Running a successful restoration business is challenging. Both franchisees and independent owners face their share of problems, as standing out from the competition can be tough.
But by understanding your ideal customers and their behaviors, you can turn these challenges into opportunities with Google Ads. When property water damage strikes, your potential customers are likely to reach for their devices to search for solutions. We will show you how powerful Google Ads can be in placing your water restoration expertise front and center, right when they need it most.
Understanding Google Ads
What Are Google Ads?
In short, Google Ads is an advertising platform where businesses can create text, image, or video ads to display on Google search results pages and across Google’s display network (like YouTube and The New York Times). The most common are search ads, which often appear at the top of search results and are labeled “sponsored.”
How Google Ads Work
Search Ads
These are text-based ads that appear at the top and/or bottom of the search results page. They are marked “sponsored” and look similar to organic search results.
Display Ads
Display ads or banner ads are image or video ads displayed on websites within the Google Display Network, which includes millions of websites, apps, and blogs. For example, the ad on the top section of CNN.com is a display ad.
Video Ads
We are all familiar with YouTube video ads. Video ads can be displayed before, during, or after videos, as well as within YouTube search results and on the YouTube homepage.
Local Service Ads
These ads are designed for businesses that offer local services, such as restoration, plumbers, and electricians. The ads appear when users search for services in their area and often display business names, phone numbers, and reviews.
The Benefits of Google Ads for Water Damage Restoration Businesses
Immediate Visibility in Search Results
Water damage cleanup and repair is a stressful and often urgent situation. Depending on the source and size of the damage, the restoration can be an emergency-level service. With Google Ads, your business gains quick visibility, as ads can appear on Google platforms almost immediately after launching a campaign.
When dealing with emergency water damage restoration, searchers often call providers listed on Google, favoring the first few credible ones who respond. Non-emergency leads tend to shop around, comparing prices, inspections, and options before making a decision.
For searchers, seeing your brand in the top spot in the search results leaves an impression and increases brand awareness.
Targeting the Right Audience
One of the best features of Google Ads is the ability to target your ideal customers. Whether they are homeowners, property managers, or contractors, you can target them by keywords, demographics, location, and interests. For example, if you want to reach Houston homeowners aged 45+, you can easily set this up in Google Ads. Targeting and meeting your customers where they are with solutions to their problems helps you connect with the right people. This builds valuable leads and relationships.
Local Targeting to Reach Customers Nearby
It is common for both franchisee and independent restoration businesses to operate only within designated areas. Franchise businesses may be limited by territorial agreements. Independent businesses may be limited by resource availability, licensing, and permits.
Local targeting, or geotargeting, is a great way for water restoration companies to use their ad budgets wisely by focusing only on areas within their service range. This helps avoid wasting money on ads outside their service areas and targets the locations where their best customers are. You can refine targeting down to the country, city, neighborhood, or even zip code level.
Also, appearing on Google Maps and in “near me” searches is essential for reaching customers who need immediate services. When people search for “commercial water damage restoration near me,” they’re actively looking for local help. Many of these searches happen on mobile devices, so local targeting ensures your business is visible and accessible to nearby customers on the go.
Measurable Results and ROI
Tracking the effectiveness of campaigns and how they impact key performance indicators (KPIs) like leads and revenue is essential. By targeting the right audience and keeping ad campaigns well-optimized using tracked metrics, you can reach customers actively searching for your service, boosting conversions. Google Ads’ detailed analytics help you understand what works, optimize future campaigns, and ultimately maximize return on investment (ROI).
Top tracked performance metrics:
- Impressions: The number of times your ad is displayed indicates the reach of your ad.
- Clicks and click-through-rates (CTR): Clicks are the number of times users clicked on your ad. CTR is the ratio of clicks to impressions. A high CTR suggests effective ad content and targeting.
- Conversions and conversion rates: Conversions are actions you want users to take, like phone calls or website visits. The conversion rate is the percentage of clicks that lead to conversions.
- Cost-per-click (CPC): The average cost you pay for each click on your ad. A lower CPC can mean more efficient ad spending.
- Cost-per-conversion (CPA): Average cost for each conversion. A lower CPA suggests more efficient use of your budget.
