Most remodelers already know their minimum. They've just put it in the wrong place. It's one of the simplest fixes in this guide, and judging by the ads in our example market, one of the least used.
We profiled the websites of 12 remodelers, builders and design-build firms in our example market, Raleigh-Durham. Eleven of them publish some kind of price signal: a project floor, a price range, a per-square-foot estimator or a minimum scope of work. Only one, Simply Right Remodeling, showed none on the pages we checked.
Then we read the Search ads of 38 home-project advertisers in Google's Ads Transparency Center. Three put a project price or floor in an ad: Haven Design Build ("Projects $250K+"), Riverstone Construction ("Projects from $8K-$40K+") and Raleigh Custom Homes ("$3M-$9M+"). Everyone else left it for the homeowner to find out later, on the website if they're lucky, on the phone or at the estimate visit if they're not.
This bonus chapter is about moving that number forward, into the ad and the first minute of the call, so the leads Google learns from are the jobs you'll actually take.
A Minimum on Page Three Gets Read After the Estimate Visit.
Homeowners don't mind a minimum. They mind finding out about it late.
In the low-star reviews we read from the example market, the ones about project size were rarely about the number itself. They were about timing. One homeowner wrote that a company's president had strung them "along for 2 weeks with information he should have told us when he met us." Another was told by a receptionist that the job was "too small," and answered: "I'll call somebody who wants work." On Reddit, homeowners bring up being turned away as too small again and again: 19 homeowner posts and comments in the threads we read, including one who was finally told that "most companies at this time of year only do jobs that are $5,000 or more."
Contractors see the other side. One put it this way in a trade forum: "A contractor needs to believe that working on an estimate is worth their time. If you haven't discussed budget at all, the contractor is left wondering if you're just a tire kicker."
Both sides want the same thing: the number, early.
There's also a Google reason, and it's the one most contractors miss. Chapter 1 made the booked estimate the conversion Google bids toward. If a $6,000 bathroom refresh books an estimate with a firm that won't take anything under $75,000, Google still counts that booking as a win. It learns that the search, the ad and the homeowner were a good match, and it goes looking for more people like them. Every too-small estimate you book teaches the campaign to find you more too-small estimates.
It also bends the math from Chapter 7. Say the hand-bid campaign spent $10,500 and booked 30 estimates, the $350 example Chapter 7 handed to broad match as its target. Now say 9 of those 30 were jobs below your floor that you'd never sign. The real cost of an estimate you'd actually take is $10,500 divided by 21: $500, not $350. Hand broad match a $350 target built on too-small bookings, and you've told Google to find more cheap estimates for jobs you don't want.
11 of 12 Contractor Sites Publish a Price Signal. Only 3 of 38 Advertisers Put One in the Ad.
The sites in our sample show how many ways there are to say it:
- A plain floor. CQC Home: "Most projects we tackle start at $75,000+." Riverbirch Remodeling lists kitchens from $100,000+ and additions and whole-home work from $250,000+.
- A range by project. Kozub Remodels publishes a pricing guide: kitchens $35,000-$75,000+, full baths $15,000-$45,000+, additions $150-$300+ per square foot.
- Starting prices. Archadeck's brand pages list decks from $15,000 and screened porches from $30,000. BoCo Modern lists select kitchens from $47,800 to $64,750 on a 10-by-12 reference kitchen.
- An estimator. 2SL Design Build's online tool runs $175-$425 per square foot by project type and finish.
- A minimum scope. EZPro Kitchen & Bath doesn't name a dollar figure but defines the smallest job: a bath means the shower and the floor, a kitchen means cabinets and countertops.
Any of those works on a website. The question is how much of it reaches the ad. For a firm with a real floor, the answer is simple: put it in a headline. Haven's ads do it in three words. Chapter 8's headline list already had one built on a $25K floor. A floor in the ad does two jobs at once. It tells a homeowner with a $6,000 project to keep looking, before they click and before you pay for it. And it tells the homeowner with a $90,000 kitchen that you're the kind of company that does their kind of job.
Not every contractor has a hard floor, and that's fine. A firm that takes a $12,000 bath and a $200,000 addition can still use the ad to set expectations with a range instead: "Most Kitchens $40K-$90K." That's Kozub's approach on its site, and it does the same job. The homeowner with $8,000 to spend learns it before the click, and the one with $70,000 learns you're in their range.
