PPC For Contractors - How Construction Companies Can Grow Through Paid Ads

Pay-per-click (PPC) is one of the most affordable and measurable ways to boost your business’s revenue and by extension, its overall success. It’s an internet advertising model where you pay for each click on your ad, commonly used to bring qualified traffic to your company’s website. 

Construction companies of all sizes can use this in their favor and get extraordinary amounts of new customers on all search engines and social media networks. 

In today’s blog, we’ll explore the benefits of PPC for contractors and provide you with some basic tips on running these campaigns to maximize your website traffic.

Is PPC Better Than SEO?

Although construction companies often weigh these two options, the real question is: why choose one over the other?

Here are some things to consider. Paid ads appear above organic SEO results, but at the same time, you’ll have to pay for the PPC traffic. SEO traffic is practically free (not including the time investment it took you to get there). 

This means that SEO is permanent, while you’ll lose all your traffic as soon as you stop paying for the ads. 

Put differently, you should use both in your marketing strategy. Focus on SEO as the basis of your long-term marketing strategy and PPC as a method of capturing immediate leads.

For example, you can run PPC campaigns to either boost your SEO results or advertise construction services while waiting for your SEO to kick in. It’s also viable to run PPC ads during specific times of the year to advertise relevant services and increase your brand awareness.

Benefits of PPC For Contractors

There is no shortage of ways your company can benefit from setting aside more resources for a paid advertising campaign:

• Tangible and Measurable Result: You’re not wasting money on impressions, rather, you’re only paying when someone clicks on the ad. Meaning, that you’ll always achieve tangible results. In addition, you can easily track your advertising expenses and which placements deliver the best ROI, making it possible to adjust your campaigns in real-time.

• Budget-friendly: Expect to pay around $2.69 per click for search engine ads and $0.63 for Google’s display network ads. You can set any budget that works for you, no matter how high or low. 

• Instantaneous Traffic: Results of PPC ads are immediate and you can receive traffic to your website in under 48 hours. 

• Outrank your competitors: Your largest competitors are probably outranking you at the moment. Running PPC ads gives you a fighting chance against businesses that have been doing SEO for years. 

• Attract local audiences: Most of your business will likely come from local customers. Fortunately, paid ads generally result in 24% of all search clicks, and as such, you can target your local area to put your ads in front of qualified local leads.

How To Run a Successful PPC Campaign

While effective, PPC for contractors requires a strategic approach. You can use these tips to see results with your paid ad campaigns.

1. Define Your Audience

Before starting a campaign, you should first define your audience. PPC ads provide you with plenty of options for targeting. You can target ads by content, search, audience, or all three. Moreover, you can include or exclude audiences and specific keywords based on various categories such as gender, location, life events, or remarketing. 

You can also set up a customized campaign for each of your audience segments. 

The only thing you need to know is the demographics of your audience and their intent, which will allow you to target them correctly.

Alternatively, you can opt for Google’s Dynamic Search Ads.

 2. Set a Budget

To stay within your allocated budget, choose the right keywords. This can get tricky as different keywords can vary in cost. As a rule, the more hits the keyword has (more competition), the more it will cost per click. A good way to overcome this problem is to estimate the qualified traffic you want to receive. 

For instance, if a keyword has the highest traffic and the highest cost per click, multiply these two numbers to determine your budget. 

 3. Research Keywords

So, how to choose the right keywords?

Here’s a quick guide:

• Use Google Keyword Planner to put together a list of relevant keywords
• Research monthly volume, keyword difficulty, and cost-per-click
• Eliminate negative keywords, i.e. phrases that are related to the keyword but not relevant to your audience
• Group related keywords for individual ads to lower the cost and improve your quality score

You can also spy on your competitors to see which keywords they’re using. 

 4. Optimize Your Landing Pages

For your PPC endeavor to be successful, you need appropriate landing pages your users will be redirected to when they click on the ad.

An effective landing page must match the message of the ad, thus inspiring the visitor to convert into a paying customer. Furthermore, use plenty of images and shift the content to how your services can help your visitors.

Most importantly, keep the copy short and avoid using complex business jargon - your landing pages will serve their purpose well.

 5. Monitor The Results Of The Campaign

PPC for contractors requires continuous management to ensure your marketing efforts are paying off. Considering the amount of data you’ll receive when running ads, you’ll have full control over the settings to make immediate improvements. 

For example, if the headline of the ad is the weak part, you can change it while the campaign is live. We recommend using Google Analytics to keep track of the intricate data in your ad campaign, including the click-through rate, conversion rate, and other data such as cost per conversion.

Get It Right The First Time

By following the process outlined above, you’ll improve the effectiveness of your ad campaigns. The question is, can you afford to make mistakes while adjusting the various facets of a PPC ad campaign?

Taking into account how much potential earnings you may lose because of inefficient ad copies, landing pages, headlines, or dozens of other factors, hiring a professional to manage your ads can save you money in the long run. 

For affordable PPC for contractor services, give Oamii a call.

As a full-service digital agency focused on serving construction companies and other types of contractors, we have the means, knowledge, and experience to attract new customers for our clients. We’ll have expert writers and SEO managers creating your ads, designers creating visually appealing landing pages, and our PPC experts will carefully monitor your ads, ensuring you get the highest amount of ROI possible.

Get it right the first time - fill out our contact form and let us know how we can help you.