Split your campaigns by job type, not by location. Run separate campaigns for emergency plumbing, boiler service, bathroom fitting, and drain unblocking. This lets you set higher bids on the high-value jobs and pause low-margin ones without touching everything at once.

Use Search campaigns only to start, and ignore Display and Performance Max for now. Display puts your name on random websites, not in front of someone with a burst pipe at 7am on a Tuesday. Get Search right first.

Set your emergency plumbing campaign to run 24 hours, seven days a week. That 2am call about a flooded kitchen is often worth the most and has the least competition. Do not let your ads go dark overnight on that campaign.

Start with phrase match and exact match only, no broad match. Broad match on ‘plumber’ will spend your budget on searches like ‘plumber salary Ireland’ or ‘how to become a plumber’. Phrase and exact keep you in control while you build up data.

Target the searches people type in a panic, not the polite ones. Think ’emergency plumber Dublin’, ‘burst pipe repair Cork’, ‘no hot water tonight’, ‘boiler broken Limerick’. These are high intent and often high value.

Bid more aggressively on SEAI grant-linked searches. Terms like ‘heat pump installer Ireland’, ‘SEAI grant boiler upgrade’, and ‘retrofit plumber grant’ attract homeowners with real budget who are already committed to spending money.

Block DIY and parts-only searches before you spend a single euro. Add negatives for ‘how to fix’, ‘YouTube’, ‘do it yourself’, ‘pipe fittings Woodies’, ‘plumbing parts’, ‘compression fitting size’, and ‘push fit connector’. These people want a part from a merchant, not a plumber.

Block job-seeker and trade-school searches. Add ‘plumbing apprenticeship’, ‘plumber course’, ‘plumbing jobs’, ‘SOLAS plumbing’, and ‘City and Guilds plumbing’. These clicks cost the same and pay you nothing.

Block RGII and gas queries if you are not RGII registered. Searches like ‘RGII gas installer’, ‘gas boiler service’, and ‘gas leak repair’ must only run if you hold a current RGII registration. If you are not registered, add these as negatives immediately to avoid wasted spend and any compliance headache.

Lead with the job and the area, not your company name. ‘Emergency Plumber Dublin, Available Now’ beats ‘Murphy Plumbing Services Ltd’ every time as a headline. Nobody searching at midnight knows your name yet.

Call out your RGII registration and relevant credentials in the ad if you do gas work. Homeowners are nervous about gas. ‘RGII Registered, Fully Insured’ in a description line builds instant trust and filters out price-shoppers looking for a cowboy rate.

Include a real response promise if you can back it up. Something like ’60-Minute Response Across County Clare’ or ‘Same-Day Boiler Repairs Cork’ gives a concrete reason to call you over the next result. Only write it if it is true.

Set up phone call tracking before you spend a single euro on ads. Without call tracking you are flying blind. Use Google’s call conversion or a tool like CallRail to see which keyword and which ad drove each actual phone enquiry, not just clicks.

Track form submissions separately from phone calls. Most plumbing jobs are won on the phone, but some customers, especially for planned bathroom installations, will fill in a quote form. Count both and keep them as separate conversion actions so you know your true lead cost.

Start on Manual CPC or Maximise Clicks until you have at least 30 conversions recorded. Google’s Smart Bidding like Target CPA or Maximise Conversions needs real conversion data to work properly. Feed it too early and it will optimise toward the wrong thing or waste your budget learning.

Set higher bids on mobile devices. Most emergency plumbing searches happen on a phone, and a click that leads straight to a tap-to-call button is worth more than one from a desktop where the person is still in research mode. Adjust your mobile bid modifier upward once you have enough data to judge.

Check the Search Terms report every single week for the first two months. This shows you the exact words real people typed before clicking your ad. You will always find searches you never expected, some brilliant ones to add as keywords and some wasteful ones to block as negatives.

Move any winning search term into its own exact match keyword once it has driven a genuine lead. If ’emergency plumber Galway city’ is quietly converting at a good cost, pin it as an exact match keyword and give it a proper bid. Do not leave it buried in a phrase match where the algorithm controls how often it shows.