Garage Door Repair PPC: Benefits, Ad Types, Platforms & More

What is PPC for Garage Door Repair Businesses?

PPC for garage door repair businesses involves bidding for limited ad spots on digital platforms to promote your services to a specific audience segment.

Typically, garage door companies pay the platform a certain amount whenever their ad is clicked (cost per click or CPC), seen (cost per impression or CPM), or converted (cost per lead or CPL). The amount depends on factors such as competition for the keyword or target audience. 

In exchange, the platform displays the advert to the company’s target audience, defined by criteria such as interests, demographics, and browsing habits.

How does PPC advertising work?

Although PPC ad types differ in many respects, they all work similarly:

• Companies pick their targeting criteria—interests, keywords, demographics, etc.

• They create their ad, pick a platform, and set a maximum bid.

• Every company automatically enters an auction whenever their preset criteria are triggered.

• The platform picks the winner.

However, every PPC platform uses different algorithms to select ad auction winners. For example, Google Ads uses an ad rank to decide the ad auction winners and their respective placements. The ad rank, in turn, depends on six key factors explained in this Google Ads support document.

What Are the Benefits of PPC for Garage Door Repair Businesses?

One clear benefit of PPC is that it allows you to appear whenever potential customers search for garage door services on Google Search and social media platforms. 

Garage door PPC has multiple other benefits besides the visibility it gives your company. They include the following:

1. Targeted reach

Traditional channels and some digital marketing strategies generate massive reach but lead to few conversions. For example, although a TV ad may reach thousands of people, few will convert since they don’t belong to your target audience.

Conversely, PPC lets you target specific keywords and audiences using their hobbies, previous interactions with your company, etc. This promotes your services to people who fit your ideal customer profile and are most likely to hire you.

2. Control over budget

With PPC, you can decide how much you want to spend and adjust the amount anytime. This keeps you within your marketing budget and lets you experiment with multiple campaign variations to find the right one.

3. Immediate results

Unlike garage door SEO, which takes three to six months to yield results, PPC campaigns can take just minutes or even seconds to start performing. Your ads appear and can start generating garage door leads immediately after you launch.

This short feedback loop also produces valuable insights for making data-driven decisions about other marketing channels and understanding customer preferences. For example, you can use the performance of your landing page copy to inform the messaging for your email marketing campaign.

4. Measurable performance

PPC platforms have built-in performance analytics dashboards that track impressions, clicks, and traffic. They also integrate with marketing tools and specialized PPC ad platforms that track advanced performance metrics such as generated revenue and conversion rates.

5. Competitive advantage

Advertising with PPC enables you to build brand awareness. This keeps you competitive and increases the odds of customers hiring you over other garage repair companies.

What PPC Platforms Do Garage Door Repair Businesses Use?

Multiple PPC advertising platforms exist. However, for the sake of this article, we’ll focus on the top six appropriate for garage door repair businesses.

1. Google

This is the most popular PPC platform. It accounts for over 90 percent of search traffic and is the customer’s go-to platform for finding local businesses. That’s why it costs more than other platforms.

Advertising using Google’s PPC platforms lets you appear on partner platforms (websites and applications) and at the top of Google search engine result pages.

2. Facebook

Garage door companies can run ad campaigns on Facebook to reach the platform's large pool of prospects and customers. Depending on the device the user is on, Facebook ads appear in news feeds, stories, and on the platform’s sponsored section.

Facebook has sophisticated targeting options and multiple ad formats that you can use to reach specific audiences. It also has an intuitive performance dashboard that tracks key metrics like return on ad spend (ROAS), engagement rate, and reach.

3. LinkedIn

LinkedIn perfectly fits commercial garage door companies that serve large organizations and a professional audience. Advertisers can target users using their job titles, industry, company size, and skills.

LinkedIn is ideal for generating leads, building awareness, and promoting high-ticket offers since its users have twice the buying power of an average web audience. This is also why LinkedIn ad campaigns cost more than other digital marketing channels.

