← The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
The Paid Search Podcast | A Weekly Podcast About Google Ads and Online Marketing
HVAC & A/C Lead Generation (Episode 440)
00:31:17
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Chris
Hello and welcome to the Paid Search Podcast. My name is Chris and Happy Thanksgiving. It is Thanksgiving week and today I'm doing an abbreviated show. It's a little shorter than usual, I think. You can forgive me since all I have is turkey and dressing on my mind right now. So I'm going to do a hard hitting, focused Google Ads discussion about H Vac, about AC repair, how to build, how to manage, what to expect. Whether you're new building something for the first time or you just want to get some pointers for a campaign you've been running for a while. Let's find out. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Happy to hear some thoughts. You can always email me paid search podcastmail.com especially interested in people that maybe disagree, have some arguments, think I'm wrong. I'd love to hear those things. Instead. If you don't have a question and you just have a complaint, you have a bone to pick. Those emails are welcome as well. You say, hey Chris, you say this all the time, but I don't think so. This is what I see. Happy to hear it. I'm going to lay down some things in the next 30 minutes or so and tell you what I have experienced in H vac Google Ads Management. I have clients that I've worked with. I do a lot of consulting, a lot of auditing on accounts. I have had my hands in AC repair installation from companies all over the United States and I'm going to tell you what my experience is and what I think lead generation in this industry looks like. So you can think of this as a maybe a bit of a case study, a little bit of a deep dive into this industry. So stay tuned for that. No questions this week. Nothing. We're going to get right into it right after I tell you about optio.com PSP that is the URL that you have heard many times and I hope you've taken advantage of your special offer. If you go to opteo.com PSP you can get a 28 day free trial of the Google Ads Management software, period. It is everything that you need from A to Z to help you make decisions to be able to manage your Google Ads accounts. Whether you're running one account and you're brand new and it's confusing, or you are highly advanced and you understand everything from bid management to keywords and ad copy, but you're having trouble coming up with new ideas, finding where you went wrong no matter where you are in the process. Optio can help you get more done in Google Ads So there are tools designed for bid management, budget management, keywords, negative keywords, ad copywriting, everything in Google Ads. It analyzes and provides you with data to help you make good decisions. You won't believe it till you see it. It's an amazing tool. That's why I have the special link optio.com PSP for a 28 day free trial. That's twice as long as you would get signing up on your own. So if you're thinking about trying it, use that link. Do me a favor, let them know that you found their software through the paid search podcast. All right, let's jump in right into it. We're going to go right into it. No questions, no side discussions. Let's talk about H Vac AC lead generation in Google Ads. So right off the bat, I feel that there are two paths in front of you. If you are considering doing AC lead generation, you know, you're trying to get calls to, you know, for people who have AC problems. And I'm specifically talking about homes, I'm not talking about cars. You know, AC repair in cars and stuff. That's different. AC repair in homes, businesses, H vac repair, things like that is very different because number one, there's a lot of searches, it's a lot of people who are searching. Number two, there's a lot of competitors. Number three, there's a lot of value to be made, a lot of money to be made in this industry because a job could be as small as just, you know, fixing some problem to replacing the entire unit. And even a small job can lead to more jobs. Right? You now become that houses AC company. You know, you're now the first people they call when they have a problem, if they have a good experience. Happens all the time, right? Everybody's like, these people are always quick. I just call, I schedule and they come and it's always good. So there's a lot of value. So therefore, because of the volume, because of the value, because of the competitors, I see two routes forward for this kind of industry. First route is going to be focused on quality. Okay, you focus on quality, I'll explain what that is. And the other route is focused on volume. There are disadvantages and advantages to each. So let me first explain what I mean by quality when I, when I discuss how to build an AC H VAC lead generation campaign focused on quality, what you're going to do is you're going to follow my typical 10 principles of Google Ads. You're going to, you're going to build ad groups Based on themes, you're going to focus on keeping risk low, having phrase match, exact match, keywords, maybe running manual bids, maybe running, you know, very strategically focused target CPA. You know, you're going to have 10, 15 AD groups, perhaps very specific ad copy for each one of the ad groups, you're going to have specific targeting, maybe multiple campaigns, perhaps based on different geographic areas, different value of services. Right? You can see when I talk about quality, it's going to be much more of a traditional type of build. And honestly, the drawback to this is it's more difficult, it's more expensive. I find that you can absolutely control the traffic that you're getting. But when you do that, you tend to pay more per click. And because you pay more per click, then you're gonna get less traffic, right? So if you have $5,000 to work with and the CPC is 25% more than this other method, then you're going to get roughly 25% less