If you were asked why you put any money, time or effort into your marketing campaigns, the answer would probably be simple—to grow your business and increase your revenue. If this is your goal, what better place to market than on the online search engine with 4 billion daily users?
As a local business, your goal should not be to reach all 4 billion Google users because you don’t service all of them. But it should be to reach as many people as possible in your own local market who are searching for pest control services. With Google Ads, this is a highly possible and achievable goal. You can show your ads to the people who are looking for your services and not waste money showing them to the ones who are not.
Google Ads is Google’s pay-per-click (PPC) advertising platform that you can use to run your pest control ad campaigns and compete for the highest-ranking keywords for relevant searches in your local market. As a pay-per-click platform, Google Ads is a game of math, and the quickest way to lose money is to run ads without having the proper strategy for your ad campaigns. Rather than playing the Google Ads game like a slot machine, putting your money in and pulling down on a lever to see if you will win or lose, you can actually calculate your Google math to learn how to play the game to win before even getting started.
Calculating Google Math
To calculate your Google math and play the Google Ads game in a way that is sure to earn you money, you will first need to identify the value of each pest control sale. How much does your average customer bring in? How many different types of customers do you service? What is the average sales value of each customer?
Take the average value of each of these services for example:
- An annual recurring pest control maintenance plan
- Rodent treatment and exclusion
- A termite inspection
- A seasonal mosquito treatment
- Pigeon control
- Solar panel protection
- Bed bug treatments
Now, determine what the ROI must be for running a campaign for each one individually. For example:
- Annual GPC maintenance plan = $500 annually
- Average Google click (CPC) for this campaign = $10.00
- Google Ads Spend Budget = $1500 monthly
- Leads captured by 150 clicks = 15 (10%)
- Conversion rate of leads = 50%
- Sales for the month = 7.5
- 5 sales at $500 = $3750.00
- ROI = 3750/1500 = 250%
We would refer to these results as trading a dime for a quarter. Each dime invested acquired a Google return of about a quarter.
Understand the bidding process for pest control keywords
Your primary focus when bidding for pest control keywords will be on Clicks. The average number of clicks your ad gets will help you determine how appealing your ad is to the people who see it. Highly relevant ads will get the most clicks. The relevancy of your ad depends partly on if the keywords you use in your ads match what searchers type in the search bar to find your ad.
The bidding prices for your keywords are highly dependent on your service location(s), however pest control keywords tend to be higher than keywords in other service industries. The larger the population of your service area(s), the higher the bidding prices for your keywords. If you service highly populated areas, you may see high costs to run your ads.
As far as winning bids, you set how much you want to spend. Let’s say the maximum you want to bid for an important local pest control keyword or phrase is $4 and Google determines that your cost-per-click is $2. You would get that ad placement! If they determine that it is more than $4, you would not get the ad placement.
Don’t get too caught up trying to win bids for keywords that you neglect to really create a strong Google Ads strategy. The way you set up your ads can determine whether you win or lose the Google Ads game. You must create a successful Google Ads strategy for pest control. You can succeed with your campaigns by learning to use very detailed ad groups, keywords, and responsive Search ads.
An example black widow campaign in Orlando, Florida might look like this:
- Campaign – [Name, Orlando]
- Ad Group – [ Black widow, spider]
- Keywords:
- Black widow control
- Black widow control near me
- Black widow in house
- Black widow infestation
- Black widows
- Black widows in my house
- Black widows control
- Black widows in my attic
- Responsive Search Ad:
- Headline 1 = “We Get Rid of Black Widows”
- Headline 2 = “Exterminate Black Widows in Your Home”
- Description = “Our Pest Control Company is #1 in Orlando. Kid & Pet-Friendly Treatments Available.”
Typically, your campaigns will have about 50+ individual ad groups with 10-20 keywords for each group and 2-3 responsive Search ads.
Google Ads operates on a pay-per-click system and works with your budget. There is no minimum spend requirement to run your campaigns and generate leads. You can monitor your local search performance to ensure your money is being used to grow your pest control business.
