PPC for Home Services: The Definitive Guide

What is PPC Marketing for Home Services?

PPC (pay-per-click) marketing is a form of online marketing in which home services providers, such as plumbers and electricians, pay to display their ads on digital platforms, such as websites, search engines, social media platforms, and applications.

With PPC marketing, home services companies bid on keywords and target specific audiences based on their demographics, interests, location, etc. 

While each click or view incurs costs, optimized PPC ad campaigns can generate highly qualified leads that generate significant revenue. For example, paying $3 for a click that converts into a $400 job is a huge bargain.

How Does PPC Work?

Although several PPC ad platforms and formats exist, they all work the same way:

• You define the audiences you want to target using filters such as demographics.

• You identify specific keywords on which you will bid. 

• You then determine your marketing budget and maximum bid—the most you’re prepared to pay for each click (i.e., the cost per click or CPC).

• Next, create your destination (landing page), ad copy, and visuals (images or videos).

• Now, you enter into an auction whenever someone searches your target keyword. 

• Finally, should you win the auction, you pay whenever potential customers click on your ad.

There are also similarities in the auction system each PPC ad platform uses in picking the ads to display.

Take the Google Ads auction process, for example.

Whenever internet users search, every advertiser that placed a bid on that search term (keyword) enters a lightning-fast auction.

Google’s ad algorithm decides which ads win the auction and the order they'll appear, using several factors:

• Maximum bid: The maximum amount you decide to pay for each click. Your final CPC will depend on your Ad Rank—the higher your ad ranks, the lower your final CPC.

• Projected impact of ad assets: Google looks at how ad assets such as your phone number and site links will affect your ad's performance.

• Contextual relationship between your ad and the search: This includes the searcher's location and device, the relevance of the search term to your ad, other ads and organic results on the SERP, and the search time.

• Ad quality score: A 10-point scale that indicates your ad’s quality compared to other ads. It depends on your landing page experience, the ad’s relevance to the search query, and the expected clickthrough rate (an estimated ratio of how many people will click on your ad versus the number of times it's shown).

• Ad Rank: A value Google assigns to your ad to determine if you’ll appear on the page and your ad’s position in relation to others.

The ad with the highest ad rank takes the first position, followed by the one with the second highest, and so on.

Why is PPC Important for Home Services Companies?

In this digital era, where most customers use search engines to pick local service businesses, appearing in search results is crucial. It’s even more important to remain on the first page of search results as most users will rather execute another search query than click on the second page.

To remain on the first page of search results, you can use search engine optimization, which takes time to yield results. Or you could use the better and easier option of buying the top spot with PPC marketing.

Other factors that make PPC ads so valuable to home services companies like yours include the following.

1. Precise targeting

With PPC ads, you can target precise audiences using their demographics, browsing history, interests, search behavior, etc. So, the right people see your ads, increasing your campaign’s return on investment (ROI).

You can also target prospects who interacted with your brand, visited your booking page, or requested a free quote or estimate. This allows you to encourage them to book an appointment.

2. Total control

You can easily set or change your CPC, campaign budget, and bidding strategy. This allows you to run A/B tests and tweak or discontinue ads that are not performing.

3. Measurable

PPC ads provide huge amounts of campaign performance data compared to traditional marketing channels such as television and radio.

You might not know how many people booked an appointment after watching a TV ad or viewing your billboard. But you can easily track people who clicked on your PPC ads and their actions on your website.

In addition to showing how your campaign is performing, you can use this data to enhance your SEO and content marketing campaigns. 

4. Quick results

You can start seeing results the moment you launch a PPC ad campaign. This is far quicker than SEO campaigns, which can take up to six months to start yielding results.

5. Cost-effectiveness

With PPC ads, you decide how much to spend on each campaign and when someone clicks on your ad. You can also ensure people with high buying intent view your ads.

This makes PPC ads a very cost-effective marketing strategy.

What Are The Different Types of PPC Ads for Home Services?

There are different types of PPC ads for you to choose from. They include:

1. Search ads

These text-based ads appear at the top and bottom of search engine results whenever potential customers search keywords relevant to your business.

Although resembling organic listings, they are labelled with a “Sponsored” tag.

Paid search ads are great for generating leads as they occupy a valuable position on SERPs and appear when someone needs your services.

2. Display ads

Display ads are text, image, and video ads that appear across online platforms, such as YouTube, Google Search, Bing, Google Mail, websites, and applications.

To get started with display ads, you must sign up for ad networks such as Meta Audience Network, Google Display Network (the most popular), and Yahoo Advertising.

Since they are not limited to search engines, display ads are an excellent tool for growing brand awareness and boosting online visibility.

3. Paid social ads

These are ads placed in the feed of social media platforms such as Facebook, TikTok, and Instagram.

