Google Ads For Pressure Washing Businesses
Want to learn how to take your Google Ad campaigns to the next level?
We run several Google Ad campaigns for pressure washing businesses and know that having the proper knowledge and correct strategy can be very beneficial for your bottom line.
On the other hand, if you don’t have the proper knowledge or the correct strategy your Google Ad campaign can run amuck and drain you hard earned dollars.
Learn How to Stop Wasting Countless Dollars on Google Ads
In this guide we’ll go over everything you need to run a successful Google Ads campaign for your pressure washing business so that you:
- Maximize Your Ad Budget
- Have an Advantage Over Your Competitors
- Have Consistent Top of Page Ad Rankings
- Spend Less to Convert More
What Are Google Ads?
Google Ads are a pay-per-click (PPC) platform where Google offers the opportunities for business owners and advertisers to appear on their search networks and other websites through their Display Network.
Google Ads show above the organic results and are a way for businesses such as yours to produce quick and effective results if done right that can lead into getting some early wins.
Benefits of Google Ads
As a pressure washing business you should be adding Google Ads into your marketing repertoire especially if you are new or don’t have a substantial online presence and need to get some leads generating for your business.
Here are some of the benefits of running Google Ads for pressure washing businesses:
Instant Visibility
You can build out an entire Google Ad campaign within one day and show up in the top position for keywords like “pressure washing (your city)” immediately. Usually you would have to wait 3-6 months to see results like this with SEO.
Hyper Focused Targeting
The targeting within the Google Ads allows you to target based off of income, zip code, and other demographics. This allows you to be visible to the audience that you choose.
Your Reach is More Vast
Do you have several areas that you service? If so, Google Ads allows you to run your ads to surrounding service areas so that the reach for your business is vaster and you can get potential customers in multiple locations.
Leverage Analytics for Performance
Do you have several areas that you service? If so, Google Ads allows you to run your ads to surrounding service areas so that the reach for your business is vaster and you can get potential customers in multiple locations.
Control Your Budget
You have more control of how much you are going to spend with Google Ads as you can set your daily budget and stay within the limitation of how much you can spend for that month, or if your campaign is performing well you can be more aggressive with your approach.
Utilize Re-marketing
You have more control of how much you are going to spend with Google Ads as you can set your daily budget and stay within the limitation of how much you can spend for that month, or if your campaign is performing well you can be more aggressive with your approach.
Why Most Google Ads Campaign Fail
Now before you say Google Ads don’t work and that you’ve tried them for your pressure washing business are you keeping up to date with the latest changes on Google Ads and have you implemented the right strategy for your business?
Below are some of the main reasons why most Google Ads campaigns fail:
Not Spending Enough Money
You can’t expect to perform well in your Google Ad campaign if you are not spending enough money. The reason being, you will not garner enough clicks to allow yourself an opportunity to convert leads and it can be detrimental to your ad position. If you are only spending $25/day but the average click costs $14 in your area, you are only allowing yourself an opportunity to get 2-3 clicks a day at the most. This also could potentially hurt your ad position as your daily budget may not allow you to bid any higher therefore your ad is not prioritized as much as your competitors. We will discuss how much you should spend in greater detail later on.
Set-Up Only One Ad Group
Most pressure washing businesses who run Google Ads will run one generic ad campaign for ALL their keywords. Doing this will hurt your conversions and your relevance score for your ad which lowers your ad position and potentially increases your cost per click.
Sending Traffic to Homepage
You should not send the traffic from your Google Ads to the homepage of your website. The reason being, this will distract users from your conversion path, meaning they can click around on different links which could potentially lead them off your website. This is why you need to make separate landing pages focused on conversions for your Google Ads campaign which we will go into further detail later.
How the Google Ads Process Works
Most pressure washing business owners think that whoever spends the most on Google Ads gets the top position, when that is incorrect. If that was the case, a plumbing company could bid on pressure washing keywords, yet still show their plumbing ad and landing page and be top position. Google is all about showing the most relevant results to users which is why they use a “quality score” coupled with your bid amount.
Google Ads utilize an auction system for ad placement that is centered around keywords. As a pressure washing business owner, you will select keywords such as “pressure washing (your city)” or “roof cleaning (your city)” and set the “bid” for how much you are willing to pay for a click on that keyword. Your bid along with the quality score of your ad will determine your placement and you will need to optimize both in order to have better ad positioning.
