Topics: Google Ads / SEA, high-intent keywords, conversion rates, YMYL, Google Ads optimisation
As a Google Ads specialist, expectation management is part of everyday work. How much do Google Ads cost? How many new enquiries per week can I expect? When will we see the first results? Especially during the initial consultation, clients often end up asking about the best-case scenario: “And what has been your best campaign so far?”
I don’t particularly like answering this question. Not because my best campaign was bad – quite the opposite – but because my best campaign…
- was not primarily successful because of me,
- and the answer would be misleading because most companies probably couldn’t replicate that benchmark.
So, my best campaign: a conversion rate of over 60%, cost per conversion around CHF 15, and return on ad spend in the mid four-digit range. The campaign was neither particularly creative nor technically unusual. How is that possible? Quite simple… it was an emergency electrician.
Some industries can hardly fail with Google Ads
There are a few services and products that are so well suited for Google Ads that it’s almost impossible to fail with them. And the conditions for this are actually quite intuitive: whenever customers mainly need to find a trustworthy provider immediately.
The common characteristics can be defined quite clearly:
- An urgent problem
- Few alternative solutions
- Short decision time
SEA for emergency and on-call services
The most obvious example has already been mentioned: almost all on-call services – from locksmiths to towing and roadside assistance to emergency electricians or emergency heating repair – fall exactly into this category. Users who type a search query like “power outage Sunday” into Google usually don’t compare prices or decide to deal with the issue the next day. The risk of financial or other damage outweighs that.
Whoever appears in the number one search result at the right moment, looks trustworthy, and offers a direct way to get in touch (phone number) will very likely receive the enquiry.
Legal, financial and medical services
There are also a few other services that (to varying degrees) fall into this high-intent niche but are somewhat more complex. People searching online for toothache treatment, criminal defence lawyers, or insolvency advice are usually not in a position to postpone or ignore the issue.
Unlike locksmith services, however, providers in these fields should proceed with caution – and rightly so. So-called YMYL topics (“your money or your life”) are often subject to strict requirements, both legally and within the Google Ads policies.
Do I even need an Ads specialist then?
If Ads campaigns in these industries are really such a guaranteed success, you might quickly wonder whether it’s even worth hiring a marketing freelancer or agency. As a business owner, you could surely write a few keywords and ad texts yourself, right? I would still recommend getting advice and support from a specialist.
Google has made campaign creation very simple, but certain settings can still “break” a campaign. For example, if you let Google guide you through campaign creation, you’ll be pushed rather quickly into creating a so-called PMAX campaign or a search campaign with display retargeting. In other words, a user who had an emergency will then see banner, YouTube and Discover ads for your emergency service for the next few weeks. That’s wasted money: I promise you nobody drills into a power cable again just because they’ve seen enough of your ads.
Expertise pays off (literally)
Even with the correct settings, the most important lever remains: appear as high as possible in as many relevant search queries as possible, while avoiding wasted impressions. That requires experience. Is “impression share” enough as an optimisation goal, or is your campaign one of the rare cases where manual bidding strategies still make sense in 2026? Who is the right target audience: should tenants be excluded directly, or does the data show that not only property owners use your emergency service?
In these high-intent niches, click prices are also often extremely high. The keyword “heating emergency service”, for example, costs CHF 8.89 per click. At those CPC levels, every irrelevant click hurts, especially since it reduces the daily budget available for truly relevant impressions.
Professional optimisation of such high-intent campaigns saves money precisely because experienced SEA specialists know which mistakes to avoid and which search queries you don’t want to appear for without limiting the campaign’s success.
Thinking about running Ads now?
Whether you work in exactly such a “high-intent industry” or not: Google Ads can be worthwhile for many businesses... if they are set up correctly. As an digital marketing freelancer with many years of Google Ads experience, I’m happy to advise you on SEA.
Your no-obligation initial consultation is just one email away.