4. Instagram

As of the beginning of 2024, Instagram’s ad reach amounted to almost half  the United States’ population, making it a perfect platform for reaching prospects.

Advertisers have various ad types at their disposal, including photos, videos, carousels, stories, and IGTV. They can also use demographics, interests, and behavior to reach specific audience segments.

5. Youtube

This platform allows advertisers to promote their garage door services using a variety of video formats: skippable, non-skippable, bumper, sponsored, and overlay ads.

YouTube offers a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-view (CPV) payment model for ad spots.

6. Bing

Garage door companies can use the Bing PPC ad platform to run ads on the Bing search engine and digital platforms (websites and mobile applications) registered to the Microsoft Advertising Network.

Advertisers pay whenever their ad is clicked (CPC) or viewed (CPM).

What Different Types of PPC Ads Do Garage Door Repair Businesses Use?

Here are some PPC ad types garage door repair companies use to promote their services. 

1. Search ads

These are the textual ads you see above search engine result pages. They look like conventional organic search engine results, have a sponsored tag, and display the linked destination’s (website or landing page) meta title, description, and favicon.

Search ads generate qualified leads since they only appear for purchase-intent search queries such as “garage door company near me” and “best garage door company.” These queries indicate that the searcher wants to hire a garage door company.

Search ads are the best PPC format to use if you’re focused on generating leads and new customers.

2. Display ads

These visual and text-based ads appear on digital platforms registered on ad networks such as Microsoft Advertising, Google Display Network, and Yahoo Advertising.

They are perfect for remarketing campaigns and building awareness. However, they fail to generate significant conversions, as internet users often ignore them due to their disruptive nature.

3. Video ads

These ads appear on YouTube and platforms affiliated with different ad networks. Since they easily capture and hold people's attention, you can use them to promote campaigns and grow online visibility.

4. Local services ads

Whenever you look at local result pages, one search feature you will find is local services ads (LSAs). They contain three top-ranking businesses alongside their details, ratings, and a pinned map insert.

LSAs are valuable to garage door companies.

They capture searchers’ attention because they take up most of the screen real estate on mobile devices. Even better, they are a cost-effective lead-generation channel since advertisers pay only when there's a lead—a call, message, or job booking.

Local services ads attract high-quality leads since they appear for purchase-intent queries. You can also use them to provide prospects with a seamless job booking process using ServiceTitan’s Local Services Ads integration.

By partnering with Google, we empower users to add a calendar booking widget to their LSAs. This allows new customers to book appointments and describe their issues using a Google form and calendar without your employees’ assistance.

Such a seamless booking process increases close rates and conversions. Shane Jaeger reinforced this benefit in a recent webinar.

“If a customer who needs a water heater types ‘plumber near me,’ the first businesses listed—above paid search ads and organic listings—are GLSA customers. The Google/ServiceTitan integration allows customers to easily book and schedule a time and date for the work.”

It doesn’t end there. ServiceTitan’s Local Services Ads integration pulls every job booking and its associated details into your Service Scheduling dashboard. This allows you to follow up on leads and prevent human errors that happen when manually copying job details from your Local Services Ads account.

5. Social media ads

These are paid ads on social media platforms like LinkedIn, TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. They grant you access to a large pool of potential customers since around 186.4 million people in the US (more than half of the population) are active social media users.  

6. Remarketing

Advertisers use this type of PPC ad to target internet users who have interacted with their website. For example, you can program your ad to appear only to people who visited your booking page or requested an estimate.

Remarketing ads are perfect for generating conversions and immediate sales since they target warm leads—people who have shown interest in your services and are close to converting.

How Can You Start a PPC Campaign For a Garage Door Repair Company?

Here’s a step-by-step guide for starting your PPC campaign:

Define your goal

Setting goals is a cornerstone of running a successful PPC campaign. It helps to align your campaign with business goals and set a benchmark for tracking success.

