Google Ads for electricians produces better leads when you stop paying for 3 kinds of call: jobs you don’t do, places you won’t drive to, and hours nobody answers. Fix those, make every ad carry your licence number, and measure cost per booked job rather than cost per click. Then raise the budget.
What counts as a good lead from Google Ads for electricians?
Ask ten electricians what a good lead is, and most will describe the same thing. Someone nearby, with a job they actually do, who picks up the phone and books. Everything else- the price shopper three suburbs over or the apprentice asking about wages- still costs the same click.
That gives a simple test for any lead: right job, right area, right time, ready to book. Most of the waste we find in electrician accounts fails one of those four, and each one is fixed by a different setting. The rest of this guide takes them in turn.
It also changes what you measure. Better electrician leads start with that definition: a campaign full of cheap clicks that fail the test is more expensive than one with dear clicks that pass it, and only the second one fills the diary with work you want.
Why do electricians get calls for jobs they don’t do?
Because the ad matched a search you never meant to buy. Keywords tell Google roughly what you want, but the searches that trigger your ads can be quite different, and Google’s search terms report is the only place you’ll see them.
Google’s guidance is to add irrelevant searches as negative keywords so the ad stops showing for them. For electricians, the same culprits come up account after account:
Career searches. Apprenticeships, TAFE courses, wages and “how to become an electrician”.
Do-it-yourself searches. Wiring diagrams, “how to change a light switch” and part numbers.
Neighbouring trades. Appliance repair, antenna installation or air conditioning servicing, if you don’t offer them.
Information searches. Questions about electricity bills, outages or retailer plans that no electrician can fix.
Match type decides how often this happens. Google’s own example shows a broad keyword for flowers matching searches for flowers the advertiser doesn’t sell. A broad “electrician” keyword behaves the same way, so smaller accounts usually do better on phrase and exact match.
Which electrical work is worth paying Google to find?
Not all electrical work deserves ad money. Some jobs are searched with urgency and booked on the first call. Others are researched for weeks, and some barely get searched at all.
Electrical work ranked for paid search
Work
What the searcher is doing
How to treat it in Google Ads
Power outage, faults, burning smell
Calling the first credible result, often at night Its own campaign, its own hours, phone number first
Switchboard upgrades
Acting on an inspection report or a sale Its own campaign with a higher cost-per-job ceiling
EV charger installs
Comparing quotes, often by car or charger brand Its own campaign, landing page explains what’s included
Solar and battery
Researching rebates and systems for months Only if it’s core work, with a separate budget
Lights, power points, smoke alarms
Price-checking small jobs One grouped campaign with a firm daily cap
Commercial maintenance
Rarely searching; using tenders and contacts Leave it to SEO, referrals and direct outreach
The two rows that usually deserve the most attention are faults and switchboards. One wins on speed, the other on job value, and they need opposite settings, which is why they should never share a campaign.
How do you stop paying for calls from outside your service area?
Change one setting that most accounts never touch. Google offers two options: the default reaches people in, regularly in, or interested in your area, while the alternative, called Presence, reaches only people in or regularly in it.
Google calls the default its recommended option. It also says to consider Presence when you only want to reach people in specific locations, which is the situation of every electrician with a van and a working day.
Then draw the area by drive time, not distance. A suburb on the other side of a bridge or a toll road can be closer on the map and further in practice. If one job type justifies a longer drive, such as a switchboard upgrade, give it a wider radius in its own campaign.
Finally, read the locations report monthly. Google notes its location targeting isn’t 100% accurate, and the report shows exactly which suburbs to exclude.
What happens to a lead that calls at 9 pm?
If nobody answers, you paid for a customer and handed them to the next electrician on the page. Google Ads shows ads all day by default, so unless someone has set a schedule, planned-work ads keep running long after the phones are off.
The reverse is also true. Evenings and weekends can be the most profitable hours for fault work, precisely because fewer electricians are advertising then. A marketing agency can help structure these schedules around when calls are most likely to be answered and converted. The rule is simple: run each campaign only in the hours its calls will be answered, and keep fault campaigns running after hours only if someone is on call.
Watch the budget when you change hours. Google says campaigns using ad schedules still pace towards a monthly spend of 30.4 times the average daily budget. Fewer hours with the same daily budget means the same monthly spend packed into a shorter day.
Call tracking tells you how big this problem is. It shows how many calls rang out and at what time, which is usually enough to decide between a tighter schedule and a call-answering service.
Does your ad pass the NSW licence test?
If you advertise electrical services in NSW, Fair Trading rules apply to online ads as well as print, and electrical wiring counts as specialist work. That means you can’t advertise it at any value without a current contractor licence.
The licence test for every ad and landing page
Check
Source of the rule
What a customer sees
Licensee name shown
NSW Fair Trading Who they’re actually dealing with
Licence number with the correct category of work
NSW Fair Trading A number they can look up before they call
Business phone number
NSW Fair Trading A real way to reach you
Single total price shown alongside any part price
NSW Fair Trading No surprise on the invoice
No false or misleading claims
NSW Fair Trading and consumer law “24/7” that is true at 2 am
The landing page matters as much as the ad. Someone who clicked an EV charger ad should land on an EV charger page, with the licence number, service area and phone visible on a phone screen without scrolling. If clicks arrive and don’t call, look at why a landing page stops converting before spending more.
Licensing rules differ between states, so electricians outside NSW should check their own regulator before a campaign goes live.
What is a good lead actually worth to your business?
