Construction PPC Agency

What is Paid Ads Management for Construction Companies?

PPC management for construction companies refers to creating and optimizing PPC advertising campaigns. That is an incredibly simple explanation though, so let's dive a little deeper.

To provide premium paid ads management, a paid advertising firm for construction companies should get to know you and your goals. Since the way you approach PPC advertising for a local construction company is much different than how you would for a nationwide construction company ecommerce brand, this information helps determine the next steps.

Local construction companies, for example, are often only searching for contact form submissions or calls. This can be accomplished through paid advertising that gets traffic to an optimized landing page or sales funnel. If those digital assets don't yet exist, or need substantial improvement, we recommend you start with Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms.

Alternatively, ecommerce-focused construction companies are most often interested in online sales. Using paid advertising, you can improve traffic to a page optimized for products or categories. In some cases, it might even make sense to include Google Shopping Campaigns in your strategy. We've even utilized sales funnels to help sell products, subscriptions, and services.

To optimize and scale construction company PPC campaigns, it's important to understand what metrics will be used. For some construction companies, that means looking to platforms like Google Analytics. However, there are other options out there too, like Wicked Reports, Triple Whale, or Northbeam.

To be successful with paid advertising, your construction company needs to use multiple strategies and marketing tools. Some of the best paid advertising packages for construction companies include tactics to:

• Promote your digital assets (websites, sales funnels, etc.) via search engines, social media channels, and third parties.
• Increase conversions for your construction company through qualified leads or online sales.
• Better understand ad attribution through the integration of third-party attribution software.
• Showcase social proof through case studies, white papers, video testimonials, and other factors.
• Engage users in story creation, email collection, and user generated content.
• Test ad creatives across various ad placements and between different media formats.

Tips for Managing Paid Ads for Construction Companies

With in-depth knowledge of the latest PPC trends for construction companies and other industries, we are a team of paid ads experts.

Here are some of our best tips to follow for keyword research, audience research, landing page / sales funnel optimization, conversion rate optimization, and ad creation.

1.) Keyword Research Tips

In the context of paid advertising, keyword research for construction companies largely relates to Google Ads and Bing Ads search campaigns. After all, Bing and Google only show ads based on what people search for that your construction company is targeting.

For example, a person searching for a construction company nearby might search "local construction company" on a search engine. Knowing to target that exact phrase wouldn't require in-depth keyword research.

However, what if that exact match keyword wasn't producing enough search volume and the construction company needed to increase their advertising reach? To solve the problem, keyword research would be required.

The next steps might involve the paid advertising manager discussing with the construction company about what types of products / services they want to target more often and within what geographic areas. It might also require some broadening of the keyword targeting.

Suppose the PPC manager discovers that there is high traffic volume for "nearby construction companies" or even "construction company services." The first phrase is targeting a type of business or organization in the area. The second phrase is targeting a service, which might result in a more lucrative conversion.

When building negative keyword lists, keyword research can also be beneficial. You can use negative keywords to prevent your paid advertising from showing in search queries that you know won't convert to more clients.

For example, an individual looking for "free services from construction companies" or "when to advertise to construction companies" is unlikely to convert. However, they might see your paid advertising if you are using broad keyword targeting without any negative keywords like "free" or "advertise".

As you can see, no matter how obvious your keyword research needs might be at the start of building out your campaign, they become more complicated as you begin to scale your ads and reduce wasted ad spend.

2.) Audience Research Tips

Audience research is often mentioned as part of scaling social ads on Facebook and Instagram for construction company paid advertising campaigns. There are options within Google Ads and Bing Ads for audience targeting as well though.

Let's go over a little history on audience research and targeting within the Facebook Ads platform.

Construction company paid advertising managers used Facebook's custom audiences extensively in the past. As a matter of fact, one of the most attractive features of Facebook Ads was its ability to collect data on users, which advertisers flocked to take advantage of.

As time went on, data privacy and machine learning both had an impact on custom audiences.

In the iOS 14.5 update, Apple included a pop-up message that allowed users to opt out of tracking for personalized ads. As a result, Facebook had difficulty tracking mobile device behavior. Even ad attribution reporting was affected.

Then came improvements to their machine learning algorithms, which greatly diminished the need for custom audiences and lookalike audiences for most ad companies for construction companies. Their algorithm has become so good at understanding your ideal audience that you typically do more harm than good by choosing your own interest-based targeting.

