Google Ads
Pay to be found, once the rest is right.
Google Ads for local businesses is simple to describe and easy to waste money on. You pay Google each time someone clicks your ad, and the click lands on whatever your site already is. If the page is slow, the listing is wrong or nobody knows which calls came from the ads, you are paying to find that out. We build search campaigns around the services you offer and the terms your customers type, and we manage them against cost per lead, not clicks.
Where Google Ads for local businesses goes wrong
An ad does one thing. It puts your business in front of someone who just searched for what you sell, and it charges you when they click. What happens after the click is not the ad’s job. It is the page’s job, and the listing’s, and the tracking’s. Send paid traffic at a page that loads slowly on a phone, or that does not say what you do inside the first screen, and you pay full price for visitors who leave. Send it at a business with no call tracking and you will never know which calls the ads produced, so you cannot tell whether to spend more or stop. Ads do not fix any of that. They make it more expensive.
The Baseline comes before the first ad
Before any campaign is built, we record where the site stands, with a date on it: Lighthouse scores on mobile and desktop, whether the pages are indexed and how they are structured, the state of the Google Business Profile, and whether calls and forms are already tracked to a source. For ads, that record matters twice. It tells us whether the site is ready to receive paid traffic or whether something underneath needs fixing first. And it shows whether conversion tracking is in place, which is what the campaigns will be judged against. Once the campaigns have run, the same things are measured again, with the cost per lead beside them, and both numbers are shown to you.
What the work covers
- Account structure: campaigns and ad groups split by the services you actually sell, so each can be judged on its own.
- Keywords and negatives: the terms your customers type, and the ones that look close but bring the wrong callers.
- Ad copy: written plainly around the service and the area, and matched to the page it sends people to.
- Landing pages: each ad lands on a page built for that service, with the phone number and the form where a visitor can find them.
- Conversion tracking: calls and forms from the ads recorded with their source, so cost per lead is a number and not a feeling.
- Budget pacing: spend kept steady so the budget lasts as long as it is meant to, instead of running out early and going quiet.
Who this is for
For a business that wants to pay for a place on the results page while the slower work of getting found organically is still under way. It suits local businesses across Canada and the United States with a service people already search for, and a site in shape to receive the click. It does not suit a business hoping the ads will cover for a page that cannot convert, because they will not.
Questions before you book
What does managing against cost per lead mean?
Google will happily show you clicks, how many times the ad was shown and what share of those turned into clicks, and none of those pay your bills. Cost per lead is what you spent divided by the calls and forms the ads actually produced. That is the number we adjust the campaigns against: terms that bring leads get more of the budget, terms that bring clicks and nothing else get cut.
Can we run ads before the site is fixed?
You can, and we will tell you plainly if we think you should not. The Baseline is what decides it. If the page is slow on a phone or calls are not tracked, paid traffic will show that up at your expense. Sometimes something needs fixing first, sometimes the site is ready as it is. Either way you see the record before you spend.
What does it cost?
Our fee for managing the account is quoted on request, against your Baseline, because one service in one area is a different job from many services across several.
Related services
Start with a Baseline.
Tell us what you sell and where, and we will measure where the site stands before you spend anything on clicks.