The short version
- Residential service calls and commercial contracts are two different businesses, and they need two different marketing plans.
- For residential work, the Google map pack, Local Services Ads, and reviews drive most of the calls.
- High-ticket jobs like panel upgrades, EV chargers, and generators deserve their own pages and their own ad campaigns.
- Commercial work comes from relationships with general contractors, property managers, and facility managers, so your marketing should support those conversations.
- Call tracking tied to booked revenue is the only way to tell which spend is working.
Electrician marketing goes wrong most often when a shop treats every customer the same. A homeowner with a dead outlet and a property manager with eight buildings find you in different ways, decide in different ways, and care about different things. If your website and ad budget try to speak to both at once, they usually reach neither.
So split the plan. Below is how we’d set up marketing for an electrical contractor doing $1 million to $15 million a year, with residential first and commercial second.
Residential electrician marketing starts on the map
When a homeowner searches “electrician near me,” the top of the page usually shows Local Services Ads, then the map pack, then organic results. Most residential calls come from the first two.
Google Business Profile
Set your primary category to “Electrician.” Add secondary categories that match your real work, such as “Lighting contractor” or “Electrical installation service.” List every service with a short description. Set the service area to the towns you want work from, and upload real job photos every couple of weeks: panels, trucks, techs, finished installs.
Our guide on how to rank in Google’s map pack covers the details, including why proximity to your address limits how far out you’ll rank.
Local Services Ads
Google Local Services Ads charge per lead, and electrical leads often cost $30 to $100 depending on market and job type. They rank on reviews, response time, and hours. Answer fast, keep your hours accurate, and dispute junk leads weekly. LSAs are usually the best paid channel for residential service calls.
Reviews
Automate review requests by text when a job closes. Housecall Pro, ServiceTitan, and Jobber have built-in tools, or use NiceJob or Podium. Have techs mention it before they leave. A shop that adds eight to fifteen reviews a month will pull ahead of one that adds two, all else equal.
Build pages for the jobs that pay best
A $250 outlet repair and a $4,500 panel upgrade show up in the same ad account if you let them. They shouldn’t. The big jobs deserve their own pages and their own campaigns.
For most residential electricians, the high-value list looks like this:
- Panel upgrades and replacements
- EV charger installation
- Whole-home generators and transfer switches
- Rewiring older homes
- Service upgrades (100 amp to 200 amp)
- Surge protection
Each page should explain the job in plain English, give a realistic price range, cover permits and inspections, and show photos of your own installs. Homeowners researching a generator or EV charger read a lot before they call. The shop that answers their questions on the page tends to get the call.
Then run Google Ads campaigns pointed at those pages. Clicks for “panel upgrade” or “generator installation” may cost $12 to $45, but one job can cover a month of spend. Keep these campaigns separate from general service terms so you can see the return on each.
Watch the search terms report every week. Generator campaigns pull in people looking for portable generator repair, and EV charger campaigns attract searches for public charging stations. Add those as negative keywords early or they’ll eat a real chunk of your budget. Also check that the landing page phone number is a tracking number, so a call from a $40 click gets credited to the right campaign.
Utility rebates and tax credits change often, so if you mention them on a page, date the section and review it every quarter. A stale rebate claim costs you trust on the first call.
Commercial work runs on relationships
Commercial electrical work rarely starts with a Google search. It starts with a general contractor who needs a sub they trust, a property manager who’s tired of their current electrician, or a facility manager with a budget for LED retrofits.
Your marketing for commercial work should help those relationships along. That means:
- A commercial section on your website with project examples, licenses, insurance limits, bonding capacity, and safety record (EMR if you have a good one).
- A short capabilities statement as a PDF you can email after a meeting.
- A target list of 50 to 150 GCs, property managers, and facility managers in your area, kept in HubSpot or a simple CRM.
- Regular contact with that list: a quick email when you finish a notable project, a lunch-and-learn on code changes, a check-in before budget season.
- LinkedIn profiles for the owner and estimator that look current and show recent work.
None of this is flashy. It works because commercial buyers want a contractor who shows up, bids accurately, and doesn’t cause problems on the job. Your marketing proves you’re that contractor before the first bid.
If you’re mostly B2B, our post on fractional CMOs for B2B companies covers how to build a pipeline around a target account list.
Track calls and tie them to revenue
Most residential leads arrive by phone. Without call tracking, every call looks like it came from “Google,” and you can’t tell LSAs from the map pack from paid search.
Use CallRail or WhatConverts to assign tracking numbers by source and swap numbers on your website by visitor source. Then connect lead source to booked jobs in your field service software. The number to watch is cost per booked job by channel, and for big-ticket work, revenue per channel.
Build a simple monthly dashboard in Looker Studio with five numbers: calls by source, booking rate, average ticket, cost per booked job, and total revenue by source. That’s enough to make real decisions. Our marketing KPI dashboard guide shows how we lay one out.
Recruiting is part of electrician marketing now
For a lot of electrical contractors, the limit on growth isn’t leads. It’s licensed electricians. If you can’t staff the work, more marketing just means more unhappy customers waiting for a callback.
Put some of your marketing effort toward hiring. A careers page with real pay ranges, benefits, and photos of your crew does more than a generic job board post. Short videos of your techs talking about the job work well on Facebook and Instagram, which is where many tradespeople spend their scroll time. Apprentice programs and relationships with local trade schools build a pipeline for the next five years.
FAQ
How much should an electrical contractor spend on marketing?
Residential-focused shops usually spend 5% to 10% of revenue. Commercial-heavy contractors spend less on ads and more on estimator time and relationship building, often 2% to 4% in direct marketing costs.
What’s the best lead source for residential electricians?
For most, Google Local Services Ads and the map pack produce the most calls per dollar. Referrals and repeat customers come next once you have a few years of reviews behind you.
Should electricians run Google Ads?
Yes, for high-value jobs like panel upgrades, generators, and EV chargers. Keep those campaigns separate from small service calls so you can measure them.
Does social media work for electrician marketing?
It helps with recruiting and brand recognition. It rarely drives service calls on its own, so don’t put it ahead of Google.
If you’d like a plan that splits residential and commercial the right way, reach out and we’ll talk through where your next dollar should go.
This is the Foxy account shared by our leadership team, Ethan, Jonathan and Helen. Our writing is inspired by situations we encounter (or would like to encounter) with our clients. We aim to post new articles about AI, SEO, PPC, marketing automation and all the other related topics that appear in our day-to-day marketing lives.
