Google Ads · Landscapers
Google Ads for landscapers, selling a paid consultation not a free quote
Landscaping advertising fails for a reason unrelated to Google. The offer is wrong. A free quote for a garden scheme means spending a Saturday designing something for a stranger, and the campaign that generates most of those is the one that costs you the most money.
In short
Google Ads for landscapers in the UK needs a different build from a generic Google Ads account, and this is how PipelineOS structures it. Three campaigns and a rule about the fourth. Garden design and full landscaping is the high-value campaign, and its conversion is deliberately not a quote request — it is a booked, paid design consultation, typically £150–£400 and credited against the project. The first ad group to build is Garden design and full landscaping: conversion is a paid consultation booking, not a quote form. The most common way this goes wrong: offering a free quote on full garden schemes.
How we build it
Three campaigns and a rule about the fourth. Garden design and full landscaping is the high-value campaign, and its conversion is deliberately not a quote request — it is a booked, paid design consultation, typically £150–£400 and credited against the project. That single change transforms the account, because it converts fewer people and every one of them has demonstrated they are serious. Hard landscaping — patios, paving, walls, steps — is the second campaign, where a straightforward quote is a reasonable ask because the buyer knows what they want. Fencing and decking is the third: fast, seasonal, impulse-adjacent, cheapest clicks in the account.
The fourth thing, grounds and garden maintenance, we generally advise against advertising to householders at all. A £40 fortnightly cut cannot carry a £30 click, and it will win the budget from the design campaign because it converts so easily. If you want maintenance, chase commercial contracts in a separate office-hours campaign on terms like grounds maintenance contract and estate maintenance tender.
Seasonality is more extreme here than in any other trade on this site. February through June is most of the year’s enquiries; November through January is close to dead for design work. The budget curve is written in advance: heavy from mid-February, peak April and May, tapering from August, and cut to a holding level over winter rather than switched off, so the campaign keeps its history. Scheduling weights evenings and weekend mornings, because people look at their garden on a Saturday and search that afternoon. Geography is tight — landscaping margin dies in travel and spoil disposal — and match types stay on phrase and exact, with heavy negatives for gardener jobs, garden centres, plants, artificial grass supply and landscaping courses.
Ad groups
The account structure in practice. Ad groups stay tight so the ad can genuinely match the search, which lowers cost per click for the same position.
| Ad group | Example keywords | Bids and handling |
|---|---|---|
| Garden design and full landscaping | garden design [town], landscape gardeners [town], complete garden transformation | Conversion is a paid consultation booking, not a quote form. Highest bids, and the ad copy states the consultation fee so it filters before the click. |
| Patios, paving and hard landscaping | patio installation [town], porcelain paving fitted, garden wall and steps builder | A quote is a fair ask here because the scope is obvious. Bid moderately and lead the ad with material choice, which is what this buyer is deciding. |
| Fencing and decking | fence installation [town], garden fencing fitted, composite decking installer | Cheapest clicks, fastest decisions, and violently seasonal. Scale hard in spring and after high winds, which produce a genuine fencing spike. |
| Commercial grounds maintenance | grounds maintenance contract [county], commercial landscaping contractor, estate maintenance tender | Office hours only, exact match, wider radius. Low volume and recurring revenue, which makes a £150 enquiry cost perfectly reasonable. |
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Call 07443 392243WhatsAppBudget and the arithmetic
In season, £500–£1,500 a month is the working range for a design-and-build firm; over winter we cut to £150–£300 simply to keep the account alive. Clicks run £2–£6 on design terms and £1.50–£4 on fencing. Cost per enquiry lands roughly £25–£70, but that number is misleading until you say what an enquiry is.
Here is the arithmetic that matters. With a free-quote offer you might pay £30 an enquiry, convert one in eight, and spend two hours per losing quote — fourteen unpaid hours per job won, which is the real cost and never appears in the ad account. With a paid consultation you pay perhaps £90–£180 per booking because far fewer people convert, but three in four consultations become projects, the consultation fee covers your time, and full schemes run £15,000–£60,000. The second model is dramatically better and looks worse on every standard Google Ads report, which is why it is rarely recommended.
Four ways this goes wrong
- Offering a free quote on full garden schemes. It maximises the metric on the report and fills your weekends with unpaid design work for people collecting ideas.
- Letting maintenance and design share a campaign. Maintenance converts at a fraction of the cost, so automated bidding funnels the money into £40 grass cutting and the design enquiries quietly disappear.
- Running full budget in December. Design searches collapse over winter, and spending through it buys the least motivated buyers of the year at the same click price.
- No negatives for garden centres, plant suppliers, artificial grass rolls and gardener vacancies. These are enormous search volumes that sit right next to your keywords.
The two pages behind this one
This page is the intersection. For the wider picture:
Google Ads in general
Everything about marketing for landscapers
Questions
Will a paid consultation not put people off?
It will, and that is the function. It removes the people collecting ideas and the ones who want a number to argue with their existing contractor. What remains is a shorter list of people who have paid to have you in their garden, which converts at a completely different rate. Set it at £150 to £400, credit it against the project, and state it in the ad.
How should the budget move through the year?
Start increasing in mid-February, peak through April and May, hold June and July, taper from late August and drop to a holding budget from November to January. We would not switch off entirely, because the campaign loses its conversion history and the January and February planners are genuinely valuable buyers for spring work.
Is fencing worth advertising separately?
Yes, because it behaves nothing like design work. It is cheap, fast, decided in a day, and it spikes hard after a period of high winds when half a county has panels down. Kept in its own campaign you can scale it for that week without disturbing anything else. Mixed in, it distorts the whole account’s cost per enquiry.
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