One of the first things we hear from home service business owners is that search ads don't work for them. For whatever reason their business is different and it excludes them from what works for millions of business owners – targeting search terms and AI prompts for the services they sell.
To this we say, a disciplined approach to search advertising with consistency of budget and ongoing optimization will reap rewards.
What requires consistency in a Google Search Account?
Once your tracking is setup properly, you need to be consistent with the platform – more than anything this means time and budget. Budget can be small and grow over time, but it has to be realistic. If a lead for your service costs $100, if you're only running $300 a month budget, you'll get conversions it will just take about 10 days. You'll get more conversions and learnings faster with a larger budget.
In many cases we've seen accounts start at ~$110 a lead, and move down into the $45 range for calls and form fills because the owner of the business trusted the process.
In the example below, we were able to reduce the cost of what were very expensive leads ($287) for this home service business down to $74 leads – almost a factor of four. Plus we implemented a new ad group with different angle that debuted at much less cost, and also saw nearly 50% cost reduction.
The reason for this is Google gets smarter about which users convert on your website and how.
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What else goes into making Google Search ads work?
Once we have established time and budget consistency, we layer in optimizations around keywords, products and service presentation, asset build out, and ad testing. It's not a secret sauce, it's taking a disciplined approach.
Without getting too technical, we look for keywords that are under performing and decided if they have the correct business intent and need a different ad approach, or they are not converting because the end user expects something different.
We work through how your products and services are presented to the consumer – are we seeing features, benefits, angles, trust signals, or reactive / emergency purchases performing the best.
Building out the campaign assets and regularly assessing their value is also important. These are all the little call outs, buttons, and extra links that come with search ads today.
We split test your ads and try different approaches in the copy, location relevance, and conversion alignment. Everything gets tagged and tracked.
See how we'd optimize your search ads →
What about AI and how Google is changing what search looks like?
Yes, search is changing with AI overviews, AI Mode, and Gemini. Google has released AI Max within the search product which, when enabled, brings your business listing into these areas where users are browsing. Depending on the reactivity of you home service business – i.e. plumbing leak vs. buying a deck – your business may benefit differently from having this enabled.
How does crftsmn help home service businesses?
crftsmn helps home services businesses with their Google Search Ads. If your business has never tried Google Search ads, has tried to run ads yourself, or have worked with another partner but feel that there is opportunity that is being missed, we're here to bring a meticulous and consistent process to your advertising.
Reach out to our team today for a free account review or consultation – call 717.781.9802 or contact us online.