Let’s talk about Google Ads. Not the theory you’ll find in some marketing textbook—the actual reality of running paid search campaigns for asphalt contractors in 2024.
I’ve been running Google Ads campaigns for paving companies across the country for years now, and I can tell you this: when it’s done right, it’s the fastest way to get your phone ringing with qualified leads. When it’s done wrong, it’s the fastest way to burn through a couple thousand dollars with nothing to show for it.
The difference comes down to understanding how this whole system actually works—and more importantly, what works specifically for local home service businesses like yours.
Why Google Ads Makes Sense for Asphalt Contractors
Here’s the fundamental reason Google Ads works: you’re putting your business in front of people who are actively searching for what you do, right when they need it.
Think about it. Someone types “asphalt paving company near me” or “driveway sealcoating Minneapolis” into Google—they’re not browsing, they’re shopping. They’ve got a driveway that needs work, they’re comparing options, and they’re ready to call someone this week.
Google Ads puts you at the top of that search result before they even see your competitors. That positioning matters. The first few results get the majority of clicks, and if you’re not there, someone else is getting that call.
The other advantage is speed. SEO takes months to build up. Google Ads can have you ranking at the top within a couple of hours of launching a campaign. For contractors who need leads now—not six months from now—that matters.
The Reality of Ad Spend: You Need at Least $2,000 a Month
Let’s get this out of the way early: if you’re going to run Google Ads for asphalt paving, you need to budget at least $2,000 per month. Preferably more if you’re in a competitive market like Denver, Chicago, or anywhere in California.
Here’s why: clicks in the home services space aren’t cheap. Depending on your market, you might be paying anywhere from $5 to $15+ per click for good keywords like “asphalt paving contractor” or “driveway replacement.” That’s just what it costs when you’re competing against other contractors and national companies with deep pockets.
Let’s do the math. At $10 per click (a reasonable average), $2,000 gets you about 200 clicks per month. If your landing page converts at 15%—which is solid—that’s about 30 leads. If you close 30% of those leads, you’re looking at 9-10 jobs from that ad spend.
For most asphalt contractors, 9 jobs easily covers that $2,000 investment and then some. A typical residential driveway project might net you $3,000-$5,000 in profit. A commercial parking lot? You could be looking at $20,000+. The ROI is there, but you need enough budget to get through the door in the first place.
Running Google Ads on $500 or $1,000 a month in this industry is like showing up to a job with half the crew and wondering why you’re not getting it done. You’re just not working with enough volume to make it work.
How Google Ads Actually Works
Google Ads operates like an auction, but it’s not just about who bids the highest. Google’s trying to make money every time someone clicks an ad, so they want to show ads that people will actually click on and that lead to good outcomes. That’s where Quality Score comes in.
Your Quality Score is Google’s way of measuring how relevant and useful your ad is. It’s based on things like your click-through rate (are people actually clicking your ad?), how relevant your keywords are to your ad copy, how relevant your landing page is to what people searched for, and your overall account history.
Here’s what matters: a higher Quality Score means you pay less per click and your ads show up in better positions. Two contractors could bid the same amount, but the one with a better Quality Score wins the auction and pays less to do it.
This is why you can’t just throw money at Google Ads and expect results. You need good ads, relevant keywords, and landing pages that actually deliver what you promised in the ad.
Choosing the Right Keywords
This is where most contractors either win or lose. Your keywords determine who sees your ads and how much you pay for each click.
Start with Search Campaigns, Not Performance Max
You’ll hear a lot about Performance Max campaigns from Google. They push them hard because they’re automated and easy. Here’s my take: they’re terrible for local home services.
Performance Max spreads your budget across Google Search, Display Network, YouTube, Gmail—basically everywhere Google can stick an ad. For a national e-commerce brand, fine. For an asphalt contractor trying to reach property owners in a 30-mile radius? It’s a waste of money.
Stick with Search campaigns. That’s where you control exactly which keywords trigger your ads and where your budget goes to people actively searching for your services.