Your PPC campaign goal depends on what your business needs. It also determines your ad format, marketing budget, and platform. Some examples of PPC ad goals include the following:

• Grow website traffic

• Drive sales

• Generate leads

• Drive free-estimate requests

Research your audience and high-value keywords

The next step is finding your target audience and the search queries they use when looking for your business. This ensures the right people see your ad and that it’s activated by business-relevant search queries such as “garage door company near me.” This maximizes return on investment and protects your bottom line.

To research your audience, submit surveys and questionnaires to your current customers. Social media listening tools, industry research reports, and website analytics software are also great tools to research your audience.

If you’re running ads on any search engine, proceed to find the right keywords using the right tools. Pick free keyword research platforms like Google Keyword Planner or premium SEO tools like Ahrefs and Semrush.

Finally, align your keyword choice to your campaign’s goals and business objectives.  

For example, a keyword like “garage door repair” attracts leads in the awareness stage, which you still have to convert into customers. Conversely, optimizing your ad for “garage door companies near me” attracts leads in the consideration or decision stage—people ready to hire you.

Set your PPC ad spend

Ad spend determines a campaign’s target keywords and the number of impressions or clicks the ad generates.

Before setting a PPC ad budget, define the overall marketing budget based on your average revenue per job ticket and profit margin. Experts suggest residential companies allocate two to five percent of generated revenue to marketing while commercial companies should cap it at between five and ten percent.

If you're running search or local services ads, use your keywords’ CPCs to estimate ad spend. How?

Log into your Google Keyword Planner account. Then, sum up the estimated CPCs of your selected keywords, and add a markup to accommodate rate increases. That’s a rough estimate of your daily PPC campaign budget. Multiply it by 30.4 to get your monthly budget.

Create your landing page and PPC ad

Your landing page and ad creative work together to ensure the success of your PPC campaign—the creative attracts leads, while the landing page convinces them to take action.

Creating a high-converting landing page is equal parts design and persuasive copywriting.

In terms of design, PPC ad platforms reward ad campaigns with user-centric design. That means uncluttered text, CTA buttons with eye-catching colors, descriptive headings, and readily accessible contact information.

Your landing page should also feature conversion elements such as testimonials, case studies, star ratings, and certification badges. You can go a step further and include video testimonials, too.

As for your ad, focus on the benefits your target customers want. Position your services as a solution to their problem, use testimonials to prove you've done it for others, and add visuals to grab people's attention (if the PPC ad format allows it).

Finally, align your ad's and landing page's messaging. Optimize both for the same keywords and campaign goal so the ad’s promise or offer is repeated in the landing page’s copy. This will boost conversions.

Monitor and optimize your PPC ads

Even when your ad’s out there, your work is not finished. You must still track the campaign’s performance to learn what’s working and refine your approach.

Prioritize the following metrics to gauge your campaign’s performance: 

• Clickthrough rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click your ad after viewing it.

• Impressions: The number of times people see your ad.

• Conversion rate: The number or percentage of people who see your ad and book an appointment.

• Cost per acquisition and cost per lead (CPA and CPL): The amount you pay for a new customer (CPA) or lead (CPL).

Best Practices for Creating Effective Garage Door Repair PPC Campaigns

Here are some tried-and-tested best practices for running successful PPC campaigns:

1. Bid Management

Setting the right bid is crucial to running a PPC Campaign. Bid too high, and you burn through your budget. Too low, and your ad consistently loses in digital auctions. Finding the happy medium is the essence of bid management.

Bid management means strategically setting a maximum ad spend that allows you to compete favorably during digital auctions, get the best ROI, and achieve your campaign goal. It also involves picking the right bid strategy and strategically increasing or decreasing the bid based on the ad's performance.

Google Ads has eight bid strategies for achieving the different campaign goals of clicks, conversions, impressions, or views. You can find the strategies in Google’s support document. Before you check them out, use these tips to pick the right bid strategy:

• Use smart or automated bidding strategies only if there is sufficient historical data for Google’s algorithm to optimize your campaign’s performance.

• Avoid changing your bid strategy too often to give the algorithm sufficient time to perform.

• Always set an ad spend cap when using automated bidding.

• Prioritize balancing your ad spend and ROI over capturing the top spot.

