Sector: trades
Google Ads for Birmingham trades
The phone rings from the postcodes the van actually goes to
For a plumber in Erdington, an electrician in Solihull or a roofer covering the Black Country the enquiry is a phone call, made on a phone, often outside office hours, from within a few miles. The account is built around that: calls counted as the conversion, a radius drawn from where your jobs are rather than from a map of the whole city, a schedule that runs when someone answers, and the search terms read weekly for the jobs you do not do. From £249 a month on the Starter tier, one business per trade in Birmingham.
Two kinds of job
The emergency and the planned job are two campaigns, not one
- The emergency: burst pipe, no power, leaking roof
- Searched on a phone, decided in a minute, hired by the first person who answers. Call-only ads with no landing page at all, a bid that rises in the evening, a tight radius, and the ad text saying the hours and the call-out fee so the caller already knows.
- The planned job: new boiler, rewire, extension, driveway
- Searched over a fortnight, three quotes gathered, decided on trust. A landing page with photographs of real jobs in named suburbs, the registration numbers, a short form, and a promise to ring back within a working hour that is kept. The form and the call both count.
Where the van goes
The radius in postcode districts, not in a circle on a map
Birmingham and the Black Country are one continuous built-up area with the M6 and the M5 through the middle of it, and a fifteen-mile circle from Kings Heath quietly includes Dudley, Walsall and Solihull. The campaign is targeted on the postcode districts you actually work: the B districts of south Birmingham for one firm, B72 to B76 for a Sutton Coldfield firm, B90 to B94 for Solihull, DY, WS and WV for the Black Country, CV for Coventry. Districts you keep declining jobs from are excluded, and the towns outside the list go on the negative list as well.
The location option is set to people physically in those districts, never the default that includes anyone who has shown interest in the area from anywhere in the world.
The schedule
A day in an emergency plumber's account
The bids follow who answers the phone and when the competition is thin. The hours below are a shape, corrected from the calls-by-hour report every month.
6am to 8am
Cold houses and the school run
Boiler failures found at breakfast. Bids up, ad text says "open now" because it is true, and the sole trader answers between jobs.
8am to 5pm
The working day
Steady searches, the most competition, and the trader is under a floor. Bids hold; the form on the landing page carries the planned jobs and the promise to ring back within the hour.
5pm to 10pm
The evening emergency
Leaks found when people get home. Fewer competitors bidding, a customer who is not comparing quotes. Bids up again for the trades that genuinely answer.
10pm to 6am
Overnight
Ads on only for a firm that truly answers at 2am, with a call-out fee stated in the ad. Off for everyone else, because a click to voicemail costs the same as a click to a job.
Negatives
The searches that spend a Birmingham trade's money without ever becoming a job
| Kind of search | Examples we exclude | Why it happens in Birmingham |
|---|---|---|
| Jobs and training | "electrician jobs", "plumbing apprenticeship", "gas safe course" | A large jobs market and several colleges teaching the trades |
| DIY and manuals | "how to bleed a radiator", "Worcester boiler error code", "wire a socket" | Same words as the job, none of the intent |
| Wrong trade | "roofing supplies", "plumbing merchant", "electrical wholesaler" | Supplier searches match trade keywords at phrase and broad match |
| Wrong place | "plumber Wolverhampton", "electrician Coventry", "roofer Redditch" | The conurbation's towns run into each other and the radius catches them |
| Free and cheap | "free boiler", "cheapest electrician", "grant" | Scheme and grant searches that never become a paid job |
Our free negative keyword generator on Competitor Watch seeds the list for each trade; the weekly search terms read adds the ones only your account could reveal.
Local Services Ads
Pay per lead above the results, pay per click below them, both in one report
Local Services Ads exist in the UK for plumbers, electricians, locksmiths and several other trades. They sit above the paid search results with the Google Guaranteed badge once the business has passed Google's background, licence and insurance checks, they charge per lead rather than per click, and a lead that turns out to be a job seeker can be disputed and credited. For the broad “plumber near me” searches they are often the cheapest lead on the page.
They do not show for everything, and they have no search terms report. The specific searches, a boiler make, a certificate, a job in a named suburb, still go to the Search campaign. We run the two together and the report shows each as its own line, so you can see which produced the jobs.
Keep reading
Next door to this page
Landing pages
The number at the top, the area named honestly, the form kept short.
Automotive
Garages and body shops: the same phone-led account with a different calendar.
Pricing
Most trades sit on Starter; the tiers and the setup fee are on one page.
Get a quote
Your trade, your postcodes and your hours; the fee and the click cost in reply.
Questions from Birmingham trades
What does Google Ads cost for a Birmingham plumber or electrician?
Management is £249 a month on the Starter tier for spend up to £1,000, which covers most one-van and two-van trades, and £399 up to £3,000 for a firm covering the whole conurbation. The clicks themselves are paid to Google on your card; for emergency trades in Birmingham they are usually mid single figures in pounds, and your own figure comes from Keyword Planner with your postcode area set.
Should a Birmingham trade run Local Services Ads or Google Ads?
Both where Local Services Ads exist for your trade in the UK. They sit above the paid results with the Google Guaranteed badge after a background and insurance check, charge per lead rather than per click, and let you dispute leads that were not leads. Search ads catch the specific jobs they do not show for: a boiler make, a certificate, a job in a named suburb. The report shows both as separate lines.
How do you stop me paying for Wolverhampton when I only cover south Birmingham?
Location targeting set to people physically in the area, a radius or postcode district list drawn from where your jobs actually are, and a negative list of every West Midlands town outside it, so a search that contains Wolverhampton, Coventry or Redditch never triggers your ad. The list grows weekly from what people actually typed.
Do calls count as enquiries?
Calls over about a minute do. A call asset on the ad and a tracked number on the landing page report each call with its length, the hour and the search that produced it. Misdials and wrong numbers are logged and ignored so the bidding does not learn to buy more of them. At month end we ask which calls became jobs.
Can the ads run only when I can answer the phone?
Yes, and they should. The schedule is set from when somebody actually answers: a sole trader who cannot pick up on a roof at 2pm may bid harder at 7am and 6pm; an emergency plumber who answers at midnight should bid at midnight, when the competition is thin and the customer is not comparing quotes. Calls by hour in the report correct the schedule from data.
Which trades do you take in Birmingham?
Plumbers and heating engineers, electricians, roofers, builders, plasterers, locksmiths, drainage, driveways and landscaping, cleaners and removals: any trade hired by phone from a search. One business per trade in Birmingham on the monthly plans, so a Solihull electrician and a Sutton Coldfield electrician can both be clients if their patches do not overlap, and two in Kings Heath cannot.
What searches waste a trade's money in Birmingham?
Jobs and apprenticeships, courses at the city's colleges, DIY questions, product manuals and error codes, "free" and "cheap", the trades you do not do, and the towns you do not cover. Our free negative keyword generator seeds the list for each trade and the weekly read adds to it.
I have a Checkatrade profile. Do I still need Google Ads?
They do different jobs. Directories catch people who search the directory; Google Ads catches the far larger number who type the job and the suburb into Google and ring the first plausible result. Most trades that measure both find the tracked Google call cheaper per job once the account is clean, and the report shows the number so you can decide for yourself.
Tell us your trade, your postcodes and the hours you answer. The reply has the click cost, the fee and whether your patch is free.
If you already run ads, add the customer ID and the free check says how much of last month went on searches outside your area or outside your trade.