I’ve seen pest control companies spend thousands of dollars on Google Ads campaigns that run across the entire US when they only operate in one or two states.
They miss a little button. And their entire budget gets wasted on clicks from people 2,000 miles away.
I run Pest Control SEO, and I’ve audited dozens of Google Ads accounts. Let me show you exactly how to target your ads so you’re not throwing money away.
The Most Important Thing: Geographic Targeting
The easiest thing we can identify, and obviously this is non-negotiable, is where we are geo-targeting.
We need to make sure that the ads are showing up in the right area.
And you’d be surprised at how many people get this wrong.
I’ve seen Google Ads campaigns, it might be a white label agency setting them up, or it might be virtual assistants setting them up.
And I swear I’ve seen this: pest control companies that are spending thousands and thousands of dollars on Google Ads and they’re running across the US when they’re only in one or two states.
They Hide the Little Button
There’s a little button that people miss. They set it up right away and literally distribute to everyone, not just in their little city.
That’s a super easy thing to mess up.
We need to make sure that we are targeting the right area.
Really, if that’s not being done, then nothing else matters.
The Website Analogy
I always like to make the analogy or the comparison to the website and the other things.
On our website, we should also be geo-targeting. We should have dedicated pages talking about the areas that we’re in.
This is the really interesting intersection between the website and Google Ads. They’re not the same thing, but it’s organic versus paid. But they are very similar in that regard.
Again on your website, you might have a termite control page.
I’ve looked at so many different pest control websites and they will have a termite control page and they will have a mosquito control page and a general pest control page and a spider control page and an ant control page.
And that’s all great, but there’s no geo-targeting. They’re not talking about the city at all.
And specifically actually having a dedicated page for each city and even the city combined with the service.
How can you expect to rank in that area? In the same way, how can you expect your Google Ads to show if you’re targeting the whole US?
And essentially, if you try to sell to everyone, you’re going to get no one because it’s so competitive.
Obviously, I don’t even have to go into this much depth with Google Ads. It’s pretty obvious that you are targeting people in a specific area.
The Three Types of Keyword Match
The other aspect of targeting is what actual keywords to use.
There are three different kinds of keywords regarding your Google Ads: exact match, phrase match, and broad match.
Exact Match
Exact match means that you only want to show up for that exact keyword.
Phrase Match
Then we have phrase match, which is you have that exact keyword, but it might show up slightly different in the search. So we’re going to be targeting that area.
For example, if you have the phrase match of pest control, then you would show up in a search that is pest control near me or how do I do pest control, pest control do it yourself.
So that one can be a little bit risky. Pest control near me would probably be a safer one there.
Broad Match (Use with Caution)
And then the other one we have is broad match.
Usually I advise against this at least initially because broad match is Google kind of just interpreting what the search will be.
And this is kind of how search is evolving in real time. It will be more broad match and it will be more things like AI Max because the searches are becoming more and more complex.
People are used to doing a Google search, trying to keep it as concise as possible. Just, okay, here’s what I want to see. Here’s three, four words.
But now what it’s becoming, as more and more people are using ChatGPT and AI mode is kind of taking over Google search, that’s the head of search at Google is saying that AI mode is the future, which is essentially almost like a hybrid between Google search and something like ChatGPT.
People are doing much longer searches on these platforms.
So broad match does come into play there where there are some of these keywords, you just can’t account for every single keyword.
And there are some of these phrases, someone might say 10 sentences about what they want in a pest control company. How are you going to exact match or phrase match that? It’s going to be a lot tougher.
So it does come into play in that sense, but those are also the three types of keywords that we need to be aware of when we’re targeting.
How to Adjust for Seasonality
Seasonality is a good one.
We always want to, we have our base campaigns like we’ve already talked about of different pests and such and we have also the ad sets within the different cities.
Now, the smaller cities and the smaller ad sets, we probably don’t have to go into each one just because it can get tedious. We might have 20 campaigns set up.
But for I’d say at least our top five to 10 campaigns, it would make sense to run a dedicated ad or maybe even ads targeting that particular season talking about, okay, hey, we have a discount in fall or make sure to watch out for these kinds of pests in winter.
So it’s not a huge deal, but that’s definitely a good add-on that we can have is targeting seasonality.
And we can even edit our existing ads and just put that extra headline in there.
Are Demographic Targeting Options Worth It?
They are, but again, Google’s getting so smart that it doesn’t even really matter anymore.
More and more they are taking over the different aspects of marketing the same way with Facebook. They’re making Facebook advertising way easier.
So this is going to be less of a concern in the future because Google is just going to get so smart that, and really is already so smart, that they already know how to target.
Google Trains on Your Data
Also a big part of this, which is worth mentioning just as a whole regarding Google Ads, is that Google ads in particular are trained on your data the same way with Facebook ads.
There’s going to be a ramp up period of the first month to two months to three months where Google just understands what you are advertising for, about your company, how people are interacting with your ads, how people are interacting with your pages.
That also plays into it that we don’t have to worry so much about demographics because Google is going to train its data and naturally figure out who the best customers are for your company.
So we don’t have to worry about that too much. Google is already going to take care of that over a long enough time because they’re optimizing to make you money so you keep spending money on their platform.
How Keywords, Demographics and Geographies Interact
That is a tongue twister.
The demographics between the people versus where they’re actually at, like I said before, the geographic is the most important.
Generally that’s by zip code. Or if you want to choose by city, kind of the same as local service ads are.
But I guess maybe the question here is how do those two interact with each other?
So you have the people that are in that city. And then you have the keywords that you’re using for that city and you’re targeting those people.
Google Tests Everything for You
Where this plays in, like I was saying earlier, is that Google will test and what you should do when you’re setting up your ads is that you have different headlines and different descriptions for each of your ads.
So you might make 10 headlines and 10 descriptions, whatever you’d like to do. You can do as little as two on each or you can do almost as many as you’d want.
And then Google will naturally, like I said, Google’s taking over more and more of the process. So Google will naturally test and figure out what’s best.
So it’s not even like you have to fully understand it, but you just have to create a good solid section of ads which really you could even use ChatGPT.
Or Google actually even has, you can generate ads within their platform, too. So they make it super easy, so you don’t have to worry too much about that.
Which Negative Keywords Are Most Important?
One of the top ones we want to mention might be other company names because we don’t want to show up for other companies.
That’s one that we probably don’t want to show up for.
But there’s actually not too many negative keywords that we need to set up.
Again, Google’s getting smarter and there’s less and less things that we need to do.
Back in the day when it was 10, 20 years ago when Google was just running Google ads, you had to set up everything manually and honestly, the platform was stupid.
You had to train it, you had to give it all the exact information, but now it is trained much higher.
So we don’t even worry too much about negative keywords.
The Bottom Line on Google Ads Targeting for Pest Control
Geographic targeting is non-negotiable. If you’re targeting the entire US when you only operate in two states, you’re wasting thousands of dollars.
Use zip code or city targeting. Match it to your website’s location pages.
Understand the three keyword match types: exact match (safest), phrase match (moderate), broad match (use cautiously as searches get more complex).
Add seasonal ads for your top 5-10 campaigns. Simple headline changes work.
Don’t worry too much about demographics. Google’s AI trains on your data and figures out your best customers automatically over 1-3 months.
Create 10 headlines and 10 descriptions. Google tests combinations and optimizes automatically.
Negative keywords matter less now. Block competitor names, but Google’s smart enough to handle the rest.
The platform does more and more of the work for you. Your job is to set up the structure correctly and let Google optimize.
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Check that little button. Make sure you’re not targeting the entire country.
