Greiner Buildings
+400 monthly organic visits from strategic blog content
Built topical authority in post-frame construction and earned organic traffic that compounds without ad spend.
SEO & content by Gridwork.
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PPC for Home Service Contractors
Ads put you in front of someone who needs you today. Run properly, they buy time while the work underneath them compounds.
Rented Traffic or Owned Traffic? You Want Both, in the Right Order
Get StartedMost contractors get sold ads as the strategy. Ads are a faucet. Turn the spend off and the calls stop the same week, at the same rate, forever.
That is fine as a bridge. It is expensive as a permanent plan, and it is the arrangement most agencies quietly prefer, because a client who never builds anything of their own never stops paying.
The way this works inside the Momentum System is simpler. Paid fills the pipeline while the foundation and content work compound underneath it. As organic rankings take over the high-intent searches, ad spend comes down on the terms you now own.
Spend that falls over time is the whole point.
What We Do
What's Included in Gridwork's PPC Management
Six things, each a deliverable rather than an adjective. Google rewards accounts that are actually maintained, and Quality Score is where that shows up in what you pay per click.
Account build or audit
A new account set up properly, or an honest read on the one you have. Most inherited accounts are carrying years of settings nobody has questioned, and the audit usually pays for itself before a single new campaign runs.
Search campaigns on buying-intent terms
"Emergency AC repair" is a customer. "How does an AC work" is a reader. Campaigns get built around the first kind, structured tightly enough that you can tell which terms actually book jobs.
Negative keywords and waste cleanup
The fastest win in most contractor accounts is not a new campaign, it is turning off what is already burning money. Job seekers, DIY searches, and towns you do not serve come out first.
Landing pages built to convert
Sending paid clicks to a homepage is how a good campaign gets blamed for a bad result. Each campaign points at a page that answers the search it came from and asks for the call.
Call and form tracking that attributes
Tracking that ties a booked job back to the search that produced it. If you cannot tell paid leads from organic ones, you cannot tell when it is safe to spend less.
Reporting in jobs, not clicks
A monthly report that says how many calls came in, what they cost, and which campaigns are carrying the account. Impressions and click-through rate are diagnostics, not results.
Honest Fit
When Ads Are Worth It, and When They Are Not
You need calls before SEO can deliver them
Organic takes 6 to 9 months to carry a market. Ads cover that gap. This is the single best reason to run them, and it comes with an end date.
You just opened, moved, or added a service area
No rankings, no reviews, no history in the new market. Paid is the only channel that works on day one.
Your busy season starts in six weeks
Content published today will not rank in time. Ads will run tomorrow. Use them for the season, then let the content you published carry the next one.
Not a fit: ads instead of the foundation
If the plan is to run ads permanently and skip the work underneath, we are not the right agency. You would be paying a management fee on top of a spend that never comes down.
Not a fit: a site that does not convert
Paying for traffic to a page that loses it is the most expensive mistake in this list. Fix the site first, then buy the clicks.
FAQ
Answers to your most pressing questions:
Do you sell PPC on its own?
No. Ads run inside the Momentum System alongside the foundation and content work, not instead of it. Selling a permanent ad retainer to a contractor with no organic presence is how agencies build revenue that depends on the client never getting independent, and it is the opposite of what this business is for. If ads are genuinely all you want, a specialist PPC shop will serve you better and I will say so on the call.
How is this different from Local Services Ads?
Local Services Ads are the pay-per-lead units at the very top of the page with the Google Guaranteed badge, and they are a separate program with its own screening. Google Ads are the paid search results below them, billed per click, with far more control over targeting and messaging. Most contractors should be in both. Local Services Ads have their own page.
What should I expect to spend?
Ad spend goes to Google directly and is separate from anything you pay Gridwork. What it needs to be depends on your market and your trade, and any agency quoting a number before looking at your service area is guessing. Management is scoped as part of the engagement rather than sold as a percentage of spend, so there is no incentive to talk you into a bigger budget.
How quickly do ads start working?
Campaigns can serve within days. Useful data takes a few weeks, and the first month is mostly spent finding what to turn off. Anyone promising a dialed-in account in week one is describing a setup, not a result.
When can I stop paying for ads?
That is the goal, and it is the honest measure of whether the rest of the work is landing. As organic rankings take over the high-intent searches, spend comes down on the terms you now own. Watching that number fall over a year is the point of running both.
Will you work with the account I already have?
Usually, yes. An existing account carries history that Google values, so rebuilding from scratch is rarely the right call. You keep ownership of the account either way, including if we stop working together.
Reviews
What working together looks like.
17 Google reviews
Ana Nixon
3 years ago
John is such a pleasure to work with! His response time is impeccable. He's been immensely helpful with our projects, often going the extra mile to ensure information passed on to us is clear and easily understood.
Caroline Smith
6 months ago
John is super professional and knowledgeable at marketing. You won’t find a better, customer service oriented marketing manager for your business in Asheville. Thanks Gridwork Marketing!
Joshua Zello
1 year ago
Great experience with John and I would highly recommend working with him. It was apparent that he cared about our business and our success, which is hard to find in the SEO world. He took plenty of time to walk us through both basic and advanced techniques to get more noticed and our website has really benefited from his recommendations. 10 out of 10 would recommend that you invest your time and money with John!
The Gridwork Momentum System
Every service sits inside one system.
Ads are the fastest lever in the system and the only one that stops the moment you stop paying. This is where they sit, and why the goal is to need them less each year.
Results
Real outcomes, not traffic screenshots.
Snowbird Outfitters
From 21 to 142 Google reviews in 8 months
A review generation system plus local SEO took a summer camp from invisible to dominant in local search.
Content & SEO by Gridwork. Site designed and built by Openbox9.
Read the case study →Creek Engineering
From page four to page one, 95 first-page rankings across 8 counties
Started with no digital presence under a previous brand name. A full rebrand, new site, and weekly content moved average Google position from 41 to 11, with 52 keywords in the top three.
Design, build, brand, strategy & weekly content by Gridwork.
Read the case study →Pricing
One plan. No contracts. You own everything.
Most agencies sell three tiers so the middle one looks reasonable. There's one here.
$2,000/month
Month to month · Cancel anytime
- The full Momentum System, foundation, content, authority
- You work directly with me, not an account manager
- Everything built is yours, including if we stop
- The 180-day Gridwork Guarantee
For contractors and engineering firms with complex needs, multi-location operations, competitive markets, commercial work, or a business that needs web design and SEO built together from scratch.
- Everything in the Gridwork Momentum System
- Multi-location SEO infrastructure
- Web design and development alongside SEO
- Heavy content production for competitive markets
- Expanded link building and authority campaigns
- More dedicated time and faster execution
Every custom engagement starts with a full strategy conversation. We scope the work to match your market, your growth targets, and where you are today.
Free Resources
Guides worth reading before you hire anyone.
Written for contractors, not marketers. No email required.
SEO vs. Google Ads: Which One Should a Contractor Do First?
Most contractors think getting more reviews is the answer to ranking higher on Google Maps. This article explains why review recency and consistency matter more than total count, and how to build a steady rhythm that signals to Google your business is active right now.
Read the guide →
Why Angi and Thumbtack Are More Expensive Than They Look
This is not an argument that Angi and Thumbtack are always a waste of money. For the right contractor in the right situation, they can produce real business.
Read the guide →
How to Know Where Your Leads Are Actually Coming From
A call comes in. You answer, you close the job, you move on. Good day.
Read the guide →