Chapter 5 gave every project its own ad group, so each group can carry its own floor. A kitchen ad group says "Kitchens From $60K," a bath ad group says "Baths From $30K," an additions group says "Additions From $150K." The floors don't have to match each other. They have to match your business.
Then repeat it on the project page from Chapter 4, in the same words. A homeowner who clicked an ad saying "Projects from $75,000" and lands on a page that never mentions money will wonder which one to believe.
A Budget Question on the Form Lets Google Count Only the Leads You'd Take.
A floor in the ad filters the click. A budget question filters the lead, and it can change what Google counts.
Google's lead form assets, which let a homeowner submit their details in a form directly in your ad, now support what Google calls qualifying responses. You add a multiple-choice question, such as the budget range, and mark which answers count as qualified. Google's help page says a submission with a qualifying answer is tagged as a qualified lead and counted under its own conversion action, "Lead form - Response qualified (Google-hosted)," in the Qualified lead goal. The question is required, so every homeowner answers it, and the feature works in Search campaigns.
Keep the question plain. "What's your budget for this project?" works better than anything clever, and the answers should be ranges a homeowner can pick without doing math. For a remodeler with a $75,000 floor, that's four choices with the top two marked as qualifying: under $25,000, $25,000 to $75,000, $75,000 to $150,000, and over $150,000.
The same idea works everywhere else a lead comes in:
- Your own website form. Add a required budget range field. Then count only the qualifying answers as conversions, with the same tracking Chapter 1 set up for every form.
- The phone. Ask about budget and timing in the first minute, kindly and plainly. If the call doesn't qualify, mark it that way in your call tracking so it isn't counted as a booked estimate.
- The estimate calendar. Only estimates that pass the screen get booked, and only booked estimates go back to Google.
- Your CRM. Tag every below-floor lead with the campaign it came from. Once a month, look at which campaign sends the most of them. That's the campaign whose ads, keywords or floor need work first, and the answer is usually obvious once it's counted.
A note on how this fits the bidding from Chapter 1. In the accounts we run, the booked estimate stays the conversion Google bids toward. The qualified form answer is an earlier signal that tells you, and Google, which form leads are worth calling back first. Both should point at the same kind of homeowner.
A homeowner below your floor still deserves a good answer. In our experience, the remodelers with the best reviews keep a short list of trusted smaller contractors and handymen and pass the name along. It costs nothing, and it turns a would-be one-star review into a thank-you.
A "From $25K" Headline Is a Promise. Google's Pricing Policy Treats a Fake One as Bait-and-Switch.
Putting a number in an ad has a rule attached. Google's ad policies list bait-and-switch by name among dishonest pricing practices: luring buyers with a price too low to be real, never meaning to honor it, then pushing them toward a costlier job.
For a contractor, that means the number in the ad has to be a job you'd actually do at that price. "Kitchens from $25,000" is fine if a $25,000 kitchen is on your menu. It isn't fine if it's a teaser that turns into "well, realistically, $60,000" at the estimate. That's a policy risk with Google, and in our sample it's exactly the kind of surprise homeowners write reviews about.
The fix is consistency. The same number appears in the ad, on the project page and in the first minute of the phone call. If your floor changes, all three change together. And if you've turned on AI Max (Chapter 13), add a messaging restriction so Google never writes a price you didn't choose.
Floors can move with the season, too. The Reddit homeowner who heard "$5,000 or more" was told it was because of the time of year. If your minimum rises when the schedule fills up, change the ads the same week, not the next quarter. An outdated floor in a headline is as misleading as no floor at all.
If you'd rather have us set up the minimums, the budget questions and the qualified-lead tracking, our Google Ads management builds them into every remodeling account from day one.
Next: Some Contractors Charge for Design Before the Contract. The Ad Should Say So.
Chapter 15, the second bonus chapter, covers paid design agreements and how to advertise a design fee without losing the homeowners who'd happily pay it.
This chapter is part of Google Ads for Contractors, our sixteen-chapter guide for residential general contractors and construction companies anywhere in the US.
