When a basement floor drain backs up, the homeowner calls the first company that looks competent and answers. Backup call capture is built for that moment: search ads aimed at urgent drain searches, scheduled to your staffed hours, routed to a person who can book the job, and tracked so you know which calls were real backups and what they cost.
The job, the buyer, the offer
The job: urgent work such as main-line backups, floor drain overflows, toilets that won't clear and kitchen lines that stop on a holiday weekend.
The buyer: a homeowner or tenant who is stressed, on a phone, and not comparing prices for long. They want to know you can come today and roughly what the visit costs.
The offer: a clear, honest promise you can keep. "A technician can usually be there today" is fine if it's true. A flat call-out or clearing price, if you use one, belongs in the ad and on the page so nobody is surprised at the door.
What we build
- An ad account in your name, structured by job type: backups and emergencies, routine drain clearing, camera inspections, sewer repair. Each gets its own budget so urgent work can't be starved by planned work.
- Call-only and call-asset ads for phone searches, plus a short landing page for people who want to read first.
- An ad schedule matched to your coverage. If evenings are covered and overnight is not, the ads stop at the point your phone stops being answered.
- Location settings that match the areas your trucks can reach in a reasonable time.
- Negative keyword lists for work you don't do, jobs, DIY searches and free-advice searches.
- Call tracking and routing through a tracking number that forwards to your dispatcher or on-call phone, with recordings if you choose to use them and your local rules allow it.
Timeline
- Week 1: review of any existing account, your call log and your staffed hours.
- Weeks 2–3: account build or rebuild, tracking numbers, landing page, conversion setup.
- Weeks 4–8: launch at a controlled budget, daily checks for the first two weeks, then weekly.
- Month 3 onward: budget moves toward the job types and hours that produce booked work.
How results are measured
The number that matters is cost per booked job, not cost per click. We get it by matching tracked calls to your booking records. Here is an illustration with made-up numbers, so you can check the arithmetic:
- Monthly ad spend: $3,000
- Tracked calls from ads: 100
- Calls that were real, in-area drain jobs: 60
- Jobs booked: 36
Cost per booked job is $3,000 ÷ 36, or about $83. If your average urgent drain ticket is worth several times that, the campaign pays; if a third of the "booked" jobs were cancelled, the real number is higher, and that's what we report. Plan fees are listed on the pricing page and are separate from ad spend.
Mistakes to avoid
- Advertising hours nobody covers. Calls to voicemail are paid for and lost.
- One campaign for every drain job. Planned work quietly eats the emergency budget.
- Counting clicks as results. A click is not a call, and a call is not a job.
- No price signal at all. Homeowners who fear a surprise bill keep scrolling.
- Letting the account sit in the agency's name. If you leave, you should take your account and its history with you. With us, it's yours from day one.
Where this fits
Ads buy time while local search builds up, and they cover the hours when map listings alone aren't enough. A backup job is also the start of the bigger conversation: many urgent clearings end with a recommendation to run a camera, which is where camera-inspection content takes over. If your phones go unanswered while crews are on jobs, a missed-call text-back service can help; ask us about options during your consultation.
We manage the marketing. We are not a contractor, and we never send technicians or attend calls.
Frequently asked questions
Should drain ads run 24 hours a day?
Only if someone answers 24 hours a day. We schedule ads to the hours your phone is actually covered, and widen the schedule when your coverage widens.
What is a call-only ad?
It's a search ad built so that tapping it on a phone starts a call instead of opening a web page. For urgent drain searches it often suits the buyer better than a landing page.
Who pays for the ad clicks?
You do, directly to the ad platform, in an account in your company's name. Our plan fee covers managing the account; the ad budget is separate and you set it.
Can you stop us getting calls for jobs we don't do?
Mostly, yes. Negative keywords, location settings and ad wording filter out a lot of unwanted calls, such as commercial jetting or septic pumping if you don't offer them. No filter is perfect, and we review the call log to keep tightening it.
Do Google Local Services Ads work for drain companies?
They can, but check eligibility for your location first. Google's Local Services help page lists plumbers as a category and tells businesses to check whether the ads are available in their area (as of October 2026).