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Keyword Strategies for Plumbing
Hi, I currently run search ads for a plumbing company. We use to use a marketing team but we were getting burned pretty badly. ($80 a click and one booked customer in every three.) Recently we’ve gotten our conversion rate to around 40% and we’re spending $20-35 per click, using manual CPC.
My question however is more to do with keyword strategy. Recently I’ve been playing wack-a-mole adding competitor companies to the negative keywords as people click on our ads for example.
We got one customer booked from someone searching “remedies for a clog drain” on a drain clog ad group.
On the other hand for a water heater ad group I am getting burned on people calling and asking for cost of a water heater, often searching “water heater cost” or “home depot water heater price.”
Is there anywhere I can learn more about online strategies for Google search ad keywords related to the service industry? I see YouTube videos where people have 1000+ negative keywords and I have probably roughly 10. I am not sure if I should make a keyword negative like “home remedies” or embrace it since I’ve gotten lucky so far, or if I should make “cost” a negative keyword.
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1 Reply
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Sounds like you have really broad keywords for your campaigns, also negative keywords match types don’t work like regular keyword match types. You have to actively manage your search terms and trim down those bad traffic/low intent searches. It’s going to be a lot of work in the beginning but once you have every possible combination or misspelled term you don’t like on a list traffic tends to improve after.
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We have worked with a couple of local service companies in the past. Here’s things we did that worked for us:
**Manual CPC:** it seems like you are already doing this. This works, but you really need to hone in on your negative keywords.
**negative keywords:** Sit down for 30 minutes and come up with everything obvious you don’t want to show for such as “jobs”, “cost”, “price”,… add these to your campaign.
**Portfolio bid strategy:** If you are converting 1 out of every 3 clicks, I’m wondering why you are not running smart bidding with a bid cap. You can set a tCPA based on your historical data and set a tCPA.
**business model expansion:** This has little to do with PPC but heard this on a podcast from a plumbing company recently. They basically got like 200 people or smth to pay them $50 per month for “a plumber on retainer”, making sure they would get serviced right away if they ever needed help. Very nice extra 10k per month for them.
Hope any of this is helpful!
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Ditch regular search ads for a bit, and test out LSA – if you can stomach the cost-per-lead minimums, Google prioritizes this format far more nowadays for local searches. Plumbing might be something like $45 CPA.
Source: I work with a Baskin Robbins variety of clients and am US-based. LSA is great for blue-collar businesses given the locality and focus on “near me” searches
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You are on the right path for sure. But you mindset should be that of a DIY’r. Negative keywords using phrase match for
“how”
“when”
“should”
“what”
“depot”
“lowes”
“amazon”
etcThese will clean your profile ALOT etremley quickly. These are the first things I add to home services, as well as price keywords, they are too far up the funnel.
“cost”
“quote”
“price”
etcThere is obviously more, but this is a bite size step that will help get you on the right track.
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Like some of the other people have said pay for a ppc expert to set you up or put them on a monthly retainer. Easiest and safest option imho and probably the most cost effective as well.
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Take a look at your keyword history and what actual keywords you paid for. Go through that list, noting every keyword you don’t want to target. You’ll be surprised how quick your negative keyword list fills up.
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What’s your match type? sounds you like you could be in using broad. Stick to Phrase and Exact for now if you are.
As mentioned below such a competetive niche like plumbing you are better off hiring a specialist freelancer to do this work for you as they will know best practises and the best way to drive results over time.
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You can find ideas for negative keywords from various places:
Google’s keyword planner
Coming up with a list of obviously irrelevant terms
Looking at your existing search termsSometimes ‘cost’ type traffic can convert, but you’d usually want to have this in its own campaign so you can keep more control, bid lower, shows ads and landing pages that make address the cost. I don’t see much use in sending cost type traffic to your normal landing pages which don’t mention cost at all and just ask people to call for a free quote.
If you can get a cost / quote calculator on the site then even better.
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