Home Services Google Ads Best Practices
Google and Microsoft Ads Home Services Manifesto
by David Becklean , Music City Digital Media
This Document summaries the real world experience from over 10 years of managing home service related Google and Microsoft Ads Accounts.
Campaign Structure
The philosophy for understanding campaign structure is really one of understanding what the objectives of the client’s business are. typically we would assign one specific campaign to each specific line of business or service that is offered. if a business is operating in multiple verticals and multiple Geographic areas then we get to the point where we have to have multiple campaigns targeting the same services in multiple geographies. This is where overlapping and expanding radiuses can be a useful strategy for covering intersecting Geographic region, but lets table that for later.
Networks
The philosophy for understanding Network strategy is that we want to Leverage the ability to bring High Intent Searchers to our clients websites when they are looking for what they do where they offer it. to this end, search campaigns should always be focused exclusively on the SERP. search campaigns should never be opted into Google Search Partners or display networks. this is one of the few absolutes that this document will espouse. P Max Campaigns are understood to be focusing on all-of-network coverage.
- PMax Campaigns are a rapidly improving lead generation tool, however, they should still be considered a Display Network.
Bid Strategies
The philosophy for understanding bid strategies is that most clients want to field the maximum number of repair and replacement jobs as possible. In an account with good first party data, a maximize conversion bid strategy is recommended as it does instruct the system to attempt to capture the maximum number of converting searchers possible.
There will be times when clients insist on cost for acquisition bid strategy however is important to understand the Dynamics at play in a cost per acquisition bid strategy. In order to do this you must put yourself in the position of Google and see things from their perspective. If you had an endless stream of valuable information that you knew many different individuals and organizations would be willing to pay for, how would you structure this situation to maximize your profit?
If it were me, one of the key pieces of information that I would want to know about my customers is how much they were willing to pay for a lead. if I had that information, I could probably come up with the system to feed the best leads to the customers paying the most and the worst leads to the customers paying the least. You get what you pay for. By providing Google a Cost Per Acquisition Target, we are putting ourselves in an unfair position of showing our hand to google. Max Conversions, assuming good data and lead quality, will give you the most realistic real time market value of leads and hence, a Realistic CPA.
If you have to run CPA strategy, Run Max Con first to establish a baseline of what good quality leads will cost and set a value within 10% of that.
*Accounts starting from scratch, with no campaign history or conversion data, must be set to Maximize Clicks until the system receives 30 conversions, capped at 30 days of time. Once the 30 conversions happen, switch to maximize conversions *
**When Switching to Maximize Conversions, it is important that you understand you are authorizing the system to spend TWICE the daily campaign ad spend. This is because maximize conversions will chase the natural organic fluctuations in search traffic and capitalize on those increases by spending more, hence the name.
Ads & Ad Copy
The philosophy for understanding ads and Home Service businesses is that we want to take up as much real estate as possible on the search engine results page. The headlines and descriptions should contain the company name as well as the service that they provide and the location that they provided in. Calls to Action and Unique Value Propositions ( history in town, special offers, 24 Hour Service, Emergency Repairs, etc.) should be included in headlines and descriptions.
Most home service related businesses want to field phone calls as their preferred type of lead. This is because phone calls can more quickly and easily be qualified and scheduled for an estimate. Emergency and 24 Hour Repair Services are good examples. Always be sure to include Call Only Ads for Each Ad Group you are using.
In regards to Ad Copy, the use of Dynamic Location Injection is highly recommended to increase CTR and Conversion Rates.
Extensions (Assets)
The philosophy for understanding extensions parallels that for ads themselves, we want our ads to take up the most amount of real estate and provide the most value to our searchers. To that end we include a full array of extensions that make sense for the business. obviously if a business does not have promotions it doesn’t make sense to run promo extensions. image and dynamic image extensions are one of the most important additions for responsive search ads. images that contain High Dynamic contrast or bright colors typically generate higher click-through and overall conversion rates. Call Extensions are another great addition to search ads. Location Extensions help you show up in Google Maps but this requires a Google My Business account link.
Keyword Targeting
The philosophy for understanding keywords is that keywords for Home Service businesses follow the 80/20 rule and that 80% of our leads and volume come from 20% of the keywords in the account. Service description keywords for specific verticals and segments , In combination with Geographic locations will make up most of an account. The rest of the account is typically medium and long tail searches for specific types of repairs, installations, brands of equipment or service.
Location Targeting
The philosophy for understanding location targeting in home service businesses is that we want to cast as big a radius as possible. This typically is limited by the driving distance a business is willing to travel in order to estimate or complete a job. This comes out to approximately 45 to 60 miles for most major Metropolitan areas in terms of what is 1 hour of drive time away. I would use 45 to 60 miles away as a fallback position and set up campaigns with between 20 and 30 miles of targeting around a central downtown location. This distance is typically more than enough to encompass a metropolitan area including suburbs. Keep in mind the most important factor when looking for Home Services clients is not the number of people, but the number of rooftops. Targeting Options should be set to “Presence” as “Presence and location” will target users outside of the Geotarget.
