Google Ads for builders on the Mornington Peninsula: reaching homeowners planning big jobs
By Seam Media · Updated
A builder's Google Ads account works differently from an emergency trade's. Nobody books a new home or a second-storey extension in a hurry. People search for months, compare builders and look closely at your past work, and one good job can be worth more than a year of small repairs. On the Mornington Peninsula, where a house in Mount Martha, a beach house in Rye and a rural build near Red Hill can all be very different jobs, the account needs to reflect the work you actually want.
This guide covers how to set up Google Ads for a peninsula builder so the budget goes towards those conversations, using Google's own guidance.
Choose towns before keywords
Start with where you are happy to build. Set your location targeting to those towns or a radius around your base, and use Google's presence setting, which targets people in or regularly in your locations. Be aware of what that excludes: some peninsula builds are planned by owners who live in Melbourne, so if holiday homes and investment builds are part of your work, test a separate campaign for people showing interest in the area, with its own budget.
- List the towns you will build in.
- Start with presence targeting.
- Test interest targeting separately for out-of-area owners.
Split campaigns by the job
New homes, knockdown rebuilds, extensions, second storeys and major renovations are different searches with different budgets. Put each in its own campaign or ad group, so you can set spending by what the job is worth and write ads that match it. Someone searching for a second-storey extension in Mornington should see an ad about exactly that, not a general line about quality homes.
Avoid bidding on broad words such as builder or renovations on their own. They bring plenty of clicks from people wanting small repairs, materials or other trades.
Filter out work you do not want
Negative keywords stop your ads showing for searches that will never be your kind of job. For most builders the list starts with jobs, apprenticeships, courses, salaries, handyman, cheap, plans, kit homes and DIY. Negative keywords do not match close variants, so include plurals and similar forms.
Then read the search terms report, which shows what people actually typed. Check it weekly at first. Google says broad match reaches the widest range of related searches, so if you use it, this report matters even more, and broad match works best once your conversion tracking is reliable.
- Negatives for jobs, courses, DIY and small work.
- Search terms read weekly at first.
- Phrase and exact match to start with.
Send people to a page that sells the job
Homeowners planning a big job want evidence. Send each campaign to a page about that job, with real projects from the peninsula where the client has given permission, the towns you work in, the way your process runs from first meeting to handover and a short enquiry form that asks about the site, the scope and the timing.
Show your registration too. In Victoria, the Building and Plumbing Commission says homeowners need a registered builder for domestic work worth more than $10,000, and it tells them to check a practitioner's ID card. Putting those details on the page answers that question early.
Be patient, and count the right things
Long decision times mean a builder's ads can look quiet for weeks and then produce a very good enquiry. Count calls of a reasonable length and completed forms as conversions, not taps on a phone number or visits to a contact page. Then ask each enquiry where it came from, what the job is and roughly what it is worth, and note which ones become site visits and quotes.
A low cost per enquiry is not the goal if those enquiries are for small jobs. A smaller number of serious conversations about the right builds is usually the better result, so judge each campaign on the jobs it brings, not on clicks.
Run ads when someone can answer. An ad schedule limits your ads to set hours, and if you are on site all day, make sure enquiries get a prompt call back, because the homeowner is likely talking to other builders too.
- Calls and completed forms as conversions.
- Job type and rough value noted for each enquiry.
- Site visits and quotes tracked by campaign.
Support the ads with local search
People who click an ad often check your Google reviews, your Business Profile and your website before they call, so those need to look as good as the ad promises. Over time, local search can also bring enquiries you do not pay for each time.
Seam Media is based on the Mornington Peninsula. Our page on SEO on the Mornington Peninsula explains how we help local businesses show up across the towns, and our builder marketing and Google Ads management pages cover how we run ads for builders, including our enquiry guarantee for new Google Ads clients, with the full terms on those pages.
SEO on the Mornington PeninsulaMarketing for buildersGoogle Ads management
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