Scaffolding marketing
Marketing for scaffolding companies that understands hire periods
We have run advertising accounts for Bowman Scaffolding, Cambridge Scaffolding, St Ives Scaffolding, No1 Scaffolding and 1st Scaffolding. The single most valuable thing we learned is that domestic and commercial scaffolding are two different businesses that happen to share a keyword.
In short
Scaffolding marketing in the UK works when the campaign separates domestic and commercial from the first click, because they are two different businesses sharing a yard. Domestic searches are one-off, price-led and close in days; commercial enquiries come from contractors and main builders, take weeks, and are worth many times more per job. The single biggest source of wasted spend is job-seeker traffic, people searching for scaffolding jobs, labourer work, CISRS courses and scaffolding training, which has to be negatived out before any budget figure means anything. Radius should be set on profitability rather than distance, because the cost of getting a wagon and a crew to site is what decides whether a job at forty miles is worth quoting at all.
The two businesses inside one search term
Somebody types “scaffolding Southampton”. They might be a homeowner needing a week's hire so a roofer can replace forty tiles, or a contractor needing eight weeks on a four-storey frontage with a pavement licence and a design. Same three words. One is worth perhaps £600, the other £9,000.
If both live in the same campaign, the domestic searches — higher volume, cheaper clicks, faster to convert — will consume the budget by mid-month. The commercial enquiries, which are the ones that fill a yard for a quarter, never get shown. We have seen this in almost every scaffolding account we have inherited.
So we split them at campaign level, with separate budgets, separate bids, separate ad copy and separate landing pages. Domestic ads talk about speed, price and tidiness. Commercial ads talk about design drawings, TG20 compliance, insurance, licensing and capacity.
The negative keyword list nobody builds
Scaffolding is unusually polluted with searches that can never become a customer. Left unmanaged, they routinely take a third or more of the budget:
| Search type | Examples | Why it costs you |
|---|---|---|
| Employment | scaffolding jobs, scaffolder vacancies, labourer wanted | Very high volume, especially near a city. Pure waste. |
| Training | CISRS, Part 1 course, scaffolding card, training Southampton | Expensive clicks from people entering the trade. |
| Purchase | scaffold tower for sale, boards, fittings, buy scaffolding | Retail intent, not hire intent. |
| DIY / tool hire | scaffold tower hire, HSS, Speedy, DIY platform | Wants a £60 tower, not an erected scaffold. |
| Information | scaffolding regulations, TG20 pdf, how to erect | Research intent, no purchase. |
This list gets extended every week from the actual search terms report. It is tedious and it is where most of the money is saved.
Radius is a profitability decision
Scaffolding profitability is dominated by transport and erect time. A job forty miles out that looks identical on paper to one four miles out is a substantially worse job once you have paid two men to travel twice. So the targeting radius is not a marketing setting — it is a commercial one. We set it from where your jobs are actually profitable, and expand only when the close-in market is genuinely saturated.
What we set up for scaffolders
- Split domestic and commercial campaigns
- Employment and training negative lists from day one
- Call tracking with a 30-second threshold
- Radius set on job profitability, not on ambition
- Google Business Profile with real scaffold photography
- Review automation after each strike
- Missed-call text-back — scaffolders miss a lot of calls
Scaffolders we have worked with
Bowman Scaffolding · Cambridge Scaffolding · St Ives Scaffolding · No1 Scaffolding · 1st Scaffolding
The follow-up point
Scaffolders miss more calls than almost any trade we work with, because the work is physical and often noisy. Missed-call text-back is usually the highest-return thing we install — it costs nothing per enquiry and recovers callers who would otherwise ring the next firm within two minutes.
What people actually search for
Scaffolding search splits into four intents, and they deserve different treatment:
| Intent | Typical search | Value | How we handle it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local hire — domestic | scaffolding hire [town], scaffolders near me | Medium, fast | Core search campaign, tight radius, price-led ad copy, click-to-call prominent. |
| Commercial / contractor | commercial scaffolding contractor, scaffolding design [county] | High, slow | Separate campaign, compliance-led copy, landing page with insurance and TG20 detail. |
| Specific application | chimney scaffold, roof scaffold, temporary roof, edge protection | Medium–high | Dedicated ad groups; these convert well because intent is precise. |
| Price research | how much does scaffolding cost, scaffolding prices UK | Low direct, high SEO | Content, not ads. Ranking for this organically captures people early and cheaply. |
The price question. Scaffolding buyers ask what it costs before anything else, and most scaffolding websites refuse to say. Publishing an honest range with the variables — height, duration, access, licence — loses you a few tyre-kickers and materially raises the quality of the enquiries that arrive. It also ranks, because it is what people search.
Scaffolding marketing questions
How much does it cost to get scaffolding leads?
In our accounts, cost per enquiry for domestic scaffolding typically lands somewhere between £15 and £45 depending on how competitive the town is. Commercial enquiries cost more per lead and are worth several times as much. The number that matters is not cost per lead but cost per job won — if you convert one in three quotes and a job is worth £900, a £40 lead is very cheap indeed.
Why do my Google Ads bring people looking for scaffolding jobs?
Because ‘scaffolding’ on broad match matches job-seekers, CISRS course searches, scaffold tower purchases and hire-shop queries. This is the single biggest waste in almost every scaffolding account we take over. The fix is an aggressive negative keyword list — jobs, vacancies, careers, course, training, CISRS, for sale, buy, tower, DIY, hire shop — extended weekly from the real search terms report.
Should I advertise for domestic or commercial work?
Both, in separate campaigns. Domestic is higher volume, shorter hire, faster decisions and priced by the job. Commercial is lower volume, longer hire, relationship-driven and worth far more per contract. If they share a campaign, the cheap domestic clicks eat the budget and you never see the commercial enquiries.
Is SEO worth it for a scaffolding company?
Yes, and Google Business Profile especially. ‘Scaffolding near me’ and ‘scaffolders in [town]’ are high-volume searches where the map pack takes most of the clicks. A profile with genuine recent reviews and real photographs of your own scaffolds will often out-earn a great deal of website work.
What about the seasonality?
Scaffolding demand tracks the work it supports. Roofing and render drive spring-to-autumn peaks; commercial and new-build smooth it. January and February are usually thin for domestic. We normally reduce domestic budget over winter and hold or increase the commercial side, because commercial buyers plan in the quiet months.
Related
Talk to a human
Filling the yard, or filling the diary?
Tell us whether you need domestic volume or commercial contracts. They need completely different campaigns and we will build for the one you actually want.