Plumber PPC: The Definitive Guide [2024]

What is Plumbing PPC Marketing?

Plumbing PPC marketing (or pay-per-click advertising) involves displaying your ads to prospective plumbing customers on different platforms and paying for each click or impression the ad receives.

The amount per click can be high depending on factors such as the PPC platform, location, and keyword you're using. However, with a correctly optimized PPC ad, a single job booking more than justifies the cost.

There are several types of plumbing PPC marketing (we'll cover them later). The most popular is Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords), which lets you place ads on all of Google's products—particularly YouTube and Google Search.

Google Ads’ popularity stems from Google's dominance of the search market, which accounts for almost 92 percent of the world's online traffic. Plus, most marketers use the ad platform, as most customers use Google’s search engine to find and evaluate businesses.

How does PPC work?

Every PPC ad works on an auction system that decides which ads to display at any given time, in what order, and what the advertiser pays if a prospect clicks on them.

Let's use Google Ads, for example.

Advertisers pick the plumbing-related keywords they want to bid for, set the maximum amount they're willing to pay per click and launch their ads.

When a potential customer searches with a plumbing-related search term, Google pulls every plumbing ad with that keyword into an auction. To pick the auction winners, Google computes an ad rank using this formula:

The maximum bid is the highest amount advertisers are willing to pay for each click. At the same time, the quality score is a tool Google uses to identify ads with higher-than-average user experience. The quality score is derived from the following criteria:

• Ad's expected clickthrough rate (CTR): The percentage of clicks that converted to job bookings in the past.

• Landing page experience: The experience people have when they visit your landing page. This is determined by the page’s relevance to your ad and its bounce rate, loading speed, navigability, and visual appeal.

• Ad relevance: The alignment between your ad’s content and the searcher's intention.

Google displays the top three or four ads with the highest ad ranks in descending order—the highest takes the top spot, the second highest takes the second spot, and so on.

What Types of Ads Are Used in PPC for Plumbing Companies?

There are many types of plumbing PPC ads. However, not all are tailored to a plumbing PPC campaign’s unique lead-generation needs.

Shopping ads are primarily for advertising products. Remarketing ads don’t fit plumbing businesses since someone looking for a plumber usually wants to hire one immediately and doesn’t need to be reminded. And Gmail-sponsored ads have limited precision and low conversion rates.

Here’s a breakdown of the five types of PPC ads you can use for your plumbing PPC strategy:

1. Social media ads

These are ads displayed in social media feeds such as Instagram, Facebook, X (Twitter), and Pinterest.

Social media ads have different formats and advanced targeting tools that ensure your ads appear in front of audiences likely to be interested in your plumbing services.

You can target prospects by their demographics, interests, previous browsing activity, etc. That’s why paid social is a great tool for lead generation and building brand awareness.

2. Search ads

Search ads are the most popular type of PPC ads. 

Plumbing search ads appear at the top of Google, Bing, Amazon, and other search engine result pages (SERPs) whenever someone enters a plumbing query with local intent.

Here are search ads appearing for “plumbing services Chicago”:

These text-only ads are perfect for generating qualified leads and immediate conversions. Because of their prominent position above organic results, searchers are likelier to click on them. Plus, they show up at the exact moment when people are looking to hire a plumber.

3. Display ads

Display advertising allows you to show ads on Google properties (e.g., YouTube and Google search engine) websites, and applications.

To run display ads, you have to pick an ad network. Some examples include Taboola, Meta Audience Network, Yahoo Advertising, AdMaven, and Google Display Network.

Given display ads' broad reach, you can use them to build brand awareness and retarget people who previously engaged with your brand.

4. Local Services Ads

These memorable PPC ads appear above conventional organic search results on local search result pages. 

Triggered when someone uses a local intent search query such as “plumbers near me,” these ads empower new customers to call or message local businesses directly from the search results.

A typical plumbing Local Services Ads section on Google contains two or three plumbing companies that score high on Google’s local search ranking factors, their key business details, and a map insert with pins indicating their physical locations.

Local Services Ads are a great way to generate high-quality local new leads that will likely become new customers, as the ads appear when a person is looking for a plumber. They are also cost-effective since Google only charges per lead—a call or message—unlike search ads that charge per click. 

