Why Paid Search and Social are Non-negotiable for Electricians

Destiny Marketing Solutions specializes in marketing for electricians. Trusted by electrical contractors across the U.S., we help electricians grow through digital marketing—local SEO, local service ads, Google Ads, content, and automation.

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Transcript

Leonard Parker's video recording: 0:00

Hey there. I'm Leonard Parker, founder of Destiny Marketing Solutions. For nearly a decade, we've been working with electricians just like you to solve one persistent problem. You know what keeps me up at night? Seeing skilled electricians like you leaving thousands of dollars on the table every month because you're not running ads. If that statement made you a little uncomfortable, if I'm coming across as a little creepy, oh, don't worry. Stick around. By the end of this video, I'll share an insider tip that most marketing agencies won't tell you about ad strategies that could completely change your lead flow. I. Let me guess. You built a successful electrical services business on word of mouth referrals and maybe some basic foundational online presence. That's impressive. That should be applauded. But what have I told you then? In today's market, that's like trying to power a modern home with a system from 1970. Here's the harsh reality that no one's talking about. Word of mouth isn't scaling with you anymore. Referrals and recommendations are fantastic, but they're wildly unpredictable. One month you're turning away jobs. The next you're wondering if your phone is broken. Meanwhile, your competition, yes, even an electrician you know isn't very good is running Google Ads 24 7, grabbing all those emergency calls and high value panel upgrades. The difference is simple. You cannot control when someone recommends you, but you can control when your ad shows up. It's a difference between hope and strategy. Did you know that over 70% of homeowners now use online search to find a contractor? Think about that for a second. If you're not showing up when people search, you're essentially invisible to seven out of 10 potential customers. But Leonard. I'm working on my SEO. I've been working on it for the last six months. I hear this all the time and that's great, and we support. SEO is actually a big part of our growth method for electricians, but here's what paid ads do that organic marketing simply cannot touch you. Your ads show up instantly. You don't need to wait six to 12 months for SEO to kick in. You control exactly what shows when and where. Want to target only the ZIP codes with the highest income households done. Only show ads during business hours easy. One of my favorite strategies is retargeting visitors who didn't convert the first time. Think about it. Someone visited your website, checked you out, but then call without retargeting ads, they're gone forever. With retargeting, you get a second chance, and maybe even a third, fourth, fifth, and so on. You can also specifically promote those high margin services. Having a slow month push those panel upgrades or EV charger installs that bring in 1500 plus per job. And the best part, you can dominate search and social while spending all day posting and hoping for engagement. These platforms work for you while you're doing what you do best electrical work. Let me paint a picture of what's happening right now if you're not running ads. When someone searches an emergency electrician near me. At 7:00 PM on a Friday evening, your competitor owns the top of the page and your potential customer, that homeowner with the sparkling outlet, they're calling someone else. Potential customers are also making assumptions about your business. When they only see a other electrical companies in the search results, they assume you're either small time or not. Taking new clients even more painful. Those happy customers who used you last year, they're getting retargeted by your competitors who have ads like need electrical work again, get 10% off your next service. Yes, that's a strategy You can target someone who's in market and one of those options. You can target someone who has been in market or was in market in the past for an electrician. You're missing out on emergency jobs, which as you know. Are the most urgent, high converting leads with the best margins and perhaps most concerning for your long-term business. You're invisible to younger search first homeowners who will never hear about your, never hear about you due to traditional channels. You're not just missing clicks, you're losing trust before they even talk to you. Let's talk solutions. Starting with Google Ads, the highest intent, highest, ROI option out there. What makes Google search ads so powerful is that these are buyers actively searching for your service. They're not scrolling mindlessly. They literally type electrician near me or panel upgrade contractor into Google. You can target specific services panel upgrade near me, electrical vehicle charger install or commercial electrician, and just add in your city and customize ad copy to match exactly what they're looking for. Google makes it easy to track calls, form fills and conversions right inside their platform. So you can set up what we call conversion tracking. Have that set up on your website, have call tracking set up on your website, and you can get that information right in the Google Ads interface. You can also use what we call ad extensions, like direct call buttons, location information, and site links. To