Google Ads for painting contractors: what to run, what to kill, what a lead should cost

By Steve Meitler · 2026-07-15 · 5 min read

Budgets, the three campaigns worth running, the keywords that drain a painting account, negative lists, and real cost per lead for interior and cabinets.

Google Ads is the fastest way for a painting company to buy estimate appointments and the fastest way to burn $2,000 finding out you were paying for people who want a job, not a painter. Both outcomes come from the same account settings. The difference is about four hours of setup.

What a lead actually costs

Real ranges from painting accounts in mid-size and large US metros:

• Interior repaint terms: $8 to $18 per click, $60 to $140 per lead
• Exterior house painting: $10 to $22 per click, $70 to $180 per lead
• Cabinet refinishing: $12 to $28 per click, $80 to $220 per lead
• Commercial painting: $6 to $15 per click, but a longer sales cycle

Those are leads, not jobs. A painting company that closes a third of the estimates it runs and averages $3,200 a project can pay $150 a lead and still make money, which is why painting tolerates ad costs that would sink a lower-ticket trade. Run your own version of that math before you set a budget, and check the assumptions against the pricing guide.

Budget: below $1,500 a month, do something else

Google needs volume to learn and you need enough leads to judge the account. At $12 average cost per click, $1,000 a month buys about 83 clicks. At a 12% lead rate that is ten leads, which is not enough to tell a good campaign from a bad one.

Start at $1,500 to $3,000 a month in a metro, $1,000 in a small market, and commit to 90 days. Anything less and you are paying for the learning period twice.

The three campaigns that work

1. Service and city search, exact and phrase match. One ad group per service, not one ad group with everything in it:

• "interior painters [city]", "interior house painting [city]"
• "exterior house painters [city]", "house painting company [city]"
• "cabinet painting [city]", "kitchen cabinet refinishing near me"

Each ad group points at its own landing page. An exterior click that lands on your home page converts at roughly half the rate of one that lands on a page about exterior painting with photos of exteriors.

2. Local Services Ads, if you qualify. LSAs sit above the regular search results, charge per lead rather than per click, and require license and insurance verification. In painting they typically run $30 to $90 a lead, cheaper than search, and the Google Guaranteed badge does real work with a homeowner deciding who to let in the house. Run them alongside search, not instead of it, because LSA volume alone is rarely enough to fill a schedule.

3. A small remarketing campaign. $5 a day showing your before and after images to people who visited an estimate page and did not call. Painting decisions take one to three weeks, so this is one of the few display placements worth buying in this trade.

The keywords that quietly eat the budget

Painting has the worst search ambiguity of any trade. These waste money in nearly every account:

• Broad match "painters" and "painting" (pulls in artists, art classes, painting companies hiring, and "paint by numbers")
• "painting jobs", "painter wanted", "painter salary", "painter apprentice" (job seekers, and there are a lot of them)
• "how to paint" and any tutorial phrasing (DIY, will never hire you)
• Paint brand names on their own, such as searches for a specific product line (people looking for a store)
• "cheap painters", "budget painting" (price shoppers who will not accept a real bid)

Build the negative list before you turn the campaign on: jobs, hiring, career, salary, apprentice, resume, near me free, DIY, how to, tutorial, art, artist, canvas, watercolor, paint by number, wholesale, supplier, store, sherwin, benjamin, home depot, lowes.

Then turn off Search Partners and the Display Network in a search campaign. Both are on by default and both spend painting budget on nothing.

Settings that matter more than the ad copy

• Ad schedule. Run ads when a human answers. If the phone goes to voicemail after 5 p.m., either stop the ads at 5 or set up missed-call text-back, which is covered in the follow-up guide.
• Location targeting. Set it to "presence" rather than "presence or interest," or you will pay for clicks from people three states away researching a move.
• Call tracking. Use call extensions with call reporting and a 60-second conversion threshold. Then listen to ten calls a month. Half of what looks like a bad campaign is a bad phone answer.
• Auto-applied recommendations. Turn them off. Google will otherwise broaden your match types back out and undo the work above.
• Conversion actions. Count calls over 60 seconds and form submissions. Do not count page views, and do not let a smart bidding strategy optimize toward a conversion action that fires on everything.

Ad copy for painting

Homeowners scanning results decide on three things: are you local, do you do this specific work, and will you show up. Write to that.

Headlines that pull: "Interior Painters in [City]", "Free Estimate, Usually Same Week", "Licensed, Insured, Owner On Every Job", "Cabinet Refinishing, 4 to 6 Days". Descriptions should carry a real number: "Most interior repaints from $2.50 per square foot. We send the estimate before we leave your driveway."

Skip "quality workmanship" and "satisfaction guaranteed." Every competitor says both, so they read as nothing.

What to check every week

Fifteen minutes: search terms report (add negatives from anything irrelevant), cost per lead by ad group, and the call recordings from three leads. Pause any ad group above twice your target cost per lead after 40 clicks. That is the whole routine.

Frequently asked

Should I run Performance Max? Not as your first campaign. PMax hides the search terms and will happily spend a painting budget on Display and YouTube placements. Get a search campaign profitable first, then test PMax with a separate budget.

How long until it works? Leads usually start in week one; a reliable cost per lead takes 60 to 90 days because painting estimates close over weeks, not hours.

Is Google Ads better than just building up reviews? They solve different problems, and reviews are cheaper. If your profile has fewer than 11 reviews, which is the median for painting contractors, fix that first. Ads sending traffic to a thin profile pay for your competitor's credibility. Start with the benchmark report.

If you want the account built and managed, it is one of the services in the free 14-day trial. Text or call (385) 832-6175.