- Return on investment (ROI): Measures the profitability of your ad spend. A positive ROI indicates that your ads are generating more revenue than they cost.
Driving Qualified Leads and Conversions
Using audience, location, and interest targeting, Google Ads can attract qualified leads, helping restoration contractors to showcase their credibility and expertise. The goal is to build strong relationships by offering tailored services that lead to customer conversions and amazing post-service reviews.
Strategic Considerations for Running Google Ads
Identifying Your Business Goals
Set a clear direction for your ad campaign to achieve goals like generating leads and boosting revenue. For example, generate a 10% increase in phone call leads in Q1. Identifying these goals improves audience targeting, enhances budget efficiency, and makes it easier to measure success, guiding future optimizations.
Understanding Your Target Audience
Who are your ideal customers? No one wants water damage, and you’ll be their guide during a tough time. By understanding and being sensitive to your audience’s needs, you’re better equipped to offer effective solutions, making them more likely to convert.
With this understanding, use Google Ads’ audience targeting to specify demographics, location, interests, and behavior. This ensures your ads reach those most likely to engage.
Keyword Research and Selection
Understanding your audience’s pain points helps you find relevant keywords that match both your business and searchers’ needs. Using Google Keyword Planner in Google Ads, focus on high-intent keywords like “residential water damage restoration near me” or “water damage inspection [City].” These keywords suggest searchers are ready to take action, not just gather information, making them more likely to convert.
Crafting Compelling Ad Copy
Write clear, compelling ad copy that explains why searchers should choose your restoration service. Highlight what sets you apart, like certifications, the latest technology, green initiatives, reviews, or years in business. Use strong call-to-action phrases to encourage clicks and drive engagement.
Setting an Effective Budget
Set a daily and monthly budget that fits in with your overall marketing budget and business goals. Distribute your budget across different campaigns and ad groups and monitor closely to identify which are high- and low-performing. Take advantage of Logic Inbound’s expertise in restoration marketing to determine the appropriate budget in order to be effective in achieving your goals.
Optimizing Google Ads Campaigns for Water Damage Restoration
Utilizing Ad Extensions for Better Visibility
Ad extensions are a great way to give searchers more information and give your ad more prominence in the search results, thereby standing out amongst the competitors.
Call Extensions
Call extensions add a phone number to your ad, allowing searchers to call your business directly from search results. Disaster cleanup and restoration can often be urgent matters so it’s crucial that we make it easy for searchers to contact you and speak with an expert.
Location Extensions
Location extensions are key for businesses with an on-site presence. They show your address, a map, the distance to your location, and a clickable link for directions. This helps customers who want to visit you for a consultation or verify that your business is local.
Sitelink Extensions
Sitelink extensions add extra links below your main ad copy, directing searchers to specific pages on your website. For example, your ad might lead to the “water damage restoration” page, but sitelinks can also guide users to the “about us” or “special offers” pages. This gives searchers more options, boosts click chances, and enhances your ad’s visibility on search results pages.
A/B Testing Ad Variations
So, you set up your water damage restoration campaign by researching your audience and keywords, setting appropriate bids based on your budget, and creating compelling ad copies with extensions. But succeeding in Google Ads is all about finding what resonates with your audience and continually optimizing your ads for high engagement. This is where A/B testing, or split testing, comes in.
Examples of A/B Testing
Let’s assume Leslie is the owner of Water Pros, a water damage restoration company in South Carolina. She wants to refine the messaging of her ads and see which call-to-action (CTA) in her ad copy is more effective. She creates two versions of an ad:
Ad A: “Top-Rated Water Damage Experts, Greenville, SC l Call Us 24/7!”
Ad B: “Top-Rated Water Damage Experts, Greenville, SC l Get a Free Quote Today!”
Leslie runs both ads simultaneously with a similar budget and the same audience targeting to maintain consistency. Her goal is to increase click-through-rates (CTR). By analyzing the results, she can determine which CTA message connects better with her audience and use that information to optimize future ads.
A/B testing is an ongoing process; consider testing other add-on elements to continue refining and optimizing performance. Through A/B testing, Leslie has a better understanding of her audience and what works best for them.
Leveraging Remarketing Strategies
Remarketing helps target people who visited your site but didn’t convert. You can show them tailored ads to keep your brand in their minds and encourage them to come back and convert.