With the help of targeting filters, paid social helps you ensure your target audience sees your ads, making it a great tool for generating leads.

Also, because 70.1 percent of the United States population uses different social media platforms daily, social ads can be used to grow brand awareness.

4. Local Services Ads

These ads appear on search engines whenever a user searches with a local-intent keyword such as “plumbers near me” or “HVAC Florida.” You only pay when a prospective customer calls or messages directly from the ad.

Local Services Ads usually appear at the top of local search result pages above organic listings. They contain three to four local home services businesses, their key details, and a map insert.

Local Services Ads attract high-quality leads who are already searching for your business. So, you can use them to get immediate job bookings.

5. Video ads

Video ads appear on platforms such as YouTube and online platforms affiliated with the Google Video Display Network.

PPC video ads easily capture people’s attention and connect with them emotionally. This makes them perfect for growing online visibility, reinforcing brand messaging, and promoting campaigns.

How Does Commercial PPC for Home Services Differ from Residential?

Commercial and residential home services companies use PPC campaigns to generate leads and achieve various marketing objectives. 

However, their approaches differ significantly. Both types of home services companies have varying target audiences, budget sizes, services, and PPC strategies.

PPC for commercial home services

Commercial home services companies serve large organizations, corporations, and businesses that pay top dollar and are usually locked into long-term maintenance contracts. 

This consistent revenue flow grows their PPC marketing budget, which lets them bid on more competitive keywords.

Also, since they offer round-the-clock support, commercial PPC ads appear all day to cater to late-night inquiries such as pipes bursting or an air conditioning unit failing.

Finally, commercial PPC campaigns usually have device-category adjustments that ensure they appear more on desktop devices. This adjustment is necessary, as most workers search from the workplace on desktop devices.

PPC for residential home services

Residential home services companies only serve homeowners within their local service area with whom they have close relationships. Therefore, they are not completely reliant on PPC campaigns.

Residential companies using PPC campaigns have small budgets, which allow them to target only local homeowners with highly specific, long-form, and low-priced keywords.

Residential home services companies also limit their ad spending by making time, date, and device adjustments to appear predominantly during the day and on mobile devices.

How Can You Start a PPC Campaign For a Home Services Business?

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

1. Pick a goal and PPC ad type

Goal-setting provides the road map your PPC campaign needs to succeed. It also makes tracking progress easy and ensures you create a campaign that will impact your company’s growth.

Your goal also determines the PPC ad type, platform, and format you use.

Before setting a goal, assess your business's gaps. Are you falling short of your revenue targets? Have leads dried up? Are you struggling with brand recognition?

Some PPC ad campaign goals include:

• Lead generation

• Customer acquisition

• Boosting website traffic

• Re-engaging old customers

After setting a goal, the next step is picking a PPC ad type. And your final decision rests on your goal.

For example, Local service ads are perfect for generating job bookings, while display ads are for growing brand awareness.

2. Audience and keyword research

Your PPC ad’s success rests on ensuring prospects see your ads. That can only happen if you use the right targeting criteria and the search terms (keywords) your target audience already uses to search.

Surveying your current customers is a good place to start audience research. Find their interests, demographics, and the relevant problems they’re trying to solve.

After finding your audience, the next step is keyword research. You can use SEO-specialized tools or Google’s free Keyword Planner to save costs.

With the Keyword Planner, you can either input a relevant keyword or wait for the system to generate other related keywords. Or you can analyze a competitor’s website to find the keywords it ranks for.

Log into Keyword Planner, click “Tools” and select “Discover new keywords.” Then, select “Start with website” and input the URL to discover the keywords your competitor is ranking for.

Finally, knowing a searcher’s search intent is crucial when seeking the right keywords.

What does the customer wish to find when searching with this keyword? Is it more information? Or do they want to hire a roofing company, for example?

For example, someone searching for “types of roofs” needs a blog post explaining the types of roofs, their benefits, and so on. But another person searching for “roofing company Alaska” wants to hire a nearby roofing company.

To confirm a keyword’s search intent, search for the term and see the pages that appear. Alternatively, you could use specialized SEO tools that automatically display every keyword's search intent.

3. Define your budget

Defining a budget ensures you spend reasonably on your PPC campaign without hurting your company’s finances. The amount depends on the keywords you picked, your company’s size, and the revenue targets you must achieve.

To calculate your budget, you can check the amount comparably sized home services companies in your area spend on PPC campaigns or use UpCity’s PPC budget formula.

The first step is finding the number of customers (NOC) you need to hit your revenue goal using this formula:

With the NOC in hand, you can now calculate your PPC budget as follows:

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

You can find the keyword’s CPC using Google’s Keyword Planner.

4. Design the landing page

The landing page is the last opportunity to nudge prospects to take the desired action. So, don’t take it lightly.