While there will still be plenty of construction company paid ads agencies relying on custom audiences, the trend is moving toward broad targeting. Don't take our word for it though. If you've been involved in the creation of Facebook ads, you've probably noticed the removal of interest-based targeting options here and there. Maybe you've even seen changes to how "Advantage Detailed Targeting" is recommended during the setup process.

This blog article from Social Media Examiner does a good job of talking about recent changes to audience targeting, if you'd like a second opinion.

This isn't to say audience research and targeting is going away. The targeting options within construction company ad campaigns will likely always be manageable to boost performance.

3.) Tips for Optimizing Landing Pages

The quality of your landing page will be a big factor in the success of your construction company PPC advertising campaigns.

Let's begin by examining the landing pages for your construction company to make sure they follow best practices. In this review, we consider the following factors and more:

• Do you have a headline that emphasizes benefits?
• Are there any images above the fold?
• Is the content written in a compelling manner?
• Am I able to find a lead form right away?
• Can you easily identify the call to action?
• Does the page load quickly?
• Is there social proof?
• Does the page load on mobile devices?

Designing and developing a quality landing page involves so many factors. Here is a great blog post about what makes a quality landing page.

Please, don't spend money on paid advertising until you have a landing page that follows best practices! If you want to create an effective landing page, you should never consider it finished. You can refine your sales pitch by running A/B tests on the landing page every few months.

4.) Revenue Funnel Tips

As an alternative to a landing page, you might want to consider building out one or more sales funnels. We rely heavily on sales funnels for lead generation, email audience building, and even online purchases.

For example, we have a client that promotes an online fitness challenge that you could even join from your local area. In the course of managing their online marketing, we built several sales funnels using Click Funnels. Here are some of the funnels we made:

• We used squeeze pages to help capture email addresses while building awareness for the program.
• Lead magnets provided health and fitness tips, webinars, and sneak peeks in exchange for email addresses.
• We used application funnels to push people toward the idea of wanting to apply to participate in exclusive programs.
• We used sales letter funnels to serve as the registration system for the online program.

There are many different types of funnels, so your construction company isn't limited to only these options. Just keep in mind these can be incredibly helpful for gauging interest in a product or service, building out an email subscriber base, and selling a product or service online.

5.) CRO Tips

Having a clear understanding of your conversion rate is critical to making informed advertising decisions. The average conversion rate is between 1-3%, but that varies greatly between industries, products, and services.

Let's run through a basic scenario to help illustrate the impact of conversion rates.

1. You sell a $100 product or service on your website.
2. You have a 1% conversion rate, meaning for every 100 people who visit your website you sell 1 product or service.
3. You have a $1.00 average cost per click (CPC), meaning for each person who visits your website you spend $1.00.
4. To sell 1 product or service, you need 100 clicks from paid advertising, which would cost you $100. This is known as your cost per acquisition (CPA).
5. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) would be 1x, meaning for every dollar spent in PPC advertising you get one dollar in return.

For most construction companies, this return on ad spend wouldn't be acceptable. Sadly, we often see this type of ROAS when jumping into new client accounts.

To improve the situation, you hire a paid advertising agency to modify your campaign settings, ad creatives, and landing page experience.

Let's assume those improvements bring your conversion rate up from 1% to 2%. That means for every 100 visits to your website you now sell 2 products. This is twice the return on ad spend! You might be profitable now selling that product or service, if your margins are good.

Understanding your conversion rate, and knowing how to improve it, can be crucial to the management of your paid advertising.

6.) Ad Creation Tips

This is potentially one of the most important aspects of a Facebook Ads account, but it also applies to Google Display Ads.

When you run Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads for construction companies, you are mostly targeting a cold audience that is more interested in quickly scrolling by advertisements in favor of seeing what their friends and family are up to online.

You should develop an understanding of how to capture someone's attention in a split second.

To do this, you need to build out great ad creatives that make someone stop for a second and say to themselves, "wait a second, what...?"

This doesn't happen by running the same ad creative over and over and over again. Even if it is a good ad, it will eventually become stale. You should change things up frequently, even if you are just targeting people nearby.