For example:
“Still Looking for a Reliable Water Restoration Specialist? Schedule a Same-Day Free Inspection.”
To make retargeting more effective, segment your retargeting audience by their past behavior, like pages visited or time spent on your site. Avoid targeting those who’ve already converted or quickly left your site to save on ad spend.
Tracking Performance with Google Analytics
The first step to tracking performance with Google Analytics is to link it with Google Ads. This allows data from your Google Ads campaigns to flow into Google Analytics.
Auto-tagging in Google Ads automatically appends a unique tracking parameter to your ads that helps Google Analytics capture detailed information about each click on your ads. It helps track user behavior metrics such as:
- Bounce rate: When someone sees only one page or triggers only one event, this is a bounce.
- Average session duration (in seconds): Average time someone stayed on your site.
- Pages per Session: Average number of pages viewed per session.
- % of new sessions: Estimated % of first-time sessions.
These additional metrics can help show how effective your campaigns and ads are. With this information, you can make decisions about your budgets, bids, landing pages, and ad copy.
Adjusting Bids Based on Performance
By adjusting bids based on performance, business owners can focus on what works and reduce spending on underperforming areas. Bids can be changed based on device, location, time of day, and audience, as well as automated by campaign goals.
Common Challenges and Solutions
Managing High Competition in the Industry
Competing with large restoration franchises can be difficult for independent, non-franchise businesses. However, understanding your local audience, building relationships with strong customer reviews, and using your local expertise can help you stand out. Our team at Restoration Inbound can help you find opportunities where your business can fill gaps left by the competition and get noticed by your best potential customers.
Avoiding Wasted Spend on Broad Keywords
We want to get the most out of your ad budget by understanding your potential customers and identifying the keywords they use for water damage restoration services in your area. Avoid wasting ad spend on broad or low-intent keywords. Instead, focus on high-intent keywords that attract customers comparing local businesses. Since 15% of daily Google searches are new, we’ll keep your keyword list updated and monitor it regularly.
Balancing Cost Per Click with Conversion Rate
Cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you pay for each click on your ad. If our conversion goal is phone calls, ideally, we want to pay less for clicks and get more phone calls.
Various factors, such as the amount of competition, search intent of the user, industry, target audience, and quality score, determine the average cost per click on Google. But we can optimize in the following ways to balance the cost per click and conversion rates for our campaigns:
-Use Negative Keywords
Irrelevant searches can trigger your Google Search Ads, leading to unnecessary clicks and lower conversion rates. To avoid this, we regularly review your search term list and create a negative keyword list.
This list includes terms that are unrelated to your business and campaign and unlikely to convert. For example, a water damage restoration company might add “DIY water restoration” or “water damage restoration salary” to the negative keyword list to avoid attracting do-it-yourselfers and job seekers.
-Quality Score
To improve your ad placement, it’s important to optimize your quality score.
Ensure your landing page flows seamlessly from the search ad, meeting the searcher’s expectations. For a water damage restoration ad, the landing page should focus on this topic, answering key questions, providing information, and including a clear call-to-action.
Ad relevance is crucial. Align your keywords, ad extensions, and ad copy with the searcher’s intent. For example, if your ad promotes free water damage inspections, make sure your keyword list targets this specific service so the ad appears for users looking for it.
Dealing with Seasonal Demand Fluctuations
Managing seasonal demand fluctuations is important for restoration businesses to maintain a consistent workflow. Google Ads’ historical data from past seasons can help you anticipate busy periods, allowing better planning to meet demand without delays. With climate change making traditional peak seasons less predictable, closely monitoring tracking metrics becomes even more important.
Tracking data patterns also supports effective customer outreach before peak seasons. For example, running ads with tips on flood season preparation can boost engagement. During slow seasons, promote complementary services like mold remediation and waterproofing to keep a steady workflow.
Start Your Google Ads Campaign with Restoration Inbound!
Whether you’re new to Google Ads or looking to optimize your existing campaigns, Restoration Inbound is here to help maximize your growth. We specialize in setting up and fine-tuning ads to meet your business goals, ensuring you reach your target audience effectively. With 60+ 5-star reviews, our expertise in helping restoration businesses speaks for itself! Get in touch with us today!