Google Ads for Local Service Businesses

Google Ads is the default answer when a service business wants more leads. And for good reason. Someone searching "boiler repair Newcastle" at 7pm on a freezing January evening is not browsing. They need help now. Appearing at the top of that search is valuable.

But there is a significant gap between "run some Google Ads" and "run Google Ads that actually generate profitable leads". This article covers the practical setup for local service businesses, the bits that actually matter rather than every setting Google offers.

Campaign Types That Work for Local Businesses

Google offers a confusing array of campaign types. For local service businesses, two matter most: Search campaigns and Local Services Ads.

Search campaigns

Search campaigns show text ads when people search for specific terms. You bid on keywords like "garage door installation Gateshead" or "emergency locksmith Newcastle", and your ad appears when someone searches those terms or similar ones.

Search campaigns give you the most control. You decide exactly which keywords to target, what your ads say, and where traffic lands. For businesses wanting to understand what is working and why, search campaigns provide the clearest data.

Local Services Ads

Local Services Ads (LSAs) appear at the very top of search results, above regular ads, with a "Google Guaranteed" or "Google Screened" badge. You pay per lead rather than per click. Google verifies your business, checks insurance and licences, and puts their badge on your listing.

LSAs are available for specific categories: plumbers, electricians, HVAC, locksmiths, garage door companies, and others. The list keeps expanding. If your trade qualifies, LSAs are worth testing. The badge builds trust, and paying per lead rather than per click shifts some risk to Google.

The downside is less control. You cannot choose specific keywords or write custom ad copy. Google matches you to searches based on your categories and service area. Some businesses find the lead quality inconsistent. Others swear by it.

What about Performance Max?

Performance Max campaigns use Google's AI to show ads across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, and Maps. Google handles targeting and bidding automatically, optimising towards your conversion goals.

For local service businesses, we are generally cautious about Performance Max as a starting point. It works best with significant conversion data, which most local businesses do not have initially. It also provides less visibility into what is actually working. Start with Search campaigns, prove the concept, then consider adding Performance Max later if you want to expand.

Setting Up Your Campaign Structure

How you structure your campaigns determines how easy they are to manage and optimise. A messy structure leads to wasted spend and unclear data.

The basics

Google Ads has three levels: campaigns, ad groups, and ads. Campaigns contain ad groups, ad groups contain keywords and ads. Budget is set at campaign level. Keywords and ads live at ad group level.

For a local service business, a sensible starting structure might be one campaign per main service area or location, with ad groups organised by service type.

Example for a garage door company covering the North East:

Campaign: Garage Doors - North East

Ad Group 1: Garage Door Installation Keywords: garage door installation, new garage door fitted, garage door fitting service

Ad Group 2: Garage Door Repair Keywords: garage door repair, broken garage door, garage door not working

Ad Group 3: Electric Garage Door Keywords: electric garage door, automatic garage door, motorised garage door

This structure lets you write specific ad copy for each service, track which services generate leads, and allocate budget accordingly.

Keyword match types

Google offers three keyword match types that control how closely a search must match your keyword.

Broad match (no punctuation) triggers your ad for searches Google considers related, even loosely. The keyword "garage door repair" might show your ad for "how to fix my garage" or "garage maintenance tips". Broad match casts a wide net but often catches irrelevant searches.

Phrase match (keyword in quotes) triggers for searches that include your keyword's meaning. "garage door repair" would match "garage door repair near me" or "cost of garage door repair" but not "how to paint a garage door".

Exact match (keyword in brackets) triggers for searches that match the exact meaning or very close variants. [garage door repair] would match "garage door repair" or "repair garage door" but excludes broader searches.

For most local service businesses starting out, phrase match offers a good balance. You reach relevant searches without the wild irrelevance of broad match. As you gather data, you can add specific exact match keywords for your best performers and use broad match cautiously for discovery.

Location Targeting

Location targeting is where many local campaigns go wrong. Get this wrong and you pay for clicks that can never become customers.