traffic. It's more difficult because it requires a higher level of knowledge and the failure rate, I find, is higher. In other words, this didn't work. It's not enough volume, right, Because I define two different paths. Remember, one is quality, one is volume. So on the quality path, I don't typically find volume is something that you're going to get a lot of. You can get quality, you can get good leads, solid leads. This is the area that I want. This is the service, this is the kind of client that I want. This is the kind of call that I want. You know, the closing rate for these leads is good. And on the other side, the other path focuses on volume. So the great thing about volume is it leans more into the Google Ads algorithm. Right? The black box of, you know, you just kind of throw stuff at Google Ads and it just kind of churns out traffic and gets you conversions. There's not a lot of precision in the way that you build it. It's easier, certainly more unpredictable. There's less control. There's no way that you could say exactly the kind of calls you're going to get. You're leaving things much more wide open. So you're using broad match, you're using phrase match, probably not using exact match at all. Exact match is probably off the table. Okay? You're using things like maximize conversions with no target CPA limiter in the bidding. You're definitely not using manual bids. No way. You're using target CPA with a very high target CPA goal. Using maximize conversions with, you know, with no goal. This can lead to volume. Lot of clicks, lower CPCs, higher conversion rates. The problem is, is that there's a lot of unpredictability. Very often you'll have spikes and valleys, right? Mountains and valleys. Things go up, things go down. And it can absolutely be frustrating. The quality of the lead that you're getting. You know, someone's looking for parts, somebody's looking for, you know, to get questions answered or, you know, conversion rates could be up and down all over the place. They could be low, they could be high. But the fact is, is that volume does not lead itself to quality. So I find that these two paths differentiate between volume and quality. I don't find at the beginning that there's a middle ground here. I find that typically you're going to have to mainly go on one path. Now, in the end, these two paths can converge, but I find that they spread apart and don't come together for quite a while until it's going to take some time before you can get a volume strategy to bring you more into a quality path. And a quality path, it's going to take quite a while before you can eventually get it leading you into higher volume. Okay, so that's a broader picture of what you can expect with an H vac lead generation campaign. It's going to be a very different experience depending on which path that you can go. Now, what I'm going to do is no matter what camp you decide to settle in here, I'm going to give you some suggestions. Regardless of your method, I'm going to give you some suggestions that I think should work for everybody based on experience. This is what I think is going to be ideal and I'll give as many reasons as I can about that. Okay, so number one, I think everyone should avoid competitor searches. Now this is something that is contested. And Again, paid search podcastmail.com if you disagree me, if you disagree with me, tell me why you think. But I'm going to probably take your argument away from you right away. Okay. Many of you think that competitors are good because, hey, if they're looking for Joe, why wouldn't they be happy with Jim? We do the same thing. Not really that different. We just, you know, we can still provide the same service. Sure. Very often I see if someone's looking for Joe and they end up calling Jim, they'll settle with Jim. But very common. I find the problem to be a lot of call and hang up. You know, the feedback that I get from clients is that that doesn't happen. Very often they call and realize this is the wrong place. Or they give their name. Hey, can you guys come out? You know, and they're like, we don't have you in our system. Oh. And they realize this is not the right place. Or perhaps they're looking for Joe and they called Jim because they'd already booked an appointment with Joe. And they're like, hey, can I change my schedule, you know, or can we talk about that invoice that you guys gave me? Like, oh, we didn't give you an invoice, or we don't have you on the schedule. Oh, this is the wrong place. Right? Every one of these scenarios, money was wasted. Nothing was gained. Okay? The reason why competitors might be appealing for Google Ads managers to continue to allow to run through your Google Ads campaign is because it jacks the numbers up. It makes your conversion numbers look a lot better than they really are. Okay? That's the ugly truth. The truth is that you might get higher conversion rates, higher conversion numbers with competitors, but in the end, it's not a productive lead for the company. The company doesn't really get a lot out of it. But you know what? My Google Ads reports look better. I'm telling you the truth. I'm telling you the truth. And in the end, for the longevity of the campaign, for the performance of the campaign, for the client themselves, it's better if your manager, you know, you, whoever's making decisions, does not allow competitors to come through the search terms. Number two on my, on my recommendations for everyone is I think you should avoid search partners. Search partners. At this point, I rarely find that they are a valuable asset to add to Google Ads accounts. In fact, most of the time, I'm surprised when someone has a good experience with search partners. So search partners is a little button that you can turn off in the campaign settings to turn off your ads on non google.com properties for search ads, I recommend that you turn it off specifically for this H vac industry. The reason for that is because there's a lot of scammy, spammy, weird