When it comes to any business, saving money and cutting costs are among the most crucial steps to maximize profits and grow your business. Especially in the home remodeling industry, when companies try to cut costs in materials and labor, the last thing they want to do is waste money on some advertising and marketing.
Because of this, a lot of home remodeling companies stay away from Google Ads and try to get work organically, whether through current connections or with past clients. Even though this may be a proven method, there is a whole world of potential growth waiting to be unleashed.
In this article, we will explain the many ways that Home Remodelers waste their money on ads and how to fix it so that you are not wasting money, but turning your losses into profits. So let’s dive right into it!
1. Use Phrase Match and Only Broad Match Keywords in Google Ads
When getting into Google Ads, you learn about three keyword match types: broad, phrase, and exact match. Google Ads always recommends using broad match keywords, as this will help you get more clicks and increase the likelihood of your ad appearing for searches that are somewhat related to your ad. Then there is phrase match, which may seem like the best option because you do not want to have too broad but also too specific of a match type, but in reality, phrase match is the worst.
What may seem like a great match type where your ad would pop up from someone searching up a phrase similar to your keywords, the truth is that it is your main money waster. With broad match, you at least get a lot of impressions and a lot of clicks with your allocated budget, which could potentially bring you some leads. Phrase match not only gets you fewer impressions and clicks than broad match but also brings you fewer results than broad match and it’s not guaranteed that the people who click on your ad are actually interested in your service.
So How Do You Save Money?
Use exact match keywords. Yes, you may not get a lot of clicks or impressions, but the people who do click are interested and are good potential customers. The best strategy when running Google Ads is to have a mix of broad match and exact match keywords at first (NEVER PHRASE MATCH). Once your campaign has been running for a while and you see you are getting conversions, switch your keywords to an 80/20 mix, meaning 80% of your keywords to be exact match and 20% of your keywords to be broad match.
Once you reach this stage where you have an 80/20 mix, it is ultimately up to you whether you would like to go 100% only exact match keywords or not. But we at Based Agency recommend that if you have a high budget on your campaign, definitely switch to only exact match keywords, so that with your high budget, you only spend money on good clicks that have a higher chance to lead to conversions. But whatever you do, STAY AWAY from phrase match!
2. Do Not Properly Set Up Conversions and Conversion Tracking
When setting up conversion tracking in Google Ads, make sure that it is set up properly. The last thing you want is to have excellent ad strength on all of your ads, great ppc landing pages with intriguing selling points, and a great list of keywords, all to be ruined because your conversion tracking wasn’t set up properly.
How Do You Save Money?
Simple, just make sure it is set up properly. You may be thinking that it is not that important, that if you are getting good leads, why does it matter where they are coming from? But that is wrong, the whole point of Google Ads is to not only advertise and get conversions but also to track where you get conversions from so that you can strategize and get the most bang for your buck.
3. PPC Landing Pages Are Bad
So your ads are set up well, with good headlines and descriptions. You finally figure out how to properly track your conversions to see where they are coming from. You finally think “I am all done, time to get some leads!” and then you are hit with no leads or a bunch of spam conversions. Why?
The saying “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link” applies very well to Google Ads. You can have a great campaign with everything well made, but if one thing is missing or not properly made, it could affect the whole campaign.
So How Do You Create A Good PPC Landing Page?
To create a good PPC landing page, you have to have a structure that will catch the viewer’s eye. From our experience, we learned that showing selling points first or any promotions at the top of the page, gets the viewer interested and they are more likely to fill out the form for a quote or a consultation.
And then with the rest of the page, include information about your company, why you are a good choice, and other services you offer. Why this certain structure? Because most of the time, the viewer does not check out the whole page. The first thing they see and read has to be the most important content, so that is why you put your selling points and promotions.
But for those who actually would check out the whole page, the rest of the content should be talking about your company and everything you can do. So it is not that this content is not as important and that is why it is not at the top, but it’s more of a complementary content that just supports the main selling points and promotions you are offering.
