PPC Tips to Help Plumbers Get Real Leads Without Wasting Money on Clicks

When you’re a plumber relying on a steady flow of leads to be profitable, it’s not enough to get your leads through word-of-mouth alone. That may work if you’re only a two-person team, but if you plan to grow your business, you’ll need to start marketing your services.

Pay-per-click (PPC) ads are a beneficial form of advertising, but they can be a source of leads or a money pit for plumbers. When done right, PPC helps plumbing companies generate targeted leads looking for services, but a poorly-crafted campaign can burn through a budget without results. The good news is with smart targeting, strategic bidding, and continual optimization, plumbers can generate qualified leads at a cost that provides a positive ROI. Here’s how it’s done.

1. Target Specific Local Areas

The biggest mistake plumbers make is targeting a broad area rather than a specific local area. Even when your company serves customers throughout several counties, you’ll want to create ad campaigns that target each individual city or county. If your ads are reaching people outside of your service area, you’re paying for clicks that won’t turn into paying customers.

An easy way to prevent this problem is to use location targeting inside of your PPC account to set your target location by zip codes, cities, or a custom radius around your main location. This will ensure your ads will only be seen by leads you can actually convert.

You’ll also want to explicitly exclude areas you don’t serve. For example, you might serve a whole county with the exception of a couple cities or neighborhoods because of traffic congestion or licensing issues. Make sure to add these locations as exclusions in your ad campaign settings to avoid wasting money.

2. Use High Intent Keywords

The keywords that will bring you the best leads are keywords that signal high intent to purchase. This includes terms like “emergency plumber near me,” “24-hour plumber,” “toilet overflowing fix,” or “fix for busted pipe.” The people who search for these terms aren’t just casual browsers. They’re people who need a plumber immediately. Prioritize these keywords and increase your bid to capture more of these leads.

3. Avoid General Low Intent Keywords

Avoid using the kinds of keywords that will attract people who aren’t likely to hire you for plumbing services. For example, terms like “DIY toilet repair” or “how to fix (fixture)” will rarely lead to calls. People who search for these phrases are usually just looking for ways to fix their own problem, so filter them out.

Getting keyword intent right is closely tied to how you structure your match types — if you want a deeper look at exact, phrase, and broad match and how each affects the searches that trigger your ads, our guide to PPC keyword match types walks through the tradeoffs in more detail.

4. Use Call Ads

When people need a plumber, they want to call and get someone out fast, especially if their basement is flooding or they’re dealing with a busted pipe in the house. Google offers call-only ads that let users tap to call you immediately from search results rather than click to visit your website, where they’d need to search for a way to contact you. This ad type alone will increase your conversions.

5. Track Your Calls to Improve Your ROI

It’s crucial to use ad tracking tools like Google’s call forwarding or third-party platforms that track which ads generate your phone calls. Knowing what ads are driving your best leads will help you do more of what works and eliminate what doesn’t.

6. Only Schedule Your Ads When You’re Available

Since most leads will want to call you immediately, only schedule your ads to run when you’ll be available to answer the phone. If you don’t offer 24/7 emergency services and don’t answer your phone at 2 AM, don’t schedule your ads to run until the start of your business day.

7. Test Performance on Weekdays vs. Weekends

Depending on your location and services, you might get more calls on weekdays or weekends. To find out your peak, check your reports to see when you’re getting the most calls and then adjust when you run your ads based on your actual performance data.

8. Write Clear, Direct Ad Copy

Don’t create complicated, wordy ads. Use simple, clear, and direct headlines that speak directly to the problems your leads may be dealing with. They’re going to be drawn to ads that promise to help them with real problems. For example, write headlines like “Broken water heater? Get 24/7 help,” “Clogged drains fixed fast,” and “Overflowing toilet? Get help now.”

In your ad copy, it helps to use location-specific phrases. For example, you might write “Serving Phoenix homes since 2001.” Doing this helps build trust and establishes relevancy.

9. Build Optimized Landing Pages

For ads that send visitors directly to your website, you’ll need to optimize your landing pages for conversion. The following elements are essential:

• Landing page copy that matches your ad. To create a seamless experience, don’t send leads to your home page. Send them to a landing page that matches your ad. For example, if your ad targets people with a clogged drain, ensure your landing page speaks to people with a clogged drain.
• An easy-to-find phone number. Your phone number should be readily visible on every page of your website, including all of your landing pages. The ideal place is in the top right corner of every page header.
• A click-to-call button. It’s easier for mobile leads to click to bring up your phone number in their dial pad rather than forcing them to write down a phone number they’ll need to then dial.
• A call-to-action (CTA). Leads need to be told what to do. Be direct and tell them to call you now for an estimate or to schedule a service call.

Your ads will only bring you potential leads. Your landing pages are responsible for converting them into paying customers. If you want more ideas for what to test on those pages, our landing page test ideas for PPC is a good next stop.

10. Set a Realistic Daily Budget

To maximize your ROI without wasting money, you’ll want to set a realistic daily budget and scale it only when you know you’re ready. Most local service providers stick with a $10-$50/day budget, but it depends on the industry and your location.

Once your campaigns have run long enough to generate real data, the next step is dialing in what each lead actually costs you — our breakdown of how to dial in your cost-per-lead using PPC covers how to calculate that number and use it to guide your budget decisions.