Some factors that determine your quality score are:
- How relevant is your ad to the user’s search query
- How relevant is the keyword the user typed to your ad group
- How relevant is your landing page to the user’s search query
- The historical performance of your ad group’s click through rate
- Your overall historical account performance
Having a high-quality score is important because it will do the following:
- Lower Your Costs - When your quality score is high, Google will reward you by lowering your cost per click giving you a better ROI and bang for your buck
- Gain You Better Ad Position – Having a high-quality score will gain you better ad position and have your ad display more often without you increasing your bid at all.
How to Structure Your Google Ad Campaigns for Success
Anybody can set-up a Google Ad campaign but setting up an effective one may seem very confusing if you are a pressure washing business owner as you are too busy making the world a cleaner place.
That is why we are going to show you how we effectively set-up and run a Google Ad campaign that not only brings consistent leads but an ROI that is positive for your business.
Know How Much to Budget
The very first thing you need to do before setting up any Google Ad campaign is to know how much you’re willing to spend each month because this is going to dictate how much you will be bidding and what keywords you will be bidding for.
A tool that you should be using that is completely free is the Google Keyword Planner located in the Google Ads platform. This will give you a good gauge at what the cost per click (CPC) is in your service area for the keywords you are targeting.
Now for pressure washing companies we recommend that you set your minimum ad budget each month to $1,000. Remember, this is not how much you are spending outright but how much you are willing to spend every month. Too many pressure washing business owners we talk to think that they are automatically going to spend that budget. If you meet your spending budget every month at $1,000 that means you are getting a healthy number of clicks which equals opportunities.
Now you’re probably thinking we are crazy for recommending that budget but let us explain.
In most cities where pressure washing services are at a premium, the cost per click is going to be between $5-$15, even in places like Tampa, Orlando, Charlotte, Houston, and Atlanta.
In the several pressure washing campaigns that we have and are currently running, we have seen on average that 3 clicks equal one phone call or form submission which we can chalk up as a lead.
That means for every 3 clicks you get on your ad; you will get a lead.
For the sake of this example, let’s say:
- Your monthly ad budget is $1,000
- You run ads Monday-Friday
- The cost per click in your local area is $8
If your monthly ad budget is $1,000 and you run ads Monday-Friday that means your daily budget is $50/day.
$50 * 20 = $1,000
So, if your daily budget is $50/day and the CPC in your local area is $8, you can get 6 clicks every day on your ad.
If it takes 3 clicks on average to get a lead, that means you should be getting 10 leads a week which equates to 40 leads in one month at the very least.
Let’s say we averaged out the price between all of your services and it came out to $220.
As much as we would like to close every lead, that simply isn’t the case. Out of those 40 leads who were looking for your services let’s say you closed 20 of them.
If the average price between all of your services is $220 and you closed 20 leads that month that equates to $4,400.
Would you mind spending $1,000 to make $4,400? I know this doesn’t sound like a lot but if you scale and optimize your Google Ads campaign over time, you can see a much bigger ROI.
Keywords
After determining your monthly budget for your Google Ad campaign, you want to determine what keywords you are going to target.
As we mentioned earlier, you can use the tool that is built into the Google Ads platform which is the Keyword Planner. Other resources you can also use for keyword research are:
You want to ensure that the keywords you are targeting have a sizeable search volume and are in your budget to bid effectively for.
For example, if you take a look below, we did research for pressure washing terms in Atlanta.
The term “pressure washing Atlanta” has a 390 search volume and between 100-1,000 monthly searches for that exact phrase and its variants. The average cost-per-click (CPC) for that keyword is $5.22 with a top of page bid rate of $7.38 on the high range. As a pressure washing business owner you know that is relatively cost effective for that search volume. This keyword and its variants are what you want to add into your arsenal of keywords that you will target.
Generally, for pressure washing businesses there are going to be 3 categories of keywords that you should be targeting.
Examples of these keywords are:
General Keywords
- Pressure washing services
- Power washing companies
- Pressure washing prices
Location Based Keywords
- Pressure washing (your city)
- Power washing (your city)
- (Your city) pressure washing
- (Your city) power washing
Specific Service Keywords
- Roof cleaning (your city)
- Roof cleaning companies
- Roof cleaning services
These are just examples, but you should sit down with either a pen and paper or an excel spreadsheet and map out these keywords.
