5 Top Mistakes that Landscape, Construction, & Design/Build Contractors Make with Google Ads (PPC)
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Corey Halstead
Co-Owner, HALSTEAD.
Let's get something straight: PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is hard. Creating a google ads strategy, implementing it, and getting results seems impossible the first several times your Landscape contracting or construction company gives it a shot.
There are hundreds (thousands actually) of settings and combinations to try. If you're getting it wrong (not getting the leads you’d like) then it's likely that you haven't yet figured out how to work the options. So if you're one of many that has turned to Google Ads for home remodeling leads, then here's a few tips for the road ahead.
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1. Not understanding geo-targeting (location) well enough. Google provides location-specific search results in two possible ways. First, it's based on the actual location the searcher has entered. For example, a searcher in Newburgh, NY, will look up general contractor in Newburgh, NY. Google will respond with a list of general contractors in that city, sorted by their distance from Newburgh.
The second way the searcher looks up general contractor doesn’t involve typing in Newburgh, NY. Google will still provide results for general contractor in Newburgh and sort by distance from that location — even though the searcher has not specified the city. Google takes the location of the searcher into consideration every single time. This is only untrue if the searcher has turned their location tracking off.
2. Not enough relevant keywords. This is a scary one and the biggest money-sucking mistake for construction and landscape contractors looking for traffic and leads. Let's say you think you should target the keyword landscape for your commercial landscape maintenance company. You set the target to your coverage area (or maybe you skip this part and the problem is even bigger). Everyone who searches landscape in, let's say, Chicago, Illinois, will see your ad. But what if someone searches landscape business software or landscape marketing and they're based out of Chicago, Il? They're most likely not your target market! And you guessed it, you may still be showing up and paying for a click from someone you don't want and who doesn’t want you.
Always consider other ways that the keyword’s you’re targeting might be used. In the landscape example, this one has quite a few ways it can be used. Merriam-Webster dictionary writes one of the definitions of landscape to be "the distinctive features of a particular situation or intellectual activity: the event transformed the political landscape." So if someone searches marketing landscape, you guessed it, your company will show be showing up... and paying if it converts. The lesson here? Add keywords to your PPC campaigns and use the negative keywords field (to tell Google which words you don’t want your construction company to show for).
Note: Account structure matters. How you structure your campaigns makes all the difference. At HALSTEAD, we have designed a very unique method of structuring Google Ads - a variation of the SKAG method (Single Keyword Ad Groups) that drives more targeted, higher-quality leads. See, agencies that work with every industry are forced to use a blanket approach to creating ad campaigns and learning the pitfalls of creating PPC campaigns that actually perform for their construction and landscape clients. This “learning” happens on your dollar, of course. So even if they are using the SKAG method, they don’t have the account data to understand the important of match type that is used. Over hundreds of PPC campaigns for industry-focused clients all across the country, we have tested and verified our approach. That’s why when owners of landscape and construction firms switch come to us to take things over, they are blown away at the difference - better quality, high quality scores, and lower cost per clicks which makes their budget stretch further.
Interested in learning more about our construction and landscape industry-proven approach to Google Ads? Let’s jump on a call!
3. Inconsistent keyword and landing page messaging. To get searchers to click, your description says something like, "Get 10% off your kitchen remodel if you sign up by December 31." When the person clicks, they are taken to your homepage — where there is no reference of such discount. The visitor immediately feels tricked and leaves... but you still paid for the click.
Here's another less-than-ideal scenario. Let's say you're pushing your snow and ice management services, so your description in your Google Ads campaign mentions this service. Again, the searcher is taken to your homepage, which only briefly mentions snow management. Yes, it mentions it — but the searcher is specifically looking for snow management. You can give it to them, easily, quickly, and clearly by linking your ads campaigns to topic-specific landing pages designed to convert visitors effectively.
The lesson is to spend the time to create a landing page, which will also boost improve your site’s SEO, driving more organic traffic. Make sure that your keywords and landing page messaging is consistent in the description on the campaign and on the landing pages. (Related Read: SEO for Landscaping and Pool Companies: Inbound Marketing Drives Leads.)
4. Not enough time dedicated to tracking and optimizing Google Ads campaigns. The ultimate success of Google Ads campaigns are directly related to the amount of time adjusting and tweaking and the skill with which these updates are made. Launching campaigns and leaving them alone to continually spend budget is the best way to waste that precious budget in a hurry. It takes a significant amount of time to review the progress and make adjustments along the way to improve elements such as click-through-rates (CTR), cost-per-click (CPC), and optimizing use of extensions. How much review? In the beginning, daily. As the data populates and the campaigns hit optimization, these adjustments move to weekly.
PPC, if done incorrectly, can be very expensive. Expensive is relative, of course, and only a word we use if the spend is not delivering marketing ROI. Even if your landscape or construction business has an unlimited marketing budget, the results you’ll end up with via a poorly performing campaign will only be the wrong quality leads - something that costs your business much more over the years than marketing. It’s imperative that you review the analytics to understand things like how long people stayed on your site after clicking through, what they searched, and what other pages they viewed after landing. This will help you understand if you're targeting the right people with your campaigns, and if the pages they are clicking on are well-developed and performing.
5. Thinking Google Ads is a stand-alone marketing strategy. Marketing today for the landscape and construction industries simply doesn’t work like this. The services our clients offer are concierge-style offerings for premium-paying customers, and the projects they design and build are large-scale, elaborate ones that are large purchases, not impulse buys. This means the target consumer is well-researched, educated, and discerning. They are coming into your brand’s ecosystem from many different entry points including social, search, offline touch-points, email, referrals, etc. The reality is that pay-per-click advertising as a standalone service is amongst the least effective ways to drive quality construction or land and snow maintenance leads. That said, using this strategy temporarily while ramping up the other components of a well-rounded system can be a great short-term solution. That well-rounded solution will certainly include the X-factor of bringing more ROI to your Google Ads spend….retargeting. Going back to how our clients’ target customer shops and researches, the practice of retargeting a lead on paid social that came from a Google Ad, entering them into email campaigns, and using content to educate and advance them through their sales journey is where the magic happens.