***Note before moving forward***
You can see your changes in Change history, but I like to keep a notebook or spreadsheet of the changes that I make during each optimization (not including daily additions to Negative keywords). This will help guide you as your campaign matures. It is oftentimes handy to know exactly which change you made and when.
When opening your Google Ads dashboard, you land on the Overview page. You can customize your Overview page to show you KPI’s that you track. As a simple 30,000-foot view, this isn’t terrible, but to properly optimize your campaigns, we will need to take a deeper dive.
Click on Campaigns
Next, choose your Date Range. Some optimizations can be daily, some weekly, and some only monthly or less.
Now, we need to have the correct Columns. Click on the Columns icon and then on Modify columns.
Modify Columns
After clicking Modify columns, you will land on a screen with options of columns to select and those selected (right-hand side).
The easiest way to correct this is to delete all selected columns on the right-hand side by clicking on the (x) for each column.
Performance
Drop down the performance box and make these selection in this order: Impr., Impr. (Top) %, Impr. (Abs. Top) %, CTR, Clicks, Avg. CPC, and Cost.
Call Details
Drop down Call details and select Phone calls
Competitive metrics
Go to Competitive metrics and make your selections in the following order: Click share, Search impr. share, Search top IS, and Search abs. top IS.
Conversions
Select Conversions, Cost / conv, and Conv. Rate and then click Save your column set* and give it a name. Click Save & apply. I save mine as whatever level I am on (Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword, etc).
Column Definition Now we must understand what each column is reporting to us. Impr. – How often your ad is served.
Impr. (Top) % – How often your ad appeared above organic listings. Impr. (Abs. Top) % – How often your ad was the first ad shown.CTR (Click Through Rate) – Measures how often people click your ad after it’s shown to them, which can help you understand the effectiveness of your ad. CTR is calculated by dividing the number of clicks your ad receives by the number of times your ad is shown.
Clicks – When someone clicks your ad, it is counted here.
Avg. CPC (Average Cost Per Click) – the amount you paid divided by the total number of clicks.
Cost – Your total cost for this time period Phone calls – How many phone calls were initiated.
Click share – The clicks you’ve received divided by the estimated maximum number of clicks that you could have received.
Search impr. share – The impressions you’ve received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive. Search top IS – The impressions you’ve received in the top location on the search result page divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in the top location. Use this metric to bid on the top page location.Search abs. top IS -The percentage of your Search ad impressions that are shown in the most prominent Search position.
Conversions – How many conversion actions that were taken Cost / conv. – How much each conversion cost Conv. Rate – Percentage of clicks that converted
Column Goals
Below are the metrics by column that either describe the average for that column or our targets for that column. These numbers will fluctuate, but these are good benchmarks to shoot for. Impr. – 80+ impressions per day that our ads run.
Impr. (Top) % – We found that shooting for 75% is part of the “sweet spot” for lead generation.
Impr. (Abs. Top) % – We are aiming for 15% – 25%.
CTR – For call ads, 1.75% is the average CTR. Desktop campaigns are 2% CTR.
Clicks – Call ads 1.75 clicks per 100 impressions. Desktop ads 2 clicks for every 100 impressions.
Avg. CPC – No average. Varies by market. Cost – Varies by market and advertiser.
Phone calls – Ideally, we want half of our clicks to be phone calls.
Search impr. and Click chare data – This is variable by market and based on factors such as budget, keyword bid, and keyword/ad/landing page continuity.
If you have very low Impr. share, you may need to increase your budget to be competitive later into each day. We will cover these more under Auction insights.
Conversions – We want half of our Phone calls to turn into conversions. If half of our clicks are calls and half of our calls are conversions, our conversion rate will be 25%.
The standard conversion rate for lead generation for service industries is/was 4% – 8%.
Cost / conv. – Ideally, we don’t want to pay any more than 10% of our average gross home inspection. (If your average home inspection is $420, we would like our cost / conv. to be $42 or less) Over the last few years, that has been unattainable in most markets.
Conv. rate – A conversion rate over 15% puts you ahead of most Google Ads marketers (for non-branded keywords). Our target is 25%.
In the above example, a home inspector in South Florida, you can see that we are doing well in many metrics. Identifying where we are lacking can point us to areas of improvement. Let’s break it down in 2 parts…
Part 1
Our ad schedule has us showing ads Monday – Sat. That means for the month of June, we had 26 advertising days. We want our Impressions to be at least 2,080. That would equal 80 impressions per day, and you can see we far exceed that.
Our Impr. (Top) % is a little high, but I still labeled it as green. This is a competitive market and this client wants to be at or near the top.
Our Impr. (Abs. Top)% is quite high here. As stated above, we really want to be around 25% – 35%. You can adjust this by adjusting your keyword bids, but you must be careful. Drop your bids too low, and you can be consistently beaten out on the most competitive or converting keywords. Our CTR is .32% above average, so we know our ad appeals to our audience. 86 Clicks reflects that as well.
Our Avg. CPC is about normal for Call Ads in this market. We have actually reduced that cost by full dollars per click over the last few years.
Our Cost is under $2,000, which is our monthly budget.
Part 2
We had 86 Clicks, so we would like to see at least 43 Phone calls here. We fell below that benchmark and landed at 30, so we will want to check the Search terms report and see if we get clicks for irrelevant search terms.
