Google Ads for Skip Hire Companies

What skip hire companies need from Google Ads

Someone searching for a skip usually wants one soon. They have a clear-out, a bathroom coming out or a driveway being dug up, and they ring two or three companies. That makes skip hire a good fit for Google Ads, but only if the ad shows to the right person in the right place.

The waste is rarely the click price. It is the search from outside your delivery area, the person after something you can’t take, and the enquiry from someone hunting for a price you were never going to match. Stop those and the same budget buys more booked skips.

The demand is already there

“Skip hire” gets about 60,500 searches a month in the UK, and “skip hire near me” about 40,500. “Skip hire prices” and “skip hire cost” get about 6,600 each. Those people are comparing, so your price and your phone number need to be easy to find.

In the same Google Ads data, the top-of-page bid range for “skip hire” was about a third of the typical range for plumber searches in UK towns. Clicks are not cheap everywhere though, and it depends where you operate.

Skip hire searches by city

Here is how searches for “skip hire” plus the city name compare across 14 UK cities.

Nottingham, Glasgow and Newcastle cost about 1.4 times the typical top-of-page price, so tight targeting matters most there.

Source: Google Ads keyword data, November 2026. Figures are estimates. Click cost compares the top-of-page bid in each city with the median of these 14 cities, so 1.0x is typical.

Where skip hire ad budgets leak

• Searches outside your patch. A wide location setting pays for people you can’t deliver to at a sensible cost.
• Things you won’t take. Plasterboard, asbestos, fridges and tyres are common restrictions. If yours are the same, the ad and page should say so before someone rings.
• Unclear pricing. Prices shown without VAT, or a “from” price that only applies to the smallest skip, bring the wrong calls and can break advertising rules for consumers.
• Calls nobody can measure. Most skips are booked by phone. If calls aren’t tracked, Google can’t learn what a good lead looks like, and neither can you.
• Jobs and general waste searches. Skip driver jobs, tip opening times and council collections all look close to your keywords, and all of them need excluding.

How I set up a skip hire account

1. Start with your delivery areaI set the radius from how far you will really travel, and target people in that area rather than people who have only shown an interest in it.
2. Build around how people searchCampaigns are split by the way people ask: general skip hire, towns you cover, skip sizes and prices, and same-day jobs where you offer them. I use tight keyword matching so you control what you pay for.
3. Filter before the clickA long negative keyword list goes in on day one, and the ads state your sizes, your price basis and what you can’t take.
4. Track calls and forms properlyCalls from the ads, calls from the site and quote forms are measured, so we can see what each booked enquiry is costing.
5. Show clear pricesIf you sell to householders, ads quote prices including VAT. I check what you do and don’t include before any price goes live.
6. Keep sweepingI go through the search terms regularly, because this is where most of the money is saved.

Pricing

My management fee starts at £300/month, which covers accounts spending up to £3,000/month on ads. Above that it’s 10% of spend, so a £4,500/month budget means a £450/month fee.

Your ad spend goes directly to Google. I don’t take a cut of it. If your budget is small, £300 is a big share of it, so I’ll tell you honestly if the numbers don’t stack up.