stuff that happens. International traffic, out of state. You know, it's a lot of stuff that comes in there that is not controllable and it can lead to something that I'll talk about a little bit later down the line. That sounds like a good thing, but it's actually not. Search partners can actually lead to a much lower cost per click. But I will explain why that's not so great. And it only makes the report look good. In the end, it kills the campaign. All right, number three, I suggest using text ads, not call ads, at least from the beginning. Now this might be something you explore on a short term, maybe something you test at a later date, but from the beginning, most of the time it's not going to be advantageous for you. The reason for this is because text ads set side by side between call ads, text ads will be much less expensive. The cost per click, the cost to even get an impression, right? There's a certain threshold on google.com even to show an ad. The threshold to get a text ad inserted into a google.com result page is much lower than the fresh than the threshold of a call ad getting inserted into a google.com page. Okay, so not only does the cost make it more efficient to run text ads, but also when someone clicks on a call ad, they don't instantly call. That person then has to confirm do you want to call this number? And they have to hit ok. So there's a double qualification that requires them to actually make that phone call. If they hit cancel, you still paid for that click and you didn't get the call. Right? I find that it's at least more valuable. You at least get a guarantee. If they click a text ad, they at least go to your website. At least they see the images, they see the call to action. They see something. Now, whether they back out of it or not, at least you didn't pay as much and at least you got them to come to your page. Maybe you're doing remarketing, maybe you have some other methods to now remarket to that person. You have some data about that. I think that's a better investment in the end. I think that's a better way to go. So that's it. Text ads, not call ads. Number four. Everyone, regardless of your path, whether you are focused on quality or volume, I think should separate your services based on value. All right, so let me explain what that means. So whether you're doing a quality focus or a volume focus, I think your campaign should at least have an installation ad group, a H Vac repair ad group, an AC service ad group, a maintenance ad group, a tune up ad group. You know, these different services have different values. Any H Vac business owner will tell you it's certainly more valuable for a new AC install or replacement or something like that over just a repair. Right? We're talking $10,000 for a new install, you know, versus someone who just needs some fluid added in a small part replaced. You know, the value is different for an install versus a repair. Because of that, I think it, it should at least be in your interest and in your focus to put your value traffic that's more valuable into one area to be able to control it, to be able to watch it, be able to see it. This helps you in the long run. It's not necessarily in the short game here. There's not really an immediate benefit in the short run. But for the long run, as you're able to adjust and manage and look at things, change ad copy, I think it's more valuable, let alone the value of sending people to the right page if they want an AC installation, new build, AC install kind of stuff versus AC repair. Right? The intent, the value of a person who's looking for someone to just fix their AC in the middle of the summer, in the middle of winter is very, a very different need than someone who's looking for a new install, who's likely taking bids from multiple providers. Right. Someone who wants a new install is going to be a bit slower turnover. Someone who got home from work and their AC is out. That turnover is going to be pretty quick. Can you be here in the morning? Can you be here now? That's a very different need, different ad copy, different landing page, different call to actions. That's why it's important. All right, number five, everyone should run a brand campaign separate from their main campaign. So you have a business name, your business, your H Vac business is Joe H Vac Pros. You should not let those words mingle with your normal install repair service. Tune up keywords. If you run brand keywords at all. If you, if you run business name keywords, Joe's Ace, Joe's H Vac Pros. Keywords should be in their own campaign, do not put them in their own ad group. Okay, Be very clear on the language and the vocabulary I'm using here. It should be in its own campaign, not in its own ad group inside of your other campaign, but it's a separate campaign. This is important because these brand keywords can infiltrate your conversion based bidding that you have on your lead acquisition campaign. It can mess things up. All right, I think it's very important to separate those for many, many reasons. All right, number six, use geographic keywords and quote unquote, near me keywords along with your normal keywords. So everyone's going to run keywords like AC repair, H Vac companies, you know, get AC fixed and things like that. Now in addition to these, I think it's very important to use near me. Google seems to Respond well to near me terms. Also, I think it's important to use geographic terms. So if you're in Dallas, use AC repair. Dallas, there's a lot of suburbs. AC repair, Plano, AC repair, Lewisville. You know, these other terms, they're going to be associated with these geographic areas that you might really want to try and push. Maybe there's certain homes there that you really, you're like, you know, these are some nicer homes, these are some bigger homes. They might have multiple units. Might be something a little more valuable to me. Bigger homes, you know, use geographic terms. I think this is an opportunity for you to try and garner