Electricians often search “how much should an electrician spend on Google Ads” hoping for a single figure. The useful answer is a ceiling, not a budget: instead of copying someone else’s spend, work out the most you can afford to pay for one booked job of each type.
You need three numbers from your own records for each job type: the usual invoice value, the share of calls that become bookings, and how many extra jobs of that kind you can fit in a week. None of them is a market rate; they’re placeholders for your own figures.
Those numbers give you a ceiling per booked job. Judge electrician Google Ads cost against that ceiling, campaign by campaign. A fault campaign and a switchboard campaign will have very different ceilings, and both can be profitable at very different costs per click.
What should you ask before you hand over your Google Ads account?
Six questions separate a well-run electrician account from one that’s quietly leaking. A good manager answers each in a sentence, without opening a slide deck.
“Can I log in and see everything?” The account should be in your business’s name, billed by Google to you.
“Show me last week’s search terms.” If they can’t open the report on the spot, nobody is reading it.
“How do you know a conversion was a real call?” Tracking should be checked against actual inbound calls, not just clicks on a phone number.
“What does a switchboard lead cost us compared with a small job?” One blended cost per lead hides the campaign that’s losing money.
“Why is our location setting what it is?” The answer should be a decision, not the default.
“Where is our licence number in this ad?” If it’s missing, the account carries legal risk as well as lost trust.
What happens when MarketInc takes over an electrician account?
We change nothing about spend until the account can be measured and the leaks are closed. The work runs in a fixed order.
How we take over an electrician Google Ads account
Stage
What we do
What you get
Audit
Review search terms, location, schedule, structure, ads, and landing pages, including licence details A written list of leaks, ranked by cost
Tracking
Install and verify GA4 events, conversion actions, and call tracking against real inbound calls Numbers you can trust
Rebuild
Split campaigns by job type, set Presence targeting and drive-time areas, schedule by on-call hours Budget going to the right work
Pages
Point each campaign to a job-specific page carrying the licence test More calls from the same clicks
Baseline
Record where every number starts A fair comparison for every later month
Run
Weekly search term reviews, monthly report and recommendations A clear view of what to fund next
Why the audit comes first
Most accounts we review are already spending enough. The money is going to the wrong searches, places or hours, and adding budget before fixing that only scales the waste.
Why tracking is verified, not assumed
A conversion that counts every tap on a phone number looks impressive and tells you nothing. Checking tracking against real calls, and connecting your job management software where it allows, is what lets us report on booked jobs rather than clicks.
Why every job gets its own campaign
Faults need speed and after-hours cover. Switchboards need a higher ceiling and patient quotes. EV chargers need a page that explains the install. One campaign can’t do all three, so each gets its own budget, ads, and page, with Local Services Ads and the Google Guaranteed badge added where they’re available for your category and area.
You can see how we structure electrician campaigns on our Google Ads page for electrical contractors , and the same rules apply across our wider Google Ads management .
Where else can MarketInc find electrical work for you?
Paid search is the fastest channel, not the only one. Most electrical businesses we work with run it alongside at least one of these.
Organic search and Google Maps. Our SEO work for electricians and local search services builds the visibility that keeps calls coming when ad spend comes down.
Facebook and Instagram. Better suited to planned work like EV chargers and switchboard upgrades than to faults, run by our Meta ads team .
Job-specific websites. Pages that pass the licence test and load quickly on a phone, from our web design team .
How will you know the leads are getting better?
Three numbers, reported every month, tell you more than any dashboard.
Cost per booked job, for each job type. Not per click and not per call. This is the number that matches the ceiling you worked out earlier.
Share of spend on searches that fail the test. Taken from the search terms report. It should fall month after month.
Booked jobs as a share of answered calls. If this drops while calls hold steady, the problem is the phone or the page, not the ads.
When all three improve for two months running, the account has earned a bigger budget. Before that, a bigger budget only buys more of the same leads.
Frequently asked questions
Why are my Google Ads clicks not turning into calls?
Usually the landing page, not the ad. Check that the page matches the job in the ad, shows your phone number and licence details without scrolling, and loads quickly on a phone. Then check the search terms report to confirm the clicks came from real customers.
Can a sole trader electrician advertise on Google?
Yes, with the right licence. In NSW, advertising electrical wiring work of any value requires a current contractor licence, and the licence number must appear in the ad. Check your own state’s rules if you work outside NSW.
Does paying for Google Ads help my position on Google Maps?
No. Google states there’s no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Ads can appear above the map while they run, but your map position depends on your Business Profile, reviews, and website.
Is Performance Max a safe choice for licensed trades?
Treat it carefully. It runs one campaign across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps, and with Final URL expansion, Google can change the landing page and write ad text. Google says you remain responsible for the compliance of those generated assets.
Do I need a website to run Google Ads?
You need at least one good landing page per main job. Sending every ad to a homepage, or to a Facebook page, makes it harder to show the licence details and job information that turn a click into a call.
Where to start
Ring your own business number at 8 pm tonight, the way a customer would. If it rings out and your ads are still running, the schedule is the first fix. If someone answers, open your search terms report next and block anything a paying customer wouldn’t type.
Want a second opinion on your own numbers?
Send us read-only access to your Google Ads account, or a download of your last three months of search terms. We’ll run the audit stage on it and show you which leads fail the test, where the money goes, and what to fix first. You keep the audit whether or not you work with us. References
Google Ads Help, About advanced location options Google Ads Help, About the search terms report Google Ads Help, About Ad Scheduling Google Ads Help, About Performance Max campaigns Google Business Profile Help, Tips to improve your local ranking on Google NSW Government (Fair Trading), Building trade advertisements
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