Why your metals company's Google Ads aren't working (and how to fix them).

If you have run Google Ads for your metals company and felt like you were lighting money on fire, you are not alone. The most common pattern we see: a metals owner runs ads for 60-90 days, gets a few clicks, gets zero qualified quote requests, decides "Google Ads doesn't work for our industry," and turns it off.

Google Ads absolutely works for metals. It works really well, in fact. Almost every successful metals lead generation program we have built includes a paid search component. But it has to be set up right, and most metals Google Ads accounts are set up wrong in the same five ways.

Here is the actual diagnosis.

Problem 1: Your keywords are too broad

The most common mistake. Someone — often the agency or freelancer who set up your account — picked broad-match keywords like "steel" or "metal fabrication" or "manufacturing." Those keywords trigger your ad on thousands of irrelevant searches: people researching metallurgy for school, people looking for stock metal prices, people searching for jobs in metal fabrication.

Your budget burns on those clicks before any actual buyer sees your ad.

The fix

Switch to phrase-match or exact-match keywords with commercial intent. Examples:

• "steel fabricator near me" (exact match)
• "custom steel fabrication [your city]" (phrase match)
• "[specific product] manufacturer" (phrase match)
• "metals supplier for [specific use case]" (phrase match)

Then add a long negative keyword list: "jobs," "salary," "school," "training," "stocks," "prices today," "history of," "for sale used." This filters out the searches you do not want to pay for.

Problem 2: Your ad copy is generic

Most metals Google ads read like the company website's "About Us" page: "Quality steel fabrication for over 20 years. Family-owned. Customer-focused." That ad gets clicked by no one.

Buyers do not click on ads that talk about you. They click on ads that talk about them — specifically, the job they are trying to do and the outcome they want.

The fix

Write ad copy in the buyer's language. Compare:

Generic: "Custom Metal Fabrication. 25 Years Experience. Quality You Can Trust."

Buyer-focused: "Custom Steel Stairs and Railings. Quoted in 24 Hours. Installed in 4-6 Weeks."

The second ad tells the buyer exactly what they will get and when. The first ad tells the buyer nothing useful.

Problem 3: You are sending clicks to your homepage

Someone searches "custom steel railings phoenix," clicks your ad, and lands on your homepage — which talks about everything you do (fabrication, distribution, service center, equipment). They have to scroll through three sections, click into "products," click into "railings," then find a contact form.

Most do not do all of that. They hit the back button and click the next ad.

The fix

Build a dedicated landing page for each ad group. The landing page should:

• Have a headline that matches the search query exactly ("Custom Steel Railings in Phoenix")
• Show photos of the specific product within the first scroll
• Include a quote-request form above the fold (not buried)
• Answer the top 3-4 questions a buyer asks before submitting (lead time, pricing range, installation)

Landing pages that match search intent convert at 5-15%. Homepages convert at 0.5-1%. The math is decisive.

Problem 4: You have no conversion tracking

Most metals companies running Google Ads have no idea which clicks turned into quote requests. They know the ad spend (Google reports it). They know roughly how many quotes came in (sales tells them). But they cannot connect the two.

Without conversion tracking, you cannot tell which keywords are working, which ads are working, or which campaigns to pause. You are flying blind.

The fix

Set up Google Ads conversion tracking on your form submissions. It takes 30 minutes if you have a developer or marketer. Once it's in place, you can see exactly which keywords drive quotes and which ones drain budget. Within 60 days you should be able to triple your quote volume on the same budget just by reallocating spend to what works.

Problem 5: You are measuring the wrong thing

The last problem is subtler. Some metals owners look at Google Ads and judge it by impressions ("we got 80,000 impressions this month") or clicks ("we got 1,200 clicks"). Neither of those numbers matters.

The only metric that matters for paid search is cost per qualified lead. A qualified lead is a quote request from a buyer who matches your ICP (right industry, right project size, right timeline).

For most metals companies, healthy cost-per-qualified-lead numbers look like:

• $50-$150 per qualified lead for high-ticket project work (custom fabrication, large structural)
• $20-$60 per qualified lead for distribution and supply (where projects are smaller and more frequent)
• $5-$20 per qualified lead for retail-style metals products (e.g., online sales of small parts)

If you are above these ranges, you have at least one of the four problems above.

The honest summary

Google Ads is one of the highest-leverage marketing channels available to metals companies. Most metals Google Ads accounts are misconfigured in 3-5 of the ways above, which is why they do not work. Fixing the configuration usually doubles or triples lead volume on the same budget.

If your account has been running for 90+ days and you cannot tell what worked, it's time for a teardown. We do these for free as part of our audit — happy to look at yours.