But most importantly, make sure you have a form for the customer to fill out as well as a phone number. That way, once you do all of these things, your PPC page will help you bring many conversions.
4. Location Is Not Specific
The location asset of Google Ads may be one of the most important parts for Home Remodelers. Why? Because when trying to get leads for potential customers, you do not want to get leads from someone out of your target area. What may seem like no big deal, to home remodelers, driving 2 hours one way to possibly get rejected for a project, is not worth the time and money.
Such a simple thing in Google Ads, but it plays a big role in what kind of leads you get and who you are targeting. In Google Ads, you can target locations where you know there may be people living there who are more willing to spend money on a home remodel. You can do a rough area like a few cities, all the way to specific zip codes of wealthy neighborhoods.
The most important thing to remember is to not go too specific. You have to have a decent-sized target market where you could get a lot of impressions, which in turn get you more clicks and possibly more leads. If your target market is really small and specific, you may get one or two leads, but nothing much else out of it since the number of people is not that large.
How Do Bad Locations Waste Money?
Like I said in the first paragraph of this segment, you do not want to be getting lead form submissions from people far away. It is just common sense that if you are in one area, you would want to get leads around the area where your business headquarters are.
So there are two ways you can use locations smartly so you don’t waste money:
- Use zip codes and cities to target specific areas so that all the people who see your ads are only in those areas.
- Using a radius around your business headquarters. It isn’t as popular as using zip codes and cities, but if you just in general want to target everyone 50 miles around you, this would be a great option and would not exclude anyone.
Whatever you do for your locations, just make sure you do not forget to properly set this up. The worst thing and the last thing you want to happen is for you to get a lot of leads and conversions and get excited about it, only to check and see that they are coming from Europe or Asia.
5. Bad Bid Strategy
The last thing that could be wasting your money as a home remodeler is your Google ads bid strategy. Google Ads is not a set-and-be-done kind of software. It’s a watch and change your strategy based on the current market kind of software, which may seem time-consuming but having the correct bid strategy based on your business is vital if you want to get more leads and conversions.
We won’t waste your time and explain how certain bid strategies are wasting money, well just skip right to what strategies are good and what we recommend.
When you first create a campaign and you are deciding what bid strategy to choose, the only one you should choose at the beginning is Maximize Clicks. This bid strategy is great for starting out since it just helps you get as many clicks as possible. You do not want to start with any other strategy in the beginning since Google Ads is still learning and seeing what you are looking for.
Once you start getting conversions with this bid strategy, it is time to consider switching your bid strategy. Now that you are getting conversions, you want to switch gears and go all in on getting conversions. Again, maximize clicks strategy is good only at the start to get a lot of clicks and impressions. But it’s smart to switch to Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversions (Target CPA).
With Maximize conversions, you tell Google that you no longer want to try to get as many clicks as possible anymore, you want to try to get as many conversions. With Google learning what kind of audience to target during the maximize clicks bid strategy period, once you switch to maximize conversions, it already knows who to target so it will help you turn those clicks into conversions.
Why I mentioned Maximize conversions (Target CPA) is because you can also use this bid strategy if you have a set budget you want to spend per conversion. With Maximize conversions, it seeks to get you a conversion, no matter the cost. Whereas with Target CPA, you can set it at $150 and Google will try to get you good conversions with this set CPA.
Target CPA is a little more work, as you have to constantly check every 14 days to see what your cost per conversion is and change it based on that, but in the long run, it is the best and final bid strategy you as a home remodeler business should use. That is what we recommend.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, it is very easy to waste money as a home remodeler who is running Google Ads and does not know what they are doing. In fact, a lot of the ways home remodelers waste money are easy fixes that with just some knowledge and tips can be prevented. So if you are a home remodeler, do not stray away from Google Ads, but attack it head-on and take advantage of the potential growth that it can provide you.
Our primary goal at Based Agency with these articles is not to sell to you, but to help you, as a home remodeler, by providing resources to support your growth and business.
But, if you are looking for someone to help you get started with Google Ads, give us a call or get in touch with us through our contact form. Thanks for reading!
