Google Ads for bathroom remodelers: budgets, the campaigns that work, and what an estimate costs
The search campaigns that produce estimate requests for a bathroom remodeler, the ones that burn money on browsers, realistic cost per lead, and a real budget.
Google Ads for a bathroom remodeler is a different animal from Google Ads for a plumber. Nobody has a bathroom emergency. The homeowner searching "bathroom remodel cost" at 9 p.m. on a Sunday is three to eight weeks from signing anything and may fill out four forms before she picks one. The account that wins is built for that timeline: it pays for the right searches, lands them on a page with a price range, and follows up fast. The account that loses pays $14 a click for "bathroom ideas" and sends it to a home page with a slideshow.
What a click and a lead really cost
Rough ranges from real accounts, across mid-sized US metros:
- "bathroom remodel" and "bathroom remodeling contractor": $8 to $25 per click
- "tub to shower conversion": $10 to $30 per click
- "walk-in shower installation": $9 to $28 per click
- Competitor franchise names plus "cost" or "reviews": $4 to $12 per click
Landing page conversion on a decent page runs 8% to 15%, so a qualified estimate request costs $60 to $200 in most markets. In Los Angeles, the New York suburbs, the DC area and the Bay Area, double it. If you close one in four estimates at an $18,000 average, a $150 lead becomes a $600 cost per sold project, which is about 3% of revenue. That is a healthy number for this trade. It stops being healthy when half the leads are people who wanted a $400 faucet swap, which is a targeting problem, not a Google problem.
The three campaigns that work
Campaign 1: Core remodel terms. Phrase and exact match only. "bathroom remodel", "bathroom remodeling company", "bathroom renovation contractor", "bath remodel near me", each with your main towns. Landing page is your full remodel page with a price range, three photos, a short form and a tap-to-call button. This is 50% to 60% of the budget.
Campaign 2: Conversions and walk-in showers. "tub to shower conversion", "convert bathtub to shower", "walk-in shower install", "shower remodel", "walk in shower for seniors", "accessible bathroom remodel". Its own landing page with a starting price and financing. These searchers have a specific project in mind and convert better than the core terms. 30% of the budget.
Campaign 3: Franchise comparison. Bid on the names of the one-day bath franchises operating in your market plus "cost", "reviews", "complaints", "vs". Clicks are cheap because few local remodelers do this. The landing page is an honest comparison: what a one-day acrylic system is, what a tiled shower is, what each typically costs, and why a homeowner would choose one or the other. You will not win the people who want cheap and fast. You will win the ones who were about to pay $12,000 for an acrylic liner and did not know they could get tile for the same money. 10% to 20% of the budget.
Schedule all three for the hours someone will call back within five minutes. For most companies that is 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday morning. Running overnight is fine only if the missed-call text-back is live.
The negatives that save a third of the spend
Add these on day one as campaign-level negative keywords, then prune the search terms report every week:
- ideas, inspiration, pictures, photos, pinterest, design app
- diy, how to, yourself, tutorial, video
- vanity, faucet, mirror, cabinet, fan, toilet, tile (as a standalone product search)
- jobs, hiring, salary, careers, school, license
- cheap, free, used, craigslist
- rv, camper, boat, tiny house
- home depot, lowes, ikea, wayfair, amazon
The product negatives are the ones that hurt. "Bathroom tile" sounds related and costs $6 a click, and the searcher is buying tile, not hiring you.
Performance Max, Display and the things that waste money
Performance Max is where Google spends your money on whatever it decides. For a remodeler with a small budget it fills your inbox with form spam and sends clicks to YouTube pre-roll. Leave it off until the search campaigns are profitable and you have 30 or more conversions a month to feed it.
Display campaigns are cheap clicks from people who did not search for anything. Skip them except as retargeting, where a homeowner who visited your tub-to-shower page sees a finished-shower photo for the next two weeks. Retargeting is a small budget, $5 to $15 a day, and it pays.
Broad match is the other money pit. Google will show your ad for "bathroom" plus anything. Stay on phrase and exact until you have months of search term data.
Tracking, or you are guessing
Three things before the first dollar:
- A call tracking number on the ads and the landing pages, with recording, so you know which campaign produced which call and can hear whether it was a homeowner or a sales rep.
- Count a call as a conversion only past 60 seconds. A 20-second call is a wrong number.
- Form submissions as a conversion, with the lead's source written into your CRM or spreadsheet so you can later mark which ones became estimates and which became sold projects.
After two months you want a column that says cost per sold project by campaign. Everything else is a vanity number.
A budget that gives a real answer
Under $1,000 a month in most metros buys 50 to 90 clicks, which is 5 to 12 leads, which is not enough to judge. $1,800 to $3,500 a month across the three campaigns is a real test for a one-crew to three-crew company. Run it for 60 days before deciding; the sales cycle in this trade means month one's leads close in month two or three.
If $2,500 a month feels like a lot, run the calculator first with your average project. One extra sold remodel pays for the whole quarter.
What working looks like after two weeks
Not a lower cost per click. Two weeks in, working looks like 8 to 20 tracked calls and forms you can listen to or read, a search terms report with the junk already pruned, two estimates on the calendar, and a cost per lead you can state out loud. The benchmark report shows how few competitors in your state are set up to compete on reviews and hours, which is part of why search ads in this trade still work.
Frequently asked
Should I run Local Services Ads instead? Local Services Ads list "Bathroom remodeler" as a category in many markets and charge per lead, often $40 to $120. They rank partly on review count, so with 9.4% of the trade over 100 reviews, a company with 60 recent reviews does well. Run both; LSA for the top of the page, search for the specific project terms.
How much do I need to spend on the franchise comparison campaign? $10 to $20 a day. The searches are low volume but the intent is very high. Watch the comparison landing page's conversion rate; if it is under 5%, the page is too defensive and needs real prices.
What if I get leads for projects under $5,000? Add a required budget field on the form with ranges starting at "$8,000 to $12,000" and route anything below your minimum to a polite email. You will lose a few leads and save the estimator a lot of drive time.
Google Ads management is one of the services in the free 14-day trial. No card; ad spend goes to Google on your own account.
Steven has spent the last several years running growth campaigns for local service businesses, bathroom remodeling companies among them, and builds the benchmark datasets on this site from public Google listings. About the editor