A commercial HVAC company runs the same Google Ads campaign a residential company would, gets a stream of homeowners asking about their furnace, and concludes that Google Ads does not work for commercial. What actually happened is that the campaign was built for the wrong buyer.

The commercial buyer, whether that is a facility manager, a property manager, an office manager, or a general contractor, searches differently, decides differently, and converts differently. Here is how the campaign changes.

The buyer and the search

The commercial buyer is usually at work, on a desktop, during business hours, often researching on behalf of someone else. They are less urgent than a homeowner with a broken AC and more deliberate. They search with words that signal the context: "commercial," "office," "building," "facility," "industrial," "for businesses," the specific building type ("medical office cleaning," "restaurant hood cleaning," "warehouse HVAC"), and procurement words ("contract," "service agreement," "RFP," "vendor").

They also search the residential words, which is the problem. "HVAC repair near me" is typed by facility managers too. You cannot fully separate the audiences by keyword, which is why the rest of the campaign matters.

Structure

Build the commercial campaign separately from any residential campaign. Separate budget, separate ad groups, separate landing pages, and separate conversion goals. Mixing them means the automated bidding optimizes for whichever converts more often, which is nearly always residential, and the commercial budget quietly funds homeowner leads.

Within the commercial campaign, ad groups by building type or service line work better than by service alone: "commercial cleaning for medical offices," "commercial cleaning for office buildings," and "post-construction cleaning" are three different buyers with three different concerns, and each gets its own ads and page. The general account structure guidance for trades applies, with the vertical split added.

Keywords and negatives

Anchor on the commercial modifiers. Then build the negative keyword list aggressively: "home," "house," "residential," "apartment," "my," "DIY," "cost" (often, though not always), and the residential product terms that do not apply. The negative keyword list for a commercial campaign is usually longer than the keyword list, and it is the main tool for keeping homeowners out.

Review the search terms report weekly for the first two months. Every homeowner query that got through becomes a negative.

Schedule and device

Commercial searches concentrate in business hours on weekdays. Set an ad schedule that reflects that and bid down or pause outside it. Residential campaigns often perform in the evening and on weekends; commercial ones usually do not, and the money is better spent Tuesday at ten in the morning.

Desktop matters more than in residential campaigns. Do not exclude mobile, but do not assume mobile-first either. Check the device report after a month and adjust.

Ad copy that speaks to the job

The homeowner wants "fast, friendly, same-day." The facility manager wants "certificate of insurance, background-checked staff, one point of contact, monthly invoicing, service agreements, after-hours scheduling." The copy should say those things. It should also name the building type in the headline where the ad group is specific.

Mention the credentials that matter to procurement: insurance, certifications, years in operation if you can state them accurately, and any industry-specific compliance (OSHA, food safety, healthcare cleaning standards) you genuinely meet.

Landing pages and forms

Send commercial traffic to a commercial page, never the residential homepage. The page should cover the services, the building types, the credentials, how the engagement works (walkthrough, proposal, agreement), and a form built for this buyer: company name, building type, approximate size, current situation, and a request for a walkthrough or proposal rather than "book now."

Commercial buyers fill out longer forms than homeowners, because they are qualifying you as much as you are qualifying them. Ask for what you need to prepare a real proposal, and set expectations about what happens next. A phone number still belongs on the page; many facility managers prefer to call.

Conversion tracking for a longer cycle

A commercial lead may take weeks to become an agreement. Track the form submission and the call as leads, then import the closed agreement back into Google Ads as an offline conversion with its value. Without this, the automated bidding optimizes for form fills, and the campaign learns to find people who fill out forms rather than people who sign contracts.

Give it time. Commercial campaigns take longer to gather enough conversions for automated bidding to work well. Start on manual or enhanced bidding, and move to a target once there are enough signed agreements to learn from.

Where else the commercial buyer is

Search catches the buyer when they are looking. The rest of the time they are on LinkedIn, in industry associations, and in their inbox. A search campaign works best alongside direct outreach to the property managers and facility teams in your area, with the ad reinforcing a name they have already seen.

Commercial campaigns are built separately in every Google Ads engagement we run, and the offline conversion import depends on a CRM that records the signed agreement.

Frequently asked questions

Should I run Local Services Ads for commercial work?

LSA is built around residential categories and consumer intent. Some commercial work leaks through, but it is not the channel for it.

How much budget does a commercial campaign need?

Enough to gather data at a slower conversion rate. Commercial clicks are often more expensive and less frequent, and the campaign needs weeks of consistent spend before it can be judged.

Can I target by company or industry?

Google Ads does not offer company-level targeting the way LinkedIn does. You target through keywords, ad copy, schedule, and landing page. The audience does the rest.

What if my commercial and residential services overlap completely?

They still get separate campaigns. The overlap is in the work, not in the buyer.