The thing that decides whether a contractor’s paid search works is rarely the ads. It is whether the account is built so budget cannot drift from the work you want to the work you happen to get cheaply, and so it cannot reach searches you would never take a call from.
Both of those are structural. You cannot write your way out of an account that is pointed in the wrong direction.
Budget is set per campaign, so campaigns decide the split
In Google Ads the daily budget lives on the campaign, not on the keyword. Everything inside one campaign competes for the same pot.
Put drain clearing, water heaters and full repipes in a single campaign and the cheap, high-volume search wins. Drain clearing gets searched constantly and the clicks are inexpensive, so it will quietly absorb the month. The repipe: the job that pays for the year, gets whatever is left, which is usually nothing.
If you want a specific amount of money spent on a specific kind of work, that work needs its own campaign. That is the whole reason the structure exists.
Separate emergency work from planned work
These are different visits with different economics, and scheduling is also set at campaign level, which gives you a second reason to split them.
- Emergency. Should run only in the hours somebody actually answers. A call at two in the morning that goes to voicemail was still paid for.
- Planned replacement. Can run all week. The buyer is researching, comparing and often waiting for a partner to agree, so the click and the job are weeks apart.
- Maintenance and plans. Cheap searches, low intent, long payback. Worth running, worth capping.
Keep your own name in its own campaign
People searching your business name are already yours. Whether to bid on them at all depends on whether somebody else is showing up on that search.
The reason to isolate brand terms either way is simpler: they convert cheaply and in volume, and mixing them into a generic campaign flatters everything around them. A generic campaign that is losing money will look acceptable if your own name is propping up its average.
Ad groups small enough that the ad can tell the truth
Group keywords so that every search in the group can honestly share one headline. If a group holds “water heater repair” and “tankless water heater installation”, no single ad matches both, and the visitor performs their one-second check and fails you. The same continuity that matters on the page matters here, and the destination should follow, each group pointing at the page that says back what the ad promised.
The searches you are paying for and would never want
Broad and phrase matching will find you traffic. A good deal of it belongs to people who were never going to hire anyone.
- People looking for work. “Plumber jobs”, “HVAC salary”, “apprenticeship”, “hiring”. These are common and they cost the same as a real search.
- People doing it themselves. “How to”, “DIY”, “replace it yourself”, “diagram”, “video”, “parts”, “manual”, “error code”. Somebody hunting a part number is not booking a visit.
- Other contractors. Competitors check what you are running, and so do people studying for tickets. You pay for every one of those clicks.
- Lead resellers and directories. They bid on the same terms you do, and their researchers click through. You will see them in the report if you look.
- Work you do not do. Brands you will not service, commercial jobs if you are residential, and towns just outside the distance you will actually drive.
Each of these is a negative keyword, and each one you add makes the same budget reach more of the people who can hire you.
Read the search terms report, and know it is incomplete
The search terms report shows what people actually typed, as opposed to what you bid on, and it is the single most useful screen in the account.
It is also censored. Google withholds terms it considers too rare to report without identifying somebody, so a portion of your spend sits in a row you cannot see. That is a reason to add negatives in advance rather than only reacting to what appears; you are never seeing the full list.
Negative lists belong at account level
A negative added inside one campaign protects that campaign and nothing else. Build the list once in the shared library and apply it across the account, then keep one list per problem: a jobs list, a DIY list, a not-our-services list. When you win a new service or drop one, you edit one list rather than eleven campaigns.
The automated campaign types hide the thing you need
Smart campaigns and Performance Max are sold on requiring less work, and they do require less work. They also give you categories and themes rather than the search terms themselves.
That is the actual trade. If you cannot see which searches took the money, structure has nothing to act on and negatives have nothing to aim at. For a contractor with a modest budget and a short list of profitable jobs, visibility is usually worth more than automation.
Frequently asked questions
Should I run one campaign or several?
Several, split by the kind of work. Budget is controlled at campaign level, so a single campaign lets your cheapest, most-searched service spend the money meant for your most profitable one.
Should I bid on my own business name?
Search your name and see who else is there. If a competitor or a lead reseller is showing above you, bidding is usually worth it. Either way, keep those terms in a separate campaign so they do not flatter the rest of the account.
Where do I find the searches I am paying for?
The search terms report in Google Ads, sorted by cost. Read down until you hit the first search you would never want a call from. That one is your first negative keyword.
How many negative keywords should I have?
There is no target. Most contractor accounts that have never been pruned have several hundred worth adding, and a well-kept one grows a little every month as new nonsense appears in the report.
Where to start
Open the search terms report for the last ninety days and sort it by cost, highest first. Read the top thirty rows out loud. Every one you would not want the phone to ring for is money you can redirect this afternoon, and it will tell you more about your account than any bid adjustment. Then check the numbers you are judging it by.
Real Time Marketing has worked with home service contractors since 2016: plumbing, HVAC, roofing, electrical and other trades, nationwide, from our office in Bradenton, Florida. Agreements are month-to-month. See our pay-per-click management or book a strategy call.
