Google Ads for Construction Companies: Guide

How much does Google Ads for construction companies cost?

A general contracting or remodeling lead from Google search typically costs about $224 CAD, the median of three published sources that range from $70 to $232. That's almost twice the contractor typical of $121. Booking one job takes about $540 in ad spend if 42 in 100 leads book, and more if you're slow to quote^1–4.

Construction buyers shop around. In our survey of 1,113 Canadian homeowners, 23% looked at six or more contractors before hiring, common on bigger renovations and new builds⁹. They click several builders, leave and come back, so fewer clicks turn into calls. The click price also depends on the project: B&G Collective's accounts paid about $11.39 for "home addition contractor near me", $22.07 for "kitchen renovation contractor" and $26.75 for "bathroom remodel contractor"².

What is a construction lead worth?

Work back from the job. Take the job's value, your gross margin and the share of it you'd spend to win the work, then divide by how many leads it takes to book one. On kitchens, basements and whole-home work, the most you can afford per lead sits well above $224. On bathrooms, it's close.

That's the case for giving bathrooms their own campaign and budget cap, or folding them into a broader renovation campaign. Big projects take longer to decide, so plan on something closer to 25 in 100 booking for whole-home and custom work until your own numbers say otherwise. Commercial builders have a little more room: their gross margin is about 44.7%¹¹.

How much should a construction company spend on Google Ads?

I'd start at $1,500 to $3,000 a month in a small market, $3,000 to $6,000 in a mid-size one and $6,000 or more in a big city. At $224 a lead, $3,000 a month buys about 13 leads and 3 to 6 booked jobs. Under about $1,500, there are too few leads to learn from.

What about $10 a day? That's about $300 a month, or roughly one lead at construction prices. One signed basement in a slow month looks like success and none looks like failure, and neither tells you anything. I'd rather see one project type run well at $1,500 than four thin campaigns.

Which Google Ads campaigns should construction companies run?

Start with Search campaigns split by project type: renovations, additions and suites, custom homes and, if you do it, commercial. Add a brand campaign for your own name. Each one gets its own keywords, ads and landing page, so you can see which project types sign and move money toward them.

• Renovations: kitchen, basement and whole-home searches. The steadiest volume for most residential builders.
• Additions and suites: additions, garden suites, laneway homes and basement suites. In BC, most single-family and duplex lots in larger municipalities must now allow three or four units¹², which has created new searches.
• Custom homes: only in the areas you actually build.
• Commercial: tenant improvements and office fit-outs for owner-run businesses that hire directly. If most of your work comes from tenders and bid lists, keep this campaign small.
• Brand: your company name, so a competitor can't sit above you.

Use phrase and exact match to start, and add negative keywords¹³ at the campaign or account level¹³. Set the location to the towns you build in, and schedule ads for the hours someone answers the phone. Leave Performance Max until your call and form tracking is reliable.

How do you set up a construction Google Ads campaign, step by step?

Set up tracking first, then one Search campaign per project type, each with tight keywords, its own ads and its own landing page. Here is the order we build in, using a made-up Surrey renovation company, Northgate Renovations, as the example. Plan on an afternoon for the first campaign.

Step 1: Create the account and your conversions

Sign in at ads.google.com with the company's own Google account. If Google starts walking you through a quick campaign, look for the option to create an account without a campaign, so you can set it up yourself. Then, before any campaign, add your conversion actions under Goals: calls from ads, calls from your website and quote forms.

Step 2: Pick Leads, then Search

Click New campaign. Google asks for your objective first, then the campaign type.

Step 3: Build one campaign per project type

Name each campaign after the work and the area, like "Basements, Surrey" and "Additions, Surrey". Inside each, make an ad group for each kind of search, so the ad and the page match what the person typed.

Step 4: Set your towns and your hours

Choose the towns you build in, switch Location options to Presence, and run the ads during the hours someone answers the phone. Google shows ads around the clock unless you tell it otherwise.

Step 5: Add keywords in phrase and exact match

Give each ad group a handful of keywords that name the project, in phrase and exact match, and load the negative keywords from the table above before you launch. A short, tight list you can read every week beats a long one you can't.

Step 6: Write the ad and add assets

Put the project and the place in the headline, your real rating in the description, and add sitelinks, callouts and a call asset so the ad fills more of the screen.

