Most of this guide has been about homeowners: the patio buyer, the weekly mowing customer, the family with a dog and a question about weed control. But homeowners aren't where most landscaping money comes from. Office parks, retail centers, apartment complexes, homeowners associations and hospitals pay for more of the industry's work than households do, and they buy it differently.
Google Ads can reach them, at a price. "Commercial landscaping" carries the highest top-of-page bid of the 57 core landscaping searches we tracked for this guide. This last chapter covers what commercial work is worth to the industry, what those clicks cost, the searches that look commercial and aren't, and how we build a separate commercial campaign for landscaping clients who want that business.
Commercial Grounds Work Is 53.7% of Landscaping Receipts. Seven in Ten Locations Offer It.
The Census Bureau's 2022 Economic Census breaks landscaping services into product lines. Exterior commercial landscaping services made up 53.7% of the industry's receipts, and 69.6% of landscaping establishments offered them. Residential landscaping services came to 31.8%. The lines nest inside each other, so they don't add to 100%, but the order is clear: commercial work is the bigger business.
The same census asks who pays. Business firms and farms accounted for 48% of landscaping receipts, households for 44%, and governments and nonprofits for most of the rest.
The companies in the example market, around New York, reflect that. Ten of the twelve landscaping companies we profiled sell commercial work alongside residential, and one is a commercial snow company with no residential side at all. Commercial isn't a niche in landscaping. For many companies it's the steady base the residential work sits on.
Commercial Clicks Run About Three Times the Price of a Mowing Click.
Commercial buyers are fewer, and the auction knows they're worth more. Across the US, Keyword Planner's top-of-page estimates for commercial landscaping searches run well above residential ones:
- "commercial landscaping companies," about 1,900 searches a month, up to $33.33
- "commercial landscaping," about 4,400 a month, up to $32.12
- "commercial lawn care," about 1,300 a month, up to $28.91
- "commercial landscape maintenance," about 720 a month, up to $27.53
Compare "lawn mowing service," at about 33,100 searches a month and up to $10.97. A commercial click can cost three times a residential one, from a pool of searchers a fraction of the size. Some tiny commercial searches price even higher. The 19,004-idea keyword pull behind this guide turned up "commercial building landscaping" at roughly 90 monthly searches and a top estimate of $108.79. Tiny searches with prices like that are worth an exact-match keyword if the contract fits, and worth watching closely if broad match finds them.
That can still be a good trade, for the same reason Chapter 3 gave for patios over mowing. A maintenance contract for an office park or an apartment complex can run for years and cover mowing, cleanups, mulch, irrigation and snow. Set the bid ceiling from that contract value and your real close rate on commercial bids, the way Chapter 7 set ceilings for walls and mowing, and the higher click price often fits inside it. Set it from residential math and the commercial campaign will look unaffordable when it isn't.
"Commercial Lawn Mowing" Draws 5,400 Searches at Under $2. Those Are Mower Shoppers.
Not every search with "commercial" in it is a property manager. "Commercial lawn mowing" draws about 5,400 US searches a month, more than "commercial landscaping," but its top-of-page estimates run only $0.58 to $1.99. Compare "commercial lawn care," at up to $28.91 for fewer searches.
Advertisers don't bid $28 for one search and $2 for a near-identical one by accident. Our reading: "commercial lawn mowing" is largely people shopping for commercial-grade mowers, while "commercial lawn care" is people shopping for a company. The bid gap is the intent gap.
The same pattern shows up elsewhere. "Landscaping contract" draws about 880 searches a month at up to $9.93, and in our experience a lot of that is people looking for a contract template or for work, not for a contractor. Chapter 5 built the negative list for the residential campaign. The commercial campaign needs its own: equipment, mowers for sale, templates, jobs, and "commercial" searches about products rather than services.
A Property Manager Isn't a Homeowner. The Commercial Campaign Gets Its Own Page and Its Own Conversion.
Everything about a commercial buyer is different from the homeowner the rest of the account serves. The person searching may be a property manager responsible for twenty sites, a facilities director, or an HOA board member who has to bring three bids to a meeting. They care about reliability across a season, crew size, insurance, response times after a storm, and whether you can handle every property in their portfolio. In our experience they also ask early for proof: a certificate of insurance, references from similar properties and photos of sites you already maintain. A commercial landing page that offers those up front saves the property manager a phone call, and puts you on the short list before the call happens.