As you can see these keywords are grouped with similar terms. They will eventually build out your ad groups which we will discuss shortly
Negative Keywords
The #1 reason why we see pressure washing companies blow through their budget without any credible leads is because they don’t take the time to do research on the keywords they don’t want to show up for.
You need to implement negative keywords into your Google Ads campaign so that your telling Google what keywords you don’t want your ads to show up for.
Trust us, there are plenty of keywords and phrases that you don’t want to show up for as a pressure washing business.
Some of those phrases and keywords are:
- supply, supplies, parts, buy, bulk
- job, employment, career, training
- Lowe’s, Sears, Craigslist
- All of your top competitors
Make sure that you are you implementing these negative keywords and their phrases in your campaign so that you are not wasting clicks on leads that are not qualified or not looking for your specific services.
Phrase Match Keywords
As we will discuss shortly, when building out your ad groups and the keywords for these ad groups you are going to want to use different phrase matches.
Google Ads allows you to use several variations of keywords and those are:
- Broad Match
- Broad Match Modifier
- Phrase Match
- Exact Match
Broad Match Keywords
Broad match keywords are the default settings and can show up on searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other variants. At Pressure Washing Marketing Pros we don’t use broad match terms AT ALL we find that they cause too many problems with accounts and can run your money up quickly.
Broad match keywords have no modifiers, so they look normal. An example of what a broad match keyword looks like is:
Pressure Washing Services
Broad Match Modifier Keywords
Broad match modifiers are similar to broad match keywords except they only show up in searches with the keywords with a + in front of them.
Broad match modifiers have + signs designated in front of them as an example of what a broad match modifier keyword looks like is:
+pressure +washing +services
This means that your ad will show up in search with those keywords in them.
For example, they would show up in searches such as:
pressure washing and soft washing services
services to pressure wash my house
pressure washing and exterior cleaning services
We use these types of variations in our ad campaigns for our clients.
Phrase Match Keywords
With phrase match keywords your ads may show only when the keywords match the phrase, have close variations to that phrase, and can include additional words either before or after the phrase. Your ads won’t show though if words are added to the middle of the phrase changing its meaning.
Phrase match keywords have quotations designated before and after them and example of what a phrase match keyword is:
“pressure washing services”
An example of searches they would show up in are:
cheap pressure washing services
pressure washing services for my house
Exact Match Keywords
Just as it sounds, exact match keywords only show up for search terms that exactly match the phrase and very close variants.
Exact match keywords have brackets designated before and after and an example of what an exact match keyword looks like is:
[pressure washing services]
An example of searches they would show up for are:
Pressure washing service
Pressure washing services
At Pressure Washing Marketing Pros, we use a variation of these keywords so that we can maximize the opportunities for your campaign and also spend your hard earn money as effectively as possible.
Setting Up Your Objectives and Bid Strategy
The initial steps of setting up your Google Ads campaign can be pretty confusing this where you will be setting up your goals, campaign type, location, audience, bid strategy, and setting up your ad groups and ads.
When you first start a new campaign, you will want to select a goal for your campaign. We recommend either the website traffic or leads goal.
Next will you choose your campaign type. As a pressure washing business you should choose the search network.
You will then choose your network. Once again you should choose search network.
Choose your location afterwards. You can either target specific cities, zip codes or a radius.
You can then target your audience and demographics.
As we discussed earlier, you should have already determined your daily spending budget before starting your campaign. From there you will set your bidding strategy which we recommend the maximize clicks strategy, especially if you are a beginner.
How to Structure Your Ad Groups
Two main things you want to do are make people click on your ads, make them as relevant as possible, so you have a high-quality score, and have them convert into customers. This means you need to structure your ad campaigns properly.
After you are done setting up your objectives and bidding strategy it will be time to create your individual ad groups and ads.
Now one of the biggest reasons why we think that most pressure washing campaigns don’t perform well is because they only make one ad group that runs for ALL the keywords they are targeting.
For example, if you are targeting pressure washing, roof cleaning, and gutter cleaning services, you need to make a separate ad group for each one. After creating your ad groups, you may create 3 or more ads under each ad group.
