Google Ads for electricians
Google Ads for electricians, pointed at the jobs that pay.
Top of the page from the day it starts, for the work you want rather than the word electrician on its own. Which matters more in this trade than most, because most of that traffic is people who want to become one.
In short
Do Google Ads work for an electrical company?
They work when they are pointed at jobs worth paying a click for, which for electrical usually means EV chargers, switchboard upgrades, rewires and compliance work rather than the word electrician on its own. Ads buy you visibility the day they go live. The enquiries follow once the wasted searches have been cut out.
Why it suits electrical
The expensive jobs are the planned ones.
Plumbing advertising lives on emergencies. Electrical does not, or not to the same degree. Fewer people are standing in the dark at two in the morning than are standing in water, and the urgent searches that do exist are fought over.
The money in an electrical account is usually somewhere quieter: a charger for a new car, a switchboard that will not take another circuit, a rewire on an older house, an inspection somebody needs before a settlement date. Bigger jobs, longer decisions, and enough margin to justify paying for the click.
That changes how the account is built. It is less about being fastest and more about being the one who answers the question properly on the way through.
Where the money leaks
Four searches you should never pay for.
Every trade has waste in its account. Electrical has a particular kind, and it is large enough to ruin an otherwise sensible budget.
- Courses, apprenticeships and jobs
- Searches about becoming an electrician vastly outnumber searches for hiring one. Left alone, a broad account spends your money on school leavers and career changers. This is the biggest single leak in an electrical account and almost nobody arrives with it blocked.
- How to, wiring diagrams and DIY
- People working out whether they can do it themselves. They are researching, they have no budget, and they click. Worth excluding on day one.
- Wholesalers, parts and brands
- Somebody pricing a consumer unit or a specific brand of charger is shopping for the part, not for you to fit it. Different intent, same keyword, and a steady drip of money.
- Out of area, and out of scope
- The next region over, and the jobs you do not take on. If you do not do commercial switchboards or you will not drive past a certain point, the account should know that before it spends anything.
None of that is exotic. It is the ordinary work of deciding what you will not pay for, done before the budget starts rather than after a month of wondering where it went.
What I actually do
Stop buying the clicks you do not want.
- Campaigns split by job, not by trade
- EV chargers, switchboards, faults and compliance work are different searches at wildly different values, and lumping them into one campaign means the cheapest clicks eat the budget. Split, they can be budgeted and judged separately.
- A negative keyword list before launch
- Built from the trade rather than discovered over a costly first month. It then keeps growing, because the search terms report always turns up things nobody could have guessed.
- Targeting by the places you drive to
- Not a circle drawn round your yard, which cheerfully includes the far side of a harbour and ignores the town twenty minutes up a straight road. Named suburbs and councils, bid differently where the work is better.
- Counting the calls, not just the clicks
- A separate tracked number so ad calls identify themselves without anybody being asked how they found you. Without that the reporting is guesswork wearing a suit.
We have been using Stu for our advertising campaigns for a number of months and could not recommend him enough! The communication has been excellent and the service delivered has really helped us to maintain and grow our business.
What it costs
One fee to build it, one to run it.
The ad budget is yours and goes straight to Google. What you pay me is separate and stated upfront, so you can see exactly which is which.
New Zealand dollars, GST added on top.
- To set it up
- $300one-off + GSTAccount built in your name, the searches worth bidding on worked out, the wasteful ones blocked, ads written and conversion tracking connected so we can see what actually produces calls.
- To run it
- $600a month + GSTWatching what is spending and what is producing, cutting the searches that waste money, and moving budget toward the ones bringing work in. Month to month, stop whenever you like.
Your ad budget is separate and is not included above. It goes straight to Google on your own account, every cent of it buys clicks or views, and you set it. Most trade businesses start somewhere between $30 and $50 a day.
What that buys depends on your trade and your area, because you are bidding against whoever else wants the same clicks. I can give you a rough idea before we start, but nobody knows the real numbers until the campaign has been running a few weeks and there is actual data to look at.
The honest bit
The day you stop paying, it stops.
Advertising rents attention. Turn it off and you are back where you started the same afternoon, which is fine if you know that going in and a nasty surprise if nobody said it.
It is why most electrical companies I work with run ads while the unpaid side builds underneath, then lean on ads less. And it is all wasted if the site people land on gives them no reason to ring.
Questions
Things electricians ask me.
How much should an electrician spend on Google Ads?
Enough to gather useful data in your area, which varies with how competitive it is and what a job is worth to you. Work out what one job earns you and what share of enquiries you win, and the budget follows from that rather than from a number somebody picked for you.
Will I get calls on the first day?
You will get visibility on the first day, and usually clicks. Calls are a different matter and the first few weeks are partly diagnostic: finding which searches convert and cutting the ones that do not. Anybody promising you work from day one is selling a feeling.
Why is my account getting people looking for apprenticeships?
Because the word electrician is searched far more often by people who want to become one than by people who want to hire one, and broad match keywords will happily take both. It is fixed with a negative keyword list and tighter match types, and it is the first thing I look at on any electrical account.
Are EV charger installations worth advertising for?
Usually yes. It is a planned, well-paid job with clear search intent, and competition is still thin in a lot of areas compared with general electrical terms. It is often the single best campaign on an electrician's account.
Should I advertise for emergency electrical work?
Less than a plumber would. Genuine electrical emergencies are rarer than burst pipes, and the urgent searches that do exist are competitive. For most electrical companies the money is better aimed at project and compliance work where the job is worth more and the decision is considered.
Who owns the account?
You do. It is set up in your name, billed to your card, and I am added as a user. If we stop working together you keep the account, the history and everything it has learned, which is not how a lot of agencies run it.
Can I pause it when I am busy?
Yes, and plenty of electrical companies do exactly that, running ads through the quiet stretch and turning them off when the diary fills. It is a tap rather than a subscription, and the account keeps its history while it is off.
Worth reading
More on this, in plain English.
Let’s talk
Not sure whether ads stack up for your electrical business?
Tell me what a job is worth to you and which ones you want more of. You will get a straight answer on whether advertising makes sense at that number, including when it does not.