Electrical work divides into two businesses that happen to share a van. One is the urgent callout, where someone has no power at 8pm and will hire whoever answers. The other is planned work like a rewire, a consumer unit upgrade or an EV charger, which is worth far more and takes weeks to decide.
Run both in one campaign and Google will spend your budget on the callouts, because they convert fastest and cheapest. The planned work quietly disappears.
What do Google Ads cost for an electrician?
Around or above the all industry average on cost per click, with a conversion rate well above it on urgent terms.
Across 13,474 US search campaigns the all industry benchmarks were $5.42 per click, $66.69 per lead and an 8.18% conversion rate, per WordStream. For a reference point inside the trades, automotive repair and service averaged a 15.51% conversion rate at a $29.96 cost per lead. Urgent electrical behaves similarly, because a crisis search converts at roughly twice the all industry rate.
| Work type | Ticket | How to run it |
|---|---|---|
| No power, emergency electrician, tripping breaker | Low | Bid hardest, calls on, books today |
| Fault finding, socket and light repairs | Low to mid | Steady volume, keep it profitable |
| Rewire, consumer unit, EV charger install | High | Own campaign, own budget, longer close |
| Safety certificates and inspections | Low, repeatable | Good filler work, often becomes bigger jobs |
What this means for you: a rewire can be worth fifty callouts. Give it its own campaign or it will never get the budget it deserves.
The searches that convert best are about safety
This is specific to electrical. People search electrical problems with a note of worry in the query, and those searches convert far better than generic service terms.
Burning smell, sparking socket, tripping breaker, buzzing fuse box. Someone typing those is not price shopping. They want a qualified person today, and they will take the first credible one.
Two things follow from that. Your ad should lead with availability and qualification, not price. And your landing page should say how fast you can attend, because that is the only question they are actually asking.
EV chargers are a separate campaign
Worth calling out because it is the fastest growing slice of domestic electrical work and it behaves nothing like the rest.
The searcher is researching, comparing chargers and often waiting on a grant or a car delivery. The decision takes weeks. The install is high ticket. And the competition includes national installers with big budgets.
Run it separately, expect a longer lag between click and job, and make sure the landing page handles the two questions that actually decide it: which charger, and what the total installed cost is.
Local Services Ads belong in the mix
Home services is a core Local Services Ads category and Google lists it as eligible. Those ads sit above regular search results and charge per lead rather than per click, which suits an emergency trade where clicks get expensive fast.
One current detail, because plenty of agency pitches are out of date: Google discontinued the Google Guarantee badge and its money back guarantee, replacing it with a single Google Verified badge, with reimbursement claims closed on 7 December 2025. Our comparison of Local Services Ads and Google Ads covers running both.
Track the call, then track the job
Almost every electrical enquiry is a phone call. If tracking only counts web forms you are optimizing on the minority who were not in a hurry.
- Calls tracked as conversions, with call assets and tap to call on mobile.
- A duration threshold so wrong numbers do not count. Sixty seconds is a floor, not an answer.
- Completed jobs and their values sent back, so bidding learns which calls became work.
That third step is what separates a good trade account from an average one, and it matters more here than usual because the job values are so uneven. From 15 June 2026 Google moved offline conversion imports to the Data Manager API and blocked them in the Google Ads API, so check any older integration. Our guide to conversion tracking covers it.
The negatives that matter
- DIY. How to wire, replace a socket, reset a breaker, wiring diagram.
- Parts and products. Cable, breakers, consumer unit prices, extension leads, unless you sell them.
- Careers. Electrician salary, apprenticeship, courses, how to become, qualifications.
- Commercial or industrial terms if you are domestic only, and the reverse. Different buyers entirely.
- Free. Free electrician, grant funded work, unless you actually deliver those schemes.
Set location targeting to presence rather than presence or interest. A trade has a service radius and the default setting buys clicks well outside it. Our post on negative keywords covers the rest.
How to choose an agency for an electrical business
- “How will you separate callouts from rewires and EV work?” One campaign means the big jobs lose.
- “How will you track calls, and know whether they booked?” Call tracking plus job outcomes, not call counts.
- “Are we running Local Services Ads?” For a US electrician the answer should be yes or a clear reason why not.
- “What hours should we advertise?” The right answer depends on when you can answer the phone.
- “What would make you tell us to stop?” No answer means they are selling.
Our post on choosing a Google Ads agency covers contracts, and management pricing covers fee models.
Common questions
How much should an electrician spend a month?
Work back from jobs. Take your average job value, your rate of turning calls into bookings, and decide how many extra jobs a week you want. Most single operators start between $500 and $1,500 a month in media.
Should we advertise overnight?
Only if someone answers. Buying emergency clicks with no one on the phone is the most expensive mistake in the trades. Get an answering service first, then turn the hours on.
Is it worth bidding on EV charger terms?
Yes, but in its own campaign with its own budget and a page that answers cost and charger choice. Inside a callout campaign it will be starved.
Why is our cost per click rising?
Usually a new competitor in a tight radius, or seasonality. In a small geography one new advertiser moves the auction noticeably. Our post on bidding strategies covers what to change and what to leave alone.
How long before it works?
Emergency campaigns produce calls in the first week. Give it ninety days before judging the economics, and longer for the planned work.
Where to go from here
One check worth doing today. Pull your last ninety days and split the jobs that came from ads into callouts and planned work. If planned work is close to zero, the campaign structure is the reason, not demand.
Our Google Ads management page explains how we run trade accounts, our case studies show the results, and you can get in touch for a straight read on yours.