Ad Group 1: Pressure Washing
- Ad 1
- Ad 2
- Ad 3
Ad Group 2: Roof Cleaning
- Ad 1
- Ad 2
- Ad 3
Ad Group 3: Gutter Cleaning
- Ad 1
- Ad 2
- Ad 3
This allows you to create the most unique and relevant ads to users so that not only do you have a higher quality score and better ad position, but you are also converting that traffic as well.
Headlines
When writing the headlines of your Google Ad campaign, you want to make sure that you are writing them as compelling as possible. We see too many generic headlines when looking at the ads of various pressure washers.
That means you can add phrases like, “Same Day Service” or even if you’re running a special you can include phrases like “$50 Savings If You Call Today”.
This will entice users to click on your ad which will increase your opportunities for conversions.
Another thing you want to do is to ensure that you are making your ad as relevant as possible. That means if you were targeting roof cleaning services in your area, make sure that you are mentioning that in your headline.
You want to make sure that you are utilizing ad extensions in each one of your ad groups to increase your click through rate (CTR) as this will allow you to get a higher quality score and more opportunities for conversions.
Adding these to your campaign can make or break it because a substantial number of users will click on your ad extensions and take action without even clicking your main headline.
4 Main Ad Extensions
There are 4 main extensions that you should be using for your pressure washing business and those are:
Location Extensions
Call Extension
Callout Extension
Sitelink Extensions
Landing Page
We see too many pressure washing businesses send the traffic to all of their ads to their homepage. The reason why you don’t want to do this, is because it can distract users and also potentially take them off the conversion path. Not only that but you can kill your relevancy and ad quality. If you are showing a gutter cleaning ad but are directing that traffic to your homepage that talks about all of your pressure washing services, it is not completely unique to the users.
What you should do instead is send that traffic to a landing page that just mentions and showcases your gutter cleaning services which will increase your relevancy, ad quality, and conversions.
You should be creating a unique and separate landing page for each one of your ad groups. This means that the URL you should be sending the traffic to should be a landing page that is just relevant to that ad group.
Here are some factors that make a high converting pressure washing landing page:
- Keyword in main headline
- No navigation menu (this will only give users two options: either they convert or leave)
- Contact form as short as possible (keep it to Name, Address, Phone Numbers)
- Mobile-friendly
- Fast loading time
- Unique and branded before and after photos
- Testimonials
- Trust symbols like BBB, Angie’s List, PWNA, UAMCC
- Include areas you service
Tracking and Monitoring
What good is running a Google Ads campaign if you don’t know what is working and what isn’t working? If you don’t track your conversions, you won’t have a way of scaling your campaigns and it defeats the purpose of marketing in the first place. Setting up your conversions is just as important as setting up your ads and ad groups.
At Pressure Washing Marketing Pros, we set up 3 types of conversion tracking:
- Calls from landing page – we track the calls that our clients get from their landing page down to the keyword, time, phone number, name, and duration of the call.
- Form Submissions – we track the form submissions down to the keyword and time
- Call Extensions – these calls are tracked when users don’t click on your ad and just call you directly. Like the calls we track from the landing page we can track these calls down to the keyword, time, phone number, name, and duration of the call.
If you currently aren’t tracking at least these 3 metrics you need to start tracking them immediately, so you are not wasting your precious dollars and know where to put your money.
Monitoring
Google Ads isn’t something you set up once and never monitor again. It’s a process that you have to continuously monitor so that you can look at what ad groups, ads, and keywords are not performing well and make tweaks from there to continuously lower your spend. Also, you want to increase the quality of your ads so that you are paying less per conversion.
Once you’re able to scale and are properly monitoring your ads, it gets to the point where you put in $1 to make $5. Who wouldn’t want that kind of return? That’s the power of Google pay-per-click advertising if it is done right.
We have clients who spend $3,000/month on their Google Ads, and we have some who spend $1,000/month.
Can you guess who is making the best returns and is paying less per conversion?
The client who pays $3,000/month because in order to scale and receive more of an ROI, you have to spend money to make money in Google Ads!
Call the Google Ads Experts Today
If you made it this far that means you take your business and marketing seriously. If all of this seems confusing or overwhelming, we understand. Can you imagine doing this across 20+ campaigns. That is why we have a provided a solution and process that is tailor-made for pressure washing businesses so that they can receive incredible returns from Google Ads.
You don’t have to take a shot in the dark any longer. Give us a call today or set up a free consultation session below, so that we can help you and your pressure washing business reach that next level!
