If you’ve ever felt like Google Ads is a black hole that eats your money, this one’s for you.
I just recorded a new video breaking down how to run a profitable Google Ads campaign for a house cleaning business — using one of our client accounts to show you exactly what works.
Watch the video below or read on for the summary.
Let’s be clear: Google’s goal isn’t to make you money.
It’s to make them money.
So a lot of their recommended settings are geared towards getting you to spend more — not necessarily get better results.
That’s why if we want to run a profitable campaign, we need to override a few of Google’s default settings.
Most people think that once you enter the locations you want to target, then your ads will ONLY be shown to people who are physically there. That’s incorrect.
By default, Google sets this to:
“People in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your location”
This sounds fine… but it’s costing you money.
Let’s say someone in Vancouver is relocating to Montreal and is researching cleaning companies. Google will show them your ad, even though they don’t live in your service area yet.
Why? Because “they’re showing interest”in the location.
Those people are less likely to convert.
What you want is:
Only show ads to people physically in or regularly in your service area.
This one setting can instantly reduce wasted clicks and improve your lead quality.
By default, your ads will run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
But think about it — if someone searches for a cleaner at 3am on a Sunday, how likely are they to become a customer?
Even if they are interested, are you awake to answer the call or respond to their form?
Now compare that to someone searching at 11am on a Monday — during work hours, when you can actually respond quickly and close the deal.
So make sure to adjust ad schedule:
Those out-of-hours searches tend to deliver the lowest conversion rates. Shift that budget to prime times — your lead quality will significantly improve.
There are 3 keyword match types in Google Ads:
Start with Exact Match to control relevance and protect your budget. These high-quality keywords are the “lowest hanging fruit”with the highest conversion rates.
If you can spend your ad budget by just targeting Exact Match keywords, then that’s a great position to be in.
Only add in Phrase (or Broad) if you’re not getting enough volume.
This is a game-changer.
You must protect your campaign from irrelevant searches like:
These are”cleaning related”searches but these people aren’t in the market for what we do.
Adding them to a negative keyword list means we won’t show up for similar searches in the future – allowing us to put more budget into the highest converting keywords.
If you’re starting from scratch, you’ll need to gradually build this out. The longer the list, the more protection you’ll have from future bad searches.
(If you’re one of our clients, we give you a bit of head start by uploading our 6000+ master negative keyword list into your account).
The real goldmine isn’t your keywords — it’s your search terms report.
This shows you the actual searches your ads show up for.
You’re aiming for 2 main types:
If your report shows things like “cleaning jobs near me” or “cleaning hacks” — your negative keyword list needs updating.
We aim for 90%+ of our search terms to be in 1 of these 2 categories. And if we’re hitting that number, we should be getting a 20%+ lead conversion rate (from click to lead).
If you’re sitting below 10%, you know it’s time to audit your search terms and keywords.
I hope that’s helpful.
Happy cleaning. See you next week.
If you need help with running Google Ads for your cleaning business, then I might be able to help. Learn more at https://project83.com/cleaning-business-google-ads/
