Home services PPC measured in booked jobs, with a published HVAC and plumbing case to show the method

Where contractor accounts waste money

• Emergency and planned work in one campaign. "AC not cooling" at 9 pm in July and "new HVAC system cost" are different customers with different values. Sharing a budget, the cheap emergency clicks take it and the installs never get seen.
• A phone call counted as a job. Wrong numbers, suppliers, job seekers and existing customers all ring the tracked line. Until the office marks which calls were booked, Google optimizes toward whoever calls, not whoever buys.
• Service area set to the metro. A plumber in Katy paying for clicks from Baytown. Radius and ZIP targeting matched to the trucks' actual routes, with bids by area and hour.
• Local Services Ads ignored or left to run. Google Guaranteed leads are often cheaper than Search for emergency work and the two should be compared on cost per booked job, not run by different people.
• The homepage as the landing page. Someone with water on the floor needs the phone number, the response time and the service area in the first screen, not the company history.

What a click costs by trade and metro

Average cost per click from Google Ads keyword data for the US, October 2026, for the search with the city attached. Market averages, not a forecast.

The same trade costs very different amounts in neighboring markets: HVAC repair in Dallas costs two and a half times what it does in Phoenix, and a Phoenix plumber pays half as much again as a Houston one. Budgets set from a national average go wrong in both directions. An audit prices your own auction before anything is changed.

What moved the Houston account

An HVAC and plumbing company in Houston, running Google Ads from May 2025 to February 2026, with clicks costing $45 to $80. Cost per acquisition fell 44% and qualified leads rose 60%. The full note, with the source of the figures, is on results. The work:

1. Campaigns split by type of job, so urgent, cheaper work stopped absorbing the budget meant for installs and higher-value repairs.
2. Tracking rebuilt so a booked job and a phone call were different events, with the office marking call outcomes and the booked jobs fed back to Google.
3. A weekly pass through the search terms, with a negatives program that grew every week, and steady tests of ads and landing pages.
4. Bids by area and hour, matched to the trucks' routes and to when emergency calls actually come in.

What management includes for a contractor

• Google Search by service and urgency, Local Services Ads where the trade qualifies, and Microsoft Advertising once Google works, compared on cost per booked job.
• Call tracking with outcomes, the booking software (ServiceTitan, Housecall Pro, Jobber and others) feeding booked and completed jobs back as offline conversions. See conversion tracking.
• One page per service, built by me, with the phone number, the response time and the service area at the top, loading fast on a phone. See landing pages.
• Seasonal budgets planned in advance: cooling in May, heating in October, storm response when it happens.
• A monthly report in booked jobs and cost per booked job, by service line, alongside the platform numbers.

Who this fits

HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, garage door, pest control, restoration and similar contractors in the US and Canada, from a few trucks to regional multi-location companies, spending roughly $3,000 to $60,000 a month. Lead-generation networks that resell contractor leads are not a fit. For smaller budgets, see Google Ads for small business.

Questions people ask before hiring

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