THE SHORT ANSWER
For heat pump installers, Google Ads costs EUR 77 to EUR 513 per enquiry and works out at EUR 231 to EUR 2,565 per signed job once you allow for 3 to 5 enquiries per customer. Sound arithmetic for heat pump installers. At EUR 9,000 to EUR 18,000 per project there is enough gross margin to carry a four-figure acquisition cost and still be worth doing.
A channel that is a bargain for one trade is a money pit for the next one along, and the difference is arithmetic rather than opinion. This page runs Google Ads specifically for heat pump installers: the modelled cost, the volume ceiling, the skill it demands, and a plain verdict at the end.
The relevant economics for this trade: a typical project is worth EUR 9,000 to EUR 18,000, the buyer is a homeowner replacing a gas or oil boiler, demand peaks September to January and bottoms out in June and July, and it takes 3 to 5 genuine enquiries to sign one customer.
The numbers, at a glance
Modelled cost per enquiry: EUR 77 to EUR 513, from clicks at EUR 5.40 to EUR 15.40 converting at 3.0 to 7.0 percent
Modelled cost per signed job: EUR 231 to EUR 2,565, once you allow for 3 to 5 enquiries per customer
Time to first enquiry: days from a standing start
Verdict for heat pump installers: Sound arithmetic for heat pump installers. At EUR 9,000 to EUR 18,000 per project there is enough gross margin to carry a four-figure acquisition cost and still be worth doing.
How Google Ads behaves in this trade
Google Ads produces enquiries whose intent is the highest of any channel, because the person typed the problem into a search box. It captures demand that already exists. Nobody searches for a roofer on a whim.
The constraint nobody mentions in the sales pitch: a minimum of around 30 conversions a month before the automated bidding has enough signal to work with. For a heat pump business working a single metro, that is the thing to check before anything else.
Against that, the cost of being wrong. You are bidding against every other installer in the postcode plus at least one lead marketplace with deeper pockets and better data than you. Skill required: Real. An untended account will spend a full budget on broad matches that were never going to convert.
Fix conversion before you fix acquisition
The cheapest enquiry you will ever generate comes from raising conversion on traffic you already pay for. For heat pump enquiries the highest-return elements are a page dedicated to the single service, proof of comparable local work, a visible price band or starting figure, and a form short enough to complete on a phone at a kitchen table.
Contractors reliably do this in the wrong order: they change channel, then agency, then supplier, and arrive at the page last. The page is where the largest controllable gain sits and it is the only asset that improves every channel at once.
Who pays for a heat pump and what they are really comparing against
The buyer is the bill payer, and the alternative in their head is not another installer. It is keeping the existing boiler for another five years, which is cheap and requires no decision. Winning means beating the do-nothing option: a running cost comparison at their actual tariff and their actual consumption, written down, alongside the grant position. Conversations that stay on equipment specification lose to inertia almost every time.
Keyword clusters and negatives that decide a heat pump account
The phrase heat pump is used by four unrelated markets, and three of them will never buy from you. Getting the negative list right matters more here than in any other trade in this set.
Bid at full value on: air source heat pump installer plus a place name, heat pump to replace a gas or oil boiler, heat pump survey, heat pump quote, accreditation plus installer combinations
Negatives to load on day one: pool, swimming, tumble dryer, dehumidifier, portable, ground source if you do not fit it, commercial, industrial, jobs, training, wholesale
Treat separately: subsidy and eligibility queries, which are research traffic and belong behind a guide page rather than a quote form
Do not assume urgency: failed-boiler queries convert fastest but are a minority, so bid them up specifically instead of raising the whole account
The full cost chain from click to signed job
Every step for heat pump is set out below with its assumption stated, so you can replace any of them with your own figures.
What a click costs: EUR 5.40 to EUR 15.40 on heat pump terms, a range set by job value more than by the number of competitors.
What the page converts at: 3.0 to 7.0 percent, on a page built for this single service rather than a homepage listing everything.
What that makes an enquiry: EUR 77 to EUR 513, being the click price divided by the conversion rate.
How many enquiries per customer: 3 to 5 here, since some never answer, some never quote and some never proceed.
What a signed job therefore costs: EUR 231 to EUR 2,565.
Against a midpoint project of EUR 13,500, the worst-case figure of EUR 2,565 is 19.0 percent of contract value. Whether that is acceptable depends entirely on your gross margin, not on your revenue, and that is the calculation most contractors skip.
What triggers a heat pump enquiry and how urgent it really is
Two events produce most heat pump enquiries: a boiler that has just failed, and an engineer who has said the current one will not see another winter. Both feel urgent and both then slow down, because an energy assessment, grant paperwork and a radiator schedule sit between the enquiry and the deposit. The mistake is reading the initial urgency as a short sales cycle. Book the survey quickly to hold the position, then manage a four to ten week process without letting the file go quiet.
Match types are the whole game and broad match is not free
An account left on broad match with automated bidding will find the cheapest conversions available, which in the trades means form fills from outside your area, outside your service list or outside your price range. The search terms report is the only honest record of what you actually bought. Reading it weekly and adding negatives is not optimisation, it is maintenance, and an account that has had no negatives added in a month is leaking budget by definition.
Structure the account by service, not by town
The instinct is to build one campaign per town. It fragments conversion data across dozens of thinly funded units and starves the bidding system of the signal it needs. Geography belongs in location targeting and in the landing page, not in the campaign structure. One campaign per service line, with location targeting set to presence rather than presence or interest, concentrates enough conversions in one place for automated bidding to work.
Before you spend anything on Google Ads
Take 10 to 20 percent of the gross margin on a signed job, which is the normal range, and you have your maximum acquisition cost per customer.
Divide your maximum acquisition cost per customer by 3 to 5, the enquiries this trade needs to sign one, and you have the most you can pay for a single enquiry.
Agree the test volume and the review date before anything goes live, so that continuing or stopping is a decision about evidence rather than about mood.
Confirm who answers the phone within five minutes during working hours, by name, because every figure above assumes it.
How these figures were built
These figures are a benchmark model, not a survey. They combine an industry base range observed across Western European home-improvement campaigns with a country multiplier for local auction pressure. Treat them as a band to negotiate against, not a quote. The channel assumptions behind this page are separate: click prices and conversion rates come from home-improvement campaign performance across Western Europe, and they move with the auction rather than with the trade.
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Frequently asked questions
How much should a heat pump business budget for Google Ads?
Work backwards from a signed job rather than forwards from a budget. At EUR 231 to EUR 2,565 per job and a typical target of one to two jobs a week, the monthly figure follows arithmetically. Setting a round number first and hoping it produces work is the most common and most expensive mistake in this channel.
How long before Google Ads produces a signed job?
First enquiries take days. A signed job takes that plus your own sales cycle, which for heat pump work runs from a few days on urgent jobs to several months on planned ones. Judge the channel on cost per qualified enquiry early and on cost per signed job only after a full cycle has completed.
What is the single biggest mistake in Google Ads for this trade?
Sending traffic to a homepage instead of a page built for heat pump alone. It typically halves the conversion rate, which doubles the cost per enquiry, and no amount of bid management recovers that.
What should a heat pump enquiry contain before it is worth quoting?
At minimum current heating system, insulation level, radiator type, ownership and timeline. Those answers are what separate an enquiry from a phone number, and collecting them at the point of enquiry rather than on the call removes most of the wasted quoting time in this trade.
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