Ad Scheduling
The philosophy for understanding and scheduling is that ad should be running parallel to the operational hours of the business. this is so that phone calls generated from ads can be fielded and we do not waste add spend or opportunities for clients. typically most clients choose a 6:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. or 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m or similar schedule for their ads to run.
Device Targeting
the philosophy for understanding devices and device targeting is that we live in a mobile first world in that 75% of Impressions clicks and conversions will come from mobile devices however the 25% that do come from desktop devices are typically going to be the highest quality and the largest jobs. desktop users typically represent searchers at their home office and therefore typically further along the purchase process rather than casually browsing for a service or product on their phone. another way to say it is they have sat down with the express purpose of completing a specific task
Audience Targeting
There is the option to exclusively Target homeowners under the audience tab. this should not be used early in an account as it will likely throttle the overall reach of the account more than you would typically want. observational targeting for homeowners would be a better set up which can then be upgraded to exclusive targeting at a later date when the system has more information.
for accounts with history you may want to exclude users between 18 and 24 and 25 and 34. these users are typically not homeowners and are away to exclude Impressions and clicks going towards younger users when it is typically 35 Plus homeowners who are converters.
Conversion Tracking
Budgets
Set Client Expectations on Budgets by explaining that there is variability to ad spend on daily, weekly and monthly basis. We do our best to stick to budgets, but there are many factors impacting the budget. We also want to help frame clients’ understanding of ad spend better in the sense that ad spend may be an expense, but without an equal conversation being had on the revenue production as a result of that ad spend, we may be letting clients think about ad spend the wrong way. If you want to make an omelet, you gotta break some eggs and for better or worse, Google is the best Chef in the game and their results are worth their costs. With accounts on Maximize Conversion Bid Strategy we tell clients that Monthly spends are in reality, to be + or – 10% from projections or authorized spend.
The standard operating procedure for scaling budgets within an existing account is to First establish the current ad spend in search impression share that we are getting for the account and also at a campaign level. There can be wide fluctuations between campaigns within an account, specifically if we have a client with multiple verticals or that offers multiple variations of a specific kind of service which needs to be differentiated from other service intent within the account.
As a theoretical example; if an account is spending $3,000 a month and generating a 15% impression share on a consistent month-over-month basis within one to three percentage points of each other we can safely assume that doubling the budget to $6,000 a month will bring us to the 30% impression share range plus or minus a few percentage points. Obviously we can only scale to the point of about 50% impression share because after this point we start spending more than we need to on a per click and per acquisition basis in order to generate the same volume of leads. If we are over 50% impression share in an account it is because a client has an enormous budget and has indicated that their primary goal is to dominate a given Market in a given area.
Impression Share Benchmarks
Impression Share benchmarks are used to gauge how much market exposure a campaign or account has in a given market. The 3 factors that impact impression share are Geotargeting, Keywords and Budget. If Impression share is too low, we will not have enough top of funnel activity to support a viable sales funnel. If Impression share is too high, we will see Conversion Costs and CPC’s increase to more than they need to be to support high quality lead production. The Following benchmarks describe what to expect, as typical experience from accounts are various levels of impression share.
0-10% Very Bad: Most Accounts will not people able to produce a viable digital sales funnel at this impression share. Some possible exceptions includes products that are extremely widespread and ubiquitous.
10-20% Minimum Viable Product: This is what we hope to achieve in our first month of launching new accounts. Most accounts can produce at this impression share.
30-50% Ideal: The sweet spot for most accounts.
50%+ : CPA and CPC Increase as we are showing up more than half the time, so we are
Weekly PPC Account Action Checklist
- Go Through OptiPass Recommendations – Keep at 90%+ so that clients are not troubled by this metric and do not reach out to us complaining about it. It is largely a useless and made up metric.
- Check for System Flags for Payment / Ads Not Serving / Account Suspension
- Check Budget Pacing – Shape.io , 25% mark and 50% mark are typically sufficient to make sure the account will end within budget.
- Check MTD/MOM Impression Share
- Check Any Recently Launched Campaigns at 1 week, 2 week and MTD Interval. So we can catch errors before clients
- Search Terms Review – Weekly, Bi Weekly or Monthly, Negate Terms that don’t make sense, DIY, Trends, Competitor Brands. Include New Converting Terms that are not in the account. Include High Service/Commercial Intent Terms with good click volume that are not already included.
- Review Ads and Ad Strength – Poor and Average Ads should be improved to get to Good . Excellent Ad Strength is ideal, both for the Auction Process and, debatable, auction performance.