If you’re an owner of a construction company or remodeling business, this guide is tailor-made for you. Marketing managers, business developers, and anyone involved in driving growth for construction companies will find invaluable insights here.
Why Google Ads Are Essential for Your Construction Business
Google Ads are a game-changer for construction businesses.
In simple terms, Google Ads is Google’s Search ad service that allows you to target specific demographics and locations, ensuring your ads reach homeowners who are actively looking for construction services.
This precision targeting of this tool makes it invaluable in a market where competition is fierce and every lead counts. You can craft compelling ad copy that speaks directly to your potential customers’ search queries, whether they’re looking for general contractors or specialized services like kitchen remodeling or roof installations.
As a result, most leading construction companies leverage Google ads. It just works—when done right.
Yep! The key factor is, “when done right.”
This is because an effective Google ads campaign doesn’t just get clicks, it gets the right clicks. The trick is understanding what goes under the hood of a successful ad campaign, from the right way to set it up to the right messaging, targeting, budgeting, and everything else.
That’s what this guide is all about, and we’ll start from the beginning—creating a Google Ads account.
How to Create a Google Ads Account
Do this in three steps:
Step #1: Visit the Google Ads website and click ‘Start Now’ to initiate your account creation.
You’ll be prompted to enter essential details about your business, such as your business name, website, and phone number. This information is crucial as it sets the foundation for your Google Ads account and ensures your ads are linked to the correct business profile.
Next;
Step #2: Set up billing by providing your credit card details and other relevant billing information. This step is necessary to activate your account.
Once your Google Ads account is set up, you’re ready to start creating campaigns. Let’s jump right into that.
Setting Up Your First Campaign
Start by choosing the right objective for your campaign, such as generating leads, which is often the most effective for construction businesses.
This objective will guide your ad spend and overall campaign direction. The campaign objective directly influences your ad spend, so choose wisely to ensure a successful Google Ads campaign.
If you want people to contact your business for remodeling inquiries or download a content offering (ebook, PDF, etc.) that explains your construction services in detail, helping them make better buying decisions, “Leads” is the one you will want to choose.
When setting up your campaign, it’s advisable to deselect the ‘Display Network’ and focus solely on search traffic. This approach ensures your ads appear in Google search results when potential customers search for relevant services.
Next, configure your budget, audience, and ad format to align with your campaign objectives. A well-structured campaign with clear objectives will lead to better campaign performance and a higher return on investment.
Finally, the structure of your Google Ads should include campaigns and ad groups to organize your ads and keywords around specific themes. This organization helps in crafting compelling ad copy that resonates with your target audience.
One more thing you need to know before launching your ad—keywords! Or better yet, “effective keywords.”
Conducting Effective Keyword Research
Keyword research forms the foundation of a successful Google Ads campaign. It is essential for achieving effective results. You use keywords to create ad groups and ad copies to tell Google Search the keywords you want your ads to rank for when people include them in their search.
Here are some guides for conducting effective keyword research:
- Start simple with your keywords and build from there.
- Focus on your basic service areas like kitchen remodeling, bathroom remodeling, home additions, and custom home building.
- Set these as “Broad Match” so Google can serve your ads for related keywords. This approach ensures that your ads reach a broader, yet still relevant, audience.
Ad Groups
Ad groups help organize your ads and keywords around specific themes, improving ad relevance and targeting efficiency. Each ad group can have multiple ads, but you can start with one dynamic ad.
Write multiple headlines and body copy, and let Google choose the highest-performing ones. This dynamic approach allows for continuous optimization based on real-time performance data and effective Google ads strategies.
Negative Keywords
Including negative keywords is crucial to avoid wasted ad spend. Identify terms that are unlikely to convert and add them as negative exact match or phrase match keywords. This proactive step ensures your ads are shown to the most relevant audience, improving your campaign’s overall effectiveness.
Overall, keyword research is not a one-time task but an ongoing process that requires regular refinement to achieve the best results.
Optimizing Your Google Ads Campaigns
So you’ve created a campaign; now what next? Optimization!
Optimization is where good campaigns go from good to “gold.” Effective Google Ads campaigns for construction businesses require clear objectives that guide your ad strategy.
To start optimizing your created campaign, start by setting up a spreadsheet to track your KPIs, such as impressions, clicks, CTR, conversions, conversion rate, total cost, CPC, and any updates you made.
Now, as your campaign continues to run, monitor each ad group and ad copy performance and record the metrics mentioned above in your spreadsheet. Identify what’s working and what areas you need to improve copy or keyword or target an entirely new objective or drop campaign. This is optimization.
The long-term success of any ad campaign is dependent on continuous optimization. So regularly review and adjust your ad copy, keywords, and targeting to ensure your ads remain relevant and effective.
Utilize ad extensions to enhance your ads and improve click-through rates. Crafting compelling ad copy that speaks directly to your audience’s needs will help drive conversions.
Now, we move one thing many marketers fail to set up when running Google ads—conversion tracking.