Our Search impr. share is above 56%, so our ad shows for over 50% of the available opportunities our keywords provide. In very competitive markets, you may not own the majority of Impr. share and still operate a very profitable campaign. In the below example, our ad shows more than 50% of the time, and our Click share rate shows that our ad is clicked 65% of the time that we were eligible and there was a paid click. These two metrics tell us that for June, we took more than 25% of the total paid clicks in our market.
Due to personal experience in this market, I know that our ad spend would rank no higher than 3rd, yet we took 25% of the total clicks. The top 2 competitors spend 2x or more ad budget than we do. We had 17 Conversions, which is very good. At 86 Clicks we expect 43 Phone calls, so we would want 16-17 Conversions.
We only had 30 Phone calls, so more than half of those calls converted.
A Conversion is a Phone call lasting longer than 2 minutes.
Our Cost / conv. is high, but those costs have been like that for over a year (July 2023).
Our leaves room for improvement but is way above this industry’s average conversion rate.
Auction insights
Now that our Campaign-level assessment is finished, let’s look at how we rank against our competition. In the left-hand column of the dashboard, click Insights & reports and then click on Auction insights.
Auction insights report on how you rank against your competition in a few positioning and volume metrics.
Impression share – the number of impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.
Overlap Rate – how often another advertiser’s ad received an impression in the same auction that your ad also received an impression.
Position above rate – how often another advertiser’s ad in the same auction shows in a higher position than your own, when both of your ads were shown at the same time.
Top of page rate – how often your ad (or the ad of another advertiser, depending on which row you’re viewing) was shown at the top of the page in search results.
Abs. Top of page rate – The percent of your impressions that are shown as the very first ad above the organic search results.
Outranking share – How often your ad ranked higher in the auction than another advertiser’s ad, or if your ad showed when theirs did not.
This particular report isn’t a comprehensive review of all of your competition. It gives you an overview and allows you, in some cases, to understand what your competition is doing. You can view Auction insights at the Campaign, Ad Group, and Keyword levels. At the Keyword level, you can see how competitive you are on your top converting keywords or maybe top volume keywords.
This information can allow you to make very granular adjustments to your campaign.
These insights and the resulting actions taken can directly affect your campaign’s profitability. Details matter!
For those companies that have built up their brand presence, you can add your brand name to your keywords and see if other companies’ ads are showing for your name.
Armed with his data, you can act appropriately to be competitive for those search terms. (Increase your bid on your brand keywords) If a company has a very high top or abs. top of page rate, but very low impression share, it is likely that the company is overbidding for keywords and does not have enough daily budget to sustain the campaign.Search Terms
From Auction insights and land at Search terms. Search terms allow you to see what users are typing into the search bar to trigger your ad to show.This is where we find all the terms we DO NOT WANT TO SHOW FOR.
This is one of the single most important steps in every Search campaign and can be performed daily.
If you built your campaign as I instructed, you would have at least 2 Negative keyword lists (Competitor & General). As you look through your Search terms, pick either Competitor names or General keywords that you want to remove and work on them separately. In the below example, I have chosen General terms that I want to remove. Go through and select the terms you want to remove.
Click on Add as negative keyword
Some terms will give you multiple keywords to add to the Negative keyword list. In the above example, I can remove commission, errors, omissions, ladder, and vest as broad match negative keywords. First, we make sure to select add to Negative keyword list. (There are occasions that you will only add a Negative keyword to a particular campaign or ad group)
Since I have selected General terms, that is the list that I choose. This next part is very important. You have to consider what you want to remove. I try to pare it down to the core word that would remove all associated phrases. We often use broad or phrase match types for this purpose. You can see I used broad match in the example below:
By doing this, I am telling Google that I do not want my ads to show for any search containing any of these words. Redundancy is a good thing when it comes to Negative keywords. I will add these same terms in broad match plural and as exact match just to be extra careful.
When finished, they should appear as excluded on the main Search terms screen.
Why do we do this?
We do this because Google aims to show your ads for as much inventory as possible. This increases the chance for your ad to be clicked, and the click is what gets Google paid.
If you remove the singular form of a word, it is often best practice to remove the plural, as Google may show your ad to any variation of that word. (Ex: Search term is [home inspection career]. The best practice would be to add career and careers to your Negative keyword list.)We can now move on to excluding Competitor names. It has been debated that showing for competitor names can be beneficial, but I have not seen this play out in real-world scenarios. Often, someone looking for another company is a referral or has already done business and has a question or concern. Rarely can enough of these leads be converted to be profitable. You want to be just as meticulous when removing competitors. If a name has an apostrophe, you may want to add it to the Negative keyword list with and without the apostrophe. (Ex: [Brian’s Home Inspection] can be added as Brian’s and brians.)
Be careful; if a competitor is named (Your City) Home Inspections, and you exclude them, you may exclude searches for home inspections in that City.
This is the same as with competitors with names like Best Home Inspectors Inc.
The only way to remove this term without removing your ads from people searching for the best home inspectors is with Exact match [Best Home Inspectors Inc].
Again, if you add a Negative keyword that conflicts with a keyword, Google will notify you and offer a remedy.
This report can also provide you with new Keyword ideas.
If you see a lot of traffic for a specific term, you add it to your Keywords in much the same way.
Adding keywords this way does limit what Ad group the keyword goes in.If you want to add this keyword to a specific Ad group, you may have to do that manually by going to that Ad group.