If you don't change out your ad creatives and test new ideas, you'll suffer from what is called "ad fatigue." This is the state in which your target audience has already seen your ad so many times that they instinctively scroll by it without ever interacting with your brand.

Don't be caught in this situation. You should understand when to pause an ad because it isn't performing as well as it once did. You should understand when to test new ideas, especially if you are emotionally attached to an ad that you spent a lot of time making.

Pricing for Construction Company Paid Ads Management

The cost of our PPC management plans is calculated based on the monthly time allocation you request for your campaigns. Our PPC management services start at the price listed below, however, we are open to discussing an increased budget if your ad spend or service requirements are higher.

Types of Paid Ads for Construction Companies

The options for running paid advertising for your construction company are numerous. Let's discuss some of the most common paid advertising being run for construction companies.

1.) Local Advertising

Local ads for your construction company can be run through nearly any advertising platform. One platform may be more effective for your nearby construction company than another. It is important to try out every available option to see which works best for your needs. Let's talk about a few local advertising choices.

There are going to be two options from Google.

As a first step, you can run traditional Google Adwords, possibly using their newer Performance Max campaign type. This is a very dynamic ad campaign type which utilizes multiple headlines, images, videos, and service locations to allow the Google algorithm to find the best combination of assets to bring you customers. We often use Performance Max campaigns for professional services companies, such as accountants, lawyers, dentists, and physicians.

Google's second option for qualifying businesses is their Local Service Ads. As a pay-per-lead platform, Google Local Service Ads charges a flat fee per lead. We often use Google Local Service Ads for home services contractors, like plumbers, electricians, roofers, and heating installers.

You can also target people in your local area using Facebook Ads. The first step is to set up a campaign with ad sets restricted to certain geographic areas. Nearby Facebook Ads are often used by construction companies of all types.

2.) Social Media Advertising

Pretty much any online ad you see on a social network website is going to qualify as a social media ad.

The trick to social media ads is keeping the ad creatives fresh. The performance of your campaign will gradually decline if you do not rotate your ad creatives every couple of weeks. For higher spending ad campaigns, you might need to look at weekly ad creative changes.

The best part of social media marketing is you can target audiences that have never thought of your product or service, or perhaps just aren't thinking about it now. It's quite the opposite when you run search engine advertising since you only get to show them when someone searches for what your construction company offers.

It can also be a curse, as conversion rates often drop when people aren't closer to making an immediate purchase.

3.) Search Ads

You'll want to invest in search engine ads if you know people are searching online for the products you offer.

Some people refer to this as construction company Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. There are different ways to explain search ads (not to be confused with SEO), which are advertisements displayed on search engines' search results pages.

If you've been running search engine advertising on Google for a while and have been successful at it, we suggest considering copying the campaigns over to the Bing Ads platform. As of an October 2022 study from StatCounter, about 3.57% of online users rely on Bing for their primary search engine.

4.) Display Ads

Many different message boards, chat rooms, game lounges, news websites (even local news stations), gossip sites, and more run display advertisements.

These are commonly used within the Google Ads and Bing Ads platforms.

To get started with display ads, you just need a set of ad creatives in different image sizes. Both ad platforms have algorithms that help you build results from your ad spend if you have an understanding of your target audience.

5.) Retargeting Ads

Not everyone is going to convert during their first experience with your construction company website, landing page, or sales funnel.

To help people return to your website after they've thought through various options, retargeting ads are almost always recommended.

Almost any ad platform can be used for retargeting ads.

6.) Shopping Ads

This type of search ad was popularized by Google Shopping Campaigns.

To get started with Google Shopping, you just need an ecommerce website, a product feed (CSV or TXT), a Google Merchant Center account, and a Google Ads account for your construction company.

With these tools in place, you'll be able to provide Google Ads an updated list of all your accurate product data, including the title, SKU, image, price, and availability. Using that information, they can determine what types of search queries to display your products at the top of search results.

7.) Video Ads

You can run video ads on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and other social networking websites.

Using Google Ads, you can run YouTube Ads by creating a video ads campaign or performance max campaign.

It's necessary to have a working Facebook Ads account to run video ads on Facebook or Instagram.

Both ad platforms offer excellent conversion opportunities with video ads. It's not unusual for us to use video ads for product launches, custom services, personal introductions, and more!

Your construction company PPC advertising campaigns should definitely incorporate video creatives if you have the budget to support them.