The Types of Keywords You Should Use
There are four match types in Google Ads. Here’s how they work and when to use them:
Broad Match is when you enter a keyword like “asphalt paving” and Google shows your ad for anything remotely related”asphalt supplier,” “asphalt driveway sealer,” “asphalt paving jobs.” It’s too loose. You’ll waste money on irrelevant clicks. I don’t recommend using straight broad match unless you’re pairing it with very strong negative keywords and have a healthy budget to test with.
Broad Match Modifier used to exist but Google killed it off. It’s gone, so don’t worry about it.
Phrase Match is when you enter something like “asphalt paving company” and your ad shows up for searches that include that phrase in order but can have words before or after. So “best asphalt paving company Minneapolis” would trigger your ad, but “asphalt company that does paving” might not. This gives you more control while still capturing variations.
Exact Match is the most precise. You enter [asphalt paving Minneapolis] and your ad only shows up for that exact search or very close variants like “asphalt paving in Minneapolis.” You’re paying for exactly what you want.
For asphalt contractors, I typically recommend a mix of phrase match and exact match keywords. You want enough control to avoid wasting money on junk clicks, but enough flexibility to capture people who phrase things differently than you expect.
Building Your Keyword List
Start with the obvious service-based keywords:
- Asphalt paving + your city
- Driveway paving + your city
- Parking lot paving + your city
- Asphalt sealcoating + your city
- Asphalt repair + your city
Then add modifiers that indicate commercial intent:
- “near me”
- “contractor”
- “company”
- “cost”
- “estimate”
Avoid keywords that are too general. “Asphalt” by itself is going to pull in people looking for asphalt supplies, asphalt roofing, job listings, everything. You want people looking for contractors, not materials.
Negative Keywords Are Just as Important
You need to tell Google what you don’t want your ads showing up for. This is critical for keeping your costs down.
Add these as negative keywords:
- Jobs, careers, employment, hiring
- Supplies, supplier, materials, bulk
- DIY, do it yourself, how to
- Craigslist
- Free, cheap
- Your competitors’ business names (unless you’re intentionally going after their brand traffic, which is aggressive but sometimes effective)
Every time someone clicks your ad because they’re looking for a job or trying to buy asphalt in bulk, that’s $5-$10 you just wasted. Negative keywords prevent that.
Organizing Keywords into Ad Groups
Don’t just throw all your keywords into one big campaign. Break them into ad groups based on search intent.
For example:
- General Asphalt Paving: “asphalt paving,” “asphalt paving contractor,” “asphalt company”
- Residential Driveway: “driveway paving,” “residential asphalt,” “driveway replacement”
- Commercial Parking Lot: “parking lot paving,” “commercial asphalt,” “parking lot repair”
- Sealcoating: “asphalt sealcoating,” “driveway sealing,” “parking lot sealcoating”
This matters because you want your ad copy to match what people are searching for. Someone looking for driveway work doesn’t need to see an ad talking about commercial parking lots.
Writing Ads That Actually Get Clicks
Your text ads need to do two things: match what people searched for and give them a reason to click you instead of the competitor right below you.
Headlines
You get three headlines. The first two show up consistently, the third shows up sometimes. Here’s how to use them:
Headline 1: Use your main keyword. If someone searched “asphalt paving Minneapolis,” your headline should say “Asphalt Paving in Minneapolis” or “Minneapolis Asphalt Paving.” Google bolds keywords in ads that match the search query, which increases click-through rate.
Headline 2: This is where you differentiate. Use social proof, credentials, or a clear value proposition. “Family Owned & Operated Since 1998” or “Free Estimates in 24 Hours” or “Licensed & Insured MN Contractor.”
Headline 3: Reinforce your value or add a call to action. “Call Today for Your Free Quote” or “Serving the Twin Cities Metro.”
Description
You get two description lines with up to 90 characters each. Use them to:
- Highlight specific services
- Include trust signals (licensed, insured, warranties)
- Add a clear call to action (call now, get a free estimate, request a quote)
Example: “Professional asphalt paving for driveways, parking lots, and private roads. Licensed and insured with 25 years of experience in the Minneapolis area. Call today for a free, no-obligation estimate.”
