Plumbing is the clearest emergency category in local PPC. "Burst pipe", "blocked drain", "no hot water" — these people are calling the first firm that answers. Your job in Google Ads is to be visible during those minutes and to make calling effortless.
Everything else in a plumber PPC account is secondary to that.
Emergency campaigns come first
Build one campaign around emergency intent: emergency plumber, burst pipe, leak repair, blocked drain, no hot water. Use call-only ads on mobile, run it 24/7 if you answer 24/7, and bid to position one. Conversion rates on these terms routinely exceed 20%.
Non-emergency work — bathroom fitting, boiler installation, maintenance — belongs in separate campaigns with lower bids and longer consideration copy.
Service-area targeting that reflects drive time
Set your radius to the distance a van can realistically cover within the response time you promise. Then exclude the areas the location report shows produce calls you decline. Promising a 60-minute response and arriving in two hours costs you the review, not just the job.
Negative keywords for plumbing accounts
Add: how to, DIY, parts, video, YouTube, jobs, apprenticeship, salary, courses, supplies, wholesale, and any product brand you do not fit. Plumbing attracts more DIY search volume than almost any other trade.
Review search terms weekly for the first two months, then monthly.
Track the call, or the account learns nothing
If calls are not imported as conversions with a minimum duration, Smart Bidding is guessing. Most plumbing accounts I audit are optimising against a handful of form fills while 90% of real leads come through the phone.
Getting conversion tracking set up properly is the prerequisite to every other optimisation in a plumbing account.
What plumbers pay
Emergency plumbing clicks run $10 to $30 in US metros and £3 to £12 in the UK. Cost per call typically lands between $35 and $90. Because emergency jobs close at a high rate, that is usually profitable from the first week.
A starting budget of $1,500 to $4,000 a month is enough for a single-city plumbing operation.