, financing offers, and staying in front of people who are not in an emergency yet. If the budget only stretches to one platform, for roofing and HVAC it is Google.

What a click costs in Central Texas

Home service clicks in the Austin metro are not cheap. Roofing and HVAC terms tend to cost somewhere in the tens of dollars per click, and the most competitive terms in peak season can run well above that. The range is wide because it depends on the exact search, the time of year, and how many out-of-town companies are bidding on the same zip codes that week.

The arithmetic that follows is simple. Say a click costs $25 and one click in eight turns into a call. A lead then costs around $200 before anyone has been to the house. A $2,000 budget buys about ten leads a month at those numbers. A $5,000 budget buys about twenty-five. The point of management is to move both of those ratios in your favor over time, but the starting math is what it is, and it is worth doing with your own numbers before you set a budget.

Seasonality: the calendar matters more than the number

Roofing. Central Texas storm season runs roughly March through June, with hail doing most of the damage. That is when search volume spikes and when storm-chasing outfits from three states show up in the same auction. Roofers who cut spend in the quiet months and then try to turn it back on in April are starting from zero against companies that never left. A better plan: hold a floor budget year-round so the account has history, then raise it the week after a hail event, when the searches are real.

HVAC. The summer peak is longer and more predictable. Searches climb in May, stay high through September, and drop off once the first cool front comes through. There is a smaller bump in winter for heating, but in Austin it is a bump, not a season. HVAC companies should expect to spend the most in June, July, and August, and should plan the year so that budget is available then rather than spent in February.

In both trades, the mistake is a flat monthly budget. A roofer spending the same number every month is overspending in December and underspending in May.

Local Services Ads: the other Google budget

Google runs a second ad product for these two trades, and for emergency leads it often matters more than Search ads. Local Services Ads are the “Google Guaranteed” listings that sit above everything else when someone searches “roof repair near me” or “AC repair Cedar Park” on a phone. They show your company name, your rating, your hours, and a call button, and they bill per lead, not per click. If the call is a wrong number or a job you do not do, you can dispute it and get the charge back.

That changes the arithmetic from the section above. A Search click costs money whether or not the person calls. An LSA lead costs money only when they do, and in roofing and HVAC the per-lead price in the Austin metro has tended to land well under what the same lead costs through Search during peak season. The catch is that you do not control the auction the way you do with Search. Google ranks LSA listings on review count and rating, response time, how quickly you answer the phone, and your weekly budget, and it screens the business first: license and insurance checks, a background check on the owner, and a verified Google Business Profile.

For most roofing and HVAC companies here, the right setup is both:

  • Local Services Ads for the emergency calls, with the weekly budget raised in your peak months and the phone answered inside a minute.
  • Search ads for the terms LSA does not cover, for towns where you want to own the brand search, and for replacement and financing offers that are not emergencies.

Put LSA in place first if you qualify. It usually produces leads within days of approval, and the reviews you earn from those jobs lift the listing further. Then add Search to fill the gaps. If you run only one, run LSA for roofing and HVAC, and keep a small Search budget in reserve for storm season.

A working budget for 2026

Treat these as a starting point to adjust, not a prescription.

  • Small company, one or two crews, one or two towns. $1,500 to $2,500 a month in spend, split between Local Services Ads and Search, aimed at a tight radius: Cedar Park and Leander, or Georgetown and Round Rock, not the whole metro.
  • Established company, several crews, most of the metro. $3,000 to $5,000 a month across LSA and Search, with Meta added for replacement and financing campaigns once the Google accounts are producing.
  • Peak season. Whatever the baseline is, plan for it to rise by half or more for the two or three months that matter in your trade.

Where you point the budget matters as much as its size. A company in San Marcos bidding on “roofer Austin” is paying for clicks from people an hour north who will never call. Town-level targeting, with the town named in the ad, costs less per lead almost every time.

What management costs

For accounts up to $5,000 a month in ad spend, our management fee is a published flat number. Light covers one platform, two A/B photo ads a month, and ad spend up to $5,000 a month, for $749 to $823 a month depending on term. Loaded covers Google and Meta together, two A/B video ads a month, and the same $5,000 cap, for $1,799 to $1,979 a month, plus a one-time $500 setup on the quarterly and semi-annual terms. Accounts above the cap move to Custom, quoted to the size of the account on your call.

Ad spend goes straight to Google on your card, never marked up. You own the account and everything in it. If you leave, the history leaves with you.

For most roofing and HVAC companies in the metro, that puts the real all-in number somewhere around $2,500 to $7,000 a month, spend plus management, depending on season and scale. The paid media page has the two tiers side by side and the pricing page has every term.

What makes the budget work harder

Call tracking. If you cannot tell which calls came from the ad, you cannot tell what a lead costs, and you will either overspend or quit too early.

A landing page that loads fast on a phone. Most of these searches happen on a phone, often in a driveway or a hot living room. A page that takes five seconds to load is a wasted click.

Video in the ad. For HVAC, a thirty-second clip of your tech explaining what a tune-up actually covers tends to beat a stock photo of a condenser. For roofing, a drone pass over a finished roof in Pflugerville does the same job. This is the reason Loaded ships with video ads instead of photo ads.

Answering the phone. The best-run account in Travis County cannot help a company that sends calls to voicemail at 4:30 on a Friday in July.

When not to spend

If you are already booked out six weeks, the ads are buying leads you cannot serve. Pull the budget back to the floor and put the difference into the website or into video for the next peak. Google Ads is a tap, not a foundation, and it is fine to turn the tap down.

If you want a number for your company rather than a range, book a call. We will look at your towns, your trade, whether you qualify for Local Services Ads, and what your competitors are bidding on, and tell you what we would spend if it were our money.

See also: video and ads for roofing companies and for HVAC, plumbing and electrical.