Tradespeople · Google Ads

Google Ads for tradespeople

When a boiler packs up or the power trips, the homeowner searches and calls within minutes. Be there. Arête runs Google Ads for trades that put you in those searches, for the jobs and postcodes you want. One fixed monthly fee, no percentage of spend.

Start a conversation

From £199 per month, fixed fee

The situation

Why your customers are searching.

Trade searches carry some of the strongest buying intent on Google. They also pull in DIYers, job hunters and people in towns you can't reach. Without tight keywords, location settings and call tracking, an account can spend steadily while the phone rings for the wrong work. Arête's set-up is built to close that gap.

What sends them looking

Referrals have slowed and there are gaps in the diary two or three weeks out.
You've taken on a new van, apprentice or engineer, and they need a full week of work.
You want to rely less on pay-per-lead platforms, where the same enquiry can go to several competing firms.
You want fewer small call-outs and more of the bigger planned jobs: boiler replacements, rewires, extensions.
A competitor keeps turning up above you on the map for your own trade, in your own town.

The problem

What costs tradespeople work.

Where the work slips away

Urgent work is won in minutes by whoever picks up. Miss the call while you're up a ladder and the customer is probably ringing the next name.
Rewires, boiler replacements and extensions get compared on reviews, photos and how well you explain the quoting process.
Your patch is defined by drive time, but most websites and ad accounts treat a whole county as one flat area.
Your reviews are scattered across Google, Facebook and trade directories, so new customers rarely see the whole picture in one place.
Enquiries for work you don't do, or jobs below your minimum, eat into the evenings you spend returning calls and pricing up.

What makes customers hesitate

Nobody wants a cowboy in the house. Homeowners look for a named owner, a base town and proof of insurance before they ring.
Customers dread a vague price that grows once the job starts, so they want to know how your quotes and site visits work.
Someone with water on the kitchen floor wants to know if you can come today. A generic contact form doesn't tell them.
For gas and electrical work, customers want proof of registration before they let anyone through the door.

How it helps

What Google Ads changes.

Emergency and planned campaigns run apart, so urgent call-outs get their own schedule and bids, away from quote-led work.
Targeting follows how far you'll realistically drive from your base, which is rarely a whole county.
Ads run when someone can answer. When the diary's full, they narrow or pause.
Negative keywords filter out the DIY, job-hunting, training and parts searches that plenty of trade accounts pay for by accident.

What you get

Separate urgent and planned campaigns

Separate budgets for call-outs and quote-led jobs. Neither can quietly starve the other.

Call tracking by campaign

Every call from an ad or the website, logged against the campaign and search that produced it.

Drive-time location targeting

Built around the postcodes you can reach in a sensible travel time, with exclusions where you need them.

Trade-specific negative keyword lists

Exclusions for DIY guides, apprenticeships, courses, wholesalers and parts searches, reviewed whenever new search terms appear.

Ad schedule matched to phone cover

Ads run when someone can pick up, with separate out-of-hours settings if you offer emergency cover.

Monthly report in plain English

Calls, quote requests and cost per enquiry by job type. Plus what changed in the account, and why.

Measurement

The enquiries that count, tracked properly.

What counts as an enquiry

A call from a mobile search, traced back to the ad, map listing or page that sent it.
A quote request with the job type, the postcode and a photo of the problem.
A WhatsApp or text with photos, asking for a quick first price.
A booked site visit for a rewire, boiler replacement, extension or other planned job.

What gets tracked

Ad calls above a set length, so misdials and quick hang-ups don't count as enquiries.
What a qualified enquiry costs, job type by job type.
The search terms triggering your ads, checked regularly for wasted spend.
Booked jobs fed back from your own records where possible, so bidding is steered by the work you win.

Worth knowing

What customers check, and the rules to follow.

What customers look for before they call

Your Gas Safe registration number, NICEIC or NAPIT membership, or other scheme details that match the work you advertise.
Recent Google reviews that name the job and the town, which say far more than a star rating on its own.
Photos from your own jobs with the work and the area named. Stock shots of tools and vans prove nothing.
Your public liability insurance and the guarantee you give on workmanship, stated plainly.
A name and a face behind the business: the owner on site, or the van outside a job.

Rules worth knowing

Gas work must be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer, so your ads and pages should only offer the gas work you're registered to do.
In England and Wales some domestic electrical work is notifiable under Building Regulations. That's why NICEIC, NAPIT or similar scheme membership is worth showing wherever it applies.
Claims like 'fully insured', 'guaranteed' or 'same-day' need to be true and provable, because UK advertising rules expect claims to be backed by evidence.
You can only be in one place at a time, so campaigns need to be easy to narrow or pause when the diary's full.

Straight answer

Is it right for you?

Built for trades that get urgent, local searches. The one condition: someone answers the phone while the ads run.

Made for

Trades offering emergency or same-day work, where speed and credibility win the job.
Businesses with specific gaps to fill, like summer boiler installs or rewires in a new area.
Firms whose website or landing page makes calling easy, or who'll fix it first.

Not for

Businesses with no room for new work. Ads would only bring enquiries you'd have to turn down.
Trades with no way to answer calls in working hours, and no plan for ringing back quickly.
Very small budgets stretched across a wide area. They rarely produce enough data to learn from.

Starting price

From £199

per month, fixed management fee

What moves the price

Number of campaigns, services and locations
How much conversion tracking is already in place
Landing page needs
Reporting frequency and depth

Your ad budget is separate. It goes straight to the platform and is never marked up.

See all starting prices

Questions

Google Ads for tradespeople: your questions answered

How does a fixed fee work for a trade Google Ads account?

You pay Arête a flat monthly management fee, and your ad budget goes to Google separately. The fee stays the same when you spend more, so there's no incentive to push your budget up. You set the budget. Change it whenever the diary fills or empties.

Can the ads be turned down when the diary is full?

At short notice. Campaigns can be paused, narrowed to planned work or pulled in to your nearest postcodes. A common set-up is a small emergency campaign that keeps ticking over, with planned-work campaigns scaled up and down to match capacity.

Can trade ads appear on Google Maps as well as in search?

They can, once your Google Business Profile is linked and location assets are set up. Ads can then show in Google Maps and alongside local results. That's separate from your unpaid map ranking, which depends on your profile, reviews and website. Work on both.