People search on Google for contractors or construction companies when they have a construction project. Whether they have a small or big construction project, renovation, or new construction, they look on Google and compare the services and companies.
As we have already discussed in other articles, Google becomes an inseparable part of our life. People look for schools, restaurants, items they buy, services, and many other things on Google. It’s true for construction too. When they need to make changes to their home or start building a new house, they look for contractors on Google. As a construction company, you’ll be ahead compared to your competition when you know how to advertise and promote your services. In this article, I want to show you how to set up Google call Ads.
So, how to beat your competition in the construction business with Google Call Ads?
I have to clear a few things for you to understand how the advertisement works on Google.
Let me be very straight forward. Your Ads need to be on Google’s first or second page to make a good impression and convert searcher to a business. And I prefer the 2nd page myself! Keep it there, and I’ll explain later why.
The outcome of being on the first page or second page of Google is receiving more traffic. Traffic means site visitors, people who pick up the phone and call your number or click on the phone number you have on your Ad. Per statistics, 95% of traffic goes to whatever is listed in search results on the first page of Google, and the rest goes to the other pages. But behaviorally, when people search on Google, they also want to know what the 2nd page offers. It’s human nature. Curiosity!
Advertising on the second page is less expensive than the first page! So there you go, that is my reason why I like the 2nd page. It’s cheaper, and it’s within my budget. But it’s up to you. If the budget allows you to go for the first page, then be my guest and knock yourself out.
Google Campaign Types
There are different types of ad campaigns on Google, and each one has its usage.
If you would like to learn about each one of these campaign types go to this link.
I will come up with another article explaining each of them. But for now, our focus is Google call Ads under the Search Campaign.
The Google Call Ads allows you to add your phone number to your Ad. So when people click on your Ad, they call your number directly and speak to you. The Google Call Ads has a high conversion rate comparing to other types of Google Ads!
Setup Google Call Ads step by step
You need to have a Google ad account. If you don’t have an account, go to this link and create your account and log in.
After you log in to your account, you should see a page like this.
1- Click on “New Campaign”
These are the goals, and if you hover your mouse on each of these, it shows you the types of each campaign at the bottom of each square. Google made it more comprehensive for you by using these names such as Sales, Leads, Web traffic, Product and brand consideration, Brand awareness and search, and App promotion.
For a construction business, I recommend either the Leads or Website traffic goal.
The main difference between Lead and Website traffic goal is that a visitor can become a customer of your business with the Lead goal. Whereas in a Website traffic goal, a visitor would come to your website, look around, and wandering around without becoming a customer.
Simply a Website Traffic is somewhat aimless and has less potential to convert a visitor to a business customer.
Now I have explained the difference; I’m not saying the lead goal is better over website traffic. Each one has its own pros and cons. For the lead goal, you most likely want to have a landing page, whereas, in a website traffic goal, you just need a website since you are aiming for less. Let’s get back to the business!
2- For the sake of this tutorial, I’m going to select “Leads”
3- Within the same page, Google is now asking you to select the campaign type. Since I want to run a Google call Ads, I’m interested in “Search Campaign” select that:
When you hover on the “Search” campaign, it shows:
“Generate customer leads with text or call Ads that show near search results of Google.com, on Google search partner sites, and more.”
4- Within the same page again, Google is now asking you ways you’d like to reach your goal. Multiple choices are available for you; we want “Phone Calls,” you can also choose “Website visits” or the others. I’m only going to choose “Phone Calls.”
Now you have to enter your phone number. This number must be the same number on your website. Google verifies this number and will make sure it’s the same contact number listed on your website. Also, make sure to use the same format. If the first three digits are in the parentheses, then make sure you enter them in parentheses. Click continue.
5- This page shows the campaign type and your goal. In our case, “Search” and “Leads” Give a meaningful name to your campaign. I always like to use this format:
Campaign-{Campaign Type}-{Campaign Goal}-{ways to reach your goal}
For the “Network” box, I’d personally uncheck the “Include Google Search Partners.” This way, Google will only show my Ad on its search results and other places. Yet it’s up to you where you want to show your Ad. You may want Google to show your Ad on other websites too!
Then scroll down to targeting and audiences. A construction company typically works in certain neighborhoods or towns and cities. Here you can define where you want to show our Ad. If you don’t appropriately target your Ad, Google displays your Ad in all countries, which is not ideal. Your budget will be exhausted, and your Ad will be useless.
In my case, I selected San Francisco and San Jose. You can target by zip code and region too. You can also click on “Advanced Search” and tell Google to show your Ad within a radius of a location.
The next section is “Target” and “Exclude” I recommend to choose “People in or regularly in your targeted locations“
I’d select this option because with the default option, which is “People in, or who show interest in, your targeted locations” Google can show your Ad for people in other states or areas that your business is not active. For example, if someone in Idaho searches for “Construction company in San Francisco” or previously has shown interest in your targeted area, may see your Ad and click on it. Obviously, Google will charge you for that click!
I leave the next two sections, untouched, “Languages” and “Audiences.” They are self-explanatory.
