How We Scaled a Plumbing Company in One of the Most Competitive Google Ads Industries
KEY RESULTS ACHIEVED
50%
REDUCED CPC
300%
ROI
20%
Conversion Rate
A plumbing company serving the Highland Lakes and North Austin areas. Plumbing is one of the most competitive verticals on Google Ads, with CPCs often climbing into the hundreds of dollars due to high job values. The client needed Google Ads to become a profitable, reliable acquisition channel despite this being a notoriously difficult industry to break into.
PROJECT INFORMATION
Industry: Plumbing
Platforms: Google Ads
Location: Texas, USA
The Challenge
Several factors made this a difficult account to scale profitably:
1. Extremely high CPCs
The plumbing industry is notorious for expensive clicks, which means low testing volume and slow learning cycles.
2. Limited monthly budget
With only $6K per month initial budget, performance needed to be tight, controlled, and efficient. There was no room for waste.
3. Previous Google Ads failures
The client had run ads earlier but had never come close to breakeven. The expectation this time was clear: we give the account a couple of months to become profitable, or Google Ads just isn’t for us.
The Strategy
1. Zero-waste approach from day one
With CPCs so high, we couldn’t wait weeks for Google to “learn”. Every single click needed to be high intent.
We aligned search intent → ad messaging → landing page perfectly to ensure the strongest possible conversion rate from the very beginning.
2. Hyper-relevant ad copy using dynamic keyword insertion and consumer research
- Used Dynamic Keyword Insertion to match localised searches and increase CTR.
- Conducted research into why customers choose one plumber over another (speed, reliability, availability, trust).
- Crafted every ad headline around either relevance or a strong USP.
- This time, we couldn’t rely on Google’s automation to find the best performing copy, the ads had to be strong from day one.
3. Fully customised landing page experience
We worked with the client to rebuild the landing experience to match user intent:
- Each major keyword theme received its own dedicated landing page.
- “Plumber in Marble Falls” → landed on a Marble Falls plumbing page.
- “Water softener servicing” → landed on a page specifically about servicing water softeners.
- No generic landing pages, no user confusion, and no wasted traffic.
We also shared insights from search behaviour to help the client strengthen on-site USPs and trust elements.
The Results
Conversion rate is frequently above 20%
More than 1 in 5 clicks turned into a qualified lead, rare in any industry.
CPC reduced from over $60 to under $30
This now allows us to:
- More than double the click volume within the same budget
- Collect more data
- Optimise faster
- Generate more leads
ROI above 300% by month 3
The account has become profitable on the first job, and with high lifetime value in this industry, long-term profitability is far stronger.
Scaling now underway
With performance this strong, the client asked us to increase spend as much as possible while maintaining ROI. The account is now actively scaling into new services, and with more data coming in due to lower CPCs, is simply ‘scaling itself’.
Want to achieve results like this for your business?
Ready to turbocharge your business growth with our strategic, data-driven Google Ads solution? Contact us today and arrange a strategy session.
