Plumbing PPC Agency

What is PPC Management for Plumbing Companies?

Plumber PPC management consists of creating and optimizing paid advertisement campaigns for plumbing companies. That is an incredibly simple explanation though, so let's dive a little deeper.

To provide expert PPC management, a paid ads agency for plumbers often starts by getting to know you. Since the way you approach PPC advertising for a local plumbing company is much different than how you would for a nationwide plumber ecommerce brand, this information helps determine the next steps.

Local plumbing companies, for example, are often only looking for contact form submissions or calls. This can be accomplished through paid advertising that builds traffic to an optimized landing page or sales funnel. We recommend Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms if those pages/funnels don't exist or need to be reworked.

In contrast, ecommerce-focused plumbing companies are most likely to be interested in online sales. Using PPC advertising, you can boost 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.

Understanding the metrics that will be used to optimize and scale plumber PPC campaigns is the next step. For some plumbing 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 plumbing company needs to use multiple tactics and marketing tools. Some of the best paid advertising services for plumbing 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 plumbing company through qualified leads or online sales.
• Better understand ad attribution through the integration of third-party attribution software.
• Provide social proof with case studies, white papers, video testimonials, etc.
• 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 Plumbers

Our team of PPC advertising specialists is knowledgeable in the latest PPC trends for plumbers and other industries.

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 plumbers 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 plumbing company is targeting.

For example, a person looking for a plumbing company nearby might search "local plumber" on a search engine. It wouldn't be necessary to conduct extensive keyword research to target that exact phrase.

However, what if the exact match keyword isn't generating enough search volume and the plumbing company needs to expand their advertising reach? To solve the problem, keyword research would be required.

The next steps might involve the paid advertising manager discussing with the plumbing 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.

As an example, the paid ads manager might find that "nearby plumbing companies" and "plumber services" have high search volumes. 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 customers.

For example, an individual looking for "free services from plumbing companies" or "when to advertise to plumbers" is unlikely to convert. However, they might see your PPC 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 plumber paid ads campaigns. There are options within Google Ads and Bing Ads for audience targeting as well though.

We'll review some audience research and targeting history within Facebook Ads.

Facebook custom audiences were heavily relied upon by plumbing company paid advertising managers in the past. In fact, one of Facebook Ads' most appealing features was the ability to collect data on users, which advertisers for plumbing companies eagerly took advantage of.

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

When Apple released its iOS 14.5 update, they included a pop up message that allowed users to easily opt out of personalized ad tracking. 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 firms for plumbers. With such sophisticated algorithms, it's often more harmful to choose your own interests compared to letting Facebook figure it out for you.

Though there will still be plenty of plumbing company paid ads companies using 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. Plumber ad campaigns will likely always have targeting options that can be manipulated for extra performance.

3.) Landing Page Creation & Optimization Tips

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

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

• Is there a benefit-focused headline?
• 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?
• Are the call to actions easily noticeable?
• Does the page load quickly?
• Is there social proof?
• Am I able to load the page on a mobile device?

There are so many factors that come into the design and development of a quality landing page. Here is a great blog article about what makes a results-driven landing page.

Please, don't spend money on PPC advertising until you have a landing page that follows best practices! Ideally, you should never consider your landing page to be finished. Try running A/B testing every few months to continue refining your sales pitch.

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. While managing their digital marketing we built multiple sales funnels within 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.
• We used lead magnets to provide people with healthy eating tips, fitness tips, webinars, and sneak peaks in exchange for an email address.
• 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 plumbing 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.) Conversion Rate Optimization 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 site 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 paid advertising you get one dollar in return.

For most plumbing 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 PPC advertising company 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 plumbers, 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 awesome 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 great 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 Plumbing Company Paid Ads Management

If you want us to dedicate more time to your campaigns, the price of our PPC management packages will be adjusted accordingly. Our PPC ads management plans 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 Plumbing Companies

For plumbing companies, there are many ways to run paid ads. Let's discuss some of the most common paid advertising being run for plumbing companies.

1.) Local Business Ads

Local ads for your plumbing company can be run through nearly any advertising platform. One platform may be more effective for your local area plumbing company than another. It is important to try out every available option to see which works best for your needs. Now let's discuss some local advertising options.

Google is going to offer two options.

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.

Alternatively, if your business qualifies, Google offers a Local Service Ads option. Using Local Service Ads, you get charged a flat fee for each lead the platform generates. 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. Localized Facebook Ads are often used by plumbing 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.

It's important to keep the ad creatives fresh when running social ads. 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 tweaks.

One of the best things about social media advertising is that you can target audiences who aren't yet aware of your product or service. The opposite is true when you run search engine advertising since your ads will only show when someone is actively searching for what your plumbing company has to offer.

However, this benefit can also be a curse, since conversion rates are typically lower when people aren't closer to making an immediate purchase.

3.) Search Ads

If you know people are searching online for the products or services you offer, you'll want to invest in search advertisements.

Some people refer to this as plumber 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 advertising on Google for a while and have been successful at it, we suggest considering copying the campaigns over to the Bing Ads platform. In an October 2022 study from StatCounter, Bing was the primary search engine used by approximately 3.57% of online users.

4.) Display Ads

Many different message boards, chat rooms, game lounges, news websites (even nearby 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. Additionally, you should have a general idea of your target audience, but both ad platforms have algorithms that help you produce results.

5.) Retargeting Ads

Not everyone is going to convert during their first experience with your plumbing 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 plumbing 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. From there, they will be able to find the right types of search queries to display your products at the top of the search results page.

7.) Video Ads

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

If you are interested in running YouTube Ads, you'll just need to set up a video ads campaign in Google Ads.

To run video ads in Facebook or Instagram, you'll need a working Facebook Ads account.

Both ad platforms offer excellent conversion opportunities with video ads. We frequently use video ads to showcase product launches, custom services, personal introductions, and more!

If you have the budget to support ad creatives in video format, look to implement them into your paid advertising campaigns.