Google Ads for Plumbers, HVAC and Roofers: Bid on the Emergency, Not Your Name
Stop paying for customers who already found you. One small emergency campaign, the right zip codes, a landing page about the exact problem, and a weekly routine that watches calls instead of clicks.
If your Google Ads budget is going to people typing your company name, you are paying for customers who already found you. In a lot of plumbing, HVAC and roofing accounts I look at, the biggest spend sits on the brand name, and the searches that actually bring new jobs, the emergencies, get whatever is left. Here is how to flip that, with a small campaign that a one-truck company can run and a five-truck company can scale.
Why the brand campaign looks great and does nothing
Open the account, sort by conversions, and the top campaign is almost always “Brand.” Cheap clicks, high conversion rate, beautiful numbers. The problem is who those people are: they already knew your name. A neighbor referred them, they saw the truck, they had you last year. They would have clicked the free listing right below the ad. You paid for a click that was already yours.
Meanwhile the searches that bring strangers, “water heater leaking,” “AC not cooling,” “roof leak after storm,” “sewer backup,” “no hot water,” are expensive, so the budget shies away from them. That is backwards. Those searches are a homeowner who needs someone in the next hour and will call the first company that looks close and available. That is the job.
Build one small emergency campaign
You do not need twelve ad groups and a bid strategy diagram. You need one campaign with a clear job.
- Pick the emergency and repair searches only. For a plumber: water heater leaking, no hot water, drain clogged, sewer backup, burst pipe, emergency plumber. For HVAC: AC not cooling, AC repair, furnace not working, heater blowing cold, emergency HVAC. For a roofer: roof leak, roof repair, storm damage roof, emergency roof tarp. Ten to twenty phrases. Skip “best,” “cheap,” “how to” and anything a DIY person would type.
- Use phrase match, and build the negative list first. Add negatives before the first dollar: jobs, salary, DIY, how to, parts, Home Depot, Lowe’s, reviews, near me free, and your competitors’ names. Then review the search terms report every week and add more. This is where most of the wasted budget hides.
- Limit it to the zip codes you can reach fast. Not “Tennessee.” Not a 50-mile radius. The specific zip codes where your trucks can be within 60 to 90 minutes. Set location targeting to “presence” so you do not pay for people in another state searching about Memphis.
- Set the goal to phone calls, not clicks. Turn on call conversions from ads and from the landing page. Count a call over 60 seconds as a lead. Optimize for calls, and give the campaign a couple of weeks of data before you judge it.
- Schedule it for when you can answer. If nobody picks up after 7pm, do not run the ads after 7pm. An emergency click that goes to voicemail is the most expensive click in the account.
- Keep the daily budget modest and steady. Enough for a handful of clicks a day at your market’s cost per click. Consistency matters more than size. Turning the campaign on and off every week resets the learning and wastes the first few days each time.
Send the click to a page about that exact problem
The ad is half the work. The page it lands on is the other half, and sending an emergency click to your homepage throws half of them away. Build one landing page per emergency, or at least per service, and keep it brutally simple:
- A headline that repeats the search: “Water Heater Leaking? Same-Day Repair in Memphis and the Mid-South.”
- The phone number in big type at the top with a tap-to-call button, and the same button fixed to the bottom of the screen on phones.
- Three lines on what happens next: “We answer the phone. We tell you the price before we start. We’re usually there within two hours on weekdays.”
- Two or three reviews that mention that exact job.
- A photo of your crew and truck, not stock.
- A three-field form for people who cannot call right now: name, phone, what is wrong.
That page will also rank on its own over time, which is the point of the one page per service approach. Ads and SEO feed the same pages.
Write the ad like a dispatcher, not a brochure
Headlines: the problem, the speed, the area, the number. “AC Not Cooling? Same-Day Repair,” “Serving Memphis, Germantown, Bartlett,” “Call Now, Upfront Pricing.” Descriptions: two sentences about what happens when they call. Use the call extension (call asset) so the number shows in the ad on phones, the location asset if your profile is verified, and sitelinks to the other emergency pages. Skip “family owned since” in the headline. Nobody with water on the floor cares yet.
Watch calls, not the click report
After two weeks, ignore impressions, click-through rate and average position. Open the search terms report and put two columns next to each phrase: calls and cost. Then:
| What you see | What to do |
|---|---|
| A search term brought clicks and no calls | Add it as a negative or move it to its own ad group with a page that matches better |
| A search term brought calls at a price you would pay again | Give it more room: raise the budget, add close variations |
| Calls are coming but nobody books | The ads are fine. Listen to the recordings. It is usually the phone handling or the price conversation |
| Cost per call is high on one zip code | Lower the bid adjustment or drop the zip |
| Most calls come after hours and go unanswered | Fix answering first, then reopen the schedule. See the note on answering on the first three rings |
Where Local Services Ads fit
For plumbers, HVAC and roofers in most US markets, Google also offers Local Services Ads, the “Google Guaranteed” units at the very top. They charge per lead instead of per click, require a background and license check, and lean on your review rating. They are worth setting up alongside the emergency search campaign, not instead of it. The search campaign gives you control over the page and the wording; Local Services Ads give you the top spot on the phone. Run both, and compare cost per booked job, not cost per lead.
A budget you can defend
Start with an amount you could lose for a month without flinching. Run the emergency campaign for two weeks without touching it, then one hour a week of search terms and call listening. If the cost per booked job is below what you make on that job, raise the budget by a quarter and repeat. If it is not, the fix is almost always in the landing page or the phone, not in the bids.
The short version of this went out on Instagram. If you are not sure which searches deserve your money in your trade and your area, I will take a free look at the account or the profile and send you a starting list.
Want a free look at your Google presence?
I will check your Google Business Profile, your website and how you show up for your services and cities, then tell you what I would fix first. Free, no pitch.