Resources · Google Ads Resources
Google Ads resources
Google Ads is the fastest way to get enquiries and the fastest way to waste money. The difference between those two outcomes is about six hours of setup and twenty minutes a week thereafter.
- No lock-in contracts
- Month to month after the first 90 days
- You own every account and asset
- Reported in booked jobs, not impressions
In short
What is the fastest way to stop wasting Google Ads budget?
Turn on call tracking, then read the search terms report weekly and add every irrelevant term as a negative keyword. Most home service enquiries are phone calls, so without call tracking Google's automated bidding optimises blind. Those two habits typically recover a quarter of wasted spend within a fortnight and cost nothing but twenty minutes a week.
Start here
Current benchmarks put the average cost per click in Home & Home Improvement at $8.33 and the average cost per lead at $90.92. Those are averages, which means half of all advertisers are doing worse. Most of the gap is the checklist below.
If you run your own account, work down it in order. Items one to four typically recover a quarter of wasted spend inside a fortnight.
The checklist
Work down it in order. Each item is worth more than the one below it.
- Turn on call tracking before anything else. Most contractor enquiries are phone calls. Untracked, Google's bidding is optimising blind. This is routinely the single biggest improvement available in a contractor account.
- Read the search terms report weekly. Twenty minutes. Add every irrelevant term as a negative keyword. This is unglamorous and it is where the money is.
- Build a proper negative keyword list. Jobs, salary, courses, training, DIY, free, how to, apprentice, wholesale, parts. Every one of those clicks costs you the same as a real one.
- Stop sending ads to your homepage. One landing page per campaign, matching the search, phone number above the fold, no navigation to wander off into.
- Separate emergency from planned campaigns. Different ads, different pages, different bids and different schedules. They are different customers.
- Schedule ads to when somebody answers. Or put an answering service behind the out-of-hours slots. Paying for a click that rings an empty office is pure loss.
- Check Local Services Ads availability. Where offered, the Google Guaranteed badge sits above everything else and is billed per lead rather than per click.
- Use conversion values, not conversion counts. A boiler install is not worth the same as a tap washer. Weight them so bidding chases margin rather than volume.
- Set budgets by season, not by calendar month. Raise heating spend six weeks before the cold, not after the first frost.
- Exclude your own service areas' edges. Ninety minutes of driving destroys the margin on a job you were delighted to win.
Questions
How much should I spend to start?
Enough to gather data in a reasonable time. In a single metro area that is usually £1,000 to £2,500 a month. Below about £750 the data arrives too slowly to optimise honestly.
Should I use broad match?
Only with a mature negative keyword list and conversion tracking that works. Without both, broad match is the fastest way to spend a budget on the wrong searches.
Are Performance Max campaigns good for trades?
They can work once you have conversion history and good conversion values, but they hide the search terms, which makes them a poor first campaign. Start with search, get the data, then consider it.
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