Google Ads for Local and Service Businesses

The goal is booked jobs. Clicks, impressions and dashboard scores only matter when they lead to one.

I want to start there because Google will spend the entire relationship trying to move your attention somewhere else. The platform makes money when you spend more, target wider and hand over control. You make money when someone with a burst pipe at eleven at night finds you, calls you and you fix it. Those two interests overlap sometimes, but they are different interests, and the moment you forget that, the account starts drifting.

So here is how we set up search ads for contractors and service businesses, in the order that matters.

Start with the searches, not the ad

A search ad only exists because someone typed something. Your whole job is deciding which typed phrases you are willing to pay for. A person who types “water heater replacement” and your town name is a customer. A person who types “water heater” alone could be a homeowner, a plumbing student, a price shopper or someone looking for a job. Google will happily charge you for all of them.

This is why match type matters more than almost anything else on a small budget. Exact match means your ad shows for that phrase and close variations of it. Phrase match means your ad can show when a search carries the meaning of your phrase, so it is wider than exact and tighter than broad. Broad match means Google decides what is related, and on a small account Google’s definition of related is generous with your money. My rule for owners running their own account: exact and phrase only. Broad match is for accounts with a large budget, a long list of exclusions and someone reading the search reports every week.

The exclusions are the other half. Before you spend a dollar, build a list of negative keywords, the words that mean “not a customer.” Jobs, salary, apprenticeship, how to, DIY, parts, supplies, for sale, cheap, free. Every trade has its own list on top of that; an electrician does not want to pay for “electric car” and a roofer does not want “roof rack.” Then read the search terms report every week for the first two months and add whatever junk shows up. Your own account will surface things no generic list predicts.

Geography, hours and one page per service

Google’s default location setting shows your ad to people who are in your area or who have shown interest in it. That second half is how a plumber in Pennsylvania pays for a click from someone in Florida who was reading about a football team. Change it to presence only, people physically in your service area, and keep the radius tight. A company that covers fifteen miles well beats a company spread thin across fifty.

Run the ads when someone can answer the phone. If nobody picks up after six, the ad should stop at six. An ad that rings into voicemail is money set on fire.

Then the landing page. Do not send ad traffic to your homepage. Build one page per service: one for water heaters, one for drain cleaning, one for emergency calls. The headline on the page says what the ad said. The phone number is large and tappable at the top on a phone. There is one thing to do on that page, call or fill in a short form, and nothing else pulling the visitor elsewhere. This is the change I see owners skip most often.

Group the account the same way. Emergency work, routine repairs and big installations have different economics and different urgency, so they get separate campaigns with their own budgets and hours. One theme per ad group, a small set of keywords, and ad copy that repeats the keyword back to the searcher. The headline should be the service and the town, not your company name; your name means nothing yet to a stranger with water on the floor.

Measure calls, not clicks

For a service business, the phone call is the conversion. Set up call tracking before the first dollar goes out, and count a call only when it lasts long enough to be a real conversation. Without that, you cannot tell which keyword produced a job and which produced a wrong number, and Google’s automated bidding has nothing real to learn from; it guesses.

Turn off automatic application of recommendations the day you open the account and read each one before you accept it. The optimization score measures how many of Google’s suggestions you accepted, and says nothing about whether you made money. And when a rep recommends a fully automated campaign type for your small budget, remember that they have a quota and you have a mortgage.

What should a lead cost?

Owners ask me this constantly and the honest answer is: it depends on what a job is worth to you. If your average job is a few hundred dollars, a lead has to be cheap and you need a lot of them. If your average job is a roof or a new furnace, you can pay a great deal for one lead and still come out ahead, as long as your close rate holds. Work it backwards. What is a job worth in profit? How many leads do you close? Then the most a lead can cost you falls out of the arithmetic, and your monthly budget follows from how many jobs you want.

That also tells you when search ads are the wrong tool. If the math does not work at the click prices in your market, do not force it.

Before you spend a dollar

Write down your average job value and your honest close rate from phone leads. Work out the most a lead can cost you and still be profitable. Then list ten exact phrases a real customer would type, and twenty words that mean “not a customer.” That is the skeleton of a campaign, before you have spent anything.

What it costs

Setting up a clean search campaign yourself takes four to six hours if you already have a service page to send people to, longer if you have to build one. After launch, plan on one to two hours a week reading search terms and adjusting. Ad spend is whatever your ticket size supports; too little and the account never collects enough data to learn from. An agency would normally charge a monthly management fee on top of spend. And decide now who in your business will answer the phone when the ad works.