take up more real estate in the search results and push your competitors down further. Here's the mindset shift I want you to make. If you're running Google Ads, right, it shouldn't feel like buying clicks. It should feel like buying book jobs, period. Now, let's talk about another type of Google ad, and these are local service ads commonly abbreviated as LSAs. The beauty of LSAs is that you only pay for actual leads, non impressions, or clicks. Someone. Has to actually call you or message you for you to pay anything. They come with built in call tracking and dispute resolution. If leads are not legitimate and they display that Google guarantee badge, that adds instant trust with potential customers. They're relatively easy set up. You do have to go through a background check process which my team and I we were happy to help with. And though you'll need a good volume of reviews and specific service targeting to really scale them. These can be very a great entry point into Google advertising because you don't have to worry about ad copy and other, the more robust targeting features that you do have available With traditional Google search ads, LSAs can absolutely crush it for emergency jobs. Phone first leads in high trust categories like electrical work. The key vantage of LSAs. LSAs gets you above even the map pack and straight to the top of Google where customers are making their call list. Think about it. When someone's breaker panel is sparking at eight o'clock on a Saturday night, they're calling the first few options they see. With LSAs, you have the opportunity for that to be your company. Now do a quick pause here. As I mentioned, Google search ads, Google local service ads. They're both, both, of course, on the Google platform. So you might be wondering what are, what is the difference? Well, LSAs. They are really simplified, as mentioned, they are focused on lead generation. So you're only paying per lead, some of the potential downsides. You don't have as much control over the ad copy, so that's the, the text that accompanies you're at. So if you want to call out a specific service, you don't really have much flexibility there. And there are additional things you can add to the experience, like as I mentioned with traditional search ads. You can do extensions like call extensions or site link extensions. Let's say you want to direct them to a certain page on your website. You were not able to do that with LSAs, but you are able to do that with Google search ads. I would say, again, if you're just getting started with. Paid search advertising LSAs will be a good first step, but if you have been doing this for some time, Google search ads also offer additional opportunities. And even with Google search ads, you also have the smart advertising option. So definitely different formats. And I'll make a future video really diving into those different options with Google search ads. Now moving on to your social media ads. This is, these can be beneficial for brand growth and brand development. So maybe you're not necessarily looking to drive leads right away, but you just want people to know that you exist. So you take that. Facebook or Instagram posts that have received some initial organic traction, and then you boost that post to get in front of more people. Social media ads are great for what we call demand generation. Demand generation is where you are generating demand for your services by letting people know that you exist and that. Let, letting them know what service makes that your company specializes in. Whereas Google Ads, the traditional search ads and LSAs is more about demand capture. Someone performs a Google search for electrician near me, and your ads pop up, so you're just capturing the demand that's already there. With social media ads, these aren't really going to be your top lead generation tool. Because you, someone's not on Facebook or Instagram necessarily looking for an electrician. However, while they're browsing photos and videos and doom scrolling, if your ad comes up, you'll be top of mind. And so that's where the difference lies with between social and search ads. So while Google captures. People actively searching social platforms like Instagram and Facebook. They help you build awareness and showcase your work. This is where you can really shine by showing before and after videos. Job site photos and client reviews. People love seeing that disaster of a panel transform into clean, safe wiring. If you checked out our previous video from last week, you saw an example of different Instagram and Facebook posts where they were doing just that. They were showing before and after, after photos. You can target by zip code, income level, level, or even home ownership status, so you're not wasting money showing ads to renters or people outside of your service area. These platforms are great for top of funnel brand awareness. Plus retargeting those warm leads who've shown interest. And I love how you can turn one good job into a week's worth of content photos during a job, the finished result, and even a happy interview with a happy customer. Social ads also let you at direct messages, lead forms, or click to call as calls to action, making it easy for people to reach you. If you're not running Facebook or Instagram ads, you're essentially letting competitors steal both mind share and market share while you're invisible. YouTube is often overlooked by electricians, but YouTube ads can be in incre, incredibly powerful when they're done, right. Think about this. You can own the how to fix a tripping breaker crowd. Before they even call an electrician, they watch it a do it yourself video, your ad plays, and you say, still having issues. And you can have your call to action be something like, we solve complex electrical problems every day. These. 