13 questions, answered directly. Where the honest answer is
"don't pay us for this," it says so.
How much should I budget for Google Ads?
We recommend $1,000–$3,000 a month per search channel — Google Search Ads or Local Services Ads — and $750–$1,500 for Facebook and Instagram, on top of the management fee. The right number comes from what a customer is worth to you: if a job is worth $800 and you close half your leads, you can afford roughly $400 per lead before it stops making sense.
Too small a budget is a real failure mode. Below a few hundred dollars a month, Google never gathers enough conversion data to optimize, and you conclude ads do not work when what failed was the sample size.
How quickly do Google Ads produce leads?
Usually within days of going live, and that immediacy is the main reason to run them. Expect two to four weeks before performance settles, because early spend is partly buying the conversion data the campaign needs to optimize.
This is the opposite trade-off from SEO. Ads work now and stop when you stop paying; SEO takes months and keeps working. Running both is why most of our clients are on the Growth package.
What are Local Service Ads and how are they different?
Local Service Ads are the "Google Guaranteed" listings that appear above everything else on local searches, and you pay per lead rather than per click. They also carry a Google-backed badge, which makes them convert better than a standard search ad for home services.
They require license and insurance verification to activate, and the lead quality varies, so disputing bad leads is part of managing them properly. We run them with AI-assisted lead scoring for exactly that reason.
What should a lead cost in home services?
It varies widely by trade and market, but as a reference point: one of our managed Google Search campaigns for a septic services contractor produced 63 booked calls at $57.45 each, from $3,619.55 in spend over roughly eight months.
That is one campaign in one market and not a promise about yours. The number that matters is not cost per click or cost per lead but cost per booked job — a $30 lead that never books is worse than a $90 lead that does.
Why do most Google Ads accounts waste money?
Four recurring reasons: no negative keywords, so budget goes to DIY and out-of-area searches; conversions tracked as clicks rather than calls or forms; ads pointed at a homepage instead of a relevant page; and nobody looking at the account between monthly reports.
It is genuinely as easy to lose money on ads as to make it, and management is the entire difference. In the septic campaign above, continuous negative-keyword work is what held click-through rate at 8.42% — several times a typical account.
Do you mark up my ad spend?
Never. Your ad budget goes directly to Google or Meta from your own account, and our fee is a flat monthly amount that does not change with your budget. You can verify this yourself at any time because the account is yours.
Should I run Facebook and Instagram ads too?
It depends on your service. For urgent needs — a burst pipe, no power, a failed septic system — Google captures people actively searching and should come first. Meta works better for planned, visual, or discretionary work: remodels, landscaping, new installations.
We recommend the mix rather than selling you everything. Running one channel well beats running three badly.
How do I know which calls came from the ads?
Call tracking. We use tracking numbers and conversion tracking so every call and form fill is attributed to the campaign, ad, and keyword that produced it. Without it you are guessing, and guessing is how businesses cut the channel that was actually working.
Call tracking is included wherever we manage your advertising — the Growth and Market Leader packages and à la carte advertising all come with tracking numbers and source attribution as part of the fee, not as a separate bill. If you already use ServiceTitan or Housecall Pro we work with the attribution you have.
Can I run ads without a good website?
You can, but you will pay more per lead for it. Ads decide whether someone clicks; the page decides whether they call. Sending paid traffic to a slow, dated, or mobile-hostile site means paying full price for clicks that bounce.
This is why our Growth package includes the website and SEO underneath the advertising rather than selling ads in isolation.
What happens to my leads if I stop advertising?
They stop, typically the same day. That is the fundamental nature of paid traffic and the main argument for building SEO alongside it, so that turning ads down is a choice rather than a cliff.
Do you write the ads and build the landing pages?
Yes. Strategy, keyword selection, ad copy, extensions, bidding, negative keywords, and the pages traffic lands on are all handled. You are not asked to write ad copy or produce a landing page.
What we do need from you is honest information: what a job is worth, which services you actually want more of, and which you would rather not do.
How often do you actually touch my ad account?
Continuously rather than monthly. Search terms, negative keywords, bids, and budget pacing get reviewed on an ongoing basis, because the queries triggering your ads change every week.
"Set and forget" is the single most expensive mistake in paid search. An account left alone for a quarter will drift toward broad, cheap, useless traffic.
What is a realistic click-through rate and cost per click?
For a well-managed local search campaign, a click-through rate in the mid-to-high single digits is a good sign of tight targeting. In our septic services campaign, CTR was 8.42% at an average $8.01 per click across 452 clicks.
Cost per click varies enormously by trade and market — competitive home-services categories in DFW can run well above that. CTR is the better health signal, because it tells you whether the right people are seeing the ad.
