Marketing for tradespeople: plumbers, electricians, painters and builders.

How tradespeople get jobs from Google and Meta

Almost every trade job starts with a search: “rørlegger Skien” (plumber Skien), “elektriker pris” (electrician price), “maler Drammen” (painter Drammen), “tilbygg pris”. The person searching has a specific need and usually chooses among the first results. That’s why Google Ads is the place to start, whatever the trade.

What an inquiry costs is decided mostly by the landing page. The customer wants to know whether you can come, roughly what it costs and whether you’re reliable. One page per job that answers that, with the phone number at the top and reviews visible, does more for the cost per lead than any setting in the account. A shared “contact us” page for every trade does the opposite.

Many customers of tradespeople call instead of filling in a form. If you only track forms, Google sees only part of the result and optimizes for the wrong thing. Calls from the ad and from the website should count as conversions when they last longer than 30–60 seconds.

Facebook and Instagram rarely bring in emergency jobs. They work for jobs the customer plans over time, like exterior painting, bathrooms and extensions. There you can show your own work to homeowners in your area and reach people again who visited the page without getting in touch.

Whatever the trade, some negative keywords should be in place from day one: “selv” (yourself), “kurs” (course), “lønn” (salary), “lærling” (apprentice), “jobb” (job), “utdanning” (education). You’ll find the rest in the search terms report, which should be reviewed every week in the early period.

Plumbers: emergency and planned are two different customers

Plumbing searches split in two. Emergency searches like “rørlegger akutt” (emergency plumber), “lekkasje” (leak), “tett avløp” (blocked drain) and “ingen varmt vann” (no hot water) come from people who call the first one who answers. Planned searches like “nytt bad pris” (new bathroom price), “bytte varmtvannsbereder” (replace water heater) and “varmepumpe montering” (heat pump installation) come from people collecting quotes. Put them in the same campaign and you bid emergency prices on bathroom searches, and Google learns from two completely different customers at once.

We would split it into two campaigns. Emergency, with phone calls as the goal and ads that say “today”. Planned, with a form, a price estimate and one page per service: bathroom, water heater, heat pump.

An ad schedule based on when the phone is answered. The emergency campaign should only run during the hours someone actually picks up the phone, and that’s controlled with the ad schedule in Google Ads. A customer with a leak who gets voicemail calls the next company on the list, and you’ve paid for the click.

The “døgnvakt” (24-hour service) trap. Only write “døgnvakt” or “24/7” in the ad if it’s true. Otherwise you pay for calls at ten in the evening that no one answers, and Google learns that the clicks don’t convert.

People who want to do it themselves. Add “selv” (yourself), “hvordan” (how to), “youtube”, “deler” (parts) and “biltema” as negative keywords from the start. Also set the radius based on how far you actually drive, not the whole county.

Electricians: advertise the job, not the trade

Electrical jobs are specific, and customers search for the job: “elbillader montering” (EV charger installation), “bytte sikringsskap” (replace fuse box), “el-sjekk” (electrical inspection), “varmepumpe montering” (heat pump installation). Give each job its own ad group and its own page. “Elektriker [by]” (electrician [city]) can sit in a separate group that catches the rest, but the job-specific searches should get most of the budget.

A fixed price in the ad. Standardized jobs like EV charger installation lend themselves to a fixed price or a “from” price right in the ad text. It answers what the customer is wondering, and those who think it’s too expensive don’t click. So you don’t pay for them.

A minimum price against small jobs. If you’re getting too many small jobs, put your minimum price in the ad and add small-job searches like “bytte stikkontakt” (replace power outlet) and “lampe” (lamp) as negatives. The account should work for the jobs you want, not every job out there.

EV chargers and heat pumps are planned purchases where a short video with price and installation can work on Facebook and Instagram, especially as retargeting to people who have seen the pricing page.

Painters: a photo form and starting in March

Exterior painting is a big job the customer does rarely, and quotes are compared over several weeks. Painting is also visual. Photos of houses you’ve painted, shown to homeowners in your area on Facebook and Instagram, fit better here than in most other trades.