30 to second, 30 to 60 seconds videos position you as the trusted expert in your area. You can use skippable in-stream ads and bumper ads to stay top of mind without annoying viewers. You can also have display ads that show up in the YouTube search results. You can specifically target homeowners business owners who are watching home improvement or facility management content. In your area, and these are perfect potential clients. The trust factor of video is unmatched. You people see your face, they see your truck, your team, and your work quality. It's like a referral, but at scale. YouTube isn't just for influencer influencers and entertainment. It's for electricians who want to sell with authority and build that expert status. Now you can use retargeting. Moving on from YouTube, use retargeting ads to close the loop on missed opportunities. This is one of the most neglected, the highest ROI strategies. Did you know that about 90% of visitors leave your website while converting And, and that will give you a 10% conversion rate, which is actually quite high. On average websites, they tend to convert. Anywhere from one to 3%. So that's actually you could increase that percentage to 97 to 99% of your site visitors will leave your site while converting while retargeting. Those potential customers are gone forever. So you may get lucky and they might remember your brand or remember something from your website or wrote down your number. But you can't rely on that. With retargeting ads, you can serve follow up ads, showing reviews, special offers, or answering common questions. This is a very useful strategy because you can track using a Facebook pixel or a Google tag. You can track which page they were on with your website and you can send them ads. On either the Google display network or any of the social media network ad networks. You can send them ads that are specific and relevant to the pages that they were on. So if they were on a page maybe your service page or your blog page related to EV charger installation, well, you can send them ads specific to that service EV charger installation. Retargeting ads work well, especially for estimates that went cold or jobs you didn't win the first time around. The customer might have gotten busy or decided to wait, and your retargeting ad reminds them you're still available when they're ready. If you're not following up with leads after they visit your site, you're essentially funding awareness for your competitors. You paid them, you paid to get them to your site once with the first touch, and, but you let them walk away. Now we're gonna move into some common ad mistakes that I current that I commonly see that burn budget. You often see, or I often see electricians have tried ads, but they're disappointed they're not getting the results they're looking for some of the common mistakes. First, sending traffic to a homepage instead of a focused landing page. So let's say again, if you're running. Ads targeting ev charging installation. You don't wanna send them to the homepage because that's not really relevant. Maybe you have a mention about ev charging installation on your homepage, but you really want to have a dedicated landing page on that service so that there's relevance between the ad copy or whatever they click. Maybe it was a video and where they're landing alignment is extremely important there. So you wanna make sure that. They're not clicking on a specific service, but you're taking'em to something that's really generic. In addition to this, you also wanna ensure your offers are strong or at least competitive. Simply saying call us doesn't really cut it. You need to show value so you can say something like, free panel inspection with any service call or same day emergency service. That makes a more compelling case for your prospect. Many electricians also ignore call tracking, so they have no idea what's working and what's not. In other words, you have no idea which marketing channels are actually driving calls. But even with call tracking, you can go even further and look at the quality of the calls and determine if those calls led to book jobs. Without this data, you're simply guessing. When it comes to your ad targeting, so geographic targeting, maybe you're targeting too wide, so you're just throwing money away. Maybe you're targeting people outside of your service area or even areas within your service area. That may not be the, the most. Profitable. So I highly recommend using zip code filtering and ad scheduling to make sure you're only paying for relevant impressions. And relevance can be, you know actually part of your service area, but also where are you gonna find your ideal customers. And finally I made a, a video on this a couple of weeks ago, but there's no follow up system for leads who don't convert immediately. So that means you're letting hot prospects go cold. The truth is ads do work if you know how to set them up like a business tool, not a common question. I often get, especially when someone's starting off with advertising, is. This advertising is expensive. What budget should I be using? But the good news is that you don't need to start off with a$10,000 a month budget to compete. I do suggest at