Why plumbing PPC works when almost nothing else does
Someone with water coming through a ceiling does not read a blog, compare five agencies or fill in a contact form. They search, they call the first credible number, and they book. That urgency is why paid search converts harder for emergency plumbing than for practically any other service — and why the click prices are what they are. The job is not to avoid those prices, it is to make sure every pound goes to searches with a job attached.
- Emergency and same-day intent captured at the moment it exists
- Call-only and call-extension formats so the enquiry is a phone call, not a form
- Local Services Ads for the Google Guaranteed placement above everything else
- Geographic and hour-of-day targeting matched to the areas and shifts you can actually cover
Where plumbing Google Ads budgets get wasted
We audit a lot of plumbing accounts and the same four failures appear every time. Broad match without a serious negative list, paying for 'plumbing courses', 'plumbers merchants' and 'plumbing jobs vacancies'. Ads running at 2am when nobody answers the phone. Every click landing on the homepage instead of a page about the specific job searched for. And no call tracking, so nobody knows which half of the budget worked.
- A negative keyword list built for the trade, not a generic template
- Ad scheduling tied to who is actually picking up the phone
- A dedicated landing page per job type — boiler, leak, drain, bathroom, commercial
- Call tracking and recording so a lead is only counted when the phone was answered
What we manage, and what you keep
Campaigns run in your Google Ads account, on your billing, with us as a managed user. If the relationship ends you keep the account, the conversion history, the landing pages and the negative lists. That is not the norm in this industry, and it is deliberate — an agency that holds your account hostage has no reason to keep earning the retainer.
Pay per click, or pay per lead?
If you want the account, the data and the lowest long-run cost per job, managed PPC is right. If you want zero setup risk and to be billed only when a qualified enquiry arrives, our pay-per-lead service is the better shape and the campaigns behind it are ours to fund. Plenty of firms run both — managed PPC in their core area, pay-per-lead to fill gaps in coverage.
How plumbing PPC compares to the other ways of buying enquiries
Paid search sits between owning a channel and buying a lead. Here is where it lands against the alternatives.
| Supplier type | Model | Exclusivity | Typical cost | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Checkatrade / MyBuilder style directories | Membership plus per-lead credits | Shared with 3–5 firms | £1,000–£2,000 a year plus £8–£30 a lead | Volume is real, but you are quoting against everyone else on price. |
| Bark and open lead marketplaces | Pay per contact credit | Shared, often 5+ firms | £10–£40 a credit | Cheapest per contact, worst conversion — most enquiries never answer. |
| Shared plumbing lead brokers | Bulk lead purchase | Resold by default | £15–£45 a lead | Fine for filling gaps, useless for building a contract pipeline. |
| Plumbing Lead Generation Agency | Pay per qualified lead, or managed campaigns you own | Exclusive to you, never resold | £45–£150 a qualified lead depending on job type and area | Higher cost per lead, materially higher close rate and job value. |
Who we take on for PPC
Paid search punishes firms that cannot answer the phone. Before we spend your money we check the basics that decide whether it works.
- A minimum media budget of £1,000 a month — below that there is not enough data to optimise
- Someone answering calls during the hours the ads run, or a call-answering service in place
- Capacity to attend emergency work in the areas we target
- Acceptance that the first four to six weeks are a learning period, not a steady state
If calls go to voicemail, PPC will lose you money faster than any other channel. We will say so, and suggest the call-answering service or pay-per-lead instead of taking the retainer.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a plumber spend on Google Ads?
£1,000 to £3,000 a month of media in a single city is a workable starting range, more for London or multi-region coverage. Below £1,000 there is rarely enough volume to learn from, and the management overhead eats the result.
What does a plumbing PPC agency charge?
Our management fee starts at £750 a month or 15% of media spend, whichever is greater, and the ad spend is paid directly by you to Google. There is no markup on media.
What is a good cost per lead for plumbing PPC?
£18 to £60 per answered call is the range we normally work within, varying by job type and region. Emergency drainage and boiler breakdown sit at the lower end; bathroom installation and commercial enquiries at the higher end with far larger job values.
Are Local Services Ads better than standard Google Ads for plumbers?
They sit above standard ads and are billed per lead rather than per click, which suits emergency work well. They also require Google Guaranteed verification and have limited category coverage, so we usually run them alongside standard search rather than instead of it.
How quickly do PPC leads start?
Calls typically start within 48 hours of the campaign going live. Meaningful optimisation needs four to six weeks of conversion data before the cost per job settles.
Can you run Google Ads for commercial plumbing rather than domestic?
Yes, though the volume is much lower and the search language is different — tender, framework and planned maintenance phrasing rather than emergency wording. It usually works best paired with outbound rather than alone.