Most pest control companies set up Google Ads completely wrong.
They throw everything into one campaign. Google hates it. You can’t track it. And your quality score tanks.
I run Pest Control SEO, and I’ve set up Google Ads for dozens of pest control companies. Let me show you the exact campaign structure that actually works.
Campaign Structure: Build It Like Your Website
I actually like to think about the campaign structure for a pest control company the same way we build a website.
Like I mentioned in the SEO section, we like to structure a pest control website by services first.
On your website, you should have a termite control page. You should have a general pest control page. You should have a mosquito control page, a spider control page, all of those general pages.
And then you will have additional pages on top of that, which might be a Chicago page after that termite control page.
That might look like xyzpestcontrol.com slash termite control slash Chicago. And that is your Chicago termite control page.
The Three Levels of Google Ads
We actually like to set up Google Ads campaigns the same way.
First, and just for people that don’t know, for Google Ads, we have three levels. We have the campaigns, we have the ad sets, and then we have the actual ads within the ad sets.
We want to set up campaigns for all of the top services that we want to advertise for.
So again, that will probably be likely very similar to the way we build the site if we do it correctly.
We should have a campaign for termite control. We should have a campaign for mosquito control, a campaign for all of the different really main services that we provide and we want to pay money to get those services.
Then we want to set up ad sets regarding each of the different cities.
And then we can have ads for each of, really setting up different ads for each of those cities. And then changing those out, seeing what works best.
We might be doing slightly different ad copy and slightly different targeting on each of those to figure out which one is best within that ad set of that city.
Should You Use Separate Campaigns for Each Service?
You should.
That’s basically what I mentioned. A lot of people might get this wrong. They might just set up one campaign.
And you guys are probably familiar with this from Facebook ads. You should set up many different campaigns.
And this again goes into structure. When things get really messed up, Google doesn’t like this.
When Google sees that you only set up one campaign and it’s all under one thing, then you can’t track it properly. They are all meshed together. You can’t get a good quality score.
This is just something that is advised against.
So ideally we should have different campaigns for different things. If we’re doing specific campaigns for different services or whatever we want to advertise for different services, we need to make sure that those are split up.
Performance Max vs. Search Ads vs. Display Ads
Those are really the three main types of Google ads. They now have AI Max, which we’ll talk about a little bit later.
Performance Max (PMAX)
Performance max is fairly recent. It’s come out, I believe in the past few years or so.
What it is, it will show up across all of Google’s platforms. So instead of just showing up on Google, now PMAX ads, performance max, PMAX, whatever you want to call it, will show up in people’s Gmail.
You may have seen this, that you’ll see a little ad at the top of your Gmail. That’s PMAX.
You might see that you get some side ads or some banner ads on YouTube. That’s also part of PMAX.
Those are kind of really the two main additional platforms, but it also sometimes goes on other platforms that Google owns.
Really, PMAX is more for brand awareness. If you just want to get in front of as many people as possible, you want them to see you in their inbox and on their YouTube and maybe some of these other Google assets, then that’s a good one.
That’s definitely more for brand awareness, but we have to be aware of that, that we’re not going to be seeing so much of a direct conversion from those. Again, more brand awareness.
Search Ads (Start Here)
Then we have search and display ads. Search ads are the most, really, the more basic ones.
Those are the typical Google ads that you’ll see when you do a search.
At the top, for a normal pest control search, you’ll usually see two local service ads, two Google ads, and then we’ll follow with the map pack and with websites and such.
The search ads, very basic, very straightforward, we’re bidding on keywords, and those are the ones, really, the ones that we should be setting up first.
The same way that I say with the website that we should be getting the location pages set up first, we should also be getting those search ads set up first because those are the ones that are most likely going to generate us customers and revenue, leads, whatever you’d like to say.
Because those are the most bottom of funnel. People are searching the keyword, you bid on the keyword, you show up there, they convert and then they become a customer and you paid for that click, which you’ve probably heard the term PPC, pay per click.
Display Ads
The final one we have is display ads. Display ads are a little bit nuanced.
They’ll usually show up on other websites that may allow you to show your ads and it will be more visual. There will be images versus again, the search ads, it’s just that title, that description. It’ll almost look like a website, but then it will show sponsored.
So those display ads will show up on other websites that may allow you to sponsor, might even show up on the side of a Google search or other things like that.
Usually we like to get search ads set up right away. And for bigger companies, I would recommend setting up PMAX. It usually doesn’t make sense when you’re smaller.
Is Google Pushing PMAX Because It’s More Automated?
Definitely. I mean, all of these platforms, Facebook, Google, whatever, they’re all going to want you to spend more money.
I don’t think there’s necessarily a problem with PMAX, but just keep that in mind that you are getting in front of more people.
I mean, it’s good for branding, but they’re going to want you to spend as much money as possible.
It’s not a waste of money, but let’s go to search ads first.
Which Ad Strategy Gives the Best ROI?
I would say search ads right away, but maybe PMAX on a longer timeframe.
I’m still not a huge fan of PMAX. That’s again, usually for bigger companies.
So I usually recommend getting those search ads in place first and then make sure you’re targeting the right keywords. That’s also a huge component.
How Frequently Should Campaigns Be Reviewed?
I think as a general rule across your socials and across your analytics and your CallRail, everything needs to be checked at least once a week.
Again, that’s your Google Business Profile. That’s your Google ads.
If you’re not checking everything at least once a week, or it doesn’t have to be you, but someone has to be checking in once a week to make sure that things are okay, nothing with the campaigns are broken, we’re not spending way too much money.
