When an HVAC company tells me Google Ads "doesn't work," the first thing I check is the structure. Often every keyword, from "ac not cooling" to "annual tune up," sits in one campaign with one budget and one bid strategy. That's the setup that makes the summer price spike hurt the most.
Why One Campaign Fails
Budgets in Google Ads are set per campaign. Google describes the average daily budget as an average: on a given day a campaign can spend up to twice that amount, balanced against slower days, and over a month it won't spend more than 30.4 times the daily figure.
Put emergency and routine keywords in one campaign and they compete for the same daily money. A homeowner searching "tune up" and a homeowner searching "ac not cooling" are different buyers, but one campaign can't decide to spend more on the second.
The Two-Campaign Structure
- Campaign one, emergency. Searches like "ac not cooling," "emergency ac repair," "furnace not working" and "no heat." This gets the higher bids and its own budget, and it runs during the hours you can actually answer the phone.
- Campaign two, routine. Searches like "ac tune up," "annual maintenance" and "furnace maintenance." This runs on a lower, steadier bid all year, so the account keeps its history between spikes.
Use the Ad Schedule
By default, Google campaigns show ads all day. In ad scheduling you can pick the days and hours ads appear, with up to six ad schedules per day for each campaign, and the schedule follows your account's time zone. Check that it's set to Central. Only cut hours you're sure you can't take calls. A capped budget that's gone by noon leaves the evening searches to your competitors.
Keep Junk Searches Out
A campaign without negative keywords pays for people who never wanted to hire anyone: do-it-yourselfers and job seekers. Add words like "jobs," "salary," "diy" and "parts" as negatives from day one. I go deeper on this in the piece on broad match and negative keywords.
Measure Calls, Not Clicks
A click is not a customer. Track calls and booked jobs by campaign, so you can see what each one costs. My note on call tracking covers the setup. If you can't tell which campaign produced a booked job, you can't decide where the money should go.
- Two campaigns, each with its own budget and its own hours.
- Negative keywords from day one.
- Calls tracked back to the campaign that produced them.
What To Check Every Week in Season
- The search terms report. Look for searches you don't want to pay for, and add them as negatives.
- What time the daily budget runs out. If the emergency campaign is spent by noon, the evening searches are going to someone else.
- Calls against clicks. A campaign with plenty of clicks and few calls needs its ads, keywords or landing page looked at.
- Where the click lands. Send emergency clicks to a page where the phone number is the first thing a stressed homeowner sees.
There's no magic ratio between the two budgets. In peak season, the emergency campaign should get the larger share, because that's where a call turns into a job fastest. In the shoulder seasons, the routine campaign keeps the account warm.
This is the structure behind how I approach HVAC paid search in Tulsa.