The Client
Certified LiftMaster Repair Guys is a gate and gate opener repair company based in Pasadena, California, serving the Los Angeles area. We built and ran their Google Ads, a call-only campaign that grew phone calls from the ads from 12 a month to 49.
Their customers are homeowners and property managers with a gate that won't open, a dead gate motor or a lost remote. Nobody researches a broken gate for a week. They search, they call, and the first company that answers usually gets the job.
"12 calls from the ads in April 2021. 49 in November 2021."
The Challenge
Google Ads for gate repair companies in Los Angeles is a crowded, expensive market:
- Urgent, phone-first customers. A stuck gate is a security problem, so people want to talk to someone now, not fill out a form.
- Brand-name confusion. Many searches mention opener brands, and many of those searchers want parts, manuals or the manufacturer, not a repair company.
- Garage door overlap. Gate searches sit next to garage door searches, and the two attract different jobs.
- Big-metro competition. Los Angeles has hundreds of gate and garage door companies bidding on the same few searches.
What We Built
1. A Call-Only Campaign
We built a call-only Search campaign: ads that show a phone number and place a call when tapped, with no website visit in between. For an urgent repair business, every click is a conversation. This one campaign produced every call in the results below.
2. Gate Repair Keywords, Not Generic Ones
Our campaigns carried 85 gate repair keywords, from "gate repair" and "electric gate repair" to "gate opener repair", "driveway gate repair", "wrought iron gate repair", "gate motor repair" and "gate remote replacement". The single keyword "gate repair" produced nearly two in three calls.
3. A 50-Mile Radius Around Pasadena
The ads targeted a 50-mile radius around Pasadena, covering the San Gabriel Valley and most of greater Los Angeles, where the company's technicians work.
4. Manual Bidding With Call Tracking
We ran the campaign on manual cost-per-click bidding so every bid stayed under our control, with Google's call tracking counting each call from the ads as a conversion.
5. A Search Test, Then Focus
In 2019 we tested a standard Search campaign alongside the call-only campaign. Calls came from the call-only ads, so the budget went there.
6. Daily Optimization via Ad Campaign Concierge™
The campaign was reviewed daily through our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ system: search-term reviews, bid changes by keyword, and budget kept on the searches that produced calls.
The Results
- 290+ phone calls from the ads, from $17K+ in ad spend, about $60 a call across the engagement.
- Monthly calls up 4x: from 12 in April 2021 to 49 in November 2021.
- 270+ calls in 2021 alone, from March to December.
- Cost per call down to about $51 in the final quarter, October to December 2021, as call volume peaked.
Key Takeaways
- For urgent repairs, skip the website. Call-only ads turn a click into a conversation, which is what a homeowner with a stuck gate wants.
- The simplest keyword can carry the account. "Gate repair" produced most of the calls. Broad lists matter less than bidding hard on the words people actually use.
- Keep gate and garage door separate. A gate repair campaign should be about gates; mixing in garage door searches dilutes both.
- Volume and cost can improve together. As the campaign matured, calls quadrupled while the cost per call fell.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a gate repair call cost on Google Ads?
Across the engagement, Certified LiftMaster Repair Guys paid about $60 per phone call from the ads. In the final quarter, October to December 2021, the cost fell to about $51 a call.
Do call-only ads work for gate repair?
They did here. A single call-only campaign produced every one of the 290+ calls, and monthly calls grew from 12 in April 2021 to 49 in November 2021.
What do people search when their gate breaks?
Mostly the plain words. The keyword 'gate repair' alone produced nearly two in three calls. 'Electric gate repair', 'gate opener repair', 'driveway gate repair' and 'automatic gate repair' brought most of the rest.
How many calls can a local gate repair company expect from Google Ads?
On a budget of roughly $1,100 to $2,200 a month, this campaign grew from about 15 calls a month in spring 2021 to about 40 a month from October to December 2021.
About This Campaign
Gate repair lead generation on Google Ads, built with our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ optimization system.
Industry: Home Services (Gate & Gate Opener Repair) Platforms: Google Ads (Search, call-only) Location: Pasadena and the Los Angeles area, California Account Duration: July 2019 to December 2021, with the campaign relaunched in March 2021. The engagement has ended.
Leads are phone calls from the call-only ads, as recorded by Google Ads call tracking for our LPA campaign. Clicks, website visits and directions are excluded. Earlier Smart campaigns in the account were not built by us and are not counted. All amounts are in US dollars and rounded down. The client website link points to an archived copy from the engagement period.