Google Ads for gutter companies without funding the national guard brands
Budgets, the campaign split that works, negative keywords, realistic cost per lead, and how to bid against advertisers with a $6,000 ticket.
There is one fact that decides whether Google Ads works for a gutter company. The national gutter guard advertisers, the ones running television spots and financing $6,000 whole-house installs, are bidding on your keywords. They can pay $30 to $45 a click on "gutter guards" and "gutter protection" in a large metro and still make the math work, because a single sale covers forty clicks. You cannot follow them there and you should not try.
Everything below is about winning the part of the auction they are bad at.
Split the account by buyer, not by service
The most common way a gutter company loses money on Google Ads is one campaign with one budget covering cleaning, repair, replacement and guards. Cleaning searches are ten times the volume at a fraction of the ticket. By 11 a.m. every day, the cleaning clicks have consumed the budget and your $9,000 seamless replacement search never got an impression.
Run three campaigns with separate budgets:
- Cleaning and maintenance. Terms: gutter cleaning near me, gutter cleaning [city], clogged gutters, downspout cleaning, roof and gutter cleaning. Target cost per lead $25 to $70. This one funds itself and feeds the guard sale later.
- Repair and replacement. Terms: gutter repair, gutter replacement, seamless gutters [city], new gutters cost, fascia repair, gutter pulling away from house. Target cost per lead $70 to $180. Higher clicks, far higher ticket.
- Guards, defensively. Terms: brand names of the systems you install, plus "gutter guard installation [city]" and "gutter guard cost." Do not bid on generic "gutter guards" against the nationals. Bid on the specific product names and on your own metro.
A workable starting point for a two-crew company in a mid-size metro is $1,800 a month split roughly $700 cleaning, $800 repair and replacement, $300 guards. Do not start under $1,000 total, because Google needs enough data per campaign to make bidding decisions and three campaigns on $600 is three campaigns that all learn nothing.
Match types and the negative list that saves the budget
Run phrase and exact match on your core terms. Broad match on a $25 budget in this trade is a donation. Google will show you on "gutter guard reviews," "how to clean gutters yourself," "gutter cleaning jobs hiring," and "leaf blower attachment," and you will pay for all of it.
Build the negative keyword list before launch, not after:
- DIY intent: how to, diy, yourself, tutorial, video, tool, attachment, ladder, pole
- Job seekers: jobs, hiring, salary, career, employment, apprentice
- Research and comparison: reviews, complaints, lawsuit, vs, versus, cost calculator, wikipedia
- Products: for sale, home depot, lowes, amazon, menards, parts, screws
- Wrong service: rain chain, french drain, sump pump, roof replacement, siding, soffit vent
- If you do not do commercial: commercial, industrial, warehouse, apartment complex, hoa
Then check the search terms report every Friday for the first month, weekly after that. In this trade the report is worth more than any bid adjustment, because gutter searches drift into roofing, siding and pressure washing constantly.
The campaigns that waste money
Performance Max as your first campaign. It will find your cheapest conversions, which are cleaning leads and the contact form on your about page. Run search first for at least two months. Consider PMax only after you have real conversion data and a reason.
Display. Banner ads for gutter cleaning produce cheap clicks and no calls. Turn the display network off inside every search campaign, which Google enables by default.
Bidding on the national brand names you do not install. It looks clever and it converts badly, because someone searching a specific brand has already been sold by a television ad and wants that product.
Running the same schedule year round. Covered below.
Ad schedule, geography and season
Set the ad schedule to your answering hours plus one hour, and turn bids up 20% on the first business day after a storm. Gutter search volume is weather-driven in a way that plumbing or HVAC is not. Rain on Thursday produces a spike Friday and Saturday morning.
Geography: radius targeting from your yard, 12 to 20 minutes drive time, not a 40-mile circle. Exclude the neighborhoods where a 200-foot cleaning is a two-hour drive for $220. Set location targeting to "presence" rather than "presence or interest," which stops you paying for someone in another state researching gutters.
Season: raise budgets 60% for the six weeks from late September, hold through November, drop hard in December, come back in March. In July, cut search spend to a maintenance level and put the money into guard and installation campaigns aimed at homeowners who are not in a hurry. The slow season plan covers what else to run then.
Call tracking is not optional
Use call-only ads for the cleaning campaign on mobile and enable call extensions everywhere. Then record the calls. Half the time a gutter company thinks Google Ads is failing, the campaign is producing calls and the office is not converting them: nobody answers on Saturday, quotes go out three days later, or a $2,000 repair caller was quoted a $190 cleaning and left.
Count a conversion as a booked job, not a form fill. Import the booked job back into Google Ads if your CRM supports it, so smart bidding optimizes toward money rather than toward whoever fills out a form.
Realistic numbers to expect
For a two-crew residential gutter company in a metro of 400,000 to a million:
- Cleaning campaign: $3 to $8 per click, 12% to 20% call rate, $25 to $70 per lead, 50% to 65% booking rate. Average ticket $180 to $350.
- Repair and replacement: $9 to $22 per click, 8% to 14% lead rate, $70 to $180 per lead, 25% to 40% close. Average ticket $900 to $4,500.
- Guards: $14 to $40 per click, and only worth running on the narrow terms above.
If your blended cost per booked cleaning is under $60, keep going. If a replacement lead costs $150 and you close a third at $2,600, that is a $450 acquisition cost against a $2,600 job and you should raise the budget, not lower it.
Before you spend anything
Ads amplify whatever the profile and the site already do. If your Google profile has 6 reviews, which is the trade median, and there is no website, ads will send strangers to compare you unfavorably with the two companies above you. 37.9% of gutter companies list no website at all, and companies with one show a median of 11 reviews against 2 without. Fix the landing spot first. See the website essentials guide and the benchmark report.
Frequently asked
How long before I know if it is working? Six weeks minimum. The first two are Google learning, the next two are you cutting search terms, and only the last two are representative. Anybody who tells you week one is a signal is reading noise.
Should I use Local Services Ads instead? Run both if you can. Local Services Ads charge per lead rather than per click and put you above the map pack, but the lead quality skews heavily toward cleaning price shoppers and the dispute process takes patience. Start with search, add Local Services once you have background-check screening done.
Can I run this myself? Yes, and the guide above is the whole method. It costs about four hours to build and one hour a week to maintain. The mistake owners make is building it in September and never opening it again until March.
Google Ads management is one of the services in the free 14-day trial, and yes, you keep the account. Text or call (385) 832-6175.