6- Now, it’s time to set your budget and bidding strategy. Set your daily budget for whatever you can afford. This budget is not necessarily limit the day expense on Ad. But it limits your cost per month. So you wouldn’t pay more than (Days in month * Budget). However, some days you may spend less or twice as the budget you defined.
To set the bidding, you have to consider a few things. If your website has enough visitors, then you may want to use conversion tracking and select “Set a target cost per action.”
However, even though you have many visitors, you may not have a good idea of what keywords and what price per each keyword get you on the first or second page of Google. Therefore, I recommend that you change the bidding to manual CPC for now.
Now, if your website has recently been created, I highly recommend that you choose manual bidding and keep it that way for a while.
To do that, scroll down and click on “Or, select a bid strategy directly (not recommended).” Click again on the “Select your bid strategy” dropdown.
At the bottom of this dropdown, you can select “Manual CPC.” Select that and leave the rest of the options alone. Click on “Save and Continue” to go to the next section.
We select “Manual CPC” to be able to set the cost for each keyword later.
7- Now, it’s time to give our Ad group a name. It’s a group, and we can create more Ads in the future if we needed to have more than one.
Let’s call it “Ad-Group-Call”
The next section is gonna be our keywords that may trigger the Ad on Google.
There are three ways to do this, and they can be combined:
1- Fetch the keywords from a web page (your own website page or your competitor’s website). This is my preferred method
2- Enter your service or product, for example, “Construction” and click on “Get Keywords”
3- Add keywords manually, one per each line
For this tutorial, I put one of our customer’s website address to fetch the keywords.
Click on “Save and Continue”
8- On this page, we will configure our Ad’s headlines, descriptions, website URL, and verification link.
These are the fields we are going to fill on this page:
1- Final URL: This is your website address or any other page on your website. Only configure this if you want to show “Visit Website” on your Ad. If you configure the final URL, people can click on your Ad and get to your website.
2- Verification URL: You must configure this address. The address you are configuring here must show the exact phone number you want to use for your Ad. Otherwise, Google will not approve the Ad, and it’s not gonna show up.
3- Headlines 1 and 2: You only have 30 characters for each headline.
4- Descriptions 1 and 2: Describe your services and try to be creative. For each description, you can add up to 90 characters.
5- Call Reporting: Leave it on default. We will configure this later.
Click on “Save” and from the next page click on “Publish”
The next page should be like this. But we are not done yet. We need to set the prices for each keyword.
From the top of the page, click on “Tools” and select “Keyword Planner”
Using Google Keyword Planner to Determine the Cost of Each Keyword
One reason I recommended to fetch the keywords from your own page is the keyword relevancy. Google triggers the Ad better for the keywords that have relevant content on the destination web page.
For example, if your website doesn’t have content or header related to “Roofing” and you have “Roofing” in your keywords list, Google may not show your Ad if someone searches for “Roofing.”
Alright, let’s get back to our last few steps.
1- Stop your campaign for further fine-tuning:
If your campaign is not selected, from the left section click on “All campaigns” and then on the name of the campaign you have already created.
2- Export the keywords for the forecast analysis:
Make sure your campaign is selected. From the left panel, click “Keywords.” Download the keywords in any format that you like. If you have a Mac, you can export it as a CSV and open the file in the “Numbers” App or open it in Microsoft Excel.
Copy the keywords, either one by one or all at once.
3- Paste the keywords in Google’s Keyword Planner and Forecast tool:
On the top bar, find the wrench icon on click on it. Then from the left section under “Planning” click on “Keyword Planner”
Click on “Get search volume and Forecasts” and paste the keywords in the box.
4- Historical Metrics and Keywords Cost:
Alright! Click on “Historical Metrics” on the same page. And from the top bar, change your location to places you want Google to show your Ad.
Based on the locations you have selected, the tool is going to give you different metrics.
These are the metrics that I’m interested in:
Assign Cost to Each Keyword
Head back to your campaign area. Make sure that your campaign is selected. Click on “Keywords” and under “Max CPC,” set the price for each of the keywords. If you don’t like a keyword, you have two options, Pause or Remove. click the very far left check box and from “Edit” click “Remove”
The “Max CPC” is the highest amount you are willing to pay for a click on your Ad. If you want to be on the first page of Google’s SERP, you can set this by finding the middle amount of the historical top of the page high and low bid. This will not guarantee that your Ad is going to show up on the first page of SERP. Activate the campaign and after a day or two, return to your keywords and find what Google is saying about them. It will tell you how your keywords are performing. Are they below the first-page bid!? Like I said, sometimes I prefer not to aim for the first page cause it can get very expensive!
Keywords Match Type
Another important column is “Match Type.” Do not neglect that. Google has a definitive article for keyword match types. You can read it here at “About keyword matching options“
Let’s Wrap it up
Google Ad is one of the most powerful marketing tools available for businesses. Just in 2020, over 2 trillion searches are recorded for every single day!
I know this has been a long article and took quite a time for me to write it down. But I hope this article helps you to set up your Google Ads more efficiently. I couldn’t cover many things in this article cause it would have been much longer than what it is. So please feel free to reach out, and I will personally and happily answer all your questions.
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