Click on the term and click Add as keyword. Now you can modify the keyword and put in a Max CPC if you like.
Ads & assets
When optimizing ad copy, it is best practice to not make major changes to the ad copy. I like to work on the ads for each ad group separately, and I will take the losing ad and make a small change. It does not matter if all ad copies are well above the average CTR. We always want to try and improve.
In the above example, I would try to optimize Ad A. Although this ad copy is tied for the most conversions, has a lower Avg. CPC, and showed for the most Imprs., it also has the highest cost per conversion (by far). This particular ad copy had a geo-modifier in the Headline 1. I changed this to something more simple (Complete Home Inspections).
Normally, this is all that I would do at this time but the Headline 2 was directly tied to the previous H1 and didn’t make sense with the new headline.I changed H2 to advertise the promptness of our inspections and reports. Remember, you want to use these Headlines to match your keywords and give the searcher a reason to click your ad. Ask yourself, what is my prospective customer most interested when making their home inspection decision? Often price, time to service, and time to report delivery are the biggest buying influencers.
Ad schedule
Checking your ad schedule on a biweekly or monthly basis may yield important information. Take a look at the example below:
In this example, our Tuesdays stand out. It happens to be the day that our highest Avg. CPC occurs.
However, it also has 10 conversions, a 77% conversion rate and a cost per conversion of $26.60.
On Tuesdays we have the most conversions and a cost per conversion that is almost 5x’s less than the next best day.
I will add a bid adjustment (Increase 15%) here to try and take advantage of these stats.
Keywords
When we go to the keyword level, we are really getting granular.
This is where we can really determine our competitiveness.
We cannot cover every factor that may determine what you do to a keyword, but we can follow a basic formula to make our campaign efficient and profitable. First, let’s talk about what columns you want to look at:
Impr., Impr. (Top) %, Impr. (Abs. Top) %, Clicks, CTR, Est. first page bid, Est. top of page bid, Est. first position bid, Avg. CPC, Cost, Phone Calls, Click share, Search impr. share, Conversions, Conv. rate, and Cost / conv. These are basically the same columns that we set at the Campaign level, with the exception of the page and position estimates (these can be found by clicking Columns, Modify columns, and using the Attributes drop-down. Once your columns are set, give them a name (Keywords, maybe?) and click Save.I had no good way to include this image, so I cut it in 2. Sorry if this makes it more difficult to read.
I like to organize the Keywords either by Impr. or Clicks. In this instance, we have them organized by Impr. I am looking to see if any of our Keywords are Below first-page bid. If any are, you are not competitive enough on those Keywords to expect any clicks or calls. Even if you did get a click or call from the second page, the lead quality would be terrible. Now you have to decide if those particular Keywords are worth raising the bid for.
Next, I am looking at the Top % and Abs Top %. Remember, we are shooting for approximately 75% Top % and 25% Abs Top %. Many of our Keywords in this example are hitting Top% in the 90th percentile.
We will drop these Keyword bids down some and monitor the effect.
If there aren’t many searches in your market, you may be more aggressive than the 75/25% model I suggest.
Sometimes I am forced to do the same thing. Just know that we are overpaying for these clicks at this point, which will increase our Cost/ conv. and ultimately our Cost Per Acquisition (CPA).
Ad positioning on the SERP page is another important factor determining your campaign’s profitability.
We then look at the more obvious KPI’s such as Calls, Conversions, and Conv rate. If you have a keyword that is generating phone calls AND conversions, you want to try and capture as much Search impr. share and Click share for that keyword as you can. We can use tactics such as adding broad-matched Keywords (if not already in use), modified landing pages focused solely on that Keyword, and increasing keyword use in the ad copy to increase Impr. share (IS). We can use the same tactics if we struggle with getting traffic for a Keyword.
Locations
Open up your Campaign Build Resource and go to the Phrase tab. Highlight the keywords in that column. Hint*- Click on the top of the column, which will highlight the whole column, then hold down ctrl + C. This copies all of the keywords. Click on the Enter keywords box on the Google screen and hit crtl + V.I didn’t write these manuals to get rich. I wrote these manuals because many small businesses are underrepresented in the digital marketing world. Most cheap agencies and managers are ineffective, and the Google “smart” options are smart for
Google, but not so much for you. I DO NOT guarantee that these structures and tactics will work. I do guarantee that I have used these exact methods to make many service businesses, home inspectors in particular, 3-10x their monthly investment. I want you to succeed.
If you have tried everything that I have laid out and you are still struggling, send me an email at JasonB@serviceleadsdirect.com
Please explain the problems you are encountering and any steps that you have taken to fix them. I will respond and even jump into your campaign if need be.
Do not be surprised if it takes your campaign a few days to gain traction. This is common. If after a few days, you are not receiving impressions, double-check that keywords and ads are eligible. If so, you may need to add a broad match ad group, expand your geography, or increase your individual keyword bids (if using a manual bid strategy).
Check your account performance a minimum of weekly.
Answer calls, even if they are labeled “spam risk”. When using Google tracking numbers (something you have to do to allow Google to track your calls and conversions), it is normal for calls from ads to show up as spam risk.
Do not be afraid to make small changes, but only make one or two at a time. Too many changes will make it very difficult to understand which changes had positive or negative effects. Give each change at least a week, preferably 2, before you measure the effects of the change.
Your competitors set the market. The more competition, the higher the bids. Try to stand out from the crowd.