Make Your Display URL Relevant
Your display URL shows in green below your headline. Google lets you customize this to include keywords, which helps with relevance and click-through rate.
If your website is “jsmithpaving.com,” your display URL could show as “jsmithpaving.com/Asphalt-Paving” or “jsmithpaving.com/Minneapolis-Paving.” This tells people exactly where they’re going and reinforces that you’re relevant to their search.
Using Ad Extensions to Take Up More Space
Ad extensions give you more real estate on the search results page and provide more ways for people to contact you. Use these:
Location Extension
Connect your Google Business Profile to your ads. This shows your address, phone number, and review stars right in the ad. For local contractors, this is essential. It also makes you eligible to show up in the map results above organic search.
Call Extension
Add your phone number directly to the ad. On mobile, people can tap to call immediately without even visiting your website. Make sure you’re tracking these calls so you know which ads are driving them.
Callout Extensions
These are short snippets of text that highlight benefits or services. Examples:
- “Free Estimates”
- “Commercial & Residential”
- “Family Owned Since 1998”
- “Licensed & Insured”
- “2-Year Warranty”
You can add up to 10 of these, though not all will show at once.
Sitelink Extensions
These are additional links below your main ad that point to specific pages on your website. Use them to send people directly to:
- Your services page
- Your service area page
- A gallery of past projects
- Your about page
- A contact form
The more extensions you use, the more space your ad takes up on the page and the more likely you are to get clicked.
Setting Up Your Campaign Correctly
When you create a new campaign in Google Ads, you’ll go through a series of settings. Here’s what to choose:
Campaign Goal: Select “Leads” or “Website Traffic.” Both work fine for contractors.
Campaign Type: Choose “Search.” Ignore Display, Video, Performance Max—stick with Search campaigns where you control the keywords.
Campaign Name: Name it something that makes sense to you. “MN Asphalt Paving – Residential” or “Chicago Sealcoating – Commercial.” You’ll thank yourself later when you’re managing multiple campaigns.
Networks: Uncheck “Include Google Display Network” and “Include Google Search Partners.” You want your ads showing only on Google’s main search results. Display Network is banner ads on websites, which doesn’t work for local contractors. Search Partners are smaller search engines that send low-quality traffic.
Locations: This is critical. Set your location targeting to the specific area you serve—either a radius around your city or specific zip codes.
And here’s the important part: change the default location setting from “Presence or interest” to “Presence.” If you leave it on “Presence or interest,” Google will show your ads to people in California who are searching for “asphalt paving Chicago” because they’re “interested” in Chicago. You don’t want that. You only want people who are physically located in your service area.
Languages: English, unless you’re specifically targeting Spanish-speaking customers.
Budget: Start with at least $65-$70 per day, which gets you to around $2,000 per month. You can adjust this as you see what’s working.
Bidding: This is where you control how much you’re willing to pay per click. I recommend starting with “Manual CPC” (manual cost-per-click) so you have full control. Google will push you toward automated bidding strategies like “Maximize Conversions,” but those work better once you have conversion data. When you’re starting out, manual bidding lets you set maximum bids and avoid overspending.
The Landing Page Makes or Breaks Everything
You can have the perfect ad, but if your landing page sucks, you’re wasting money.
When someone clicks your ad, they should land on a page that:
Matches what they searched for. If your ad says “Driveway Paving in Denver,” the landing page better be about driveway paving in Denver, not a generic homepage.
Has a clear headline. Make it obvious they’re in the right place. “Professional Driveway Paving in Denver” works. “Welcome to Our Website” doesn’t.
Shows what you do. Include your main services, the areas you serve, and why someone should choose you over the other guy.
Makes it easy to contact you. Big, obvious phone number at the top. A simple contact form—name, phone, email, brief description of the project. Don’t ask for their life story.
