Paid Search for Electricians
The opportunity isn’t “electrician near me”. It’s EV charging.
Where the money actually is in paid
“Electrician near me” is one of the more contested searches in the trades. Everyone bids on it, clicks are expensive, and what it mostly delivers is small reactive work — a £266 EICR or a £581 lighting circuit. You can make it pay, but the margin is thin and you’re fighting everybody.
Meanwhile there’s a search with high value, well-funded customers, growing demand and far less competition, and most electricians barely touch it: EV charger installation.
At £1,015 a job there’s real room for a paid click. The customer has just spent tens of thousands on a car and is not looking for the cheapest installer. They research properly, they read, and they’re comparing on competence rather than price. That’s a much better paid customer than someone whose kitchen light has stopped working.
The second opportunity is landlord and EICR work. A letting agent who tries you once with a single property can turn into a portfolio, which makes a paid lead worth far more than the job it arrives as.
Rewires at £3,990 are worth advertising too, though the consideration period is longer and the volume lower.
What actually works
EV charging as its own campaign, with a proper landing page covering grants, load, supply and what makes one install different from another. Not a line on a services page.
Landlord and EICR campaigns targeted at business searches, not homeowner ones. Different language entirely.
Rewire campaigns with remarketing, because that decision takes weeks.
Tight geography. Standard for every trade and routinely ignored.
Heavy negatives. “Course”, “training”, “jobs”, “salary”, “apprenticeship”, “parts”, “wholesale”. Electrical searches attract enormous amounts of trade and career traffic that will never hire you.
Skip the generic terms unless everything else is already working.
What we’d actually do
Start with EV charging, because it’s the best-value opportunity and the easiest to prove. Dedicated landing page, tight radius, decent negatives, modest budget.
Then landlord and EICR, aimed at agents and portfolio owners, with copy about turnaround and volume rather than about being friendly and local.
Then measure cost per booked job separately for each. They’ll be very different numbers and averaging them hides what’s working.
Then remarketing for the higher-value work, so someone who read your rewire page in March sees you again in April when they’re actually ready.
What we wouldn’t do is put your budget into “electrician near me” and hope. That’s where most electricians’ ad money goes and it’s the least efficient part of the market.
The first 90 days
Weeks one to three. EV charging campaign built first, with a proper landing page covering grants, supply, load management and what separates a good install from a cheap one. This page is the bulk of the work and it’s what makes the campaign profitable — sending high-value researched traffic to a generic services page wastes it entirely.
Week three onwards. Campaign live at a modest budget, tight radius, heavy trade negatives. EV searches attract a lot of people researching cars rather than installers, so the negative list matters more than usual here.
Month two. Landlord and EICR campaign added, aimed at agents and portfolio owners. Different copy entirely — turnaround times and capacity, not “friendly local electrician”. We’d track these leads to account value rather than first job value, because judging a letting agent on a £266 EICR badly undervalues them.
Month three. Both campaigns reporting separately, never blended. By now the EV cost per booked job should be clear and comfortably inside the £1,015 job value. If landlord work has produced even one agent relationship, that alone will usually justify the quarter.
What we’d resist throughout is the temptation to switch on generic “electrician” terms because volume looks low. Low volume at good margin beats high volume at no margin, and generic terms are where electricians’ budgets go to disappear.
What good looks like
EV campaign cost per job under £100. At £1,015 that’s comfortable.
Landlord leads tracked to account value, not job value. One agent is worth many single jobs, and judging that lead on a £266 EICR undervalues it enormously.
Generic terms switched off unless the specific campaigns are already maxed.
Cost per job reported by campaign, never blended.
The mistakes we see most
Bidding on “electrician”. Expensive, contested, and it brings small work.
No EV landing page. Sending high-value researched traffic to a homepage wastes it.
No trade negatives. You’ll fund a lot of people looking for courses and jobs.
Judging landlord leads on first job value. Undervalues the best leads you get.
Wide radius. Same as every trade.
Running everything as one campaign. Hides which part works.
What’s it worth?
EV install £1,015 · cost per booked job £74
Every £74 returns £1,015 — and EV customers tend to come back for other work.
Every enquiry lands in Gaffer
Enquiries arrive tagged with the campaign and page, so you know whether it’s an EV lead or a landlord one before you ring back. Certificates go out same-day, which is what turns a single agent job into a portfolio. Service reminders bring the EICR cycle round again.
Questions electricians ask
Is EV work worth specialising in?
It’s the clearest growth line in domestic electrical work and the customers are better funded. Yes.
Should I bid on my own name?
Usually only if competitors are, which does happen. Cheap to defend when needed.
What about solar and battery?
Same logic — high value, researched, worth its own campaign if you do it. Anything where the customer reads before buying suits paid search well.
Do EV customers actually convert, or just research?
Both, which is why remarketing matters. A lot of them read in month one and install in month three, once the car’s arrived.
Ad spend separate?
Always, in your own account.
Free review · Bigger outfit? Talk to us
See what we'd do for electricians
Put your website in and we'll tell you what's losing you work — speed, mobile, your Google profile, reviews and the pages you're missing. Two minutes, no call unless you want one.