Someone that has a baseline competence about these things should be going in there and reviewing and optimizing.
So it doesn’t have to be crazy. Some people will say every day and if you are a massive company, even actually like if you’re above $10 million a year, then you may want to have people checking really every day and that’s across platforms to make sure that nothing is broken, to make sure that you’re not paying too much.
But for smaller companies, up to a million dollars a year, maybe even one to 10 million, we can pretty confidently check just once a week.
Because a lot of this, and going into the actual structure and the strategy, like most other things in digital marketing or at least a lot of other things similar to SEO, is that there’s a lot of setup involved.
But then there’s not too much recurring work.
We want to set up these proper campaigns and we might set up another campaign here or there. It might be a seasonal thing.
But for the most part, there’s a lot of setup required. That’s going to be the bulk of the work. And then we just check in every week, maybe twice a week, three times a week, and we can see how they’re performing.
There was a story about running into an issue early on where a Google My Business was set up with a CallRail number and that CallRail number wasn’t connected to anything. It just died.
Luckily, it was caught within a week’s time because they were checking in on it every few days, but they probably still lost 30, 40 leads in those two days, which is a killer.
What About AI Max?
AI Max is a really interesting one. This has just come out in the past few months or so, depending on when you’re watching this. It came out fairly early 2025.
And this seems like this is where search or really actually advertising platforms are moving towards.
What AI Max says, again, it’s come out pretty recently and it is a really easy way to set up Google Ads campaigns and just be running Google ads.
They automate a lot of the process. They will naturally pull from pages on your website. So you don’t even have to tell them what pages, you don’t even have to tell them what keywords.
They kind of figure it out on their own.
It’s almost like if you’re familiar with local service ads, local service ads are super easy to set up. You literally don’t even mention the keywords, you just mention the services, and then the platform kind of figures it out on its own.
So AI Max is really in the early stages right now, so I’d be cautious to hop on that train yet, but I’d say that’s something to definitely look forward to in the future.
Google’s Way of Competing with Facebook
Facebook has made it way easier recently. And Google has still been pretty complex. It hasn’t been very user friendly.
Now again, local service ads was a great item. That’s kind of separate. And that has been super big in the home services space.
But still Google Ads themselves have been very hard to set up.
That’s also kind of part of this. If you really are running pro ads, then it probably just makes sense to have some kind of professional expert setting them up.
They should be setting up those complex campaigns versus if you’re setting them up yourself. Again, I’d probably advise against this. It’s pretty early with AI Max, but you can potentially just set up a pretty easy AI Max campaign in the future.
And that’s really where everything in digital is going. These platforms are trying to make it as easy as possible to use.
You think of Amazon. Amazon completely revolutionized the distribution market of real products because they make it so easy. The one click to purchase, you already have an account, you already have all your information there. It’s so easy to buy things.
And especially something like Google. Google makes, I forget, it might be like 80 to 90% of all their money from Google ads.
So they really want to make it as easy as possible for people to run Google ads so that they can make more money.
How to Track Google Ads Performance
We need to connect our Google Ads account to our Google Analytics account.
That’s the first item, which I’ve mentioned this before many times before. We need to have Google Analytics set up and properly integrated with our website.
Once we do that, then we can connect it to our Google Search Console and to our Google Ads account.
First, obviously you’ll have to set up all these accounts. You want to make sure that they’re in place, that they’re actually tracking, make sure that we actually have the right accounts.
And obviously Google Analytics is the first thing that we need set up. That is really the core of this.
Setting Up Conversion Events
Then once we have that, Google has actually made Google Analytics easier too.
What you do in Google Analytics is they will have key events or conversion events, whatever you want to call them, of the things that you track on your Google Analytics of your website.
And that might be a form fill, that might be someone spending a lot of time on your website or going to several different pages or clicking to call, any of those different things.
Google Analytics has actually been better about just setting this up for you. I’ve seen this several times.
But occasionally, and you’ll still want to have someone check this for you just to make sure you have all the conversion events in place.
But that goes for organic as well as for paid. So you have those conversion events in place.
And now you also set those up for Google Ads. You’ll want to make sure that those two are tied.
And once you go into your Google Ads account, you can see, are these different things being tracked in Google Analytics?
Track Your Calls with CallRail
And setting the different phone numbers, that’s another component. Do you have something like CallRail in place? Do we have different phone numbers for the Google Ads?
And really we should have a different phone number for each campaign in Google Ads.
We should have a different one, maybe just one for the website, or we could even have one for the different cities of the website, one for each Google Business Profile.
That’s arguably the biggest one, because really what we’re looking for here is calls. We need to make sure that we are tracking the calls properly and we know how many are coming from each campaign.
The Bottom Line for Pest Control Google Ads
Set up separate campaigns for each service. Termite control gets its own campaign. Mosquito control gets its own campaign. Don’t throw everything into one mess.
Structure it like your website: Campaign level for services, ad set level for cities, ads for testing different copy.
Start with search ads. They’re bottom of funnel and convert best. PMAX is for bigger companies focused on brand awareness.
Check campaigns at least once a week. Above $10 million, check daily. Most of the work is upfront setup, not ongoing optimization.
AI Max is interesting but early. It automates everything, but I’d wait to see how it develops.
Connect Google Ads to Google Analytics. Set up conversion events. Use CallRail with different phone numbers for each campaign.
Track calls above everything else. That’s what we’re really after.
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Stop throwing money at one giant campaign. Structure it right from the start.
