Google Ads may be one of the most important marketing tactics available to contractors looking to book jobs and beat local competition.
What happens if your website traffic is low? Just because you build a website doesn’t mean homeowners looking for contractors in your area will find you organically.
Instead, it takes a concerted effort—and paid search advertising—before you generate a consistent flow of qualified leads to your website.
Home services PPC is one of the best ways to generate high-quality leads and raise awareness of your contractor business in local markets.
However, it can be difficult to get started without wasting time and money.
What is Google Ads?
Leads come to your contractor website one of two ways: through earned (organic) or paid traffic.
Earned traffic includes clicks from social media, blog posts, organic searches, and referrals from friends.
Paid traffic could be website banner ads or Google Ads. As local competition heats up, contractors need to invest a portion of their marketing budget in Google Ads.
Google Ads is one of the best ways to raise awareness of your contractor business in your local market. It works because you target your ads at homeowners searching for the specific services you offer.
Your ad appears based on a number of factors, primarily your bid strategy and the relevance of your services to what the user is searching for. For example, a homeowner searching for your services near your location is more likely to see your ads.
Why? Google and Bing earn revenue through advertising. Pay-per-click has a unique benefit to both advertisers and users.
With Google Ads, you pay a fee every time someone clicks your advertisement. If someone views your information and doesn’t click, you don’t pay.
Why is Home Services PPC Important?
You need to appear in search results. If you can’t earn your way onto page one organically, you can buy your way there with paid ads.
Every home services business should build a strong organic SEO strategy. Still, it takes time and thoughtful effort for your contractor business to reach the front page of Google and other search engines.
If you look at a Google search results page for any home services search term, you’ll find there’s a hierarchy of results:
- Local Service Ads
- Google Ads (paid advertising)
- Local services listings
- Organic search results
Google Ads, Bing Ads, and other advertising platforms place paid ads at the top of the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), ahead of organic results.
While these results are clearly labeled as sponsored, many homeowners consider these ads when choosing which contractor to call.
The Value of an Expert Google Ads Agency
When you work with an agency that understands paid search advertising, you’re essentially shortcutting the waiting period for organic traffic. You boost your brand to the top of local search results faster.
Your brand will naturally gain greater traction organically over time as you provide good service and good website content.
However, Google Ads can significantly shorten the waiting period and start sending you qualified leads much sooner. Paid search campaigns deliver quick wins.
It’s similar to the long game and short game in golf. Both are important and serve a purpose. A lack of either leaves you exposed. If you want to win, work with the pros to hone your skills.
Applying all your effort into one is ultimately less effective than distributing effort between both. For maximum results, contractors should use a mix of both Google Ads and SEO.
The Best Google Ads Strategies for Home Services Contractors
When running effective Google Ads campaigns, it’s important to stick with a strategy that works. We find that home services buyers typically respond to the following strategies:
Target Buyers
Potential customers are generally looking for something specific when they search: a new furnace, a garbage disposal installation, or breaker box repair.
Whatever the query, there’s a bid strategy that works.
Most searches for local services happen on mobile phones, according to industry data.
These searches and results differ significantly from desktop or tablet searches.
Plus, people searching on mobile phones have high intent to purchase. They’re looking for something they truly need right now, not just browsing. Typically, the advertisement with the highest ad placement captures the majority of clicks.
Google Ads strategy provides a much better experience for buyers and a greater likelihood that your business gets the call.
Scale and Adjust as Needed
Newspaper advertising is becoming obsolete. Why? It’s impossible to tell whether a specific ad performs well or underperforms, and you can’t make changes once it’s gone to press.
Google Ads is the opposite of newspaper ads in many ways.
Paid search provides you with immediate metrics and is flexible enough to allow changes once the ad has launched. Paid ads are scalable based on your budget and job flow.
If a particular ad isn’t performing, modify it immediately. If your operations team is suddenly overwhelmed with leads, you can pause your advertising with a click to allow them time to serve customers properly.
You can adjust a variety of parameters including your service area, the reach of the advertising, budget, and more.
Level the Playing Field With Bigger Competitors
Digital marketing and paid search level the playing field significantly for home services contractors, allowing smaller providers of all sizes to compete beside larger competitors.
It’s impossible to tell the size of your business online. Google Ads allows everyone a shot at getting the customer.
As long as your website is properly maintained and you have a great landing page, a smaller competitor can win out over a large chain retailer.
Optimize Landing Pages
You can’t just create a great Google Ads ad and call it a day. To convert qualified leads you’re generating via search advertising, you need a killer landing page to convince prospects you can deliver.
Any Google Ads ad that sends prospects to your homepage is likely not helping your brand.
A customized landing page presents compelling offers and content to entice your target audience to contact you. With home services in particular, while some customers price-shop, most are ready to make a purchase.
This is a compelling reason to make your call to action clear and consistent on your landing page.
Your call to action (CTA) could be anything from a phone number and email address to a form for prospects to request a quote.
From a conversion rate optimization perspective, landing pages should be crisp and clean with limited information to distract the reader from the action you wish them to take.
Bid Carefully and Intentionally
With Google Ads, there’s no need to maintain a set spending level over an extended period. Instead, pick the time of day, week, month, or year most lucrative for your business.
You can update keywords and your advertising spend based on when you need more traffic. This allows you to be more competitive with your bidding during these peak times.
You also avoid wasting money on ads for heating tune-ups during summer peak months, for instance. These KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, help you identify when ads are successfully driving buyer traffic to your site.
Harness the Power of Negative Keywords
To ensure you only bid on the right Google Ads keywords, excluding specific keywords from your ads may be helpful.
For instance, if someone searches “cheap air conditioner repair,” are they likely to become a paying customer? Probably not, so you may want to add “cheap” as a negative keyword.
Google Ads is essentially an auction where you pay when people click your ad. If they click and don’t find what they’re looking for or don’t book a job, you’ve wasted money on that prospect. You can avoid this largely by adding negative keywords to your ad groups.
There are various tools to identify keywords that won’t result in bookings. This does require some work. You’ll need to review keywords people are currently using to search for your services and see which ones aren’t relevant to what you offer.
Pick Great Keywords
From Google Ads to Facebook Ads, finding the right keywords for your paid advertisement campaigns is crucial to your Google Ads success.
The key to paid search success is selecting the right keywords and targeting your messaging to what people are looking for. Are you unsure where to start with keyword research?
Tools like UberSuggest help you think through the specific terms people use in their searches. This free resource is one of many tools available to help you on the path to paid search success.
Piecing together the paid search puzzle for home services contractors can be challenging without knowledgeable guidance. Let the professionals at Valve+Meter Performance Marketing help you tightly define your goals, refine your keywords, and optimize your landing pages.
Home Services Google Ads Agency
Let the experts at Valve+Meter Performance Marketing take care of your home services PPC advertising needs.