Google Ads for Septic Service Businesses: An In-Depth Guide

What Are Septic Service Business Google Ads?

Have you ever searched for a service on Google and noticed that the results always say “Sponsored” at the top? Those are Google Ads.

Search ads target keywords that your customers search for. For example, if someone Googles “septic services near me” and your ad is optimized for those keywords, it will display as a Sponsored link on page one.

Google search ads are popular, but are not the only place to target customers. 

You can also choose Google Ads for:

• YouTube

• Relevant websites

• Apps

Where you place them will depend on who your customers are and the marketing resources you have to create the ads.

How do Google Ads work?

Google Ads spots are limited. Since many different businesses usually compete for top ad spots, Google’s algorithm will pick ads based on their relevance to the audience, quality, and how much you’re willing to pay.

Once you’ve optimized your ad, you’ll place a bid on the ad spot you want. Google’s algorithm will then choose the ads most likely to generate a lot of clicks, which will factor in your bid and landing page experience. This creates a score known as your Ad Rank, and businesses with the highest Ad Ranks will win spots. 

In marketing, these are called PPC (pay-per-click) ads, and they help ensure that you’re paying for genuine results rather than just the ad placement itself. Google Ads also gives you a few other options:

• Pay per 1,000 ad impressions

• Pay per a specific type of action (for example, filling out a form)

• Set a monthly budget and have Google automate your bid with its Smart Bidding feature

With this model, Google maximizes ad revenue by choosing ads people are most likely to click on, and, theoretically, you benefit too. 

What Are The Benefits of Using Google Ads for Septic Service Businesses?

Google Ads for septic service businesses cost money, but they’re often more effective than relying on low-cost strategies like search engine optimization (SEO), referrals, and organic social media alone.

Here are the key benefits of investing in Google Ads to generate more septic service leads:

1. More immediate results: Getting your website on the first page of Google requires a lot of sophisticated SEO strategies. Creating a website design that attracts your ideal customers can take months without paid ads. On the other hand, Google Ads can generate results as soon as you’ve launched your campaign.

2. Data-driven campaigns: Using Google Ads means you’ll have more data on where your target customers are online and what they’re most likely to click on. You can use this data to fine-tune your ads to increase ROAS (return on ad spend) and optimize your lower-cost SEO, social media, and content marketing strategies.

3. More control over your budget: Creating content costs money, regardless of whether it’s a paid campaign or a landing page. With Google Ads, you’ll pay a little bit more to promote that content, but you’ll be in complete control of how much you spend and how long your campaigns run.

4. More targeted content: With traditional advertising, you’ll often pay for ad spots that don’t target your ideal customers. Google, however, uses sophisticated machine learning techniques to target your ideal customers, making your ads more relevant and cost-effective.

5. Better online visibility: Ads make up most of Google’s revenue, incentivizing the company to make good ads visible. With paid ads, your content will have a better chance of reaching your target customers.

Google Ads are important for a septic company because they generate potential clients, drive revenue, and create repeat business.

However, there are also some important drawbacks to Google Ads.

What Are The Drawbacks of Using Google Ads for Septic Services?

Here are some potential drawbacks of Google Ads for septic service companies:

• Managing ad costs is tough with smaller budgets: Septic service companies with smaller budgets might have trouble getting Google’s Smart Bidding feature to work for them. With more competition for Google Ads than ever, the cost of ads rose 17 percent in 2023—meaning you’ll have to choose a careful strategy to optimize your ads, especially if you have a smaller budget.

• Creating winning campaigns takes expertise: To win bids on Google, you must ensure your ads are optimized for your customer base and that your landing pages are on point. 

• Measuring ROI can be tricky: Google Ads gives you data on clicks, conversion volume, and ad cost but doesn’t measure your ads' ROI. That means you could have ads that generate a lot of attention but not a lot of business.

• Ad fatigue: Customers are increasingly digitally savvy, meaning they might ignore ads and focus on organic search results instead. Ad campaigns must be consistent and highly targeted to reach the demographics that will notice them.

To make Google Ads campaigns work for you, you must place them carefully to target people looking for septic services.

What Types of Google Ads Are Used in Septic Service Marketing Campaigns?