Due to the importance of Local Services Ads to local businesses like yours, we partnered with Google to create the Local Services Ad integration.

This integration helps plumbing companies find high-quality leads with a high close rate, all at a lower cost per lead. In a recent webinar, Shane Jaeger used an example to explain how ServiceTitan’s Local Services Ad integration makes this possible.

“If a customer who needs a water heater types ‘plumber near me,’ the first businesses listed—above paid search ads and organic listings—are GLSA customers. The Google/ServiceTitan integration then allows customers to book with ease and even schedule a time and date for the work.”

ServiceTitan’s Local Services Ad integration automatically pulls every item of prospect information and job booking from your Local Services ad into ServiceTitan. 

This is better than manually copying prospect information from your Google Local Services Ads dashboard, which often leads to errors. It also allows you to follow up on plumbing leads that don’t convert immediately.

Also, every job booking your Local Services ad generates is recorded and displayed using an analytics dashboard with an easy-to-understand interface.

You can use these metrics to see your Local Services ad’s exact return on investment (ROI) and discover ways to improve your ads.

5. Video ads

These ads appear on Google partner websites and applications, including video-heavy platforms like YouTube.

Video ads have six different formats that help achieve various marketing objectives. They include:

• In-stream ads: Video ads that are either skippable or non-skippable, which appear during, before, or after videos. They are five to 30 seconds long.

• Outstream ads: Infinite-length video ads that appear on websites and applications included in the Google Video Partner Network.

• Bumper ads: Six-second-long video ads that play before, during, or after videos hosted on video streaming platforms like YouTube. They're perfect for reinforcing brand messages or promoting campaigns.

• Masthead ads: Native video ads that appear at the top of YouTube's home feed.

You can use video PPC ads to drive traffic to your website, build brand awareness and visibility, and promote campaigns.

What Are The Benefits of PPC for Plumbers?

At face value, plumbing PPC ads seem costly for a plumbing company like yours. According to Brandon Doyle, Director of Marketing at Blue Corona, most of its clients’ (home service companies) leads come from pay-per-click channels.

“Today, we see about 25 percent of our clients' qualified leads coming from pay-per-click search. So if you combine that with the approximately 30 percent coming from Local Services Ads, we're now up to 55 percent, roughly, of all contractor leads coming from paid advertisements on Google.”

Benefits of plumbing PPC include:

Fast results

Some digital and traditional plumber marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization (SEO), take a while to yield results. That's not the case with PPC advertising.

You can start recording leads once you set it up correctly and pick the right keywords and maximum bid.

Also, because of their short feedback loop, you can use PPC ad insights to refine audience targeting and ad copy for other online marketing channels. This can drive conversions and increase your marketing ROI.

Qualified plumbing leads

Plumbing PPC advertising lets you target people using their demographics, previous interactions with your company, interests, and, most importantly, location.

Such precise targeting ensures your ads reach audiences interested in booking your services, increasing conversions.

Detailed performance reports

Unlike some other digital marketing strategies with hard-to-track performance, PPC ad platforms give detailed ad performance reports. These reports show each keyword's impressions, click-through rate, and conversions.

Beyond helping you track your PPC ad's performance, these keyword performance insights can be helpful for plumbing SEO, content, and email marketing campaigns.

Full control

With PPC ads, you can set the highest amount you'll pay for each click to stay within your marketing budget.

You can schedule your ads to appear at specific times of the day, pause low-performing campaigns, and bid only on relevant keywords.

Easy set-up and operation

You can easily set up a PPC ad independently with a target keyword, an understanding of your audience, and compelling copy.

PPC ad platforms also have detailed tutorials, tooltips, and guides on how to set up and manage your PPC campaigns.

What Are The Drawbacks of PPC for Plumbers?

PPC ads also have some drawbacks:

Fierce competition

PPC ads’ low barrier to entry and immense benefits attract many plumbing businesses, making them very competitive.

Also, although buying-intent keywords generate conversions, they usually attract fierce competition, increasing their cost per click.

Expert knowledge needed

Although PPC ads are easy to set up, it takes expert knowledge to remain competitive and run a profitable campaign. 