That's why a property manager's search never shares a campaign with a homeowner's in the accounts we run: separate money, separate ads, the logic Chapters 4 and 14 already applied to services and seasons. It gets its own landing page, written for that buyer: the kinds of properties you maintain, the size of your crews, how you handle snow and storms, and how to request a bid. And it gets its own conversion. A commercial lead is usually a bid request or a site walk, not a phone call for an estimate next Tuesday, and it can take months to become a signed contract. Track the bid request as the conversion, then import the signed contract and its value when it closes, as Chapter 1 set up for residential jobs.
The details matter here, because commercial buyers compare carefully. In the example market, one company's commercial ad read "Get a Quote for Your Business," yet the website behind it offered no quote wording at all, only "Book Your Consultation," and its contact form had no phone field. A property manager who clicks for a quote and finds a homeowner-style consultation form may not fill it out.
Search volume sets a limit, too. HOA boards and property managers barely search in Keyword Planner's numbers: roughly 260 US searches a month for "HOA landscaping," 110 for the companies version and 70 for "property management landscaping." Many commercial buyers never search at all; they send bid requests to companies they already know. Google Ads can put a company in front of the ones who do search, and in front of new property managers building their vendor lists, but it won't replace the relationships most commercial work still runs on.
A Commercial Bid Can Take a Season to Close. Set the Conversion Window and the Form for That.
A homeowner who calls about a patio may book an estimate that week. A property manager who requests a bid in February may not sign until the board meets in April, and the contract may start in May. If the account only counts conversions in Google's default window, which is 30 days for Search, the click that started a commercial contract may never get credit for it.
Google lets you set a click-through conversion window as long as 90 days for Search campaigns, and it recommends a longer window for businesses whose buying cycle doesn't fit the default. For the commercial campaign, we set the bid request conversion to the longest window available, and we import the signed contract against the original click when it closes. Chapter 1 covered the import; the commercial campaign is where the long window earns its keep.
The bid request form deserves the same attention. A homeowner form asks for a name, a phone number and what they need. A commercial form should ask what a bid needs: how many properties, roughly how many acres or square feet, which services, whether snow is included, and when the current contract ends. That last question matters most. A property manager whose contract ends in March is a lead for this spring; one whose contract ends next year is a lead for a follow-up call in the fall. Both are real, and the form is how you tell them apart. Log the contract end date with the lead so the follow-up actually happens.
Commercial Snow Removal Clicks Reach $61. The Contracts That Justify Them Sell in the Fall.
Commercial snow carries the highest bid of the commercial searches we pulled for this chapter. "Commercial snow removal companies" draws only about 320 searches a month across the US, with top-of-page estimates up to $61.04. "Commercial snow removal" draws about 1,600 at up to $41.01. Of the six snow sellers we profiled in the example market, four lead with commercial work.
Chapter 14 showed when those buyers search: seasonal snow contracts are searched from September through December, before the first storm, while one-time plow searches spike in January. For commercial snow, the contract campaign is the one that matters. Run it from late summer, send it to a page that spells out how the contract works, such as response times, per-push or seasonal pricing, salting and overnight storms, and track the bid request as the conversion.
At $61 a click, a commercial snow campaign is a bet on contract value. A single multi-site snow contract can be worth more than a season of residential plowing, so the math can work. But it has to be done on purpose, with its own budget and its own bid ceiling, not left to a broad snow campaign that happens to show up for commercial searches.
A Landscaping Account Is Built in Thirteen Steps, in Order. Skipping Ahead Spends Money on Guesses.
That's the full guide. Chapters 1 through 13 built the account in the order we build it for landscaping clients: report won jobs, bid on hire-ready searches, price each job, split the auctions by service, research and cut keywords, start with exact match and open broad match when the data allows, set bids by hand, write ads from reviews, fix the settings before launch, then add Performance Max, Demand Gen, Local Services Ads and AI Max as the account earns them. Chapters 14 through 16 covered what's specific to landscaping: the calendar, the licenses and the commercial buyer.
If you're starting from scratch, start with Chapter 1. Prefer to have a team run it? Our Google Ads management takes landscaping clients through these sixteen chapters as a working plan, one service line and one season at a time.
Every chapter is on the guide's home page.