When most people think of Google Ads, they think of the ads that appear in search. But there are many other types of ad campaigns you can create depending on what types of ad you want to create and what benefit you want your ad to have.

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Alt text: A graph showing key types of Google Ads for septic service businesses.

1. Search ads

Search ads are the “Sponsored” ads that show up when you search for a product or service. They’re text-based ads, often with links to landing pages or lead generation forms relevant to the ad's target keywords. But as one of the most popular ad formats, they’re also very competitive.

2. Display ads

Display ads are shown through Google’s Display Network of 35 million websites and apps. These ad campaigns are visual banners and videos that use optimized targeting to reach relevant audiences. They’re optimal for things like growing brand awareness, retargeting customers, and generating clicks.

3. Instream ads

Instream ads are video ads that show up on YouTube and other Google video partner sites. You can add interactive elements like call-to-action buttons to drive traffic back to your site, but the success of these ads depends on how engaging the first five seconds of your ad is. After five seconds, viewers of instream ads will have the option to skip them.

4. Local Services Ads

Local Services Ads are business ads at the top of local searches with a Google Maps pin and are much more likely to convert than other types of ads. They are very effective for businesses like septic services that depend on attracting local customers in a specific region. Unlike PPC ads, you only pay for successful bookings rather than clicks.

Ready to start advertising on your preferred channel? Next, we’ll cover the steps in setting up your Google Ads campaign.

How Do You Create a Septic Service Google Ads Campaign?

Once you’ve chosen the type of ad campaign you want to run, you should take some critical steps to ensure success.

1. Define and set goals for your campaign

First, you’ll need to decide what the ideal outcome of your campaign is. If you want to generate brand awareness, you might focus on ad impressions, but if you want to generate potential customers, you can track clickthrough rates and engagement.

Google Analytics can’t track ROI independently, but with ServiceTitan’s marketing solutions, you can rank campaigns by revenue. ServiceTitan’s all-in-one platform can track the entire customer journey from ads to revenue to help you attract, convert, and retain more business.

You can also use ServiceTitan’s Marketing Scorecard for a more detailed look at what kinds of jobs your ads generate. With this feature, you can optimize ads for different septic services depending on which jobs you want more of.

2. Perform keyword research

Keyword research is essential for creating high-performing campaigns. Your keywords should be relevant to the septic services you’re advertising and speak to where your customers are in their journey. 

For example, a customer in the awareness stage is just starting to consider septic services. They might Google “household septic tank maintenance” for information on the topic. 

In the consideration stage, they’re more likely to compare services by searching for “best septic tank services in my area.” 

In the decision stage, they’re more likely to compare pricing, read reviews, and search for more specific services such as “septic tank inspections” or providers with industry certifications they’ve learned about.

You can search for campaign keywords with Google’s keyword planner, which will also help you forecast the number of clicks and engagements you’ll get based on your bid.

3. Set your advertising budget

Your ad budget will determine what keywords you’ll be able to target and how many clicks you can generate each month. To determine your daily budget, take your monthly budget and divide it by 30.4 to come up with an average you’re willing to spend per day.

Furthermore, the marketing budget is often expressed as a percentage of revenue. The common range is two to five percent for B2B sales and five to ten percent for B2C sales. 

Once you have a budget, you can return to your keywords to see which ones you can afford to target and make any necessary adjustments. From there, you can set your ads budget in Google Ads and adjust up and down as necessary based on the performance of your ads. 

4. Build your landing page

It’s easy to get so focused on ad creative that you forget about the rest of the customer journey. But your ads won’t perform well if your customers bounce after a few seconds on your website.

A great landing page will help you win ad spots and convert customers. Ideally, the content of your landing page should be simple and straightforward and match the service promoted in your ad.

Consider things like:

• Your headline: Everything above the fold matters the most on your landing page, but your headline is critical. It’s the first thing your customers will see after they click on your ad. Ensure you choose keywords that match the ones you’ve chosen for your campaign.

• Social proof: Include reviews from customers, particularly ones who have received the same service you’re advertising. Social proof can also come through certifications and awards that verify your skills and expertise.

• Calls to action: Your landing page should clearly indicate the next steps. What do you want your customer to do? Tell them clearly with buttons like “Contact Us” or “Book Our Services” in prominent locations.