That’s because striking the perfect balance between keyword relevance, competitive bidding, and compelling ad copy can be tricky. 

You also need to monitor and tweak your ads to remain profitable.

Increased distrust of ads

As internet users become more tech-savvy and digital adverts increasingly populate the internet, people have started to ignore ads or use tools to block them. Even worse, a large percentage of Americans feel targeted ads are annoying and invasive.

But all this doesn't mean you should avoid running a PPC campaign. You need to increase your ad’s profitability using the right PPC marketing strategies, which we’ll share later.

How Does Commercial Plumbing PPC Differ from Residential?

PPC campaigns generate leads for both commercial and residential plumbing companies. 

However, since both companies serve different audiences and operate differently, their PPC campaigns require distinct approaches.

PPC for commercial plumbing

Commercial plumbing companies serve organizations, large corporations, and businesses. They usually agree to maintenance and service agreements to prevent expensive plumbing problems.

This generates consistent revenue for commercial plumbing companies, which increases their PPC budgets.

So, commercial plumbing companies can afford to bid on long-tail keywords with colossal competition and cost per click. A single plumbing job is more than enough to cover that cost.

Also, commercial plumbing PPC ads have bid adjustments that ensure they show up more on desktop devices since most commercial customers search from their workplaces using such devices.

Finally, commercial plumbing companies typically operate at all hours of the day, 365 days a year, as other businesses can sometimes call with plumbing emergencies.

Therefore, commercial plumbing PPC ads lack time-of-day bid adjustments.

PPC for residential plumbing

Residential plumbing companies serve homeowners with common household plumbing issues such as leaky faucets and clogged drains. 

Since household plumbing issues are usually low-ticket, residential plumbing companies have a small PPC budget. 

Therefore, they can only afford to bid on long-tail local keywords related to specific neighborhoods, such as “plumbing company Jacksonville FL” and “Tampa plumber.”

Another way residential companies maximize their limited PPC budget is to include time-of-day adjustments in their PPC ads so they appear only during their operating hours.

Residential PPC ads also have mobile device bid adjustments, as most homeowners and tenants will search for a plumber from their mobile devices while at home.

How Can You Start a PPC Campaign For a Plumbing Company?

Here’s a step-by-step guide for starting your PPC campaign:

Define your goal

Goal setting is the first and most crucial step in creating a plumbing PPC campaign. It determines the PPC platforms, ad formats, and ad types you’ll later pick.

Setting a goal also ensures that the PPC campaign has a real impact on your business.

Your plumbing PPC campaign goal could be:

• Boosting online visibility

• Growing website traffic

• Generating leads and sales

• Promoting an offer

If your target is lead generation, your pick would be Local Services Ads. However, if you wish to grow brand awareness, you can channel a large portion of your PPC ad budget to display or video ads.

Identify your audience and high-value keywords

The next step is to identify your target audience. Find their browsing habits, interests, intent, and location (which must fall within your local service area).

After finding your target audience, take time to perform in-depth keyword research.

It’s crucial to pick keywords relevant to your business and your target audience when they are looking for plumbing services. That means a keyword such as “electrician near me” is off limits, as is one with zero search traffic (i.e., the number of people searching that keyword).

Pro tip: you can use a free tool like Google Keyword Planner to find your keyword’s search traffic.

Beyond picking a business-relevant keyword, you should ensure your ad copy and your landing page’s design and text match the keyword’s search intent.

The search intent is what the searcher seeks when searching that keyword. 

For example, someone searching for “how to repair a leaky faucet” isn’t looking to hire a plumber. What they need is a DIY blog post. So, a landing page optimized for such a keyword wouldn’t generate conversions.

You can investigate a keyword’s search intent by searching it on Google or using a specialized SEO tool such as Semrush or Ahrefs.

Determine your PPC ad spend

After conducting audience and keyword research, decide the amount you can spend on PPC ads. This amount will depend on your company size, revenue goal, and the number of new customers you want to attract with the campaign.

UpCity has an excellent formula for creating a PPC budget.

First, figure out the number of new customers you need to reach your revenue goals with this formula.

Once you have the NOC, you can determine a PPC budget fit for your company's size and goals with this formula:

The CSR and tech conversion rate is the percentage of potential customers (prospects) who convert into paying customers after interacting with your techs and CSRs (customer service representatives).

