Google Ads for concrete contractors: budgets, campaigns and real cost per lead
The campaigns that book driveways and patios, the ones that burn money on countertop and ready mix searches, negative keywords, and honest cost per lead ranges.
Concrete is one of the easier trades to advertise on Google and one of the easiest to waste money on, for the same reason: the word "concrete" is attached to about forty things you do not sell. Countertops. Ready mix delivery. Concrete floor paint. Concrete block. Concrete jobs, as in employment. A contractor who turns on a campaign around the word itself is paying two dollars a click to educate people who will never call.
Done right, residential flatwork runs $45 to $150 per lead in most US metros. Done wrong, the same budget buys 300 clicks and four wrong numbers. The difference is structure, not budget size.
Start with the money math, not the budget
Before you set a daily cap, work out what a lead is worth to you.
Say your average residential job is $6,500 and you close one in three of the leads that are actually in your service area for work you actually do. That means a booked job costs you three leads. At $90 a lead that is $270 in ad spend per job on a $6,500 ticket, or about 4% of revenue. That is a good number in this trade. At $200 a lead and a one in five close rate, it is $1,000 per job, and you need to fix either your close rate or your targeting before you scale.
Write the number down before you start so you know what failure looks like. Then use the calculator to check what you are already losing to unanswered calls, because paying for clicks that ring a phone nobody picks up is the most expensive mistake in this guide.
The campaign structure that works
Three Search campaigns, separated because the economics are different.
Campaign 1: replacement and new flatwork. Ad groups for concrete driveway, concrete patio, sidewalk and walkway, garage slab, concrete steps. Exact and phrase match only. These are the bread-and-butter searches and typically run $8 to $22 a click in mid-size metros.
Campaign 2: decorative and stamped. Stamped concrete patio, stamped concrete cost, exposed aggregate driveway, colored concrete, concrete overlay. Higher intent, higher ticket, usually higher click cost. Keep it separate so a cheap driveway click does not eat the budget of a $14,000 stamped patio search.
Campaign 3: removal, repair and everything else. Concrete removal, concrete demolition, slab replacement, concrete leveling. Lower ticket, and worth running only at a small budget or turning off during peak season when the crew is booked anyway.
Foundation and commercial work deserves its own campaign only if you truly want it. The volume is thin and cost per lead runs $90 to $250, but the jobs are large and the competition is a fraction of the residential pool.
Negative keywords, the part nobody does
This list saves more money than any bid adjustment. Add all of it before you spend a dollar:
countertop, countertops, paint, painting, stain (unless you sell staining), sealer for sale, block, cinder, ready mix, ready-mix delivery, bags, quikrete, home depot, lowes, mixer, mixer rental, calculator, how to, diy, jobs, hiring, salary, apprentice, school, license, wholesale, supplier, pump truck rental, crack filler, resurfacer, epoxy floor (unless you sell it), cement truck, pole barn, asphalt, pavers.
Then check the search terms report every Friday for the first month and add whatever else shows up. In concrete the junk is specific to your market, and there is always local junk.
Match types and bidding
Start on Manual CPC or Maximize Clicks with a cap for the first two weeks so you control what you pay. Once you have 15 to 30 conversions recorded, move to Maximize Conversions with a target.
Do not use broad match at the start. Google will tell you broad plus smart bidding is the modern way, and once the account has real conversion data it can be, but on a fresh concrete account broad match means paying for countertops in week one. Add a single broad match ad group later, at 20% of budget, and watch it.
Conversions must be set up before anything else: calls from the ad, calls from the website of 60 seconds or more, and form fills. If you cannot see which keyword produced a phone call, you are not running a campaign, you are making a donation.
Ad copy that filters
You want fewer, better calls, so say the disqualifying things out loud.
Headlines that work in this trade: the specific job type ("Concrete Driveway Replacement"), the town, a booking window ("Booking September Pours"), and a proof line ("Licensed, Bonded, 140 Google Reviews"). Descriptions should name a starting price range and the fact that you remove the old slab.
Publishing a starting range in the ad cuts your click volume and raises your close rate, because the person who wanted a $3 per square foot pour does not click. That is the whole point. More on how to present numbers in the pricing guide.
Use the call asset, the location asset, and a sitelink to a stamped gallery, a driveway page, a pricing page and a reviews page. Sitelinks that point to real service pages lift click-through noticeably, which is one more reason the website has to exist first.
Schedule and geography
Run ads when someone can answer. A concrete lead that goes to voicemail at 10 a.m. calls the next company by 10:04.
Set the schedule to your answering hours plus Saturday morning, which is when homeowners are standing in the backyard imagining the patio. If you use missed-call text-back you can run wider hours safely; without it, do not.
Set the radius by drive time, not by miles. Fifteen minutes of drive from your yard is worth more than 20 miles across a river with two bridges. Exclude the towns where you will not send a crew, and exclude them by bid, not by hope.
What to expect in the first 90 days
- Days 1 to 14: expensive and noisy. Budget $40 to $75 a day. Prune search terms twice a week.
- Days 15 to 45: cost per lead settles. If you are not under $150 by day 45 in a residential campaign, the problem is usually geography that is too wide or a landing page with no photos and no price.
- Days 46 to 90: shift budget to the two ad groups producing booked jobs, not the ones producing calls. Those are different lists more often than owners expect.
Local Services Ads, the ones with the Google Guaranteed badge, are worth adding on top once you are licensed and insured and have real review volume. They price by lead rather than by click, typically $30 to $90 for concrete, and your review count is printed inside the ad unit. With a median of 7 reviews across 80,873 listings, most contractors show up to that fight underdressed.
Frequently asked
What is the smallest budget that works? About $1,200 a month in a mid-size metro. Below that you cannot gather enough conversion data in a season to learn anything, and you end up paying the learning cost every month forever.
Should I run Performance Max? Not as your first campaign. It hides the search terms, which is exactly the thing that goes wrong in concrete. Get Search working, then test PMax with a separate budget.
Why are my leads asking for jobs, not driveways? Add jobs, hiring, salary, apprentice and careers as negatives. It is the single most common leak in this trade.
Google Ads management, including the negative list, the conversion tracking and the call recording, is one of the services in the free 14-day trial. Ad spend stays yours. Text or call (385) 832-6175.