A Construction, Home Services and Contractors’ Comprehensive Guide to Paid Advertising Solutions

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Are you currently running a small business in construction, home services, or a contractor? As a local service provider, you can’t solely depend on word of mouth anymore. Instead, high-performing local businesses often execute a healthy combination of account management, operations, customer service, and everything about sales and marketing.

Are you sure you are not a superhero? Small business owners are doing it all. Even with the help of an in-house advisor or an outsourced marketing team, it is still your responsibility to understand what is going on and why, particularly when it comes to your paid advertising. You see, a strategy such as paid advertising can be overwhelming, challenging, and confusing to deal with—especially if it is not your area of expertise. This comprehensive guide to paid advertising includes the fundamentals you need to know to make sure you are not wasting your money or time.

Should You Consider Paid Ads?

On the surface, it might seem you can always opt out of paid ads totally. After all, you can get massive reach with SEO and organic content marketing. With a professional help, SEO works for itself, and all your efforts aren’t going to empty your pockets. But before you start your advertising journey, keep in mind that your SEO should be optimized first so that your advertising spend is invested in advertising the best presentation of your company.

However, paid ads have many things to provide, and many marketers are on board already. In fact, eighty percent of marketers are making room in their budgets for different paid advertisements. You will find many reasons for that.

For starters, paid ads are excellent for brand awareness, and the traffic they bring your way is more likely to result in conversions than those from organic marketing. Also, there is the fact while SEO and content marketing have massive potential, it is also massively competitive. The internet is loaded with businesses of all sizes that are aiming to rank for the same keywords. You will always need domain authority—a reality that favors big companies who have had a long time to build their online presence.

When we talk about ads, it is never a one-or-the-other sort of thing. Your strategy must involve both paid and organic marketing, along with complementary campaigns that help you discover your audience online.

The chance of people finding and learning about your business through Google is about 100% determined by your eagerness to pay for advertising. Thus, will it work for you to make paid ads as part of your home services marketing strategy?
Yes, of course! But only if you go about it the correct way.

The Best Online Advertising Platform: Google

Most people looking for your services will look for you online. Most of those won’t even bother looking past the first page of Google’s SERP (search engine results page). So, how do you get a spot on the first page of the SERP? There’s one simple answer: you buy Google Ads.

When done properly, Google Ads will zip your website to the top of the SERP in no time. These are PPC (pay-per-click) ads where you pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Here’s how to properly do it:

A few advertisers select the wrong online context or incorrect geographical location. For construction businesses and contractors, pick to display your ads on the Search Network and choose your location properly.

Keywords are the phrases and words people type into the Google search bar. Many contractors choose the wrong keywords. Make sure you do your research and lookout for the best keywords based on your niche.

Often, changing one small word in an ad will make it many times more enticing to your audience. However, you won’t realize which words get you the most results until you test a dozens of them.

There is no point in paying to get leads through Google if your home services website is not designed to convert those leads. Similarly, you are not leveraging Google Ads to its fullest ROI potential if your website does not have an easy way to capture leads.

This is very important. The only way to understand what is working and what is not is to dig into the data. PPC hosts like social media platforms and Google make it simple to track your key metrics. Make sure you keep a close eye on the performance. Make necessary changes right here and there to ensure your budget is being spent wisely. If you must pull ads, that is totally fine. The last thing you like to be doing is throwing more money at a strategy that is not providing you anything in return. Further, you are not going to hit a home run on your first try. So, feel free to give your Google Ads some time to perform before making any substantial changes.

How Much is the Ideal Budget for Google Ads?

It depends. There are some industries where businesses can start testing their Google Ads for as little as $100. However, that is not the case for construction and home services. Given the high amount of competition, common keywords such as “remodeling” or “plumbing” may cost more than $50 every click. That indicates that $100 in the industry does not go that far. That only means your $300 or $500 won’t do it. Are you starting with PPC? Then you must set your first month’s budget somewhat between $1,500 and $2,000 or at least $50 to $65 every day. Of course, that’s a huge amount of investment, but that’s the only way to get enough baseline tests of the keywords and a great way to produce traffic to track your conversions. As you learn and experiment more about which ads produce results, you can change your budget from there. Keep in mind that most home service businesses can lower their PPC budgets because their organic traffic raises through online referrals and SEO efforts.

How Much Can You Expect as a Result?

Take note that the potential average return for contractor advertising is extremely promising. The conservative estimate of Google is that advertisers can get $8 for each dollar they spend on ads.

Nonetheless, that is not a 100% guarantee. Remember that getting the most bang for your buck will depend on a series of factors. That includes how your direct competitors are using the Ads. For instance, you and your competitor are targeting the same keyword, and their budget is higher than yours. Well, you can immediately tell whose ads get highlighted

Should You Consider Using Facebook and Instagram Ads?

It will help if you start with Google, as the SERP position is highly essential. It’s not a bad idea to add in some Instagram and Facebook advertising for your business as you start gaining traction there. Remember that social ads are highly unlikely to bring you new business real quick, especially in this industry. Those ads are much about awareness than they are about quick sales.

Remember that the power of social media advertising lies to targeting and retargeting. You can dial in your ads to show particular people based on connections, behaviors, interests, demographics, and locations. Moreover, you can even make a lookalike audience to target audiences to those already on your email contact list.

To sum up, the ideal place to advertise for contractors, home services providers and construction service provider is online. However, paid ads are not your only choice.
We hope the information presented in this guide have been informative and helpful to you. Are you ready to start using Google Ads for your paid advertising? Which of the above tips will you use? If you are not confident about how to navigate this process, let 1REALTOUR help you.