DO NOT IMPLEMENT GOOGLE SUGGESTIONS
Ad Auction – The process that happens with each Google search to decide which ads will appear for that specific search and in which order those ads will show on the page (or whether or not any ads will show at all). Each time an ad is eligible to appear for a search, it goes through the ad auction.
Ad Copy – The written or text part of an advertisement.
Ad Group – An ad group contains one or more ads that share similar targets. Ad groups are used to organize a campaign into common themes.
Automated bidding – A solution that helps advertisers automatically set bids based on performance goals.
Call to Action (CTA) – a piece of content intended to induce a viewer, reader, or listener to perform a specific act, typically taking the form of an instruction or directive.
Campaigns – Overall or top level of an ad account structure, including ad groups, keywords, budgets, and targeting.
Clicks – When someone clicks your ad, like on the blue headline or phone number of a text ad, Google Ads counts that as a click.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – Cost per click bidding means that you pay for each click on your ads.
Clickthrough rate (CTR) – CTR is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown. For example, if you had 5 clicks and 100 impressions, then your CTR would be 5%.
Conversion – When a user performs some specified action after clicking an ad, such as making a call lasting (x) amount of time or submitting a form on your website.
Daily Budget – The average amount that you set for each ad campaign on a per-day basis. It specifies how much you are roughly comfortable spending each day.
Display URL – The web address that appears with your ad
Impressions – An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on Google network.
Keyword – Words or phrases describing your product or service that you choose to help determine when and where your ad can appear.
Negative Keyword – A type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase.
Pay Per Click (PPC) – Google’s advertising solution which allows businesses to bid on keywords for a chance to show ads in Google
search results. When using Google Ads, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.Search Volume – Indicates the number of search queries for a specific search term in a search engine within a given time frame.
See more resources at: https://support.google.com/google-ads/topic/glossarySelect Create campaign (Blue +)
Choose your campaign objective:
You can choose Leads or Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance.
Conversion Goals
This will default to Calls from Ads. It is okay to leave this setting.
Campaign Type
Choose Search to use the Search net
Select the ways to reach your goal
Choose Phone Calls.
Campaign name
Type in Home Inspection Call Ads
Bidding
What do you want to focus on? Use the drop-down box and choose Clicks. Do not worry about setting a maximum cost per click (CPC)unless you plan to use an automated bid strategy. If you want to use an automated bid strategy (not recommended), start by setting your max CPC between $10-$12. If you want to avoid using an automated bid strategy, we will set the bidding to Manual CPC after the campaign creation.
Networks
I leave Google search partners unchecked. If there is a lack of impression volume after launching the campaign, turning this on can increase your reach. Partner traffic often converts less than standard Search traffic does.
Locations
Choose Enter another location, Advanced search, and target your service area. This can be accomplished by using zip codes, cities, counties, or choosing a radius from your base of operations. Remember to hit Save when finished.
Target
Presence or interest or just Presence. This will depend on where you are targeting. If you have a lot of people buying homes from out of state (Florida being one that comes to mind), you may want to choose Presence or interest. If you need to narrow your targeting, you can choose just Presence.
Languages
Choose the languages that you want to target.Audience segments
You can choose however many audiences you like or none at all. If you choose an audience, make your Targeting setting for this campaign Observation (recommended). This will allow you to view metrics on your traffics’ interest. You may be able to use this information for more focused targeting in future campaigns. This feature is rumored to be going away in the future.
Automatically created assets
Set this to Off: Use only assets I provide directly for my ads.Click on More Settings
Ad rotation
Select Do not optimize: rotate ads indefinitely – We want to see how all ad copies perform and make adjustments as the data comes in. Optimizing ad rotation will hinder your ad performance later in the campaign life.Click on More settings again
Ad schedule
Set your ad schedule only for the days and hours you can and will answer your phone. This will conserve the budget, as the leads are only as good as your ability to answer and close them. Miss a call from a lead and wait more than a minute or two and the close rate for that lead dips drastically. These are hot leads. Treat them as such.Click Next
Keywords and ads
Label your first ad group as Home Inspection Phrase and then click that box again.
Enter Keywords
Open up your Campaign Build Resource and go to the Phrase tab. Highlight the keywords in that column. Hint*- Click on the top of the column to highlight the whole column, then hold down ctrl + C. This copies all of the keywords. Click on the Enter keywords box on the Google screen and hit crtl + V.
Ads
To run these ads, you must have the phone number you want to use in the ads located on a “landing page”. This is how Google verifies your ad, so it is imperative. Type that phone number into the Phone number box. Next, enter the landing page that you want your traffic to land on. Hint* – In another tab, go to the landing page that you want to use, highlight the address bar, right-click and copy. You can now paste this URL into the Final URL and Verification URL boxes. Once you enter the URL into the Final URL box and click on the Verification URL box, the Verification URL box with auto-fill with the Final URL box information. If this happens, feel free to skip to Headline.Headline 1 You want to use a keyword here that will appeal to what your audience is directly searching for. I like to use an H1 (Headline 1) that uses “home inspection” or “house inspection”. Ex: Complete Home Inspection, [City] Home Inspection, Thorough Home Inspection.
