Paid search for plumbing is unforgiving because the clicks are expensive, the intent is immediate, and a poorly built account can spend a week's budget in an afternoon on searches from outside the service area. The agency's job is not to write better ads; it is to stop money leaving through the four or five holes that every new plumbing account has. Judge candidates on whether they can name those holes before they have seen your account.
The fee structure decides whose interest the budget serves
A percentage of spend rewards an agency for spending more, a flat fee rewards it for spending less time, and neither is automatically wrong. What matters is that you know which one you have signed and what it does to the advice you will receive. If the fee is a percentage, agree a review point at which the percentage steps down as spend grows. If it is flat, agree what happens when the account genuinely needs more hours.
Geography and hours are the first two leaks
Most wasted plumbing spend is clicks from outside the area you will drive to, or clicks at hours when nobody answers the phone. Both are settings, not strategy. Ask how location targeting will be set, specifically whether it will target presence rather than interest, and ask what happens to the ads when the office closes. An agency that plans to run a twenty four hour emergency campaign should be asked who answers the phone at three in the morning.
Search terms, not keywords, are where the money goes
The keyword is what you bid on; the search term is what somebody actually typed. Plumbing accounts collect an extraordinary volume of irrelevant terms, from job seekers and parts buyers to students writing about pipework. A monthly search term review with a growing negative list is the single most valuable routine in the account, and it is the first thing to slip when an agency is managing too many clients. Ask to see the negative keyword list from an existing account.
Advertising rules are the agency's job to know, and yours to carry
Google's advertising policies govern what may be claimed and how, and the advertiser is accountable for the account. Guarantees, pricing claims and emergency response promises are the areas where plumbing ads most often overstate. Ask the agency to tell you which of your current claims it would not run and why. A supplier that has never refused a client's copy has either very careful clients or no standard.
Measure booked jobs, not leads, and make the agency see the same number
A call is not a job. If the agency is only ever shown call volume, it will optimize for calls, including the cheap ones that never book. Give the agency access to the booking outcome, even if it is a weekly spreadsheet from the office rather than a system integration, and agree that the reported metric is cost per booked job. Everything about the account improves once both sides are looking at the same number.
Questions people ask about plumber PPC agency
What does a plumbing click cost?
Emergency plumbing terms are among the more expensive in local services and vary enormously by metro and time of day. Rather than chasing an average, ask any agency to pull current figures for your specific area and terms before you set a budget, and treat any national figure quoted in a pitch as illustration rather than evidence.
Should I run Local Services Ads as well as search ads?
They serve overlapping demand differently, one charging per lead and the other per click, and many plumbing companies run both with separate budgets. The decision turns on your verification status, your review volume and whether you can handle the lead flow. Ask the agency to model both against your cost per booked job rather than to recommend one on principle.
How much budget is needed to start?
Enough to gather signal in your area within a month, which in an expensive category means enough for a meaningful number of clicks per week rather than a round number chosen for comfort. An agency should be able to work backwards from local click costs to a minimum that makes the test valid, and should tell you if your budget is below it rather than take it anyway.
Who should own the ads account?
You should, with the agency granted access. Create the account under your own ownership and add the agency as a manager. If an agency insists on running your campaigns inside its own account, ask what you take with you when the contract ends, and treat the history and learning as part of what you are paying for.