Google Ads can be one of the fastest ways to get the phone ringing. It can also be one of the fastest ways to lose a month's budget. When we review an account for a local business, the waste almost always shows up in the same few places, and you can check most of them yourself in an afternoon.
Ads Showing to People Outside Your Area
In your campaign's location settings, Google gives you two choices for who sees your ads: people who are in or regularly in your area, or people who are in it or have shown interest in it. The second option is often the default. For a local service business, it can mean paying for clicks from people who live hundreds of miles away.
Switch to the option for people in or regularly in your locations, then open the locations report to see where clicks are actually coming from. It's one of the quickest fixes there is.
Searches You Never Meant to Pay For
Open the search terms report. It lists what people actually typed before clicking your ad, and it's usually eye-opening. You might find job seekers (“plumber jobs near me”), do-it-yourselfers (“how to fix a running toilet”) or people looking for a service you don't offer.
Add the irrelevant ones as negative keywords. In a new account, check this every week. Once things settle down, once a month is usually enough.
Broad Match Without Guardrails
Broad match can work, but it gives Google a lot of room to decide which searches are close enough to your keywords. Without accurate conversion tracking and a healthy list of negative keywords, that room fills up with loosely related searches. If you use it, watch the search terms report even more closely.
No Conversion Tracking, or the Wrong Kind
If Google doesn't know which clicks turned into calls or form submissions, its automated bidding is guessing, and so are you. Track calls from the ads, calls from your website and form submissions, and make sure each lead is counted once.
Then judge campaigns by cost per lead, and ideally by booked jobs, not by clicks or impressions. A campaign with expensive clicks can be your best one if those clicks turn into work.
Sending Every Click to the Homepage
Someone who searches “emergency water heater repair” and lands on a general homepage has to go looking for what they wanted. Many won't bother. Send each group of ads to the page that matches the search, with the phone number visible right away. A focused page usually turns more of the same clicks into calls.
Paying for Calls Nobody Answers
A call that rings out at 7 p.m. is a paid lead you just lost. Set an ad schedule around the hours someone can pick up, or make sure after-hours calls reach a person or an answering service that can book the job.
Spreading a Small Budget Too Thin
Splitting a modest budget across ten campaigns means none of them gets enough data to improve. Start with the services that make you the most money, in the areas you most want to work, and expand once those are profitable.
For some trades, Local Services Ads are worth testing alongside search ads. We compare the two in Local Services Ads vs. Google Search Ads.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much should a local business spend on Google Ads?
Enough to collect meaningful data, which depends on what clicks cost in your trade and city. We usually start with a budget that can bring in a steady number of leads each week, then scale what works. Spending too little across too many keywords is a common way to conclude that Google Ads doesn't work.
What's a good cost per lead?
It depends on what a customer is worth to you. A roof replacement and a haircut can't share a benchmark. Work backward from your average job value and how many leads you usually close to find the most you can pay per lead and still make money.
Should I let Google's automated bidding run my campaigns?
Automated bidding works best when conversion tracking is accurate and the account has enough conversions to learn from. Fix tracking first, give it time to learn, and keep checking the search terms.
How often should I check my account?
Weekly is a good rhythm for search terms, budgets and lead quality. Make big structural changes less often, so you can tell what each one did.