Setting your service area

You can target by country, region, city, postcode, or a radius around a specific location. For a business based in Gateshead serving the Tyne and Wear area, you might target a 25-mile radius around your postcode, or select specific towns and cities: Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, Durham, South Shields.

Be realistic about how far you actually service. Every click from outside your genuine service area is wasted money.

The location options setting that catches people out

Buried in location settings is an option that Google sets to "Presence or interest" by default. This means your ads can show to anyone physically in your area OR anyone who has shown interest in your area. Someone in London researching a move to Newcastle could see your ad.

For most local service businesses, change this to "Presence: People in or regularly in your targeted locations". You want people who are actually there, not people daydreaming about visiting.

Location-specific ad copy and landing pages

If you serve multiple distinct areas, consider whether location-specific messaging makes sense. Someone searching "plumber Sunderland" seeing an ad that mentions Sunderland and lands on a page about plumbing services in Sunderland will feel more relevant than a generic regional ad.

This does add complexity. For many businesses, a single campaign covering their service area with generally worded ads works fine. But if you have budget and capacity, location-specific campaigns can improve relevance scores and conversion rates.

Ad Extensions for Local Businesses

Ad extensions, now called assets, add extra information to your ads. For local businesses, certain extensions are essentially mandatory.

Call extension displays your phone number directly in the ad. On mobile, people can tap to call without visiting your website. For emergency services especially, this is critical.

Location extension shows your business address and a link to Google Maps. This requires linking your Google Business Profile to your Google Ads account. Adds credibility and makes it easy for people to find you.

Sitelink extensions add additional links below your main ad. Use these for your most important pages: Contact Us, Our Services, Free Quote, Reviews, About Us.

Callout extensions add short phrases highlighting features. "Free Quotes", "24/7 Emergency Service", "Family Business Since 1985", "5-Year Guarantee".

Structured snippets list specific offerings in a category. For services, you might list: "Services: Installation, Repair, Maintenance, Emergency Callout".

Extensions do not always show. Google decides based on predicted impact and available space. But having them set up gives Google more options and generally improves ad performance.

Call-Only Campaigns

For businesses where phone calls are the primary conversion, particularly emergency services, call-only campaigns are worth considering.

Call-only ads skip the website entirely. The ad's sole action is a phone call. You pay when someone taps to call. This works brilliantly for services with high urgency and immediate need: locksmiths, emergency plumbers, boiler breakdown.

The trade-off is that you lose the opportunity to qualify leads through your website. Everyone who wants to call, calls. For some businesses this is perfect. For others, sending people to a website first acts as a useful filter.

Consider running call-only campaigns alongside regular search campaigns rather than instead of them. Test performance and allocate budget based on results.

Setting Up Conversion Tracking

Without conversion tracking, you cannot know what is working. You will have click data but no idea which clicks became leads. This is like running a shop and counting how many people walked past the window but never checking who actually bought something.

Form submissions

If people enquire through a form on your website, you need to track form submissions. The simplest approach is a thank you page that only appears after form submission. You then set up a conversion in Google Ads that fires when someone reaches that page.

More sophisticated tracking can use Google Tag Manager to fire conversions when specific form events occur, which avoids the need for separate thank you pages.

Phone calls

Phone call tracking is slightly more complex but essential for service businesses where calls are a primary enquiry method.

Google Ads offers call tracking through Google forwarding numbers. When someone calls the number in your ad, Google records it as a conversion and can tell you how long the call lasted. This works automatically for calls from call extensions.

For calls from your website, you need to implement website call conversion tracking. This dynamically swaps your phone number with a Google forwarding number for visitors who arrived via Google Ads. When they call, it tracks as a conversion.

Some businesses prefer third-party call tracking services like CallRail or Infinity, which offer additional features like call recording and more detailed analytics. These cost extra but can be valuable if phone leads are your lifeblood.

Offline conversion imports

For the full picture, you can import conversion data back into Google Ads when leads become customers. This requires matching clicks to eventual sales, typically through your CRM, but lets Google optimise towards leads that actually convert rather than just any lead.

This is advanced territory for most local businesses, but worth knowing about as you scale.