However, if you lack the historical data to use the formula, consider researching what similar-sized plumbing companies in your local service area pay for PPC ads.

Beyond determining your ad spend, you should also pick a bidding strategy. If you’re running local service ads, you can use this tip from Brandon Doyle, director of marketing at Blue Corona, to pick the right bidding strategy.

“If you're comfortable spending your entire budget, I would recommend [maximizing] leads. But if you're saying, ‘Hey, I want to be sensitive to how much I'm paying for a lead,’ that's where you might take that max-per-lead play regarding your bid strategy.”

Create your landing page and PPC ad

The next step is to create your landing page.

Ensure the landing page's copy aligns with your ad copy and the keyword's search intent. This provides a great user experience to visitors, which can increase your ad quality score.

For example, Betros Plumbing offers several plumbing services. But for a drain-cleaning PPC ad, it created a drain-cleaning landing page.

Such alignment between the ad copy's message and that of the landing page can increase the odds of the user taking the desired action.

To increase the odds of visitors converting even further, include real customer testimonials and proof of your experience and expertise—plumbing industry certifications, years of experience, etc.

To deliver a positive visitor experience, keep the landing page's design appealing and engaging. Break up texts with bullet points, use descriptive headings, and design the call-to-action button with contrasting colors.

Finally, ensure your phone number is prominent and clickable, as most leads will prefer to call rather than fill out a form.

Craft your ad

Your ad should include your unique value proposition and briefly explain your services.

Take this search ad from Betros Plumbing, for example.

Some key elements you can model from this ad include:

• A brief description of the company's services.

• The company's hours of operation.

• A value proposition.

Notice the extra links or extensions at the bottom of the ad. You can use them to add additional details to your ads and occupy more space while pushing competitors down the viewport.

Here’s another example of a site link extension from Los Angeles Repipe.

Monitor and optimize your PPC ads

The work is not done after you launch the PPC campaign. You still need to track its performance to channel a significant portion of the ad spend toward high-performing keywords.

Monitoring your campaign’s performance involves tracking the right metrics. Here are some of the important ones:

• Click-through rate (CTR): The ratio of clicks your ad receives to the number of times your ad is displayed. A low CTR implies you need to tweak your ad copy.

• Ad quality score: A one-to-ten scale that measures how well your ad and keywords match searches compared to other advertisers. Ads with high-quality scores have lower CPC and are displayed by Google. Find valuable insights for increasing your ad quality score here.

• Cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL): This is the amount it takes to acquire a customer (CPA) or a lead (CPL). To lower your CPA or CPL, consider aligning your landing page with your ad copy, using the right campaign structure, and including negative keywords.

• Conversion rate: The proportion of visitors to your landing page who take the desired action. To increase your conversion rate, target the right keywords and optimize your landing page copy to match your ad.

To track the performance of your PPC ad, you can use tools such as the Google Ad platform, Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, and social media performance dashboards.

But wouldn't it be better and easier to track the performance of all your marketing campaigns from one central hub instead of hopping from one platform to another? 

Wouldn’t it be better to know your exact revenue per lead rather than just the cost-per-lead data provided by conventional marketing platforms?

That's what ServiceTitan's Marketing Pro –– Ads software is for.

The software integrates with your Google Analytics and Ads accounts, helping you tie the leads a campaign generates to booked jobs and revealing your campaign's exact ROI. 

ServiceTitan's Marketing Pro Ads software also lets you create unique phone numbers for each Google ad campaign and include them in your ad as call extensions.

By pairing the unique phone number with Dynamic Call Insertion (DNI) you can track the exact ROI of each PPC campaign.

In a recent webinar, Renee Lenox, operations and marketing administration executive for Service Specialties Inc., emphasizes the importance of tracking marketing campaigns’ performance using ServiceTitan.

“I always say garbage in, garbage out,” she explains. “Monitoring how things are being booked [is important]. Are they being booked correctly? Are you using certain features [in] a certain way to get the right KPIs? I think for a long time, we had things that weren't being input right. So we couldn't make the best decisions because they weren't in the right order to know what was working and what wasn't.”

Another helpful tool in ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro platform is the Ad Optimizer, which automatically optimizes your PPC campaign for revenue and conversions.