Headline 2
You used H1 to verify that you provide the service that your prospect is looking for. Now you want to use this H2 space to appeal to your prospects buying decision. What is important to your customer? Report turnaround time, time to inspection service, and cost are the 3 of the most popular concerns I have encountered in this industry (in general). You can also focus on quality, additional offerings, free thermal, etc. Ex: Same Day Reports, Next Day Home Inspections (especially when used with [City] Home Inspection as an H1), Thermal Imaging.Business Name
I have encountered businesses that have names that exceed the 25- character limit. It has often worked for me to exclude the word home if necessary. Ex: Anywhere’s Home Inspections can be shortened to Anywhere’s Inspections. If you have any trouble getting your ads verified due to Business name not matching, you can reach out to Google support. They can perform a manual review based on your website.
Description line 1
Here you have up to 90 characters to explain why this prospect should do business with your company and not scroll right past to a competitor. Focus on what sets you apart from your competition. What value will you bring to this person if they become your customer?Description line 2
Another 90 characters to work with. If you were crafty with your Desc. 1, you can focus on a call to action (CTA) here. If you need more space for description, please use this additional. Remember that your entire ad may not be shown to on every Impression (ad view). I like to go right to a CTA here, or put in a short and sweet “value proposition” and then a CTA.Call reporting should be set to on Conversion action Use account settings (Calls from ads)
Click on Done
Click +Call ad
Budget
When I set up campaigns, I start with a 5-day ad schedule, so we will only advertise around 21-22 days per month. A daily budget of $35 will often lead to a $600 – $700 per month ad spend. If you choose too small of a budget, Google will not show your ad very often, which defeats the purpose of advertising. I recommend starting with $25-$35 per day.
Your campaign is ready to publish. Click Publish campaign.
Now we need to fix your bidding. From the main screen, click on your Campaign. Then, on the left side of the screen, you will click on Settings. Now go to the Bidding drop-down. Choose Change bid strategy. Next, select Manual CPC and make sure that Enhanced CPC is NOT checked.Negative Keywords
This is one of the most important parts of your Google Ads campaign and one that is often looked over by amateurs and professionals alike. Negative keywords tell Google what keywords we do NOT want to appear for. This is how you save money. The goal is to show our ad for as many searches with the right intent as possible and avoid the searches that don’t have a chance of converting.
First, click on Keywords on the left side of the page. Then click Negative keywords.
Click on +Negative Keywords
Make sure Add negative keywords… is checked and select your Campaign
Open your Campaign Build Resource and go to the Negative KW’s tab. Click on the top of column A to highlight all of these keywords, right-click and press copy, or hold ctrl + C.
Go Back to the Google Ads screen, click inside the Negative keywords box and hold ctrl + V, or right-click inside the box and click paste.
Check the Save to new or existing list box and enter the name you want to use in the box. I call this list General.
We are not quite finished with Negative keywords just yet. Over the years, I have found that removing as many competitor names as possible will also increase the efficiency of your campaign. No matter how long you spend doing this initially, removing “competitor” names will be an ongoing process over the life of the campaign. I cover this in the Optimization manual.
Open your Campaign Build Resource and go to the Competitors tab. You will find some of the common competitors in your area, but we will want to be more thorough than that. The best way to do that is to open a Google tab, type in (without quotations) “home inspection [your city or target market],” and then hit enter. Your Search Engine Results Page (SERP) should look something like this:
Click on More businesses to open the full page 1 of the Google My Business listings. It will look something like this:
Before using this list to remove our competitors, we must learn what the keyword “match types” means. Match type is how we want the search engine to interpret our keyword or negative keyword. There are three match types:
Broad Match – Ads may show on searches that are related to your keyword, which can include searches that don’t contain the direct meaning of your keywords. This means you will show your ads to virtually anything related to any of the keywords. This will yield the most search volume but the broadest intent as well. This keyword is written with nothing around it. Using broad match keywords without a very strong negative keyword list will lead to you losing money every time.
Phrase Match – Ads may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword. The meaning of the keyword can be implied, and user searches can be a more specific form of the meaning. This is a narrower form of targeting which can help to minimize budget waste. This will yield a smaller search volume than broad, more search volume than exact match, and keep the search intent fairly in line with your desired audience. This keyword is written with “quotations around it”. This is the preferred match type for new/er campaigns.
Exact Match – Ads may show on searches that have the same meaning or same intent as the keyword. Of the 3 keyword matching options, exact match gives you the most control over who views your ad but reaches fewer searches than both phrase and broad match. Some ad managers swear by exact match, and I have worked on accounts that needed more exact matches than any other type. That being said, in a smaller-scale lead generation campaign like this one, I like to gather data, then add exact match keywords based on search volume. During optimization, you will review the Search terms that Google allows you to see. When you see certain terms repeatedly, that is your cue to try adding them to your campaign. Exact match keywords are written with [brackets around them]. If text in my ad and my keyword match the search exactly and I have that same verbiage on my landing page, I will typically get better positioning for less cost. This is a major component of the success of your campaign.
With the match-type lesson over, it is time to add our competitors’ names to our list. When possible, we want to use the fewest words to exclude terms. When considering how to remove a keyword, think about place names in your area, keywords you are focused on, etc. For instance, if your business name is ABC Home Inspection, and you see a competitor name All Star Inspections, you would want to add their name to your list as “all star”. This tells Google that anytime someone types anything that includes all star with a space between those words, you do not want to show your ad. What would happen if someone typed allstar inspections? Would your ad show?
