Google Ads Agency · Hermanus, Western Cape
Google Ads Agency
in Hermanus
We tell every other client to set their location targeting to presence only. In Hermanus we tell them the opposite, because a large share of the people who own property here are sitting in an office in Johannesburg or Cape Town when they decide who to call. From R4,500 a month. No lock-in.
Google Ads Certified · In the industry since 2018 · One specialist, not an account manager
Documented Client Accounts
Four client accounts published with their account screenshots. The returns above are ratios, so they read the same in rand as they do in dollars. All four are American accounts. None of them is a Hermanus account, and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Judge the method, then read the numbers and the reconciliation notes on the results page.
Where Your Ads Show
The person who pays your invoice
is not in Hermanus today.
Second-home ownership turns the standard location advice upside down here, and it is the one place we argue for the setting we spend the rest of the year switching off.
The inverse rule
Interest-based targeting is correct here
Google’s default location setting also serves people merely interested in an area. Everywhere else that is a leak. In Hermanus it is the mechanism: the owner deciding who fixes the roof is at a desk in Sandton, Bryanston or Claremont, and presence-only targeting hides your ad from exactly the person holding the chequebook. We turn it on deliberately here and then spend real effort keeping it affordable.
Which costs something
The setting we just recommended brings its own waste
Opening the targeting to interest means you also reach everybody planning a weekend here, and that is a lot of people. The trade is only worth making if the negative list is built for it from the first day — accommodation, tours, restaurants, festivals, whales, all of it out before the campaign runs. Without that work, this recommendation is a bad one and we would rather not make it.
Whale season is a wall
September to November, and August is when you win it
The town fills from September and everything that broke over the winter gets discovered the week an owner arrives. The bookings, though, are made in August, by an owner planning their arrival. Peaking the budget in October means competing for work that is already allocated. We front-load into late winter and let the season itself run leaner.
Quoting somebody who is not in the province
The sales process is the differentiator
An absentee owner cannot walk you round the house. They need photographs, a written scope, a way to let you in through a caretaker or agent, and an invoice they can pay by EFT without being present. Saying all of that plainly in the ad separates you from every competitor who assumes the customer is standing in the driveway.
Suburbs we build Hermanus campaigns around: Hermanus, Eastcliff, Westcliff, Fernkloof, Voelklip, Onrus, Vermont, Sandbaai, Hemel-en-Aarde Valley, Kleinmond, Betty’s Bay, Pringle Bay, Stanford, Gansbaai and De Kelders.
Trades We Run Here
The Overberg coast trades
we build campaigns for.
Houses that stand empty for most of the year fail in specific and predictable ways.
Plumbers
Burst pipes, seized valves and dead geysers found on the day of arrival, and pre-season checks booked by owners who would rather not discover any of it in person. The second category is better work and almost nobody advertises for it.
Construction & Renovations
Renovations here are scheduled for the off-season on purpose, because the owner is not using the house. That makes winter the selling season for a trade that everywhere else treats winter as dead time.
Roofing Companies
Overberg wind and winter rain working on a house with nobody in it to notice. Leak damage found in September is usually months old, which changes the job from a repair into a repair plus a ceiling.
Cleaning Companies
Pre-arrival opens, changeover cleans between guests and end-of-season closes. The buyer is often a letting agent or a caretaker rather than the owner, and they book on a schedule you can plan around.
Electricians
Compliance certificates on a second-home market that changes hands regularly, plus backup power and monitoring for properties that sit unattended for weeks at a time.
HVAC & Aircon
Damp and mould in closed-up coastal houses is a real and under-served category here — dehumidification, ventilation and heat pumps for a house that is shut for five months of the year.
Stop Paying For These
Hermanus searches that look like
work and are not.
This town is one of the most heavily searched tourism destinations in the country, which is precisely why the negative list has to come first.
Whale watching
“whale watching Hermanus”, “boat trips”
The single largest search category attached to this town’s name. Add shark cage diving out of Gansbaai and the surrounding tour traffic and you have a volume of intent that will swallow a service budget whole if the interest-based targeting is left unguarded.
Festivals and the wine route
“FynArts”, “Hemel-en-Aarde”
The events calendar and the valley’s wine estates generate their own peaks of search interest, and they collide with cleaning, catering-adjacent and maintenance vocabulary at exactly the times of year you are bidding hardest.
Letting and booking enquiries
“self catering”, “rent a house Hermanus”
Two different people search this: somebody looking for a holiday house, and an owner looking for someone to manage theirs. The first is worthless to a trade, the second is a genuine prospect, and broad match cannot tell them apart without help.
Distance and route queries
“how far is Hermanus from Cape Town”
Trip planning is a large share of what the interest-based setting brings in. It is cheap traffic with a good click-through rate and no possibility of a job at the end of it, which makes it the most flattering waste in the account.
Every one of these is something we have pulled out of a real account. The free audit tells you which of them your budget is funding right now.
Pricing
From R4,500 a month.
Cancel any time.
Management fee only — your ad spend stays in your own account, on your own card, and we never touch it. A one-off account build fee applies in month one; after that there is no lock-in and no notice period.
Never advertised on Google before? You may qualify for Google’s matched ad credit. We check before you commit, and we tell you if you do not.
Questions
What Hermanus businesses ask us.
You said presence-only everywhere else. Why not here?
Because the ownership pattern is different. In most towns the searcher and the property are in the same place. In Hermanus a large share of the decision makers are in Gauteng or the Cape Town suburbs when they search, and presence-only targeting removes your ad from the person who actually approves the spend. It is the one place the default setting is the right one.
Does that not just import a lot of waste?
It does, and we would not recommend it without saying so. The interest setting only pays here because the negative list is built to hold it back — tourism, tours, accommodation, festivals and route planning excluded before the first click. If you are not prepared to maintain that list, presence-only is the safer choice.
When should my budget be highest?
August and early September, ahead of the season rather than inside it. Owners plan their arrival and book work in advance, so the enquiries you want happen before the town fills. Bidding hardest in October is competing for jobs somebody else has already been given.
Should Gansbaai, Stanford and Kleinmond be in the campaign?
Usually yes, with their own bids, because the R43 makes them serviceable and none of them has enough volume to stand alone. Keep them separate in the account so you can see whether the drive is being paid for.
Will you advertise for a competitor of mine along this coast?
No. The Overberg is one small market pretending to be several villages, and taking on two clients in the same trade would mean bidding them against each other while telling both of them we do not do that.
Do I have to commit for a season?
No, even though the seasonality might tempt you to. Billing is monthly and you can stop whenever you like — though if you leave in July you will have paid for the build and skipped the month it was built for.
Free Audit
Find out whether your ads reach
the owner or only the house.
Send your details and Vogien will go through the account personally — whether your location settings are hiding you from owners in Gauteng, how much of the interest-based traffic went to whale and tour searches, and whether your budget peaks before the season or during it.
Request your free audit
For Hermanus businesses specifically.