Includes trust signals. Years in business, licenses, insurance, certifications, better business bureau rating, past project photos, customer reviews.
Looks good on mobile. Most of your clicks are coming from phones. If your landing page is a mess on mobile, you’re losing jobs.
Here’s what you don’t want: links to other pages, navigation menus, blog sidebars, anything that distracts from the goal of getting them to call or fill out the form. The whole point of a landing page is to convert visitors into leads. Every link you add is an opportunity for them to click away and never come back.
Tracking Conversions So You Actually Know What’s Working
If you’re not tracking conversions, you’re flying blind. You need to know which ads, keywords, and campaigns are actually generating leads so you can double down on what works and kill what doesn’t.
There are three main types of conversions to track:
Form Submissions: When someone fills out your contact form, Google needs to know that happened. You do this by adding a conversion tracking code to the “thank you” page that shows up after they submit. Every time someone hits that thank you page, Google counts it as a conversion.
Calls from Your Website: When someone clicks your ad, goes to your website, and calls the phone number on your site, that’s a conversion. You can track this using Google’s call tracking numbers or a third-party call tracking service like CallRail.
Calls from Your Ads: When someone clicks the phone number directly in your ad (especially on mobile), that’s a conversion. Google can track these automatically through the call extension.
Set up all three. Most contractors get leads through both forms and phone calls, so you need to track both to understand your true conversion rate and cost per lead.
Managing Your Campaign After Launch
Launching the campaign is just the beginning. The real work is monitoring performance and making adjustments.
Check your campaign every few days for the first couple weeks. Look at which keywords are getting clicks, what your cost per click is running, and whether you’re getting conversions. If you’re burning through your daily budget by noon, you might need to lower your bids or add more negative keywords.
Add negative keywords regularly. Look at the search terms report in Google Ads to see exactly what people searched for before clicking your ad. You’ll find stuff you never would have thought of. Add anything irrelevant as a negative keyword.
Pause underperforming keywords. If a keyword has spent $200 with no conversions, it might not be worth keeping. Either lower the bid significantly or pause it and shift that budget to keywords that are working.
Test different ad copy. Google Ads lets you run multiple ads in each ad group. Create 2-3 variations with different headlines or descriptions and see which one gets more clicks and conversions. Then pause the losers and create new variations to test against the winner.
Adjust bids based on performance. If a keyword is converting well and you’re not spending your full budget, raise the bid to get more traffic. If a keyword is too expensive and not converting, lower the bid or pause it.
This is an ongoing process. Google Ads isn’t a “set it and forget it” thing. The contractors who get the best results are the ones who are actively managing their campaigns and making small improvements every week.
When to Call in a Professional
Look, I run Google Ads campaigns for asphalt contractors for a living. So I’m obviously biased. But here’s the honest truth: running your own Google Ads campaign is absolutely doable, but it takes time and there’s a learning curve.
If you’ve got the time and the interest to learn how this stuff works, go for it. You can save the agency fee and have full control over everything. Just expect to make some expensive mistakes along the way—everyone does when they’re learning.
But if you’d rather spend your time running jobs, managing crews, and handling estimates, hiring someone who already knows what they’re doing can make sense. A good agency or consultant should be able to get you better results for less money than you’d spend figuring it out yourself. They’ve already made all the mistakes on someone else’s dime.
The key is finding someone who actually understands local home service businesses. Plenty of marketing agencies will happily take your money and run generic campaigns that don’t work. You want someone who knows the paving industry, understands your local market, and has a track record of getting results for contractors like you.
Final Thoughts
Google Ads works for asphalt contractors. I’ve seen it generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue for clients over the years. But it requires a real budget, smart strategy, and consistent management.
If you’re willing to invest at least $2,000 a month, set up your campaigns correctly, and actively manage performance, you can build a reliable lead generation system that keeps your crews busy year-round.
Or if you’d rather focus on running your business while someone else handles the ads, that’s what we do at 28 Circles. Either way, the opportunity is there if you’re ready to take it seriously.