Use an appealing design and layout that delivers a positive experience to visitors, increasing your ad quality score. Break up long text blocks using headers and bullet points, add a call to action, and include an accessible navigation bar.

Optimize your landing page with your target keywords and tailor the landing page copy to match your ad copy and fulfill the keyword's search intent. This can help increase your quality score and conversions, as it ensures people find the solution that made them click the ad in the first place.

Add real customer testimonials and indicators of your expertise to quash customer objections, such as certifications and awards. Remember to add click-to-call buttons, as most customers may not have the time to fill out a form.

5. Create your ad

Taking time to create your ad’s copy or visual assets is crucial, as it determines if your ad appears and the position it occupies.

The ad copy should match your landing page and the keyword’s intent.

Use the recommended character count to give a detailed but concise description of your services. 

If you’re using the Google Ads platform, add site links, callouts, location extensions, reviews, and phone numbers to occupy more space and push competitors further down the viewport. This increases the odds of users clicking on your ad.

6. Consistently track and optimize your campaign

After launching your campaign, you should monitor its performance to maximize your ad spend.

You should eliminate some keywords, reallocate budgets, tweak the landing page, or adjust the bid.

Key performance indicators (KPI) or campaign performance metrics to track include:

• Click-through rate (CTR): The number of clicks your ad receives compared to the number of times it’s shown. A low CTR usually means there’s a problem with your ad copy.

• Impressions: This is the number of times your ad was shown. A very low impression may mean you have to adjust your maximum bid.

• Conversion rate: The percentage of landing page or website visitors who clicked your ad and booked a job. A low conversion rate could mean you must tweak your landing page's copy.

• Cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL): The price you're paying for every new customer (CPA) or lead (CPL). Your CPA or CPL must not exceed or match your revenue per job.

• Quality score: This measures your ad's quality and likelihood of appearing compared to others. Low-quality scores mean you have to improve your ads, keywords, or landing page.

Many marketing and SEO tools are available for tracking your campaign’s performance. Examples include Google Analytics and Google Ads.

However, they track only the leads generated and not the revenue (if any) that those leads result in. In a recent webinar, Johnny Wenzel, Senior Manager of Marketing Operations for ServiceTitan Marketing Pro – Ads, describes this challenge.

“Google tracks website clicks or phone calls as conversions, whether they correlate to revenue or not,” he says.

“For example, a customer searching for a specific competitor may receive an ad for your business instead. They click to call but end the call once they realize they called the wrong company. If it didn’t cost much to earn this phone call, Google tracks a low cost per conversion or cost per lead.”

Even worse, “Google will see this as a winning campaign and reallocate more of its resources to that campaign because it has a better cost per conversion.”

Recognizing this challenge, ServiceTitan created Marketing Pro – Ads software.

The tool integrates with your Google platforms—Google Ads and Google Analytics. It also has Dynamic Call Tracking, which helps you assign unique phone numbers to each ad. ServiceTitan uses this feature to automatically attribute the source of each website visitor or job booking.

These integrations facilitate revenue attribution and provide insights on job booking rates, ad spend, exact ROI, average job value, and number of leads so you can monitor your progress toward fulfilling set goals.

Recommended watch: See how to connect Google Ads and Google Analytics accounts to your ServiceTitan account.

ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro – Ads also facilitates PPC ad campaign optimization through Ads Optimizer software powered by Titan Intelligence, ServiceTitan's AI for trades like yours.

Using conversion data from Google and ServiceTitan, this tool trains Google Ads’ machine learning algorithm to display your ads to high-quality leads—people likely to book your services.

This increases lead quality and quantity and lowers your cost per lead.

For example, 12 ServiceTitan customers who used this tool reported the following results in just six months:

• Average ROI increase of 2.5X

• Average cost per lead decrease of $100

• Average order volume increase of 54 percent

Recommended watch: How to make your PPC ad campaigns 300 percent better with the Ads Optimizer.

What Are The Best Practices for Home Services PPC?

To increase your PPC ad campaign’s ROI, consider following these best practices:

1. Landing page optimization

Your ad is meant to entice people to click, getting them to your landing page. And the landing page’s job is to get you leads by phone or form-fill.

Make sure your phone number is immediately apparent on the page. Your landing page becomes a lame duck if someone wants your services but can’t figure out how to contact you. We recommend putting your number in a stand-out color at the top right-hand corner of the page, as we read from left to right.

If you allow people to convert through a call-to-action button (one that leads to a form-fill), we recommend locating the button above the fold, i.e., the visible part of a webpage when you first land on it.

2. Keywords “near me”

Now that you have a landing page that will convert, you need ads that get people to click through. Before your ads appear to consumers, you must use the keywords they’re searching.

Because home services are location-specific—you don’t want someone in New York to click your ad and waste your money if you service Central Florida—you want to use keywords that target specific locations, such as “plumbing Miami.”