How to set up conversion tracking
Conversion tracking is the secret sauce to a successful Google Ads campaign, but it can be a challenging aspect of the setup process. It’s no wonder why it can be overlooked.
Conversion tracking is what allows you to measure the actions people take after interacting with your ads, such as purchases, sign-ups, or downloads, helping you understand the value your campaigns generate.
Setting it up properly allows you to optimize your ads for conversions, which means the Google Ads algorithm will try to serve your ads to people who are most likely to fill out your contact form or take some other action you’ve deemed to be important. It’s a much more effective goal than merely optimizing for clicks.
Step #1: Install Google Analytics on your site, which you might already have in place. Here’s a guide to do just that.
Step #2: Connect Google Analytics to your Google Ads account. This connection is vital as it allows you to track key events and conversions on your website.
Step #3: To measure conversions, create custom events in Google Analytics using the page visit approach. Each conversion action, such as a contact form submission or a download, should redirect to a thank-you page. Visits to this thank-you page will count as conversions in Google Analytics.
After setting this up, give it some time for key events to register, preferably 24 hours. Then, go to Google Ads and create a new conversion action via “Import”, choosing Google Analytics as the source.
Set an estimated value for each conversion and make all conversions “account” level goals so they count across all your ad campaigns.
Search Terms Report: What It Is, How To Use It
Google Ads’ Search Terms report is a goldmine for optimizing your campaigns. It displays the actual search queries that triggered your ads, allowing you to understand how users are searching and refine your keyword strategy for better performance.
Each month, review this report to see what keywords Google actually showed your ad for on search engine results pages.
Sort the report by impressions and look at the top 200 search terms. This analysis will help you identify which keywords you’re bidding on and can inform necessary adjustments.
Put a checkmark next to each search term that isn’t relevant to your business. When you’ve gone through all 200, click ‘Add as negative keywords’ and apply.
This proactive approach helps to minimize wasted ad spend by preventing your ads from appearing in irrelevant searches. Over time, you’ll weed out more and more irrelevant search terms, continuously improving your campaign’s performance.
Regularly reviewing and updating your negative keywords ensures that your ads reach the most relevant audience while minimizing wasted clicks. This ongoing refinement process is essential for maintaining the effectiveness of your search campaigns, lowering cost per acquisition, and achieving the best possible results.
How to View Search Terms Report
To view your search terms report, follow these steps:
- Sign in to your Google Ads account.
- Click “Campaigns” > “Insights and reports” > and then “Search terms”.
On the report, you’ll find data on the search terms that have been used by a significant number of people and have triggered impressions and clicks.
Budgeting & Bidding Strategies
Effective budgeting and bidding strategies are vital for successful Google Ads campaigns. I recommend starting with at least $3,000 per month as your total ad budget.
This amount gives you enough flexibility to test different strategies and optimize your campaigns without running out of funds too quickly. If you’re running multiple campaigns, look for the ones that are getting the best results and consider shifting some of your budget to those high-performing campaigns.
Adjusting bids based on performance data is another critical strategy. Monitor which keywords and ads are driving the most conversions and adjust your bids accordingly. This approach ensures that your ad spend is directed towards the most effective campaigns, maximizing your return on investment.
Other Insights
Landing pages
Your landing pages play a crucial role in converting clicks into clients. It’s better not to use your homepage as a landing page.
Instead, create dedicated landing pages for each of your major service offerings. Remove the main navigation to keep the user focused on converting rather than getting distracted by other parts of your site.
Optimize your landing pages with clear calls-to-action, testimonials, project photos, and trust signals such as certifications and awards. These elements help reduce bounce rates and drive conversions. Ensure your landing pages are mobile-optimized to provide a seamless experience for users on all devices.
An optimized landing page is key to turning your ad clicks into actual business. Optimized landing pages are essential for maximizing conversions.
CRM Integration
Integrating Google Ads with your CRM system is a game-changer for tracking ad performance. Aligning Google Ads data with customer relationship management systems allows you to track the full journey from click to closed project, enabling campaign refinement based on actual sales cycles. This integration provides a holistic view of your ad performance and helps you make data-driven decisions.
Tools like HubSpot offer excellent Google Ads integration, showing you the number of deals generated from your campaigns, the total revenue, and the ROI. With such tools, you can also target ads to certain lists of people, although Google requires these lists to be large.
CRM integration ensures you’re not just generating leads but also converting them into real business.
Hiring a Professional Google Ads Manager
Sometimes, the best way to ensure a successful Google Ads campaign is to hire a professional. Engaging a construction marketing agency adept at Google Ads can lead to more effective campaigns by leveraging their knowledge of best practices and platform nuances. They can streamline the ad management process, ensuring campaigns are fine-tuned for optimal performance while saving time for contractors.
At Electromagnetic Web, we’re experts at managing PPC ads for construction and remodeling brands. We deploy the industry’s best tactics to craft, target, and analyze campaign data to provide insights that drive conversion and better ROI.
With our technical expertise, budget stewardship, and easy communication with your team, we can make a significant difference in your campaign performance.