Patch searches dominate
The volume is in small repairs and how-to videos. A campaign built on “drywall repair” fills the phone with $100 jobs and people who want to know what spackle to buy.
Hanging and finishing is labor. Sell the days, not the patches.
“Drywall repair near me” usually means a fist-sized hole and a $150 ticket, if the homeowner does not just buy a patch kit. The jobs that pay, basement finishes, new construction, water damage rebuilds and ceiling replacements, get searched less and get bid on by every handyman and remodeler.
We tilt the budget toward the big work, run a small, controlled campaign for repairs that are worth the trip, keep the DIY searches out, and track every call to a signed job.
Repairs from $300, basements and whole-house from $3,000 to $15,000. The upside is real. So is the waste, and here’s where it usually comes from.
The volume is in small repairs and how-to videos. A campaign built on “drywall repair” fills the phone with $100 jobs and people who want to know what spackle to buy.
Everyone with a truck says they do drywall. You separate yourself with finish quality and speed on big jobs, not with a higher bid on the small ones.
An estimate visit for a job that never signs costs a finisher half a day. The clicks need to be qualified before the drive.
Big jobs first: Basement finishing, whole-house hang and finish, ceiling and texture, water damage rebuild, commercial. Repairs get their own small campaign with a stated minimum.Minimum charge in the ad: Saying “repairs from $350” or “basements and full rooms” right in the ad stops most of the hole-in-the-door clicks.Negatives for kits and how-to: Patch kit, spackle, “how to”, texture sprayer rental, Home Depot, “drywall near me” as a product search, finisher jobs. Cut weekly.Signed days tracked: Call and form tracking into Jobber, Buildertrend or your estimate sheet, so Google learns from jobs that signed, not holes that got priced.Examples from drywall accounts. The real lists run to hundreds of terms and get reviewed every week.
Your account is run by two PPC pros with 20+ years each. No handoff to a coordinator juggling 35 accounts.
Not quarterly. Not “when the algorithm settles”. Every week, by hand, so the junk never gets a chance to pile up.
Your Google Ads account, your data, your tracking, from day one. Leave anytime and take it all with you.
Who likes 12-month contracts? We don’t. We earn the next quarter by making the last one pay.
Usually $1,500 to $4k a month in a mid-size metro. The search volume for big jobs is modest, so the budget stays modest and the work is in keeping the small stuff out.
No. One drywall company per metro. We will not bid two drywall contractors against each other for the same basements.
Only with a minimum charge in the ad and a tight radius. Done that way, repairs can fill gaps between big jobs. Done the usual way, they eat the budget.
Clicks at $30 to $80. Materials and crews eat most of the job. The ads can’t afford to miss.
How we run it →A small niche with a lot of Amazon in it. Precision matters more than budget.
How we run it →It rains, the phone rings, the franchises bid. Be ready before the storm, not after.
How we run it →Lead vendors sold you the same name three times. Your own ads don’t.
How we run it →Talk to a senior PPC expert who has run drywall accounts. Never a junior.