Electrician Advertising: Say What a Nervous Homeowner Needs to Read

Nobody hires an electrician the way they hire a painter. A bad paint job looks bad. A bad electrical job can burn the house down, and most homeowners know that even if they couldn't tell a breaker from a bus bar. So they read electrician ads with one question running underneath. Is this person going to make my house safer or more dangerous?

You can see that worry in the search data. When people add a word to “electrician”, it's usually a trust word or a money word: licensed, best, master, cheap, cost, 24 hour. Each one points at something your ad needs to say, or at a crowd you'd rather not pay for. I'll go through them with Google's numbers, then look at when emergency calls peak and what advertisers bid for each search.

If you haven't decided which jobs to go after yet (generators, EV chargers, panels), start with our piece on electrician marketing aimed at the jobs that pay. This one is about the ad itself.

The words homeowners put next to “electrician”

Google's Keyword Planner counts how often each search gets typed. Below are average monthly US searches for the plain term and for a handful of the words people attach to it.

The plain search dwarfs everything, which is normal for any trade. The modifiers are where it gets useful. “Licensed” draws more than twice as many searches as “best” or “cheap”. People who bother to type a qualifier type a safety word more often than a bargain word. That's my reading of eight rows of rounded data, not a survey, but it fits a trade where a mistake can start a fire.

Keep in mind that the 368,000 people typing plain “electrician near me” have the same worries. They just did not type them. Your ad is where you answer the question they didn't ask.

“Licensed” is the claim your ad has to carry

Searches for a licensed electrician barely move through the year.

November and December were the low months, at 6,600. Every other month sat at 8,100 or 9,900. That's steady demand for proof of a license in every season, so the license claim belongs in your ads all year, not just when you're busy. How to say it, if it's true for you:

• Put “licensed” in a headline if you hold the license your state requires for the work you're advertising. It's one short word, and it's the word those 8,100 searchers a month are filtering on.
• Show the license number on the landing page where your state issues one, near the top instead of in the footer. A homeowner who wants to look it up shouldn't have to hunt for it.
• Use “master electrician” only if one is on staff and on the jobs you're advertising. At 590 searches a month it's a small group, but the people typing it know what the title means and they'll ask.
• Add insured and permits pulled, if both are true. They answer the same fear from a different side.

Emergency calls peak in winter and in summer

Emergency searches swing far more than licensed ones. This is “emergency electrician near me” over the same eleven months.

The quietest month was November at 5,400. January, February and August all reached 18,100, more than three times that. December, March, June and July sat at 14,800. So there are two busy stretches, deep winter and high summer, with a dip in late spring and a hard low in the fall.

Why? I'd guess heating loads and winter storms on one side and air conditioning and summer storms on the other, both pushing old panels and circuits past what they can handle. That's interpretation. The national numbers show when, not why, and your county may look different. Pull the same search for your own state in Keyword Planner before you plan a budget around it.

“24 hour electrician” is the same need typed in advance, 2,400 searches a month on average, and it carries the highest bids of any search in this article (more on bids below). Advertisers clearly think a night call is worth a lot. It is, to the company that picks up.

So write “24 hour” or “open now” only if a person answers at 2 a.m. If calls go to voicemail after six, run the emergency ads on a schedule that matches the hours you cover and put those hours in the ad. Somebody standing in a dark kitchen would rather read “until 10 p.m.” and get a person than read “24/7” and get a recording.

“Cheap” is a crowd to skip, unless cheap is your business

“Cheap electrician near me” gets 3,600 searches a month, as many as “best electrician near me”, and advertisers bid $19 to $130 to show up at the top for it. Before you join them, ask yourself if you're the cheapest electrician in town and want to stay that way.

Most shops aren't and shouldn't try. In my view, a homeowner who typed cheap is going to compare quotes on price and little else, and the permit fee becomes an argument. If that is not the customer you want, add “cheap” as a negative keyword so your ads stay off that search. Our guide to negative keywords shows how to set one up.

Price still matters to everybody, though. “Electrician cost per hour” draws 720 searches a month from people who want a number before they pick up the phone. You can meet them with a price signal in the ad, as long as you'll honor it. A service call fee, a flat rate for a common job, or a line saying the price is agreed before work starts. It turns away the bargain hunters and tells everyone else there won't be a surprise on the invoice.

“Best” means reviews, so the ad has to point there

Nobody believes an ad that calls its own company the best. The 3,600 people a month typing “best electrician near me” are going to check for themselves, and the 260 typing “electrician reviews” already are. You will not win that with adjectives. You can point at evidence.

• A rating or review count in the ad, if it's accurate and current.
• Years in business and the town you work from, if both are real.
• A landing page that opens with reviews naming the job (“rewired our kitchen”, “fixed the panel the same afternoon”), not a stock photo of a smiling man in a hard hat.
• Photos of your own panels and installs, tidy enough that another electrician wouldn't wince.

The ad earns the click. The page has to survive the comparison.

Which claims belong in an electrician ad

You can't fit all of these into a headline, so pick by search. Licensed and permits pulled on the ads for planned work. Your real hours and an answered phone on the emergency ads. A price signal wherever bargain hunters have been eating the budget.

What advertisers bid for these searches

Keyword Planner also reports a top-of-page bid range for each search, the low and high end of what advertisers bid to land above the free results. That is a bid. It is not what a click costs on average, and it isn't what you'd pay. Your own account's average cost per click is the figure to budget on.

I'd compare the low ends, because a high end can come from a handful of aggressive bidders. The urgent search starts highest at $41, about double the $21 low end for plain “electrician near me”. “Licensed electrician near me” starts lowest at $13, though it's the search with the clearest buyer behind it. My guess is that fewer advertisers target that wording on its own, which would make it one of the better buys on the list. Check it in your own account before you count on that.

The “electrician advertising” row isn't about homeowners. That search gets 260 a month, and the $18 to $97 range is what agencies and software companies bid to reach an electrician reading about ads. Probably you, right now. Fair enough, but when someone pitches you, ask which of the searches above they'd pay for and which they'd block. Our study of click prices across home service trades puts electrical next to the other trades if you want the wider view.

The same claims on the van, the profile and the sign

Search ads aren't the only place these claims go. If Local Services Ads are available for your category and area, Google screens the business before the ad runs, which standard search ads don't require, and the Google Verified badge that comes out of it does some of the license work for you. That last part is my read, not Google's promise.

Vans, yard signs and your Google Business Profile should say the same things as the ads. Licensed, the hours you answer, the license number where your state issues one. A homeowner who sees the van on Tuesday and the ad on Friday should recognize the same company. For the campaign side, budgets, structure and the negative list, the Google Ads for electricians guide goes into detail.

Before your next ad goes live

1. 1Read each ad as a nervous homeowner would. Does at least one of them say licensed?
2. 2Check every hours claim against who answers the phone at those hours.
3. 3Decide whether you want the cheap crowd, and block it if you don't.
4. 4Put a price signal in at least one ad, if you'll stand behind it.
5. 5Make the landing page open with the license number, reviews that name jobs and photos of your own work.
6. 6Pull “emergency electrician near me” for your state and set the budget around your own peaks, not the national ones.