more traffic in this particular area. I'm not saying that if you add the word AC repair Louisville, you're going to just get all Louisville stuff that absolutely won't happen. But I think you should sprinkle them in. This does not mean that you should just blow up the campaign and have, you know, hundreds of these for every different suburb or city name or county name or whatever. No sprinkling. I think a sprinkling of some key important areas I think is important along with the near me terms. So don't, don't have a campaign that has absolutely no geographic reference in the keywords. I think geographical references in the keywords are important. All right, I've got two more. Real quick. I'll remind you about optio.com opteo.com PSP that is the special URL to get a 28 day free trial of my favorite Google Ads management software. Helps you from everything from setting up the campaign, writing ad copy, choosing keywords, search terms, negative keywords even so far as to analyzing the data, getting reports on your account, alerts about when your ads have stopped running, or there's a problem with the billing, or there's a problem with your landing page, all kinds of issues that it can alert you to that will be much faster than the standard Google Ads interface. So try it out. Optio.com PSP last two, number one. Well, now I forgot what number I'm on, so I'm going to say last two. These are the final two. You should expect to pay 50 to $90 per click. If you're actually getting H Vac repair legit Google Ads.com searches, I think you should expect to pay $50, $90 per click. I've checked with real accounts and whether you're in a big metro area, small metro area, you know, out in a urban, a rural rural area or an urban area, the CPCS can change. So that's Why I give a range 50 to 90 I think is, you know, could be a 50 to 100 I think is something that you would expect to pay. Depends on season, depends on a lot of factors. Now you say, well Chris, that number is shocking to me for blah blah, blah reason. Okay, Right. So you say Kris, that number seems way too high or Kris, that number seems way too low. Let me tell you what my general answer is for people that say that number is too high. Right. They're getting much cheaper cost per click. Well, if the cost per click is less than what I said and you think my number is extremely high, you're likely getting a lot of junk. Okay, I mentioned it earlier in the show. Search partners. I see very often people that are running Google Ads campaigns that have search partners turned on and I immediately know that there's a problem. I don't even know when you open up a Google Ads campaign, you can't immediately tell that they're running search partners. But I certainly have a hint. If I were to pull up an H Vac campaign and see $10 clicks, $8 clicks, you know, $15 clicks immediately I'm questioning the quality of that traffic. And I'm first thing, I'm probably going to check search partners very often. I go in and I see 70% of the spend is going to search partners and the cost per click on those is $2 a click. Google.com is costing them 60, $70 per click. 70% of the budgets going to a search partners bringing down the average cost per click because of these cheap junk ratty clicks that do nothing for them. Sure they generate quote unquote conversions, but when I press on the client it turns out, yeah, actually we get a lot of junk calls, we get a lot of spam stuff, we get bot kind of stuff. We don't know what it is, man, it's probably search partners. So if that number that I gave you seems really high, you're probably getting junk traffic. Maybe the search terms are absolute junk. Maybe you have brand keywords that are bringing your cost per click down. But I would, I would stand by that range. Tell me if I'm wrong. Tell me if I'm wrong. Paid search podcast gmail.com. okay, let's say Chris Minor, that seems low. My numbers are way higher. Well, if the CPC is a whole lot more than what I'm saying, then I hope, I hope, I hope that you are justifying that extremely high CPC with really good conversions, with a strong conversion rate, you should not be paying extremely high CPCs unless you've proven that that traffic is worth that cost. No campaign should be running super high CPCs and getting first position rankings all the time unless there's a justification for that. High CPCS don't just win the day. High CPCs don't just work because they're high CPCs. You better be justifying that with a good landing page or getting good leads, your conversion rates, you know, 30% or something. And just this should be a well oiled, well managed, well working campaign. Okay. And last, this is something just based on experience. Typically I suggest geographic targeting is better at the city and or county level. So if you're running a Google Ads campaign, I typically suggest not doing something like zip code targeting or you know, a bunch of radiuses or you know, like some kind of weird shape that you kind of built out with a bunch of zip codes and it kind of curves around this area. I don't find that that works very well. If you are doing that. I hope that you are. There's some kind of proof you've tested it against other methods, but I usually find that targeting something at a city level, you know the name of the city, you type in the city name and you can target a city you know has a, a few 10,000 people in it, you know, and you target 3, 4, 5, 10 of those maybe, or maybe you're targeting an entire county and it has several million in it. This is going to be more ideal typically much more success is what I find. More, more more stable process of seeing a steady output of conversions when I use city or county level targets. So with that I have a hot plate of turkey waiting for me. So I've got to go get to working on that. If you'd like to contact me after I finish eating, I'll see if I can respond back. Although I'll probably take a big nap. You can find me@chrissafer.com otherwise I'll catch you guys next week.