Powered by ServiceTitan's AI for the trade (Titan Intelligence), the tool uses ad conversion data from Google and ServiceTitan to train Google's machine learning algorithm to display your ads to high-quality leads—people likely to book your services.

Liz Soto, a senior account manager at Proximo Marketing, a digital marketing agency that works with home service companies, believes this tool is a game changer.

“This is a solution that I think any industry would be able to capitalize on and really dig into,” she says. “And I personally haven't seen any other software that is trying to do this.”

Johnny Wenzel, senior manager of marketing operations for ServiceTitan Marketing Pro Ads, who helped launch the campaign with beta testers, has this to say about the Ad Optimizer:

“What we’ve seen with our beta users is they're able to turn wasted spend into [a] very profitable spend and generate a lot more leads and a lot more revenue from their marketing.”

Recommended watch: How to connect PPC ads to your ServiceTitan account.

What Are the Best Practices for Plumbing PPC?

Here are some plumbing PPC best practices to boost your campaign’s performance:

1. Refine your targeting

Customer search behavior tends to change. The keywords you picked during your campaign setup can become irrelevant later.

So, always check Google's Keyword Planner and the Search Terms Report in your Google Ads account. Also, use specialized SEO tools such as Semrush, SimilarWeb, and SpyFu to find the keywords your competitors are targeting.

Finally, include negative keywords when setting up your ad so you don't appear for services you don't offer and queries outside your service area. And use Google’s recommendations.

Pro tip: Bid also on branded keywords such as “X plumbing company” to capture leads who forgot your website domain name.

2. Use up the character count

PPC ad platforms always have a character limit. Use them all to provide a detailed description of your services, making your ads appear more prominent.

Also, don’t forget to include call extensions and site links.

Add your phone number to the call extension so prospects can call you if they can’t use the click-to-call button. Then, include site links to push your competitors down the page and maximize your ad’s real estate. 

You can also use site links to promote discounts, offers, and coupons, entice users to click, and increase conversions.

3. Use trust-building elements in your ad copy

To increase conversions, consider using trust-building elements in your ad copy. Examples include your years of experience and the professionalism of your plumbers.

4. Optimize your landing page

Optimizing your landing page increases your landing page experience score, which also lifts your quality score.

So, your landing page should have an appealing design and uncluttered layout. Also, use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool to ensure it loads quickly.

Also, ensure your phone number and call to action (CTA) are immediately visible to anyone coming to your landing page. Place the phone number in eye-catching colors at the top right-hand corner of your landing page since we tend to scan pages from right to left. And if you’re using a CTA button that links to a form fill, locate the button above the fold—i.e., on the part of the page that people see immediately when they land on it.

Pro tip: Consider using ServiceTitan’s Lead Integration to connect third-party booking requests directly to ServiceTitan so that you can manage all leads in one place.

What Tools Are Used in PPC?

To track your campaign's performance, you need the right tools. Some examples of these are:

• Keyword Planner: This is a free keyword research tool from Google that lets you find new keywords, see the number of times people are searching for them, and discover their cost per click.

• Google Analytics: This free analytics tool from Google helps you track prospects' behavior on your website or landing page. It also shows your customer acquisition rate, bounce rate, conversion rate, etc.

• Google Tag Manager: A free tool for creating, installing, and managing your website's code snippets (also known as marketing tags),  and user behavior data.

• ServiceTitan Ad Optimizer: This tool feeds conversion data to Google to ensure your ads are seen by the right leads (those likelier to convert). The tool also makes it easy to scale your PPC ad budget up or down based on job capacity levels.

Over to You

Using PPC ads to boost your online visibility can yield significant results; it generates leads, grows brand awareness, and generates revenue.

Setting up your campaign is only half the battle, however. You must also consistently monitor and optimize your ads for revenue and conversions.

Also, remember that PPC is only one marketing channel. There are several others, such as SEO. Check out other plumbing marketing channels you can use here.

Consider using ServiceTitan’s suite of tools to improve your campaign and measure its performance.

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive plumbing software that helps home service companies streamline their business operations. Over 100,000 contractors across the United States use the software to track their marketing campaigns and boost their revenue.