Priced on clicks, not pours
The agency reported cost-per-click and impressions. Nobody could tell you what a booked driveway actually cost, so you had no idea if the spend paid for itself.
GOOGLE ADS · FOR CONCRETE
Nobody Googles "concrete" on a whim. They price a driveway, a patio, or a slab, then take three bids. Search Ads, Local Services Ads, and campaigns built to catch that homeowner before your competitor's estimate does, priced on cost-per-booked-job, not clicks.
Ad spend goes to Google, not to us. You keep the account and the login.
QUICK FACTS · GOOGLE ADS FOR CONCRETE CONTRACTORS
The whole engagement on one ticket. Read it in a minute, then bring us the hard questions on the call.
PAID ACQUISITION
Concrete is a considered buy, not an emergency. A homeowner decides the cracked driveway has to go, or wants a stamped patio for the backyard, then searches, clicks a few listings, and requests three estimates before anyone pours a thing. Google Ads for concrete contractors is how you get into that shortlist today, while your SEO and your map pins are still climbing. The wedge is not the click. It is the booked pour, and whether that driveway estimate was worth what you paid for the search that produced it.
This trade lives on ticket size and timing. A tear-out and replacement driveway, a garage or shop slab, a stamped or decorative patio: these are four and five-figure jobs, so a single booked pour can clear a month of clicks. But the searches split hard. "Driveway replacement near me" is a buyer. "How to pour a concrete slab" is a DIY weekend and a wasted dollar. The campaign has to bid the intent that books and write negatives against the tutorials, the bag-of-Quikrete shoppers, and the job-seekers. Local Services Ads put the Google Guaranteed badge above the paid results and charge you per lead instead of per click, but only after Google screens your license, insurance, and background.
Most agencies bid the same concrete terms, hand you a dashboard full of impressions, and bill a retainer. We run the other math. What did a booked driveway cost, which searches brought homeowners who signed the estimate, and which ones burned budget on people pricing a job they'll never hire out. Since 2008 we have managed local-service accounts, so we speak service radius, crew capacity, and ticket size, not clicks and vanity charts.
[ 01 ] THE PROBLEM
Most owners who call us already tried Ads once. Here is what went wrong.
The agency reported cost-per-click and impressions. Nobody could tell you what a booked driveway actually cost, so you had no idea if the spend paid for itself.
Broad keywords with no negatives meant you paid for "how to pour a slab," bag-of-concrete shoppers, and rebar tutorials. Budget gone before a real driveway lead ever called.
Flatwork tear-outs and stamped patios are different buyers at different tickets. Lumped into one campaign, the cheap searches ate the budget and the high-margin decorative work never got seen.
You competed on the paid line while the Google Guaranteed badge sat empty above you, and screened concrete contractors with the badge got the estimate request first.
[ 02 ] THE METHOD
Every campaign is wired to concrete intent and your crew's real capacity.
We stand up your LSA profile, walk the license, insurance, and background screening for the Google Guaranteed badge, and set lead disputes so you're not paying for tire-kicker calls.
Driveways and flatwork in one campaign, stamped and decorative in another, slabs and foundations in a third. Each gets its own budget so the high-ticket decorative work doesn't get starved by cheap flatwork clicks.
We bid the intent that books: driveway replacement, concrete patio, stamped concrete, slab, near me, cost. Then we write negatives against "how to," "Quikrete," "per bag," and job-seeker searches that don't.
Paid clicks hit a page built for one job: service radius, photos of real driveways and stamped work, and an estimate request above the fold, loading in under 2 seconds.
Call and form tracking ties spend to booked pours. Monthly, you see what a driveway and a stamped patio cost to win by campaign, not a wall of impressions.
The homeowner who priced a stamped patio, clicked, and went quiet gets a reminder as they browse, so a maybe comes back to you instead of the second bid on their list.
[ 03 ] THE DIFFERENCE
[ 04 ] DELIVERABLES
We inherit and fix your existing Google Ads account or build a fresh one you own outright.
Local Services Ads set up and walked through Google Guaranteed license, insurance, and background verification.
Bidding on driveway, pad, slab, and stamped and decorative intent, with a negative list that blocks the DIY and bag-shopper searches that waste spend.
Separate campaigns and budgets for flatwork, decorative, and structural pours so each ticket size gets funded on its own math.
