Google Ads has a reputation in the AEC world as an expensive way to attract the wrong clicks. That reputation is usually earned by broad campaigns: generic keywords, no negative keywords, and ads that send visitors to the homepage. Engineering searches are low in volume and high in value, so there's little room for waste.
Run narrowly, paid search is one of the few channels that reaches buyers at the exact moment they're looking. It's especially useful for launching a new service line, entering a new geography, supporting a hiring push, or generating inquiries while SEO builds organic visibility.
Google Ads is one of the channels we manage under our Growth Marketing retainer.
We target specific service, market, and location combinations and maintain extensive negative keyword lists to block job seekers, students, salary research, and unrelated industries. In AEC, what you exclude matters as much as what you bid on.
Campaigns focus on the regions where you can actually deliver work — by state, metro area, county, or radius around your offices — with separate budgets for priority markets.
Ads that state what you do, who you do it for, and where, so the wrong prospects self-select out before they click. We lead with your real differentiators and credentials, not generic claims.
Paid traffic deserves a page built for it: one service, one audience, proof from relevant projects, and a clear inquiry path. We build or optimize landing pages so clicks turn into conversations.
Form submissions, proposal requests, and calls from ads are tracked as conversions and tied back to keywords, so bids and budget follow what produces inquiries rather than what produces clicks.
When hiring is the bottleneck, separate search campaigns aimed at engineers in your markets can send candidates directly to your careers pages, complementing your job board listings.
Google Ads is managed monthly as part of a Growth Marketing retainer. Budgets are agreed with you up front and reviewed every month.
Keyword and competitor research, account structure, conversion tracking, and landing page review. If you already have an account, we audit it before changing anything.
Campaigns go live with measured bids and tight targeting. In the early weeks we review search terms closely, adding negatives and cutting waste as real data comes in.
Bid adjustments, ad testing, and budget shifts toward the campaigns producing inquiries, with monthly reporting and clear recommendations.
Click-through rates are diagnostics. We report on what the spend actually produced:
Form submissions, proposal requests, and calls from prospects that match your target clients.
What each qualified inquiry costs, by campaign and by market.
The actual searches triggering your ads, and what we've excluded to protect the budget.
How effectively paid visitors turn into inquiries, and where pages can improve.
Paid search inquiries that turn into proposals and projects, when your CRM lets us track them.
Google Ads delivers visibility now; SEO builds visibility that compounds. Many firms get the best results running both, using paid search data to decide which organic pages to build first.
To reach decision-makers before they search, LinkedIn marketing targets by job title, company, and industry. All three are part of Growth Marketing.
It can, when campaigns are narrow. Search volume for engineering services is lower than in consumer categories, but intent is high and project values are large. The keys are precise keywords, aggressive negative keywords, and landing pages built for the specific service being advertised.
It depends on your markets, how competitive the terms are, and how many inquiries you need. We size a starting budget after keyword research shows realistic search volumes and costs in your geography, then adjust based on cost per qualified inquiry.
Negative keywords are the first line of defense: terms like jobs, careers, salary, internship, and resume are excluded from service campaigns. Ad copy that clearly names the service and audience also discourages irrelevant clicks. If hiring is a priority, we run a separate recruiting campaign so those searches reach your careers page on purpose.
They solve different problems. Google Ads produces visibility immediately and stops when spending stops, while SEO takes longer but keeps working. Many firms start with paid search to generate early inquiries and learn which terms convert, then use that data to prioritize SEO.
Yes. We start with an audit of account structure, keywords, search terms, and conversion tracking, then recommend fixes before making significant changes. Accounts that have run without close management often have wasted spend that can be redirected.
Tell us which services and markets you want to grow. We'll show you what search demand looks like and how a focused campaign would work.
