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Tradesman in my city DO NOT use Google ads.
I've been researching the PPC market for tradesmen in my city (with a population of around 1 million), and I've noticed that very few of them are using Google Ads. For instance, when searching for terms like "plumber near me" or "boiler service," only one ad appears. According to Google Keyword Planner, these queries receive an average of 100-1,000 monthly searches, with a top-of-page bid of just $0.60.
However, many tradesmen do have a Google My Business listing.
Could this be a market gap?
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1 Reply
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Seems low. Try searching using an incognito browser. Not sure that will make much of a difference though. But a clean browser should show more advertisers if they are targeting that area. Try using zip codes. Top of page < $1 would be surprising these days for those, normally competitive, terms.
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Search using valentin.app
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You’re probably not wrong. I work with a lot of small local service businesses US based and Google ads isn’t much of a demand for them unless they’re just starting out. Most of them don’t need high amounts of traffic or advertising once they’re established. They’re usually not looking to expand beyond their capabilities so they just need enough new clients to stay busy. We’ve found much more cost effective ways to get them that kind of business than Google ads.
For the ones that rely more on Google for leads, SEO can be more important because the ad spots get dominated but the large national companies so getting them higher on the regular and local search portion for the people that want to skip the big companies works well.
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Are they using Google LSAs?
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Set up a test campaign, send a couple leads to some of those.
After a week, pick up the phone:
“Hey, about those leads you got, that was me. Interested in talking?” -
In my experience it’s unbelievably expensive and less effective than word of mouth for contractors unless it’s commercial. Similar to law, they have to be fully involved and have capacity in the first place. Most contractors around where I live are multiple weeks out for scheduling jobs.
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Their problem is not enough employees and too many customers. Thats why they aren’t buying ads
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Pro-tip : Start your own firm by poaching one of their best guys.
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Marketplaces cover those kind of searches. Homeadvisor, bark, their counterparts in other countries. If a tradie lives in an area, their digital marketing freelancers would naturally lean harder I to Google Business. Google Ads still has its place. My campaign for Eastern Sydney painters (Bondi etc) has 50 other trades business in auction insights, all running probably the same keywords as me. Lucrative niche that one. $5000 for small jobs
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It’s probably the totally absurd fees from an evil company that is well known to rip off their customers. What’s hard to understand about why you wouldn’t give a company like that your money? They’ve completely tricked you into thinking that their ad invetory is an ATM machine and it’s definately only an ATM machine for them… For everybody else it’s a giant rip off… Most people realistically need a person who has experience managing a PPC account just to avoid Google’s maze of evil tricks and rip offs only to bring the cost level down to reality and avoid burning huge amounts of money by buying complete garbage, which they try to convince you to do…
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If the CPC is really low and no competition, you could definitely do money with lead gen / affiliate type business, quite easily actually. DM if you want to discuss.
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Tradesmen keywords are normally expensive even if competition is low. Locksmiths for example can easily pay over £10 a click in the UK in my experience. I also think that tradesmen build up alot of their business by word of mouth and if they’re good at the job, they will always be in demand and probably don’t need much advertising
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I bet all the big dogs are running LSAs though. That should always be priority number 1 if they’re available before search ads.
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Nice if you want to build something I could scale it in EU this is an active problem
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Run competitor ads directly calling out the companies while running LSA’s.
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