The answer is yes, yes, it would. There is no space between all and star. So, we can add allstar and all-star (broad match) to our negative list also. What if one of our competitors is named Home Inspection LLC? We don’t want their calls, but we can’t exclude the term home inspection. We add them to our list like this; [home inspection llc]. By adding it as exact, it would have to be typed EXACTLY like this to be excluded. Our ad would still show for home inspection (city), certified home inspection, etc.
See the below image for an example of how I would remove the names from the previous Google business listings page.
Once you have your list, follow the steps you did to make your General list. I would call this list Competitors.
Now we wait…
In the case of Miami inspectors, there are more than 20 pages of businesses. The more negative keywords (competitors, in this case) you put in, the less money you will waste. If you accidentally exclude a word or term that conflicts with our keywords, Google will let us know in our dashboard and then offer you remedies, but we still want to be careful.Select Create campaign (Blue +)
Choose your campaign objective:
You can choose Leads or Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance. 
Conversion Goals With Desktop searches, this becomes a little trickier. It will be covered in depth later in this tutorial.
Campaign Type
Choose Search to use the Search network.
Select the ways to reach your goal
Choose Website Visits and add your website/landing page.
Campaign name
Type in Home Inspection Desktop Ads
Bidding
What do you want to focus on? Use the drop-down box and choose Clicks. Do not worry about setting a maximum cost per click (CPC)
unless you plan to use an automated bid strategy. If you want to use an automated bid strategy (not recommended), start by setting your max CPC between $5-$7. If you want to avoid using an automated bid strategy, we will set the bidding to Manual CPC after the campaign creation.
Customer acquisition You have the option to Only bid for new customers. This is what I suggest unless you are going to upload your customer/client list to Google.
Networks
I leave Google search partners and Display unchecked. If there is a lack of impression volume after launching the campaign, turning Search Partners on can increase your reach. Partner traffic often converts less than standard Search traffic does.
Locations Choose Enter another location, Advanced search, and target your service area. This can be accomplished by using zip codes, cities, counties or choosing a radius from your base of operations. You can use multiples of the above. Remember to hit Save when finished.
Target Presence or interest or just Presence. This will depend on where you are targeting. If you have a lot of people buying homes from out of state (Florida being one that comes to mind), you may want to choose Presence or interest. If you need to narrow your targeting, you can choose just Presence.
Languages Choose the languages that you want to target.
Audience segments You can choose however many audiences you like or none at all. If you choose an audience, make your Targeting setting for this campaign Observation (recommended). This will allow you to view metrics on your traffics’ interest. You may be able to use this information for more focused targeting in future campaigns. This feature is rumored to be going away in the future.
Automatically created assets Set this to Off: Use only assets I provide directly for my ads.
Click on More Settings
Ad rotation
Select Do not optimize: rotate ads indefinitely – We want to see how all ad copies perform and make adjustments as the data comes in. Optimizing ad rotation will hinder your ad performance later in the campaign life.Click on More settings again
Ad schedule
Set your ad schedule only for the days and hours you can and will answer your phone. This will conserve the budget, as the leads are only as good as your ability to answer and close them. Miss a call from a lead and wait more than a minute or two and the close rate for that lead dips drastically. These are hot leads. Treat them as such.
Keywords and ads
Label your first ad group as Home Inspection Phrase, and then click that box again.
Enter Keywords
Open up your Campaign Build Resource and go to the Phrase tab.Highlight the keywords in that column. Hint*- Click on the top of the column, which will highlight the whole column, then hold down ctrl + C. This copies all of the keywords.
Click on the Enter keywords
box on the Google screen and hit Crtl + V.
Ads
To run these ads, you want to pick the web page that best describes what you do, why the user would want to choose your service, and any value propositions that your company offers (same-day reports, first responder discounts, etc.). These ads are different from call ads in that we add headlines and descriptions, and Google decides which headlines and descriptions to show and in what order. You can use the “pin” feature to pin a certain headline or description, but the more that you do this, the less Google will show your ad.
Headlines
Just as in the Call Ads, Headlines are 30 characters. You want to use keywords/phrases here that will appeal to what your audience is directly searching for. You can also get idea help from the Google Ads platform by clicking “View ideas” in the blue area of the ads section.
You definitely want to include keywords in your headlines, but also incorporate a call to action (CTA’s) and/or Value Propositions ($25 Off for First Responders, Same-Day Reports, etc.). We have very little engagement time with our prospects. Let’s use that time to highlight our company and services in the best possible light.
Just because Google suggests something does NOT mean it is a good idea. Please avoid the bad suggestions. Terms like education, courses, forms, etc., will waste your money. We want complete home inspections.
Now you can see Estimated Traffic totals on the right-hand side of your screen.
Mostly, I ignore these estimates. They are typically inaccurate, especially because they do not consider where we want our ads to appear on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP), which will affect our cost per click (CPC). Ad placement is directly related to lead quality. You don’t have to be first, but you don’t want to be frequently at the bottom of the page. I do pay attention if they show very LOW reach estimates.
Descriptions
You used Headline to verify that you provide the service that your prospect is looking for and a call to action or value proposition. Now you want to use the 90-character Description section to encourage your prospect to click your ad. What is important to your customer? Report turnaround time, time to inspection service, and cost are the 3 of the most popular concerns I have encountered in this industry (in general). You can also focus on ancillary offerings, experience, or anything else that would influence a buying decision. Just like for Headlines, you can consider the Google description suggestions.
