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Home services PPC in markets where clicks cost $45 to $80

HVAC, plumbing, electrical and roofing are among the most expensive keyword markets in Google Ads. At those click prices, structural mistakes are not small inefficiencies. They are the difference between a profitable channel and a very expensive one.

44%CPA Reduction
60%More Qualified Leads
14+Years Experience
The Problem

Why home services accounts get expensive fast

When a click costs $60, every one of these compounds.

Emergency and non-emergency share a budget

A burst pipe at 2am and someone researching a system replacement in March are different buyers, different bids and different landing pages. Merged, the urgent jobs subsidise the browsing.

Seasonality is not planned for

Demand swings hard with weather. Accounts that run a flat budget year round overspend in the slow months and run out of budget exactly when the phone should be ringing.

Calls are not tracked properly

Most conversions in this industry are phone calls. Without call tracking tied to keyword and, ideally, call outcome, you are optimising on a fraction of the truth.

Service area is too wide

Bidding across a whole metro when crews cover half of it means paying premium CPCs for jobs you will decline or lose money driving to.

What You Get

What a home services engagement includes

This is the vertical where I have the most directly comparable public result.

Measurement and tracking setup

Before anything gets scaled, the data has to be right. GA4 and Google Tag Manager audited and rebuilt where needed, conversion actions deduplicated, Meta CAPI or server-side tagging where it applies, and offline conversion import so the platform optimises toward revenue instead of form fills.

Call tracking down to keyword and outcome

Not just that a call happened, but which search produced it and whether it turned into a booked job. That is what lets bidding chase revenue rather than ringing phones.

Emergency versus planned separation

Distinct campaigns, bids, ad copy and landing pages for urgent work versus considered purchases, with scheduling and budget pacing built around your season.

Campaign landing pages

Paid traffic dies on a bad page. I build and iterate the landing pages the campaigns point to, so the conversion path is one system instead of two vendors blaming each other. Fixed scope, tied to the campaigns, not open-ended web design.

Reporting you can actually read

A Looker Studio dashboard tied to your real conversion data, plus a written read on what changed and why. No 40-tab spreadsheet, no vanity metrics, no 'impressions are up' as a headline.

Local Services Ads usually belong in the mix here too, measured separately from standard search so you can see which one actually produces booked jobs.

Proof

A real home services engagement

Mission AC & Plumbing, Houston, TX

Freelance · May 2025 to Feb 2026

The Challenge

  • Extreme keyword competition with CPCs of $45 to $80
  • Dozens of local competitors bidding on the same terms
  • Seasonal demand swings affecting lead flow

The Strategy

  • Granular A/B testing of ad copy and landing pages
  • Negative keyword refinement to cut wasted spend
  • Audience targeting and full funnel restructuring
44%CPA Reduction
60%More Qualified Leads

Managed roughly $20K per month in Google Ads spend as a freelance PPC specialist for this Houston HVAC and plumbing company.

How It Works

How it runs

1

Audit

I go through the account, the tracking and the conversion path and tell you what is actually broken. You get the findings whether or not we work together.

2

Fix the foundation

Tracking, conversion actions and structure get corrected first. Optimising on top of bad data just makes you confidently wrong.

3

Build and launch

Campaigns, ad copy, audiences and landing pages built around how your buyers actually search.

4

Iterate

Weekly optimisation against the metric that matters to your business, with a monthly written read on what moved and what is next.

Go Deeper

Related guides

Long-form writing on this topic from the blog.

FAQ

Home services questions

Is $45 to $80 per click normal?

In competitive US metros for emergency HVAC and plumbing terms, yes. That is real and it is why account structure matters so much here. The Mission AC engagement ran in exactly that range and still brought CPA down 44%, by cutting waste rather than finding cheaper clicks.

Should I run Local Services Ads instead of Google Ads?

Not instead. Alongside, and measured separately. LSAs are pay-per-lead and sit at the very top of results. Standard search gives you control LSAs do not. Most established contractors benefit from both.

What happens in the slow season?

Budget gets paced down and shifted toward planned-purchase and maintenance-plan messaging rather than emergency terms. Running the same campaigns year round is one of the more expensive mistakes in this vertical.

We already have an agency. Can you audit them?

Yes. A fixed-scope audit that tells you whether the account is well run, in plain language. Some clients keep their agency afterwards and just use the findings.

Get In Touch

Tell me what you are working with

A short form beats a long discovery call. Give me the basics and I will come back with a straight read on whether I can help, usually within one business day.

  • No sales sequence. You get a reply from me, not a nurture flow.
  • If I am not the right fit, I will say so and point you somewhere better.
  • Prefer to talk live? Book a slot instead, link below.

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