Google Ads · Scaffolders
Google Ads for scaffolding companies, built around the hire period
A scaffolding account has one structural decision and one housekeeping job. The decision is separating domestic hire from commercial contract work. The housekeeping is stopping the trade from paying to advertise itself to people who want a CISRS card.
In short
Google Ads for scaffolders in the UK needs a different build from a generic Google Ads account, and this is how PipelineOS structures it. Four campaigns, and the split is not stylistic. Domestic hire, commercial and contractor work, specific applications, and a small brand-defence campaign. The first ad group to build is Domestic scaffolding hire: highest volume, cheapest clicks. The most common way this goes wrong: running one campaign called “Scaffolding” and wondering why the commercial enquiries stopped.
How we build it
Four campaigns, and the split is not stylistic. Domestic hire, commercial and contractor work, specific applications, and a small brand-defence campaign. Domestic and commercial cannot share a budget because domestic clicks are cheaper and convert in hours, so by the middle of the month they will have eaten everything and the eight-week frontage job never saw your ad. Separate campaigns mean separate daily budgets, which is the only budget control Google genuinely respects.
Match types stay tight for longer than in most trades. “Scaffolding” on broad match is one of the worst keywords in UK search advertising, because it matches vacancies, courses, card renewals, tower hire and boards for sale. We launch on phrase and exact only, build the negative list from the search terms report every week, and do not test broad until the list has three months behind it. The employment and training negatives go on before the account spends a penny, at account level, not campaign level.
Bidding differs by campaign. Domestic gets enough conversions to run target CPA within a few weeks. Commercial rarely does — four enquiries a month is not a training signal — so it stays on manual or maximise clicks with a hard CPC cap, and we judge it on enquiry quality rather than cost. Geography is presence-only, and the radius is drawn from where a job is still profitable once two men have travelled twice, not from where you would like to work. Scheduling runs domestic from 7am, because homeowners ring before work, with Saturday morning on; commercial runs weekday office hours only, because a contracts manager is not searching at 8pm.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Domestic scaffolding hire | scaffolding hire [town], scaffolders near me, scaffolding for roof repair | Highest volume, cheapest clicks. Target CPA once thirty conversions are in. Click-to-call prominent, ad copy leads on speed and tidiness. |
| Commercial and contractor | commercial scaffolding contractor, scaffolding design [county], TG20 compliant scaffolding | Bid two to three times the domestic CPC and accept it. Manual bids, office-hours schedule, landing page carrying insurance levels and design capability. |
| Specific applications | chimney scaffold, temporary roof scaffold, edge protection, loading bay scaffold | Precise intent and unusually good conversion rates. Worth its own ad copy naming the application, because the generic ad loses to a competitor who says the word. |
| Pavement licence and access | scaffolding pavement licence [council], road closure scaffolding, scaffolding over footpath | Low volume, serious buyers, often commercial. Keep at exact match and route to a page that explains who applies for the licence and how long the council takes. |
Running Google Ads for a scaffolder business already?Send us view access or a screenshot and we will tell you what we would change first, at no charge.
Call 07443 392243WhatsAppBudget and the arithmetic
A scaffolding firm covering one county realistically works at £600–£1,500 a month of ad spend, weighted maybe 70/30 toward domestic in summer and reversed over winter. Clicks sit around £2.50–£6 for domestic terms and £5–£12 for commercial ones. Cost per enquiry lands in the £15–£45 range for domestic hire and £60–£150 for commercial, and both of those are wide because town competitiveness moves them more than anything we do.
The arithmetic is straightforward. A domestic hire is commonly worth £600–£1,200 and scaffolders quote a lot and win perhaps one in three. At a £35 enquiry cost that is around £105 of advertising to win a £800 job, which works comfortably. Commercial is worth £4,000–£15,000 over a longer hire, closes nearer one in five, and still works at £120 an enquiry. Where it stops working is a firm running at capacity: paying for enquiries you cannot service is the most expensive thing in this list, and the right answer is to pause the domestic campaign rather than quote badly.
Four ways this goes wrong
- Running one campaign called “Scaffolding” and wondering why the commercial enquiries stopped. They did not stop; the domestic clicks spent the budget before lunchtime.
- Leaving the employment negatives until month two. Near a city, “scaffolding jobs” traffic can take a third of a first month before anyone reads the search terms report.
- Bidding on “scaffold tower hire” because it contains the word. That person wants a £60 tower from a hire shop and will never buy an erected scaffold.
- Setting a fifty-mile radius to look ambitious. Transport and erect time dominate scaffolding margin, so the far half of that radius is paying to win jobs that lose money.
The two pages behind this one
This page is the intersection. For the wider picture:
Google Ads in general
Everything about marketing for scaffolders
Questions
Why do my scaffolding ads bring people looking for work?
Because Google matches “scaffolding” to vacancies, CISRS courses and card renewals unless you tell it not to. The fix is an account-level negative list covering jobs, vacancies, careers, apprenticeship, CISRS, course, training, for sale, buy, tower and DIY, extended weekly from the real search terms report. It is dull work and it is where most of the money is saved.
Should the commercial campaign use automated bidding?
Usually not at first. Smart Bidding needs conversion volume to learn from, and a commercial scaffolding campaign producing four or five enquiries a month gives it almost nothing. We run manual bids with a CPC ceiling until there is enough history, then test target CPA. Automating too early on thin data tends to bid up on whatever converted by chance.
What should the ad copy say for domestic hire?
Speed, coverage and tidiness, plus a hint at price. Homeowners ringing about a week's hire want to know you can be there this week, that you cover their postcode and that the drive will not be wrecked. Naming a minimum job size in the copy costs a few clicks and removes the calls about one storey of scaffold for two days.
Related
Talk to a human
Google Ads for your scaffolder business
Tell us the area you cover and your average job value. We will say what is realistic before you spend anything.