Step 7: Launch, then tune it on a schedule

The first month is for cleaning up searches and checking that tracking works. Judge it on site visits and quotes, not clicks.

Can construction companies use Local Services Ads?

No, not as general contractors. Local Services Ads put a Google Verified badge above the search ads and charge per lead, but Google's eligible categories cover specific trades such as roofers, plumbers, electricians, HVAC and tree services. General contractors aren't on the list, checked October 10, 2026⁶. Search ads and your Google profile are the way in.

If you also run a listed trade, such as a roofing crew, you may qualify for that trade. And because there's no Local Services Ads block on construction searches, the map results get more attention: in our signed-out Google Maps search for "construction company" in 21 Canadian markets, we saw 17 sponsored listings in 10 of the searches¹⁴. Map ads come from a Google Ads account with a location asset linked to your profile.

Google Ads or SEO: which should a construction company start with?

Google Ads brings calls this month; SEO brings calls that keep coming without a cost per click, but takes 3 to 12 months. Most residential builders need both: ads while the site and Google profile earn their place, then less ad spend as organic calls grow. Firms that win mostly through bids need neither as much.

The two work together. The project pages you build for your ads are the same pages that rank later. T City Developments, a Vancouver multiplex builder, went from #97 to #4 on Google for "Vancouver duplex builders" in 30 days of SEO, because the site was built for that search first¹⁵. Our SEO guide for construction companies covers the organic side.

What should a construction landing page have?

A phone number and one button at the top, then photos of finished projects of that type, your Google rating and three reviews, how you price, your process from first call to handover, your warranty and the areas you build in. The person is about to trust you with tens of thousands of dollars, so a form alone isn't enough.

Put the project and the place in the ad headline too: "Basement Suites in Surrey" or "Custom Homes in the Okanagan", with your real rating. Add call, sitelink, callout and image assets so the ad takes more of the screen. T City Developments is a good model: a call button, the 5.0 Google rating and a "Check What My Lot Allows" button on the first phone screen, with a page for each build type¹⁵.

How do you track signed jobs from Google Ads?

Count calls and form fills as conversions, then mark which leads became site visits, quotes and signed contracts, and send those back to Google with offline conversion imports. Construction has a long gap between a lead and a contract, so without this, Google learns to bid for form fillers instead of clients.

Google can count calls from ads and from your website as conversions¹⁶¹⁶, and offline conversion imports¹⁷ feed the signed jobs back¹⁷. Most construction companies skip this: only 22% of the websites we tested had a Google Ads tag, 6% used call tracking and 2% had both⁵.

Speed matters on big jobs too. In a study of 5.7 million leads, those called within five minutes converted eight times as often as leads called later¹⁸. Check the search terms report weekly, and compare signed jobs by campaign monthly.

When should construction ad spend rise and fall?

Keep ads running all year, but shift the budget with the season. Construction employment falls about 10% from August to January nationally, only about 4% in BC and about 24% in New Brunswick. Winter is when many homeowners plan spring projects, so cut back to indoor work and pre-booking rather than switching off.

Raise budgets from March as the ground thaws, run full budgets through summer, and switch to interior work in the fall.

What mistakes cost construction companies the most?

The costly ones are structural, not bids: one campaign for everything, no tracking, and judging the account on the wrong number. Each of these spends money on searches that will never sign, or hides which spend is working. Fix them before you raise the budget.

• One campaign for every project type, sent to the home page.
• Broad match with no negative keywords, so job seekers and DIYers eat the budget.
• Judging on cost per lead when the real test is signed contracts.
• No call tracking, so nobody knows which campaign made the phone ring.
• Bidding on bathroom searches as hard as whole-home searches.
• Planning around Local Services Ads that general contractors can't run.

Where should you start?

Pick your most profitable project type and your home area. Build one Search campaign on high-intent keywords, send it to a page about that project type with your rating and finished photos, set up call and form tracking, and spend $1,500 a month or more. Judge it after 60 days on site visits and signed jobs.

Then add the next project type, and add Facebook ads to stay in front of the homeowners who clicked and didn't call. If you'd rather have it run for you, see our construction marketing or construction Google Ads management. The full data is in our construction website study.