Let's TalkLet's TalkAn account where an emergency call and an EV charger installation compete for one budget, and the cheaper click nearly always wins.
Give us read access to the account. We come back with how much of your budget goes to emergency, repair and project searches, what the DIY and job-seeker traffic is costing you, whether your ads run when someone can answer, and the three changes worth making first. Recorded walkthrough, no call required.
Four failures we see repeatedly in this vertical, and what each one actually costs.
A search for an emergency electrician and a search for a standby generator installation are worth completely different amounts and convert on completely different timelines. In one campaign at one target, the algorithm buys the cheap, fast conversions - small repairs - and starves the generator, panel and EV charger searches that carry most of the value.
Electrical keywords attract people wiring their own outlet, people looking for apprenticeships and electrician jobs, and people buying parts. None of them will book a job, all of them click, and broad match finds them eagerly. Without a maintained negative keyword list they take a real share of every month's spend.
Emergency campaigns running around the clock while calls go to voicemail pay premium prices for enquiries that expire. The opposite happens too: crews with capacity on a quiet afternoon and ads scheduled off. The schedule belongs to dispatch, and most accounts set it once at launch and never look at it again.
A thirty-second call asking whether you do free quotes and a call that becomes a panel upgrade are the same conversion to most electrical accounts. Bidding on that signal optimises toward whoever calls most, not toward whoever books. Without job values from your job management system, the account cannot tell good money from bad.
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.
Generator and panel searches convert less often than repair searches and are worth several times as much. An account optimised to cost per lead will always move money away from them. We give project work its own budget and target, and judge it on booked job value - which is the only way the account ever grows the high-ticket side of the business.
Emergency ads should run when someone can go, and not when nobody can. That means knowing your rota, your after-hours arrangements and your busy seasons, then scheduling to them. It is dull, it changes by season, and it removes a large share of wasted emergency spend in most electrical accounts.
Generic negative lists miss what your account actually attracts. We read your search terms weekly at first - DIY wiring questions, apprenticeship searches, parts and tools, other trades - and build the list from what we find. It is the least glamorous work in the account and one of the most valuable.
Every term from the last ninety days, grouped into jobs you want, jobs you do not, and traffic that will never book.
Separate campaigns and targets for emergency, repair and each project type, so value is not averaged away.
Emergency campaigns aligned to when a crew can actually respond, reviewed as the seasons change.
Booked jobs and their values imported from your job management software, so bidding learns what pays.
Landing pages for panels, EV chargers and generators that answer cost, process and permits.
Monthly, by job type, with Local Services Ads alongside search.
The parts of this that come from having run it in this industry before rather than from running it well in general.
People look for a charger installer around the time they buy or take delivery of an electric car. Reaching them then - including audiences around EV dealerships and public charging locations - puts an electrician in front of the buyer before they search, and a charger enquiry often turns into a panel upgrade.
Outage-day clicks are expensive and arrive when crews are already stretched. Ramping generator campaigns ahead of the storm season, with financing where you offer it, reaches homeowners while they can still be scheduled and before every competitor bids at once.
Electricians upload their licence and pass background checks covering the business, the owner and field workers before their Local Services Ads run. For a homeowner deciding who to let into the house, that badge carries weight. It suits emergency and repair work well, and works best measured separately from search, with invalid leads disputed.
Facilities managers searching for commercial electrical work, lighting retrofits or EV fleet charging want different proof, different copy and different landing pages from homeowners. Their leads are also worth very different amounts. A separate campaign keeps both the messaging and the reporting honest.
The closest paid-media engagement we can point at is an EV dealership rather than an electrical contractor, and we will not present it as a trade case study. It is relevant for one reason: it reached the same buyer an EV charger installer needs, one step earlier - category-education creative for a market with little search demand yet, and geo-fencing around competitor lots and EV charging stations, at 480% ROAS in the first two quarters after launch. The emergency and panel work on this page comes from how electrical demand behaves, not from that engagement.
Read the full case studyIt depends on your market, your competition and your job mix, and emergency clicks are among the most expensive. The useful question is what a booked job is worth by type. A smaller budget works best concentrated on your core area and one or two job types done properly, and it should be judged on booked job value rather than on the cost of each click.
Usually both, measured separately. Local Services Ads charge per lead, carry a verification badge after licence and background checks, and suit emergency and repair work. Search Ads give you control over job types, keywords and landing pages, which matters for panel, EV charger and generator work. Blending the two into one number hides which one is working.
With a negative keyword list built from your own search terms rather than a generic template, reviewed weekly at first and monthly once it settles. Exclude how-to phrasing, job and apprenticeship searches, and parts and tools. Tighter match types on your highest-value keywords help too, because broad match is very good at finding DIY traffic.
Only if someone can take the job. Emergency ads should follow your on-call rota. Outside it, the AI chatbot can hold written enquiries until morning, but an emergency caller needs a person - and paying for an emergency click nobody can answer is the most expensive setting in the account.
Yes, with their own campaigns, their own landing pages and job values imported so the algorithm knows what those jobs are worth. Without that, it will keep finding cheap repair calls, because that is what it is being asked for. Project work also needs a longer follow-up, since those decisions take weeks.
A booked job, with its value, imported from your job management software. Calls over a set length are a weak substitute - a long call can be a question about whether you do free quotes. Until the account knows which calls became which jobs, it cannot tell your best keywords from your worst.
This is one part of a bigger service. Here is the whole of it, and the closest neighbours.
No pitch deck, no discovery call you have to sit through. Tell us the situation and we will tell you whether we can help.