• Experiment with different strategies until you discover what works best.

• Pick a bid strategy that aligns with your campaign goal. The ad spend budget should also correlate with your choice of bid strategy. 

Brandon Doyle, marketing director for Blue Corona (a full-service digital marketing agency for trade companies), emphasizes aligning bid strategy with campaign goals.

“If you're comfortable spending your entire budget, I recommend [you] maximize leads. But if you're saying, ‘Hey, I want to be sensitive to how much I'm paying for a lead,’ that's where you might take that max-per-lead play when it comes to your bid strategy.”

2. Geo-targeting

Geo-targeting allows you to display ads to users within your local service area or a specific location. For example, if you serve Charlestown, you can program your ads to appear only to users within that area. This ensures your ads appear only before high-quality prospects, maximizing ad spend.

There are two forms of geo-targeting. “Presence” targets only people living in your specified area, while “Presence and Interest” displays your ads to people who have shown interest in your target location and those living there.

For accuracy and maximum results, we advise garage door companies to use “Presence” when setting up geo-targeting to target only people in their local service area.

3. Ad Scheduling and Dayparting

Ad scheduling and dayparting involve setting your ads to appear at specific times and days. This ensures your ads appear when your target audience is active, and your business is still open, reducing ad spend waste.

When running campaigns, set your ads to appear during the daytime, when potential customers are active, and your business is still open to take job orders. However, if you still prefer running your ads all day, schedule ads with expensive CPCs during working hours, while those with low CPCs can run later.

4. Callout extensions and site links

These are ad assets that allow advertisers to showcase certain pages from their website and add extra text beneath their ad copy.

These features let you showcase offers, deliver extra details about your company, link to multiple landing pages, and push other ads down the viewport. This increases clickthrough rates and convinces users to take action.

When adding callouts and site links, ensure the copy and linked asset relate to your campaign goal and ad messaging. You should also include a click-to-call button like The Garage Door Depot has in this ad.

This will help you capture high-intent leads directly from SERPs.

5. Negative keywords

Negative keywords are words and phrases you can add to your campaign to avoid appearing for irrelevant and non-revenue-generating search terms. For example, you can include “garage door installation” as a negative keyword if you only repair garage doors.

To find negative keywords, consistently monitor your search term report, which tracks the keywords that trigger your ads. If you discover irrelevant or zero-revenue keywords, follow these steps to add them to your campaign’s negative keyword list.

• Click the Campaigns tab on the top left corner of your Google Ads dashboard.

• Select Audiences, keywords, and content. Choose ‘Search keywords’ followed by ‘Negative search keywords’ on the next display.

• Click the “+ Negative keywords” button and add your negative keywords. From there, assign your list to apply to the entire campaign or restrict it to a specific ad group. Then, click the save button

6. A/B testing

A/B testing involves serving two ads that differ in one element to two random audiences. The goal is to determine which variant of the element positively influences the campaign’s performance, generating more conversions and improving return on ad spend (ROAS).

Before running A/B tests, identify the elements you wish to test and form a hypothesis. For example, let’s say you want to test the effect of your landing page’s character count on ad performance. You can hypothesize that “Landing pages with longer copy answer customers’ objections and perform better.”

Having defined your hypothesis, create two ads, one using long copy and the other using a short version. Launch the ad variants, consistently track their performance, and allocate more resources to the one generating more revenue.

The Bottom Line

With these strategies, you’re well-equipped to enjoy massive leads, revenue, and ROI from PPC campaigns.

Remember to use the right tool to track performance. This will provide valuable insights for consistently optimizing the campaign for revenue, responding to customer trends, and reallocating your budget where necessary.

Instead of using multiple tools, consider investing in ServiceTitan, our all-in-one garage door software solution. It tracks your PPC ad campaign performance and automates key business operations, saving you costs and helping you grow your business.

ServiceTitan is cloud-based software that helps garage door repair companies automate essential business processes such as scheduling, customer management, marketing, and dispatching. Thousands of contractors nationwide have used it to increase their revenue by 25 percent in just one year.