Remember that while the goal of your website is to get customers to browse, the goal of landing pages should be to get them to take action.

5. Create your ad

Ads are an exercise in brevity: you need to pack a lot of meaning into a small space. No matter what ad format you’ve decided on, you’ll need to decide what angle you want your ad to have. For example, you could focus on:

• Benefits: Name the key benefits your target customers care about.

• Problem/Solution: Position your service as a solution to their problem.

• Proof: Testimonials, reviews, research, etc., that prove you’re legit.

From there, you can focus on your ad copy and creatives. Regardless of the type of ad you’re creating, you’ll want to create multiple versions. That’s because rather than having a static ad, Google’s features let you dynamically target customers with various keywords and images that will change depending on their interests.

For search ads, make sure you incorporate keywords naturally into ad copy. You can also leverage site links to place relevant links underneath your main ad and callout assets to add essential information about your service. For example, if you’re offering a seasonal discount, you can use a callout asset to highlight it in the text below your ad.

Different display ads will have different performance outcomes, but as you might guess, the higher-performing ones are more expensive. If you’re creating a display ad, you’ll need:

• A minimum of three headlines and up to five maximum

• At least one landscape image and one square image, but you can add up to 15

• At least one logo and up to five alternative versions

• A description of up to 90 characters, with up to five versions

• A call to action (or you can let Google create one for you)

Depending on your ad type, you may also need a long description depending on your ad type. If you don’t already have an image, don’t worry: Google will let you select from a library of stock photos if you’d prefer.

6. Track your campaign’s performance

Now, it’s time to send your ad to the world—but you’re not done yet! As your ad runs, tracking your campaign’s performance is important to understand whether or not it’s working. 

You can track KPIs such as:

• Impressions: The number of times someone saw your ad, which shows you how successful your bids are.

• Click-through rate (CTR): This is the number of clicks you get compared with ad impressions. It helps you understand whether your ad copy and design are working.

• Conversion rate: The number of visitors to your website that book with you. This shows you how successful your landing page is at driving action.

• Cost per acquisition (CPA) or cost per lead (CPL): The price you're paying for every new customer (CPA) or lead (CPL). 

• Quality score: Your ad's quality and likelihood of appearing compared to others. This shows you how well-designed your ad is in the larger marketplace.

If you’re using Google Analytics, one important metric you won’t be able to track is ROI––arguably one of the most important metrics of all.

How ServiceTitan can help you optimize your ROI

Suppose you’ve been in business for a while. In that case, you’ve probably had at least a few incoming calls that didn’t amount to much: either the customer decided your price was too high, needed a service you didn’t offer, or something else prevented them from booking.

That’s why tracking conversions doesn’t necessarily track the success of your campaigns. With ServiceTitan’s Marketing Scorecard, you can rank campaigns by revenue to understand exactly if and how well your ad spend translates into profits.

“When you reapply money into working campaigns that are lead-quality high, then you’re training Google [...] to optimize toward these better working campaigns, gain a better picture of your customer and who buys from you, and in the long run, it’s going to pay dividends,” ServiceTitan principal product manager Dylan Kessler says. “Doing this as a first step is paramount in your digital ads budget management, and you will see results. I promise you.”

With ServiceTitan’s new Ad Optimizer, you can also bring that revenue data back to your ad campaigns to optimize them continuously. Rather than optimizing ads to generate more clicks, you can optimize them to earn more revenue. That’s because ServiceTitan’s Ad Optimizer is connected to your CRM and revenue reports for a more complete picture of how your ads fit into your entire business.

In the words of Heather Donaldson, senior project manager for ServiceTitan’s Marketing Pro suite of services, “the product helps you leverage your customer data to get more calls, booked jobs, and higher customer spend.” 

Best Practices for Google Ads in Septic Services

Ad campaigns aren’t just something you can set and forget. As the digital landscape, customer demographic, and competitive landscape evolve, you’ll want to optimize your campaigns.

Here are some best practices for ensuring your campaigns keep performing their best:

1. Analyze your competitors’ campaigns

You can use Google Keywords to see what keywords your competitors are targeting, how much those keywords cost, what their ad copy looks like, and what landing pages you’re competing with.