Search ads and extensions written in concrete language, with service radius, job types, and estimate offers wired in.
A single-purpose page for paid traffic, estimate request and phone above the fold, real project photos, loading in under 2 seconds.
Tracking that connects a click or a lead to an actual estimate request so we can price the job, not the click.
Plain reporting on spend, leads, and booked-pour cost by campaign, not vanity metrics.
[ 05 ] THE PROCESS
WEEK 1
We map wasted spend, weak landing pages, and the searches actually worth buying.
WEEK 1-2
Campaigns, ad groups, call tracking, and Local Services Ads set up to ring the phone, not just get clicks.
MONTH 1
Search-term pruning, bid tuning, and landing pages that turn clicks into booked jobs.
ONGOING
Weekly hands on the account. We spend your budget like it is ours.
MONTHLY
Cost per lead and cost per booked job, in plain numbers, no agency spin.
[ 06 ] THE HONEST CURVE
Paid is the fast lane, but concrete is a bid-and-compare buy, so leads that come in this week may sign in three weeks after they collect their other estimates. Expect a few weeks of tuning before cost-per-booked-pour settles.
To first live campaigns
Once account, budget, and service radius are set
LSA badge screening
License, insurance, and background on Google's clock
To a settled cost-per-job
As bids and negatives tune to your market and season
Vanity metrics reported
We report booked-pour cost, not impressions
[ 07 ] STRAIGHT ANSWERS
The questions concrete owners ask before they hand us a budget.
Search Ads charge you per click and show as text ads at the top of results. Local Services Ads charge you per lead, show the Google Guaranteed badge above the paid ads, and require Google to screen your license, insurance, and background first. Most concrete contractors run both: LSA for the badge and trust on driveway and patio searches, Search for coverage on the terms LSA doesn't reach. We build and compare them for your service radius.
For most, yes, because the tickets are big. A single driveway replacement or stamped patio usually clears the cost of the clicks that produced it many times over. The risk is paying for DIY and bag-shopper searches, which is why we bid buyer intent, write hard negatives, and price on cost-per-booked-pour so you can see which campaigns pay and which to cut.
Negatives. Concrete searches split cleanly between buyers and the weekend crowd, so we block "how to," "Quikrete," "per bag," "mix ratio," and job-seeker terms, and we bid the intent that books work: replacement, near me, cost, contractor, installed. It never gets to zero waste, but it keeps your budget on homeowners who hire out.
No. A tear-out driveway and a decorative stamped patio are different buyers at different tickets, and if you lump them together the cheaper, higher-volume flatwork searches eat the budget and your high-margin decorative work never shows. We split them into their own campaigns with their own budgets so each gets funded on its own return.
Most burned concrete contractors were sold clicks, not pours. Broad keywords with no negatives paid for DIY tutorials, one campaign mixed cheap flatwork with high-ticket decorative, and no line ran from spend to a signed estimate. We rebuild around negatives, job-type splits, tracking, and a landing page built to convert, then report what a booked pour cost. If the numbers still don't work, we tell you to stop.
In cold-weather markets, yes, pours slow when temperatures drop and searches soften, so we scale budget to the season instead of burning it on months you can't book. In warm markets it runs closer to year-round. We plan the budget calendar around when your crew can actually pour.
There is no flat number. It depends on your service radius, competition, the mix of driveways versus decorative work, and your target ticket. We size a budget at the strategy call so it's enough to gather real data without lighting money on fire, and management is quoted separately. Ad spend goes straight to Google; we never mark it up.
Yes, and they should. Paid gets the driveway and patio phone ringing this week while SEO and the Google Maps 3-pack climb over the next several months. Run together, paid covers you today and organic lowers your cost per lead over time. We keep them from competing for the same clicks and the same budget.
[ 08 ] WHAT COMES NEXT
The rest of the build works alongside this.
The map side: Google Business Profile and 3-pack work that wins the driveway and patio calls you shouldn't have to pay for.
→A hand-coded concrete website built to load under 2 seconds and turn paid clicks into signed estimates.
→Organic rankings for driveway, stamped, and decorative terms that lower your cost per lead over time, so paid isn't carrying the whole load.
BOOK YOUR FREE STRATEGY CALL
We'll run a free audit of your concrete market and current Ads setup and deliver it in 1-3 business days, with honest cost-per-booked-pour math before you spend a dollar.