Images
You can use this section to add images. Images can help your ad to stand out by adding “relevant visuals to complement their existing text ads,” according to Google. The images have to meet certain requirements. These are not absolutely necessary to have successful ads. The directions are pretty self-explanatory, though a cursory knowledge of graphics editing may be necessary.
Business name and logos
Google can auto-add your name and logo, but as with most things Google related, I prefer to take care of this myself. Click on the blue “Get access” button.
You will be directed to a screen that (at the time of this writing) asks two questions: Are you a private business or agency, and do you pay for Google Ads or does an agency? Next, it will take you to a screen to ask for your business name and address. If you have a Google My Business or Google Local Service Ads account, it may offer to auto-fill this information for you. Verification typically takes less than an hour.
Site Links
This ad extension option allows the user to click to a specific page of your website. Typical site links are: contact us, about us, schedule online, etc. Not only are you giving your prospects direct links to important conversion pages on your website, but your ad takes up more physical real estate on the SERP (search engine results page). Google suggests taking up more space attributes to a higher click- through rate (CTR), meaning more people per 100 ad views click on your ad. More in-depth information on CTR optimization can be found in the Optimization Guide.
Callouts
This is a good tool to add value to your ad. You will offer value propositions, ancillary services, or anything that you feel sets you apart from your competition. Using [InterNACHI Certified] will get you flagged for violating Google’s drug policy (Don’t ask me?!?). A good workaround is [NACHI Certified]. Do not use the brackets.
Click on More asset types
Promotions – Use this extension if you want to run a timed promotion. A helpful tip is to ensure that any promotions are run across all of your Google properties, including Ads, Google My Business, and, if applicable, GLSA. Also, any promotion mentioned in your ads should be immediately reflected on the landing page.
Prices – Use this extension if you are inclined to list your prices. I did not usually employ this extension on behalf of my clients.
Structured snippets – A popular technique to use structured snippets in your ads is to choose the “Service Catalog” feature and then list Values such as Home Inspection, Condo Inspection, Radon Testing, etc. These snippets can be applied at the Account level, meaning they will be used in all campaigns in the account or at the Campaign level, which makes them specific to a particular campaign.
Lead forms – When lead forms came out, I thought this would be a game changer in the industry. In my experience, this particular extension creates an undo amount of spam. The lead form asks for a 30-character Headline, a 25-character business name, and a 200-character Description. It allows you to choose which questions to include on your lead form, what information is required, and to ask qualifying questions. You can also add a background image and select your call to action (CTA). You also have the ability to create a form submission message, which is basically a confirmation notice to the submitter. This extension allows you automated lead delivery options, manual lead form downloads, and you may choose your lead form type.
Locations – If you attach your GMB profile to your Google Ads, your ad will be eligible to appear in the “Map Pack” on the SERP. This is typically an account-level implementation.
Apps – This extension is for app promotion. I have not met a home inspector that has their own app yet.
Click on Done and then Next
Budget
When I set up campaigns, I start with a 5-day ad schedule, so we will only advertise around 20-22 days per month. A daily budget of $35 will often lead to a $600 – $700 per month ad spend. In this case, a daily budget of $41.90 is suggested. If you choose an amount below this, Google threatens that they may not show your ad as much as you would like. I will launch it with this budget and see how often we reach our daily maximum. I will make my adjustments based on traffic volume and performance.
Your campaign is ready to publish. Click Publish campaign.
Now we need to fix your bidding. From the main screen, click on your Campaign. Then, on the left side of the screen, you will click on Settings. Now go to the Bidding drop-down. Choose Change bid strategy. Next, select Manual CPC and make sure that Enhanced CPC is NOT checked.
We also want to fix your devices. Since we have already created a call campaign, we do not want this campaign to scavenge mobile impressions from that one. Click on Insights & reports. Then click on When & where ads showed and then Devices. We want to click on Bid adj. pencil in the Mobile phones row and choose Decrease 100%.
I also Decrease the tablet bid adjustment to either 50% or 100%. In my experience, tablet traffic does not convert very often in lead generation. You are welcome to leave it alone if you wish.
Negative Keywords
This is one of the most important parts of your Google Ads campaign and one that is often looked over by amateurs and professionals alike. Negative keywords tell Google what
keywords we do NOT want to appear for. This is how you save money. The goal is to show our ad for as many searches with the right intent as possible and avoid the searches that don’t have a chance of converting.
First, click on Keywords on the left side of the page. Then click Negative keywords.
Click on +Negative Keywords
Assuming you took my advice and implemented the call ads first, you already have negative keyword lists saved in your account.
Simply click on Use negative keyword list and highlight the lists we created in the call ads.
Hit Save.
Conversion Tracking
Conversion tracking is not always 100%. Let’s get that out of the way right up front. We strive to get as close to 100% as
possible using Google Ads and Google Analytics. Full
disclosure: we had a team at the agency that took care of this stuff for me. Since then, I have learned more than I would have liked about conversion tracking, but I am far from an
expert. That being said, let’s delve into it.
The conversion actions we are trying to track are phone calls lasting more than a certain duration (start of f with 60 seconds), online scheduler starts, website form submissions, and website calls.Phone Calls: We start with a 60-second duration conversion threshold. We are trying to teach Google what a lead looks
like to us. Though we know that 60 seconds isn’t long enough to close a deal, it is longer than your typical telemarketer call. You can set the conversion threshold to 90 or 120 seconds as your account matures. Your number of conversions will
decrease, but these calls will more accurately represent a true lead or “conversion”.