Start in March. Exterior painting sells in April–August. The ads should be running in March, so retargeting has a few weeks before the customer decides. If you start in May, you’re competing for the last customers while everyone else is bidding. Interior painting takes over from October to March, so the account should be switched over twice a year.

A form that asks for photos. Ask for the address, number of floors and photos of the house. With the photos and Google Maps, many exterior jobs can be priced from the office, without a site visit. The customer gets an answer faster, and you don’t have to drive out to people who are only checking the price.

On the page: photos of your own work, not stock photos of paint rollers, and a price estimate per square meter.

Construction companies: fewer, better inquiries

Extensions, full renovations, garages. The projects are large, the decision takes months, and the customer talks to several companies. Advertise on the project types (“tilbygg pris” (extension price), “totalrenovering” (full renovation), “bygge garasje” (build a garage)) rather than on “byggfirma” (construction company). Much of the planning happens in winter, so the ads should run then, not only once the order book starts to empty.

A qualifying form. A form with just name and phone brings in lots of inquiries from people with no budget for what they’re asking about. Ask about project type, budget range and timeframe. You get fewer inquiries, but you can call the right ones first. If you also mark which inquiries turned out to be real, that can be sent back to Google, so the bidding learns the difference between an extension and a price request.

Mittanbud and Byggstart? Fine as a supplement when you have spare capacity. There you compete for the same customer with several other companies, often on price. Your own advertising brings inquiries where the customer has contacted you alone, and the relationship is yours.

Retargeting on Facebook and Instagram through the months of deciding, with finished projects and numbers (price, time, square meters), keeps you top of mind until the customer is ready.

Work backwards before you set a budget

Start with what an inquiry is worth to you. The numbers below are hypothetical examples to show the math, not numbers from clients:

• Plumber, emergency job: NOK 6,000 × 40% margin = NOK 2,400. If every other call becomes a job, an inquiry is worth NOK 1,200.
• Electrician, EV charger: NOK 10,000 × 35% margin = NOK 3,500. If one in three inquiries becomes a job, it’s worth around NOK 1,150.
• Painter, exterior: NOK 80,000 × 30% margin = NOK 24,000. If one in four inquiries becomes a job, it’s worth NOK 6,000.
• Construction company, extension: NOK 600,000 × 15% margin = NOK 90,000. If one in five qualified inquiries becomes a contract, it’s worth NOK 18,000.

That number is the most you can pay for an inquiry and still make money. If you’re below it, the ads pay off. If you’re above it, something has to change: the page, the keywords or the geography. The math also shows why a construction account can tolerate a completely different cost per lead than a plumbing account.

For comparison, an inquiry cost NOK 163 on average at Utvendig Renhold over 90 days (June–Sept 2026), including branded searches. Between regions it ranged from NOK 145 to 341 for the same service. That isn’t a trade, but it shows how much geography alone matters.

Use the math when you allocate the budget, too. Google needs around 15–30 conversions a month for smart bidding to work. If you spread the budget across four services and three cities, none of the campaigns gets there. Start with the job that’s worth the most, where you have capacity.

Hi, Victor here. We haven’t run ads for a plumber, electrician, painter or construction company yet. What you read about the trades above is how I would set up the account, not something I’ve measured. The closest we have is Utvendig Renhold, which washes facades and roofs in nine regions, and move-out cleaning and moving in Oslo. Same type of customer: a homeowner searching for a service who wants to know what it costs. There, separate campaigns per region and one page per service have made the biggest difference.

If you want to see what it would look like for you, send us your website. We’ll put together a concrete proposal for ads and a landing page with your brand. You’ll get it by email within a couple of days, and it’s yours to keep either way.

Send us your website →

How we start

1. Tracking on forms and phone calls, with calls over 30–60 seconds counted as conversions
2. One ad group and one landing page per job, with reviews and a price or price estimate
3. A radius around where you actually drive
4. Negative keywords from day one

After that, we go through the search terms every week and move budget to where inquiries are cheapest. You get a report every Monday with what you spent and what you got.

Other industries and how Google, Meta and the landing page fit together: marketing for service businesses. Just the Google Ads part: Google Ads for service businesses. What a lead costs in the industries we work in: numbers from our accounts.