Stop bidding on the same keywords as Best Buy. Here's what to bid on instead.

Walk into any generic agency and they'll hand you a keyword list that looks like this: "smart home installer near me", "home automation company", "home theater installation". These keywords are broad, high-volume, and they do the job of draining your budget on the wrong clicks.

The problem is intent. Someone searching "home automation company" could be a $500k client who just bought a new construction home — or a homeowner who wants to connect a Nest thermostat for $200. At $12–18 per click, you can't afford to be wrong a hundred times before you find the right one.

We organize every integrator campaign into four tiers. Each tier has a different budget allocation, match type, and landing-page strategy. The goal: over-invest in the tiers with the highest revenue per click, and suppress the broad stuff entirely.

Most integrators have 5–10 negative keywords in their account. We start every new Cwell campaign with 200+. The negative list is where you tell Google all the buyers you don't want.

A typical integrator negative list includes: DIY, cheap, free, under $500, repair, tutorial, how to, diagram, schematic, Best Buy, Costco, Walmart, Amazon, soundbar, and the specific product SKUs that signal a sub-$2k mindset. Review the search terms report weekly and add new negatives every time you see an unqualified click.

A common mistake is setting geographic targeting by city name (Dallas, Plano, Frisco, etc.). This misses the actual buyer pattern — luxury clients live in specific neighborhoods and gated communities, not "Dallas" in general.

Instead, build radius targets around the neighborhoods where $5M+ homes actually sit. For most US metros, 3–5 targeted radii of 2–4 miles each will outperform a city-wide campaign at half the spend. Layer in household-income targeting where available (top 10% or top 5%).

Most integrators run one catch-all ad group called "Services". Instead, build one ad group per project archetype and use the keyword tier structure inside each one.

Example ad groups: "Whole-home automation", "Dedicated home theater", "Outdoor AV", "Lighting control", "New construction pre-wire". Each gets its own ad copy, its own landing page, and its own conversion goal. This is how you go from "we run Google Ads" to "we run five campaigns, each tuned to a different slice of the business."

Google's default optimization is "clicks" or "conversions" — but the conversion it tracks is usually a form fill. Form fills are not qualified conversations. For integrators, the right conversion signal is a scheduled discovery call with someone whose budget matches your minimum.

Pipe your booked-call events from GHL (or whatever calendar tool you use) back to Google Ads as an offline conversion. Optimize toward that. Within 60 days, Google's algorithm will stop chasing form fills from browsers and start chasing clicks that actually turn into money.