But what about people who are in Miami and just search “Plumbers near me”? How can you get your ads in front of those consumers?

In your campaign settings, you can select locations in which you want your ads to appear. From there, you can add keywords like “Plumbers near me” and “Plumbers around Me” to your general Ad Groups that target people searching for “Plumbers.”

Consumers searching for one of these keywords can see your ads if they are searching from their smartphone or a browser that recognizes their location, such as Google Chrome.

3. Ad campaign tune-ups

For home services companies like electricians and HVAC specialists, fall and spring are prime times for maintenance calls.  

While promoting your maintenance plans and tune-up services year-round might seem like a good strategy, it can lead to wasted ad spend. Think about it—people are less likely to schedule air conditioning maintenance in the winter or heating system tune-ups in the summer.

So, always pause ads when you don’t want them to show on Google or Bing. When setting up the campaign, you can use the “Schedule” option to determine when you want your ads to show.

4. Set negative keywords

In addition to picking the right keywords, you want to set negative keywords so you don’t appear for queries that don’t generate revenue.

For example, someone searching for “plumbing services free” isn’t looking to pay for a job booking. So, appearing for such a query wastes your ad spend.

To find negative keywords, check your campaign’s search term report daily to see which search terms are triggering your ads. Once you find any with zero buying intent or one that’s not completely related to your services, add them to your negative keyword list. 

5. Run A/B tests

A/B tests are experiments where you randomly display two or more variants of an ad to users to determine which converts better.

To perform A/B tests, you'll want to identify a problem you want to solve and create a hypothesis. A great hypothesis could be "Ad copy length will increase conversion by 20 percent." 

Next, pick the ad element you want to test, create the ad variant, and then randomly serve it to different audiences. Following the example, you can create two ads with different word counts and test their conversion potential.

Other elements you can A/B test are:

• Images

• Target audiences

• Demographics

• Time and date adjustments

• Devices

• Landing page copy

• Bidding strategies

Important tip: Read this article to discover other marketing strategies to combine with a PPC campaign to generate more leads and revenue.

What Tools Are Used in PPC?

Picking the right marketing tools is crucial to running a successful PPC campaign. Some examples include:

• Keyword Planner: A free Google tool for discovering new keywords for your PPC campaigns, their monthly search volume (MSV), and the cost of targeting them. You can also use it to discover the keywords a specific website or landing page ranks for.

• Google Analytics: A free web analytics tool that tracks website traffic and monitors user behavior. It also displays your landing page's bounce and conversion rates.

• Google Tag Manager: A free tool for creating, installing, saving, and monitoring code snippets that help you track user behavior data without changing your website's code base.

• ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro — Ads: Tracks the exact revenue generated by each marketing campaign. It can also help you optimize your PPC ad campaign for revenue instead of just leads.

How Can You Hire a PPC Agency for Your Home Services Company?

PPC agencies can help increase your PPC campaign's performance. Drawing from their experience, they can help you pick the right bidding strategies and keywords to refine your targeting.

But finding the right PPC agency can be challenging. Here's a checklist you can use:

• Define your PPC goals: Determine your PPC goals so the PPC agency understands your needs and creates the right PPC strategy.

• Have a budget: Set aside a budget that covers your ad spend and agency charges. This makes it easier to identify the right agency without breaking the bank.

• Find PPC agencies: Contact industry partners or industry bodies for recommendations. For every agency you discover, check the services they provide, their area of expertise, the metrics they use to measure success, and the fees they charge.

• Create a shortlist: Check client reviews and contact the agencies’ former customers to create a shortlist.

• Interview potential PPC partners: Once you have a shortlist, invite the agencies for an interview to understand how they would approach your campaign. Ask them about the experts working on your project, their certifications, and how you will communicate with them.

• Hire the right PPC agency: Pick the agency that fits your budget and PPC goals.

ServiceTitan also offers a PPC management package tailored to home services.

Our talented VitalStorm PPC team can help manage your PPC campaign and implement the above strategies to get you more leads. Call VitalStorm today at 1-877-311-5695 to reap the benefits of these strategies and more.

Over to you

PPC advertising is an excellent way to generate qualified leads, increase revenue, and generate website traffic.

Nevertheless, keep in mind that PPC ads are not a silver bullet. You should still combine them with other great home services lead generation strategies, such as local SEO, referral, and social media marketing.

Also, use marketing tools such as ServiceTitan’s Home Services Marketing software to track and manage your PPC ad campaigns.

ServiceTitan is a comprehensive software solution built to help service companies manage their operations, automate processes, and boost revenue. Thousands of HVAC, electrical, plumbing, garage door, roofing, and chimney sweep contractors have used it to increase their revenue by an average of 25 percent in just one year.