Online Scheduler Starts: Some companies that I have worked with have an online scheduling feature. I have not found a way to track the scheduling completion unless your
scheduling software lands the user on a “thank you” page when finished, and that page has to be on a trackable URL.
The closest we usually come is to track when the scheduler is started.
Website Form Submissions: If the prospect chooses to submit a contact form from your website, you want to be able to
attribute this action back to Google Ads. This walkthrough
will focus on website form submission tracking, although the same principles can apply to other actions you may decide to track. A code will be generated at the end of the process that must be embedded on your website. Contact a website
professional if you are unable to do this yourself.
At the top of the dashboard, click on Tools and setting (wrench) and then click on Conversions under the Measurement column.
Next, click on the blue +New conversion action button. Then click on Website.
Enter your Website domain into the box and press scan.
Press the blue +Add conversion action manually.
Goal and action optimization – Use the drop-down box to choose Submit lead form. Next, choose Secondary option not used for bidding.
Conversion name – I labeled this conversion Website Lead Form in the example.
Value – I usually mark Don’t use a value for this conversion. If you want to assign a value, you should wait until you have some data to base this number on. You can divide the total jobs created by Google Ads by the total number of leads Google Ads generated in that same time frame. This will give you an approximation of the value of each lead.
Count – For leads, it is best practice to count One conversion per interaction.
Remaining conversion actions:
Click-through conversion window – 30 days
Engaged-view conversion window – 3 days
View-through conversion window – 1 day
Attribution model – Data-driven or last click
Enhanced conversions – Use user-provided data from your website to attribute conversions to ads in a privacy-safe way
Click Done
Website Calls: We should have call extensions applied to this ad, but you will still find some users want to know more before calling. We want to track calls from your website as conversions as well. To do this, we need to start a +New conversion action.
This time choose Phone calls. Next, select Calls to a phone number on your website.
Click Create and continue. Now follow the installation instructions.
I didn’t write these manuals to get rich. I wrote these manuals because many small businesses are underrepresented in the digital marketing world. Most cheap agencies and managers are ineffective, and the Google “smart” options are smart for
Google, but not so much for you. I DO NOT guarantee that these structures and tactics will work. I do guarantee that I have used these exact methods to make many service businesses, home inspectors in particular, 3-10x their monthly investment. I want you to succeed.
If you have tried everything that I have laid out and you are still struggling, send me an email at JasonB@serviceleadsdirect.com
Please explain the problems you are encountering and any steps that you have taken to fix them. I will respond and even jump into your campaign if need be.
Do not be surprised if it takes your campaign a few days to gain traction. This is common. If after a few days, you are not receiving impressions, double-check that keywords and ads are eligible. If so, you may need to add a broad match ad group, expand your geography, or increase your individual keyword bids (if using a manual bid strategy).
Check your account performance a minimum of weekly.
Answer calls, even if they are labeled “spam risk”. When using Google tracking numbers (something you have to do to allow Google to track your calls and conversions), it is normal for calls from ads to show up as spam risk.
Do not be afraid to make small changes, but only make one or two at a time. Too many changes will make it very difficult to understand which changes had positive or negative effects. Give each change at least a week, preferably 2, before you measure the effects of the change.
Your competitors set the market. The more competition, the higher the bids. Try to stand out from the crowd.
DO NOT IMPLEMENT GOOGLE SUGGESTIONS
Ad Auction – The process that happens with each Google search to decide which ads will appear for that specific search and in which order those ads will show on the page (or whether or not any ads will show at all). Each time an ad is eligible to appear for a search, it goes through the ad auction.
Ad Copy – The written or text part of an advertisement.
Ad Group – An ad group contains one or more ads that share similar targets. Ad groups are used to organize a campaign into common themes.
Automated bidding – A solution that helps advertisers automatically set bids based on performance goals.
Call to Action (CTA) – a piece of content intended to induce a viewer, reader, or listener to perform a specific act, typically taking the form of an instruction or directive.
Campaigns – Overall or top level of an ad account structure, including ad groups, keywords, budgets, and targeting.
Clicks – When someone clicks your ad, like on the blue headline or phone number of a text ad, Google Ads counts that as a click.
Cost Per Click (CPC) – Cost per click bidding means that you pay for each click on your ads.
Clickthrough rate (CTR) – CTR is the number of clicks that your ad receives divided by the number of times your ad is shown. For example, if you had 5 clicks and 100 impressions, then your CTR would be 5%.
Conversion – When a user performs some specified action after clicking an ad, such as making a call lasting (x) amount of time or submitting a form on your website.
Daily Budget – The average amount that you set for each ad campaign on a per-day basis. It specifies how much you are roughly comfortable spending each day.
Display URL – The web address that appears with your ad
Impressions – An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on Google network.
Keyword – Words or phrases describing your product or service that you choose to help determine when and where your ad can appear.
Negative Keyword – A type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase.
Pay Per Click (PPC) – Google’s advertising solution which allows businesses to bid on keywords for a chance to show ads in Google
search results. When using Google Ads, you only pay when someone clicks on your ad.Search Volume – Indicates the number of search queries for a specific search term in a search engine within a given time frame.
See more resources at: https://support.google.com/google-ads/topic/glossary
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