Paid Search for Gas Engineers
An empty week in July costs you far more than the ads would have.
Idle capacity is the expensive thing, not the advertising
A gas appliance service is £125. A hob connection, £255. An emergency gas repair, £255. A power flush, £615.
Now think about your year rather than your job values. October to January you’re turning work away. May to August the phone barely rings and you’re sitting at home.
A quiet week in summer isn’t a week where you saved money. It’s a week where you earned nothing — and at four or five jobs a day that’s over a thousand pounds of capacity gone. Do that for eight weeks and it’s the single biggest cost in your business, and it doesn’t appear on any invoice.
That’s what paid search is for in your trade. Not year-round lead generation — filling the months where your van would otherwise be parked.
The maths is straightforward. If a booked job costs you £20 in advertising and it’s a £255 hob connection, that’s £235 of margin you would not otherwise have had. Fill twelve summer days that way and you’ve added several thousand pounds to a quarter that was going to be quiet.
And there’s a better prize on the same budget. A letting agent with thirty properties is thirty certificates a year, every year. Advertise for landlord work in summer, when agents are catching up on compliance before the autumn rush, and one account can be worth more than the entire year’s ad spend — recurring, indefinitely.
Where it works hardest
Summer, when you’re quiet. Your problem isn’t winter demand, it’s the April-to-September gap. That’s the only time we’d normally advise spending.
Landlord certificates. Higher value than a domestic service, and a landlord who tries you once may bring a portfolio. That’s a lead worth paying for.
Power flushes and larger jobs. At £615 there’s actually room for a paid click.
Covering a genuinely quiet patch. A new area, a slow month, a gap after losing a big customer.
Never for boiler installs against national companies. You will not out-spend them and the clicks are expensive.
What we’d actually do
Build two campaigns and run them hard through your quiet months.
Landlord certificates first, because that’s where a single win compounds. Targeted at agents and portfolio landlords, with copy about turnaround and volume rather than about being friendly and local. One account here changes your year.
Domestic servicing second, aimed at the “book your boiler service before winter” message that lands well in late summer. Tight radius, strong negatives, priced so the margin holds.
Then measure cost per booked job properly — not clicks, jobs — and scale the campaign that’s working rather than splitting budget evenly across both.
Then taper from October, because you don’t need to pay for demand you already have. That’s not us pulling back; it’s the spend going where it earns.
Alongside it we’d have the reminder system running, because every customer these ads win should come back next year for free. Ads that win a customer once are expensive. Ads that win a customer who returns for a decade are cheap — and that’s entirely down to what happens after the job.
The first 90 days
Timed to your season, because for a gas engineer when matters as much as how much.
Weeks one to two. Both campaigns built — landlord certificates and domestic servicing — with tight geography and a strong negative list. Call tracking in place before a click is bought, so we’re measuring booked jobs rather than guessing.
Weeks two to four. Live at a controlled budget. Landlord campaign weighted heavier, because that’s where a single win pays for everything. First pruning pass at around three weeks.
Month two. Cost per booked job settling. We’d expect it comfortably inside £25, and we’d be scaling whichever campaign is clearing that most easily rather than splitting evenly.
Month three. The measure is whether your quiet weeks filled. If summer capacity is being used and one landlord account has landed, the quarter has paid for itself several times over — and the landlord account keeps paying every year after.
Running throughout: every customer these ads win goes into the reminder system, so next year they come back without any advertising at all. That’s what makes paid worth doing at your job values rather than marginal.
Start in spring, not August. The campaign wants to be proven and tuned before your quiet stretch arrives, not built during it.
What good looks like
Cost per booked job under £25. At a £125 service that leaves solid margin, and at £255 it’s very comfortable.
Summer capacity filled. The measure isn’t leads, it’s whether your quiet weeks stopped being quiet.
At least one landlord account per season. That’s the win that compounds — thirty certificates a year, recurring.
Rebooking rate on ad-won customers above 80%, because that’s what turns a £20 acquisition cost into a decade of revenue.
The mistakes we see most
Not running it at all. An empty summer costs more than the ads ever would, and most gas engineers simply accept the quiet months as inevitable.
Running it in winter. You’re already full. Save the budget for when it can actually buy you work.
Wide radius. Cheap clicks, long drives, no margin.
No negatives. DIY and parts searches will eat the budget.
Chasing boiler installs. National advertisers own that space.
Not measuring cost per job. Cost per click is meaningless if you don’t know the conversion rate.
What’s it worth?
Summer capacity filled 12 days · average job £255 · cost per booked job £19
£3,060 of work for £228 of spend — plus a landlord account that recurs every year after.
Every job feeds Gaffer
Every service records the property and next date. Reminders fire automatically. Landlord certificates go out same-day. This is the thing we’d want working before you spend a penny on advertising.
Questions gas engineers ask
Can ads really pay at £125 a service?
At £19 a booked job, yes — comfortably. And once that customer is in the reminder system they come back every year for nothing, which is what really makes it work.
When should I run them?
Spring through summer, hard. Taper from October when you’re full anyway.
What if I want to grow fast?
Push the landlord campaign. One agent with thirty properties is worth more than a season of domestic call-outs and it recurs indefinitely.
Everyone else offers a full ad package.
Ask them your average job value and what cost per job they’d target. If they can’t answer, they haven’t done the sums.
What if I take on a second engineer?
That changes things — more capacity means summer gaps cost you more, and a modest ad budget becomes easier to justify. Worth revisiting then rather than now.
Free review · Bigger outfit? Talk to us
See what we'd do for gas engineers
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.