Common Local Google Ads Mistakes

We audit dozens of local business Google Ads accounts. The same mistakes appear repeatedly.

Accepting Google's default settings. Google's setup wizard optimises for Google's interests, not yours. The default location targeting shows ads to people "interested in" your area. The default network includes Search Partners and Display Network, which often deliver low-quality traffic. Review every setting manually.

Too many keywords in one ad group. If you have 50 keywords in a single ad group, your ads cannot be specific to each keyword. Group keywords tightly by theme so ad copy can be relevant.

Generic landing pages. Sending "garage door repair" traffic to your homepage instead of a page about garage door repair. Relevance matters for both user experience and Quality Score.

Ignoring search terms. The Search Terms report shows exactly what people searched before clicking your ad. Review this weekly. Add irrelevant terms as negative keywords. Find new keyword opportunities.

No negative keywords. Without negative keywords, your garage door ad might show for "garage door DIY" or "garage door manual" or "garage door B&Q". These searches are not your customers. Block them.

Budget spread too thin. Trying to target too many services or areas with limited budget means not getting enough data on anything. Focus your budget where opportunity is highest, prove it works, then expand.

Not testing ads. Have at least two ads per ad group. Let them compete. Replace losers with new challengers. Small improvements in click-through rate compound into significant performance gains.

Budget Allocation for Local Markets

Your budget should reflect your goals and your market. Here is a framework for thinking about it.

First, estimate search volume. Tools like Google Keyword Planner (free with a Google Ads account) show estimated monthly searches for keywords in your area. If there are only 50 searches per month for your main keyword in your area, that limits how much you can usefully spend.

Second, understand cost per click in your market. Keyword Planner gives estimates, but actual costs depend on competition. For many local trades in the North East, expect £2 to £8 per click for non-emergency keywords, £10 to £20 for emergency keywords, and higher for competitive professional services.

Third, work out how many clicks you need for a lead. A good landing page might convert 5 to 10 percent of clicks into enquiries. At 5% conversion, 100 clicks gets you 5 leads. At £5 per click, that is £500 spend for 5 leads, or £100 per lead.

Finally, set a daily budget that delivers meaningful traffic. A £10 per day budget (roughly £300 per month) might give you 2 to 5 clicks per day depending on your market. That is enough to learn, though it will take time to gather data. A £30 to £50 per day budget (£900 to £1,500 per month) gives more data faster and lets you test more aggressively.

The right budget depends on your goals, your margins, and your capacity to handle leads. There is no point spending £2,000 a month generating leads if your calendar is already full.

Ongoing Management

Setting up Google Ads is not the finish line. Ongoing management is where results improve or decay.

Weekly: Review search terms and add negative keywords. Check that budget is being spent. Review any significant performance changes.

Fortnightly: Check Quality Scores and act on anything below 6. Review ad performance and pause underperformers. Assess keyword performance and adjust bids or pause poor performers.

Monthly: Full performance review against goals. Cost per lead analysis. Landing page conversion rate review. Test new ad copy. Consider expansion opportunities.

If you cannot commit to this level of attention, either block out time to do it properly or hire someone who will. Neglected accounts leak money.

Getting Started Checklist

Before you launch, make sure you have:

A landing page for each service you are advertising, with a clear call to action, your phone number visible, and trust signals like reviews or accreditations.

Conversion tracking set up for both form submissions and phone calls.

Google Analytics installed so you can see what people do after clicking.

Your Google Business Profile claimed and linked to your Google Ads account for location extensions.

A realistic budget that will generate enough clicks to learn from.

Time blocked in your calendar for weekly account reviews.

A system for handling leads quickly. Responding within the hour dramatically increases your chances of winning the work.

Google Ads is not complicated in principle. Show your ad to people searching for what you offer, in places you serve, and give them an easy way to get in touch. The execution has nuances that affect performance significantly, but the fundamentals are straightforward.

Start simple. One campaign, your core services, your genuine service area. Get that working profitably before you expand. The businesses that do well with Google Ads are the ones that treat it as a serious channel deserving proper attention, not a magic button to be pressed and forgotten.