How Much Should Plumbers Spend on Google Ads?

There are 3.5 billion Google searches per day.

This translates to millions of searches in your market. If you are not utilizing Google Ads in your marketing plan, you are missing out on valuable leads for your plumbing business. Your biggest competitors are bidding on plumbing keywords and gaining market share every day. With that said, many plumbers want to invest in search engine marketing but do not know where to start. This begs the question: How much should plumbers spend on Google Ads?

Google Ads For Plumbers’ Budget  

When deciding your Google Ads budget, you need to understand the value of return on investment. Spending money on pay-per-click is a marketing investment that can lead to high-profit margins. However, if you view paid search as another marketing expense, it is difficult to create fiscal value through your campaigns. Google Ads should be a primary marketing channel for plumbers.

When developing your budget, calculate your expected gross profit. This will allow you to spend your marketing investment with confidence. ROI is vital to any successful Google Ads campaign. If you do not understand your ROI and cannot spend with confidence, you will likely pause your campaign before you see any value.

Once you understand the return on investment, you need to commit to a minimum of three months to Google Ads. Paid search & display campaigns need time for Google’s artificial intelligence to properly learn which keyword, ad & landing page are likely to result in phone calls, form fills and chat prompts. Furthermore, algorithms are reliant on large data sets for accuracy. Lastly, if you run a campaign for 6 weeks, you will likely not have enough data for the algorithm to hit your cost per lead goals.

Once you calculate your ROI and can commit to three months of spend, it is time to decide on a budget. Your budget needed will vary from region to region. Google Ads sells search inventory at the auction level. Therefore, the more competitive your market, the more expensive a click will cost. A great way to measure costs quickly is to utilize Google’s free keyword research tool. Navigate to the tools section in your Google Ads dashboard and select the keyword planner. 

From here, you can set your targeted geo, keywords, and estimated budget. Once your specifications are set, Google will output your projected results per month. If you see zero clicks, your budget or CPC bid is too low to compete. If your funds are limited, the lowest budget Plumb Solutions recommends spending on Google is $1,000 a month. Anything lower than $500 a month may yield too little conversions to be worth the expenditure. If budget is a major concern, consider spending time increasing the quality of your ad structure.

Cost and Quality are equal parts in Google’s bidding algorithm. When Google decides what ad to serve a user, they view quality as just as important as the cost. Therefore, if you have a better-quality ad, you have a high chance of winning bids at a lower cost. The main aspects of your quality score are ad copy, extensions, landing page, website experience and bid.

The best way to enhance bid quality is to focus on the relevancy of your ads to your target users. Therefore, align keywords with messaging. Specifically, if someone searched for, “Best Plumbing Company,” ensure your text ads have the exact messaging the user has searched.

Additionally, add responsive search ads, expanded text ads, and ad extensions to increase your quality score and reduce cost.

All in all, there are a lot of factors that come with calculating your Google Ads budget. If you take the time to calculate your monthly costs accurately, you will likely see great results on the Google Ads platform.

Scalability & Success

Success on Google Ads comes down to profitability, not volume. Often, amateur Google advertisers will become obsessive over impressions and clicks – not with increasing leads month over month via trackable actions users can take on your plumbing website (phone call, form fill, chat prompts. Plumb Solutions manually codes the actions users take on your website to Google Ads, so that every dollar you spend goes towards something you can track and value. From call tracking to live real-time dashboards Plumb Solutions has your plumbing company covered.

Benefits of Google Ads

Google Ads is one of the top-rated ad platforms because of the long-term value search ads provide to small businesses. Specifically, you are only charged if someone clicks on your ad. Therefore, your plumbing company can get free brand visibility at the top of Google without getting clicked. Also, with a properly configured Google Display remarketing campaign, you can even show your ads to users who’ve been to your website or clicked your ads – and only pay when they click your display ad!

Additionally, having a prominent Google brand instantly increases your local credibility. The biggest brands in the world advertise on Google. Being among national competitors will generate local authority. This instant brand recognition will bring customers into your sales funnel early. Another major benefit of Google Ads is the business insights you can obtain. When you run a Google Ads campaign for a few weeks, you get unique insights into your consumers and competitors bidding on the same plumbing keywords & search terms .

First, you can dive into the reporting tab to find out what users are specifically searching for. This can give you a better idea of what services and prices your consumers expect. You can use this information to adjust marketing efforts outside of Google Ads. Specifically, updated billboards, print marketing, and your website. Without using Google Ads, you have no way to track this type of consumer behavior. 

In addition to consumer behavior, you can learn about consumer demographics. Specifically, you can track consumer age, gender, website activity, and location. Often, plumbers will run a granular geographic report on their first month. In this report, you can see the top-performing zip codes, neighborhoods, and cities. This information is extremely valuable to any plumbing business owner that wants cross-channel marketing insights. All in all, the Google Ad network is more than just pay-per-click ads. You can drive new customers to your website, build local brand recognition, and learn about consumers with actionable data. When deciding how much to spend on Google Ads, consider all the benefits of search ads on your business. 

Working With Plumb Solutions

Plumbing owners have a lot on their plate and should not have to worry about running an efficient Google Ads account. Business owners have to manage customer service, human resources, finances and marketing. More specifically, marketing is a technically challenging skill set. Google Ads is a complex ad inventory system that can take years to master. For that reason alone, it is important to hire a marketing agency that excels in Google Ads. By outsourcing your digital marketing efforts to experts, you will save time and money.

While Google can benefit your plumbing company, they are out to make as much money as possible. If you do not know how to maximize your success on the Google Ads network, you can lose thousands of dollars that would have otherwise resulted in valuable business for your plumbing company. It is a powerful tool that should not be used lightly. Plumbing-focused ad agencies, like Plumb Solutions, know how to spend ad money efficiently. When you can reduce cost per lead and increase conversion rate, your return on investment increases exponentially.

Final Thoughts

Google Ads is a complex ad network with a ranging spectrum of products. However, the complexity of Google should not deter you from using the platform. Thousands of consumers are looking for quality plumbing companies every day. Thankfully, at Plumb Solutions, we are experts at Google search and remarketing. We drive real business growth to plumbers every day.