least several hundred dollars. So let's just say$500 as a test. Budget for a test campaign, and this is where you're only focused on one service, one part of the city, and on one platform. You also, you wanna make sure you mastered that before you expand. So when you are running ads, starting off with a small budget, I suggest testing two to three ad variations. So that can mean two to three different ad copies or ad texts, and also two to three creatives. So one common test you can do is testing a static image creative versus a video. I've seen these work in differently in different markets. I usually lens a video because people. You typically engage more with video, but there's always something to test. So once you have been running those ads and you those different variations, you wanna pause those variations that aren't performing. So in other words, maybe they're spending a lot of money, but they're not really driving clicks or. Conversions or calls or form fills and you want to double down on the winners. This is how you build a profitable system while wasting money, and this testing process is never over it. Like I said a few minutes ago, there's always something to test, so you always want to iterate to see how you can improve on your campaign performance, and this is where tracking your cost per lead and book rate is extremely important. You wanna get out the habit of just looking at impressions and clicks. A campaign with fewer clicks, but higher quality leads is always better than vanity metrics. Build on what works for your business, not what's popular or trending. Every market is different and what works for a electrician may not work for you. The reality is you don't need to outspend competition. You need to out measure and out adapt them. That's how the small guys pick the big corporate chains. This is where our approach, the full circuit growth method comes in. Paid ads are the ignition switch, but you need a vehicle that's tuned to convert Our method aligns your ads with offer design, landing pages, follow up sequences, and conversion systems so that every ad click leads to a book job, not a bounce. We start by addressing the fundamental challenge, lack of qualified leads, and then build a complete system that moves you through each critical stage getting founded by the right client. Converting more leads into projects, knowing what's working and what's not, and ultimately reaching your dream outcome. Remember this ads don't solve marketing problems. They amplify them. If your website is confusing or your phones are being answered promptly, ads will just send more people into that broken system. We help you build that foundation first. So how do you get started? We offer a full circuit growth audit where we'll analyze your current ad channels. Or if you're not running ads, we'll propose ad strategies and channels that. Match your target audience and you know, who are you're targeting as far as the types of jobs. So if you're more focused on commercial work, you may want to consider LinkedIn as part of your advertising mix, but it all depends on the priorities that you have for your business. So, in addition to analyzing channels or, or proposing strategies, we also propose budgets and ROI so that you can know exactly where you stand. And identify missed opportunities across Google, LSAs, Facebook, and YouTube. We also map each channel to your specific services market and legal goals. We review your landing pages and messaging to fixed conversion bottlenecks, and we provide a dirty day action plan to launch or optimize your pay strategy. The bottom line is if your ads aren't working, it's not the platform, it's the plan, and we can help you fix that. We build ad systems that electricians don't have to babysit. You. Focus on doing great work for your customers and we'll focus on keeping your phone ringing. To book your full circuit growth audit, visit our website@destinymarketingsolutions.com or schedule directly do the candidly link that's. Provided in the description below, you can also call us at the number shown 8 8 8 8 4 6 4 9 3 7. We're based in Houston, but we serve electricians nationwide. And just remember this, I should make you money, not headaches, and we'll show you exactly how I promise you a powerful tip at the beginning. So here it is, the expert tip that most agencies won't tell you. Try running your Google ads on weekends. Most of your competitors pause their ads at Friday, on Friday at 5:00 PM thinking nobody's searching, or there's no one there to answer the calls. But here's the secret. Weekend clicks often have lower costs and higher urgency. Emergency jobs spike on weekends along with small upgrades, and those finally got time to deal with this home improvement projects. Homeowners are home. Noticing all the electric issues that they've been putting off. Just make sure your call tracking works and somebody is answering those weekend calls, even if it's an answering service that can schedule appointments for Monday. Weekends are a gold mine for electricians smart enough to show up when others have gone dark arc, remember? In electrical work. You know that being available when others aren't is often what builds a loyal customer base. The same principle applies here. Thanks for watching. This is Leonard Parker from Destiny Marketing Solutions, helping you turn advertising dollars into book jobs. Hit that subscribe button if you want more straight shooting marketing advice for electricians like yourself, and I'll see you in the next one.