Let's TalkLet's TalkConcrete searches mix homeowners pricing a new driveway with DIYers buying bags of mix, people wanting ready-mix delivered and people with foundation cracks. Google Ads for a concrete contractor has to pay only for the first group - and book them into a slot the weather allows.
We go through the search terms you paid for, the quotes they produced and what became of them, and show how much went on DIY, material supply, foundation repair and job searches, which campaigns produced signed work and what to change before the next season. You get a recorded walkthrough; there is no call to sit through.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
'How to pour a concrete slab', 'concrete calculator', 'bags of concrete near me' and 'ready mix delivery' come from people who will do the work themselves or are buying material. 'Concrete finisher jobs' comes from people looking for work. Without careful exclusions, searches like these can take a real share of every day's budget before a single homeowner who wants a driveway poured has seen your ad.
'Concrete crack repair' might mean a cracked patio or a cracked basement wall. Loose matching sends foundation and structural searches to companies that pour driveways and patios, and each one becomes a call that ends with 'we don't do that'. Unless you genuinely do structural repair, those searches need excluding, and your ads need to say plainly what you do.
A stamped patio, a driveway replacement and a commercial sidewalk are worth very different amounts and convert at very different speeds. Lumped into one campaign, the cheapest and quickest conversions win the budget - usually small repairs and price checks - and the decorative and commercial work that pays best gets whatever is left by mid-afternoon.
Concrete demand rises with the season and crews fill up. Accounts that spend the same in a rained-off week, a fully booked month and a quiet winter either buy enquiries nobody can pour or vanish just when planned work for the next season is being decided. Budgets need to follow the weather and your calendar, not a flat monthly figure.
Business outcomes rather than dashboard metrics. None of these is a guaranteed number - where we do guarantee something, it is written into the offer above.
The real deliverables, not a list written to make a proposal look thicker.
Not the general agency pitch. The reasons that only apply to this kind of business.
Concrete keywords attract people who mix their own, people who want material delivered and people looking for work, alongside homeowners hiring a contractor. We build exclusion lists from the search terms you actually pay for, keep them current as the season brings new variations, and move the money onto searches that end in a quote request from someone who owns the driveway.
Decorative and commercial work convert more slowly than a small repair but are worth far more. We give each line of work its own campaign, budget and target, and import signed jobs with their values, so a stamped patio campaign is not starved simply because a cheap patch-repair enquiry happened to convert faster.
Before the season, we run planned-work campaigns while homeowners are deciding. When the schedule fills, we pull back to what crews can pour. In the quieter months we keep a smaller presence aimed at booking the next window. Budget follows the weather and your calendar, so you are not paying for enquiries you would have to turn away.
A season of searches sorted into projects, DIY, supply, foundation and jobs.
Negative lists built and reviewed monthly.
Driveway, decorative and commercial campaigns and pages.
Job type, size, removal, access and timing asked up front.
Spend paced to weather and crew capacity.
Signed jobs fed back for bidding.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
Someone searching for stamped concrete or exposed aggregate has usually seen something they like. Campaigns and pages built for those searches, showing local examples of the finish, meet them at the point of choosing and tend to lead to larger jobs than generic 'concrete contractor' ads.
Google's US list of Local Services Ads categories does not currently include concrete work, so for most concrete contractors pay-per-lead placements are not available and standard search campaigns carry the load. Categories change, so it is worth checking eligibility for your own business from time to time.
Crews, pumps and ready-mix trucks all have to reach the site. Targeting people in or regularly in the area you actually serve, and excluding places beyond it, avoids paying for enquiries whose travel time would eat the profit on the pour.
The easiest conversions in concrete are small patch jobs and price checks. Importing signed jobs teaches bidding which searches lead to full driveways, patios and commercial pours, which matters in a trade where job values vary so widely.
None of our case studies is a concrete contractor. The nearest Google Ads engagement is an auto dealership, where tightly targeted search campaigns produced 1.22M clicks at a 0.90% click-through rate, 627% ROAS and $617K in revenue. The transferable lesson is targeting discipline - paying only for searches from people ready to buy, which in concrete means filtering out the DIY and supply traffic first.
Read the full case studyYes, when DIY, supply, foundation and job searches are excluded, campaigns are split by line of work and landing pages show the job and finish searched for. Measured on signed jobs rather than clicks or calls, search ads can be one of the most dependable sources of driveway, patio and commercial work a concrete contractor has.
How-to and DIY searches, concrete calculators, bags and mix, ready-mix delivery and pump hire if you do not offer them, foundation and basement repair unless you do structural work, and job searches. Review the search terms report monthly, because new variations keep appearing, especially as the season starts and searches surge.
Google's current US list of Local Services Ads categories does not include a concrete category, so most concrete contractors cannot use them for concrete work. Availability varies by category and area, and the list changes, so check eligibility occasionally. For now, standard search campaigns are the main paid search channel for the trade.
In colder areas, at a lower level, yes. Homeowners plan spring patios and driveways during winter, and a smaller campaign aimed at booking the next season costs less than starting from nothing when the weather turns. In milder climates the season runs longer, and budgets can stay steadier through the year.
Yes, if you do that work. Decorative searches come from homeowners choosing a look, convert more slowly and are usually worth more. Their own campaign, budget and landing page with local examples of each finish stop them being starved by cheaper, faster-converting repair enquiries.
Photos of local pours of that job type and finish, what your quote includes - preparation, thickness, reinforcement, joints, finish, clean-up - what drives cost, how permits and scheduling work, proof you are licensed and insured where required, and a form asking job type, approximate size, removal and timing.
Import signed jobs as offline conversions, with their values where possible, so bidding learns which searches lead to contracts. Counting every quote request equally teaches Google to find people who request quotes, and in concrete a large number of quote requests are price checks from people comparing several contractors.
Enough to fill the pour slots your crews can handle, paced to your season. Start with your most profitable line of work and strongest areas, judge it on cost per signed job over a few months, then expand into what signs. There is no single right number, and a small, well-targeted account can do well.
If you do commercial flatwork, yes, in its own campaign. Commercial searches are fewer, and the buyers usually want a capabilities page, insurance details and past commercial work rather than a homeowner-style quote form. Judge commercial campaigns on bids won over a longer period, not on cost per lead.
Excluding wasted searches can improve an account within weeks. Signed-job results take longer to read, because quotes are compared and pours are scheduled around the weather, so judge changes over a couple of months - and against the same point last season rather than the month before.
Yes, for homeowners who would rather talk, which is common with larger driveway and patio jobs. Track calls as conversions, record whether each became a quote and a signed job, and ask the same qualifying questions on the phone as on the form, so calls feed the same reporting and bidding.
Written for owners weighing this up, whether or not they work with us.
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