Google Ads for local service businesses.
Buy the clicks you cannot rank for yet.
SEO takes months to reach the top. Ads put you there this week. We run them for local service businesses, and we report them next to your organic numbers.
From an empty account to live calls.
A local campaign gets built in a fixed order. Skipping the first two phases is how a budget disappears into clicks from three states away.
Research
The searches people in your area actually type, what a job is worth to you, and what the businesses above you are bidding on. This decides everything after it.
Structure
Campaigns split by service, tight ad groups, a radius that matches where you will actually drive, and negative keywords from day one.
Landing
The click has to land on a page about the thing they searched for, with the phone in reach. A campaign pointed at a homepage wastes most of what it buys.
Launch
Live, then watched. The first fortnight is mostly cutting: search terms that were never going to call, hours nobody answers, devices that do not convert.
Which ones fit a service business.
Google will happily sell you all of them. For a local service business, most of the budget belongs in the first two on this list.
Search
Somebody types your service and your town, and your ad sits at the top of what they get back. This is the closest thing there is to buying a phone call, and it is where most of a local budget belongs.
Local Services Ads
The listings with the green tick that sit above everything else, charged per lead instead of per click. They need a licence and insurance check first, and not every trade is eligible in every area.
Performance Max
Google decides where your ads run and shows you far less about it. It can work once Search is proven and there is real conversion data to feed it. As a first campaign it is a way to spend money and learn nothing.
Display and YouTube
Cheap clicks from people who were not looking for you. For a local service business this is usually where a budget goes quiet, and we will tell you that before you spend it rather than after.
Ads and organic, on one page.
Most ad reports are exported straight out of Google and hand you impressions, clicks and a cost per click. None of those is the number you care about, which is how many people called.
So the report opens with calls and form fills, then what each one cost, then which searches produced them. And it sits next to your organic numbers, because the whole point of running both is knowing which one carried the month.
See the organic side →When ads make sense, and when they do not.
Ads are not right for every business or every month. Three things decide it, and we would rather work that out on the call than three invoices in.
These move together.
Before you book the call.
Should I run ads if I am already doing SEO?
Often yes, for one specific reason. Ads cover the months before the SEO lands, and they tell you which searches actually turn into calls. That answer then feeds the SEO plan instead of being guessed at.
Do you run Facebook or Instagram ads?
Yes, and they are a separate service with their own page under Meta Ads. The two do different jobs. Google catches somebody already typing your service, which is why most local businesses start here. Meta reaches somebody who has not started looking yet, and it gets added once there is an offer worth putting in front of a cold audience.
How much should I spend?
That is a conversation, not a number off a page. It depends on what a job is worth to you, how many searches your area actually produces in a month, and what the businesses above you are paying. The call ends with a figure that fits your market, or with us saying ads are not the right move yet.
Who owns the ad account?
You do. We work inside your account, and if we stop working together it stays with you, history intact. Nothing we build is rented back to you.
What if the ads are not working?
You hear it from us first, in the monthly report, with what we are changing. If ads are the wrong channel for your business we will say that too, and we would rather move the money into your rankings than keep spending it.
Find out if ads
are worth it.
Book a call and we will look at what your area actually searches for, what a job is worth to you, and whether ads beat putting the same money into your rankings.
Not ready to talk? Send the form and we will come back to you by email.