11. Monitor Your Campaigns

Over time, you’ll find that some campaigns are working better than others. A varied performance can be caused by a variety of factors, and you’ll need to take a close look before making any changes. For example, underperforming keywords and ads that don’t get many clicks should be paused. However, if your ads are getting clicks, but limited conversions, you’ll want to tweak your landing page copy and/or your offer.

12. Use Negative Keywords to Block Money-Wasting Clicks

Sometimes irrelevant keyword searches will display your ads, so if you can come up with a list of keywords related to services you don’t provide, you can limit where your ads show up. For example, if you don’t offer sewer camera inspections, make “sewer camera” a negative keyword. If you don’t service septic systems, make “septic” a negative keyword. Doing this will prevent clicks from irrelevant leads.

Building this list out properly takes a bit of ongoing maintenance — our full guide on building a negative keywords list in Google Ads covers how to find and add the terms that are quietly draining your plumbing budget.

13. Use Google Local Service Ads (LSAs)

Local Service Ads appear at the top of Google’s search results above the typical PPC text ads and organic listings. LSAs are pay-per-lead, not pay-per-click, which makes them even more profitable. With LSAs, you only pay when a lead contacts you directly through your ad, either by calling you or messaging you. This is a much safer way to manage your ad spend and generate qualified leads. It’s also an easier way to capture bottom-of-the-funnel leads who need emergency plumbing services.

To set up these ads, head over to Google’s LSA page and click “get started.” You’ll be prompted to go through the setup process, which includes confirming your business eligibility. To complete the process, you’ll need your business license, general liability insurance proof, and at least one Google Business Profile with positive reviews. The system will then ask you to choose the zip codes or cities you serve, list the types of services you provide, and set your weekly budget. Once you submit the form and pass Google’s screening process, you’ll start showing up in results for searches related to your business.

Try to get as many positive reviews on your Google Business Profile as possible since businesses with better reviews tend to rank higher with Local Service Ads. Also, keep in mind that Google tracks your response times, and the faster you reply, the better placement you’ll get. Unlike PPC ads, you can request refunds from leads that aren’t relevant, like leads requesting the wrong services or who are outside your service area.

It’s important to take advantage of these ads because it’s an easy way to get your business listed at the top of search results pages when people search for terms like “plumber near me.” It’s easier than waiting months for SEO to kick in, and it will bring you immediate leads. People will see your reviews and your Google Guaranteed badge, which will boost your credibility.

14. Get Your “Google Guaranteed” Badge

Getting your business verified by Google will give you a green checkmark next to your business name in your Local Service Ads. It tells customers that Google has personally verified your business, you’ve passed a background check, your insurance has been verified, and Google will back your services with up to $2,000 in reimbursement if a customer isn’t satisfied with your services.

Getting this badge can boost your visibility and credibility, which can get you more clicks, leads, and paying customers. It will also help you rank higher in the list of LSAs.

To get this green checkmark, you need to get approved for Google LSAs. Once you’re approved for LSAs, you’ll get the “Google Guaranteed” checkmark badge automatically. Just make sure you renew your insurance policy on time, maintain a high review rating, and keep responding to leads quickly. If you don’t maintain these things, Google might remove your badge.

15. Track Your Conversions

You can’t improve what you don’t track. Track your critical metrics, including call tracking, form tracking, and chat tracking. Run regular reports and check in with your ad campaign performance on a regular basis. It will take a little bit of time to gather enough data to make informed decisions, but the sooner you catch underperforming ads, the sooner you can make necessary changes.

Building out a full funnel view of your campaigns — not just clicks, but calls and booked jobs — is exactly what conversion funnel tracking is for. Our guide on improving your PPC with conversion funnels breaks down how to map each stage so you know where leads are actually falling out.

16. Split Test Your Ads

It’s important to split test ads to see what elements drive the most conversions. Split testing, also called A/B testing, is where you run two nearly identical ads, but with one small difference between them. The difference could be a headline, colors, an image, the main copy, or the CTA. Once you run the ads long enough, take the winning ad and change one more element to test. Repeat this process by changing just one element at a time to see which version performs better. When done correctly, your clicks should increase over time.

17. Generate Reviews Continuously

Getting satisfied customers to review you is crucial, and as previously discussed, it can impact how your Local Service Ads show up. Reviews can also impact how you show up in the Local Pack. The more high-quality, genuine, recent reviews you have, the more likely you are to show up in search results. You’re also more likely to get clicks.

Positive reviews act as social proof that helps customers choose which business to call. You could have the best ad copy in the world, but if your competitor has 150 five-star reviews and you only have 6 reviews from 2019, customers will choose them over you.

Clicks Are Cheap, But Leads Aren’t

It’s easy to get clicks, but getting real leads – the kind that book your services – takes work. For plumbers, a strong PPC strategy can make the difference between getting steady jobs or wasting cash. By targeting high intention search terms, targeting narrow service areas, and optimizing your ads, you can create high-performing ads that deliver real results without burning through your marketing budget.

Ready to turn clicks into paying customers? We’d love to help!

Whether you’re new to PPC ads, or you’re tired of wasting money on ads that don’t generate calls, we’d love to help you get real results. Our PPC experts specialize in helping local service businesses just like yours attract high intent leads, reduce wasted ad spend, and grow predictable revenue. Contact us now for a free evaluation – we’d love to help.