But if you don’t want to invest in a paid tool just for keyword research, you can also try Googling some of the keywords your ads are optimized for and see what search results appear.

Keep in mind that everyone’s search results are different, but the results should indicate which pages tend to rank more highly for specific keywords.

From there, you can take note of what messages your competitors are using. Click on their ads to view their landing page, and see if you can spot any ways to differentiate your services.

2. Optimize your landing page

As mentioned earlier, your landing page should have a catchy header, a clear, singularly focused call to action, and social proof that helps sell your services.

But there are some other important things you can do to improve your landing page:

• Make sure it loads fast by compressing images, changing your hosting if necessary, or removing unnecessary scripts.

• Make it mobile-optimized for customers browsing on their phones.

• Make it competitive by targeting your unique value proposition in the industry and for the specific service on your page.

You should also update the content on your landing page every once in a while to keep it pitch-perfect and aligned with your latest services.

3. Target negative keywords

Negative keywords are irrelevant keywords closely related to the phrases you’re targeting. For example, the word “septic” is closely related to septic tanks and related services, but it’s also a medical term to describe an infection.

Google Ads lets you exclude these keywords to avoid your ad appearing for an irrelevant search. In our example, you might decide to target the word “infection” to prevent advertising to an audience looking for health advice.

You might also target keywords with your competitor’s names, keywords related to other services (like landscaping), or keywords like “free” or “discount.”

4. Target specific locations

In your Google Ads settings, you can target specific locations from countries and cities to regions and even specific zip codes. Only people in these locations will see your ad when you do.

Since septic services are location-dependent, that means you can target only those areas you actually serve. But what’s more, you can also target zip codes if you know there’s been an environmental issue in a particular area of your city that will affect septic systems.

Or, you can target rural zip codes to place your ad in front of homeowners who are more likely to have a septic tank in the first place.

5. A/B test your ads

When you A/B test, you try out two or more ad variations that only differ in one element. For example, you might try two ads with a different call to action, but which are otherwise the same.

This can help you identify which ads convert better and modify your campaigns to optimize conversions. Usually, A/B tests are best when you have two variations of one element and believe both can do well.

But content isn’t the only thing you can test. You can also try A/B testing different dates and times for ad placements, different target audiences, different devices, and different bidding strategies to see what works.

It may sound like a lot, and it is. Fortunately, there are many tools that can help make the job easier.

Top Tools for Google Ads in Septic Services

Since PPC ad campaigns have a strong technical component, you’ll need to learn how to use a few digital tools to manage them. Fortunately, many of those are free, including:

• Keyword Planner: Use this tool to find keyword ideas, estimate their cost, and understand their search volume. You can also use it to find out what keywords your competitors are ranking for and analyze their landing pages and websites.

• Google Analytics: You can use Google Analytics to track customer behavior on your website, including clicks, time spent on each page, and from where they navigated to your website.

• Google Tag Manager: With Tag Manager, you can create, manage, store, and deploy short snippets to track user behavior without modifying your website’s code. For example, you can track form fills, scrolling behavior, CTA interactions, clicks, and conversions.

• ServiceTitan’s Ads Optimizer: Train Google to show your ads only to high-quality leads with ServiceTitan. 

Now you’re all set to start creating Google Ads! They can be intimidating at first, but the more you stick with them, the more they’ll start to become a fun part of your business that helps you get results.

It’s Your Turn Now

Whether you’re just starting out as a septic service business owner or you’re a trusted provider in your community, there’s always room to experiment with digital marketing. 

With the right strategies and tools, you can reach new audiences and grow your business in ways you never thought possible. Understanding how to leverage Google Ads can help you stay agile and reach your ideal customers, even if they change over time. With ServiceTitan, you can manage all your marketing efforts in one place to keep your messaging relevant, engaging, and seamlessly aligned with all your business workflows.

ServiceTitan is an all-in-one platform for end-to-end septic service business management. From front-office services like proposals, scheduling, and lead generation to field operations, client services, and management insights, ServiceTitan is your A to Z performance enhancement tool. Ready to get started with ServiceTitan? Book a demo today to learn more.