Google Ads, Or Fix The Free Thing First?

I don't sell advertising, so I have no stake in this either way. That's most of why I think it's worth writing down: nearly everyone who gives you advice about ads makes money when you run them.

The short version is that most local businesses asking about ads have a cheaper problem they haven't fixed yet, and running ads on top of it means paying for clicks that were going to fail anyway.

01What ads are and aren't

Ads buy you position, immediately, for as long as you pay. That's genuinely useful and it isn't cheating. Turn them on, appear at the top; turn them off, disappear.

What they don't do is fix anything underneath. A click costs the same whether it becomes a customer or bounces in two seconds. So if your site is slow, or doesn't say what you do, or gives nobody a reason to pick you, ads don't solve that, they just mean you're paying to find out.

That's the whole argument. Ads multiply whatever is already happening. If what's happening is zero, they multiply zero.

Ads multiply whatever is already happening. If what's happening is zero, they multiply zero.

02Fix these three first

The Google Business Profile. Free, sits above the ordinary results on a phone, and for a local service business it's the main event. If yours has guessed hours, no photos of real work and a category somebody picked in a hurry, that's the cheapest available improvement and it costs an evening. Start there.

Reviews. The heaviest thing you control on the map, and the one people avoid. Somebody comparing three businesses on a phone is comparing star ratings first and everything else second. Running ads into a four-review listing means paying to send people to the least convincing option on the screen. Here's how to ask without it being awkward.

What happens after the click. Does the page load in about a second on a phone? Does the first line say what you do and where? Is the phone number tappable without scrolling? Does anyone answer, or reply, within the hour? That last one is the most common leak and the least technical. Paying for a click and then taking two days to reply is paying for nothing.

03When ads actually make sense

There are real cases, and I'd rather name them than pretend the answer is always no.

The job is urgent and the margin is high. Burst pipes, lockouts, AC failure in August. The customer takes the first credible option and one job can pay for a lot of clicks. This is the strongest case there is.

You're new and nobody knows you exist. Reviews and rankings take months. Ads buy you customers now, whose reviews build the thing that eventually replaces the ads. Ads as a bridge, with an end in sight.

You're genuinely not competing on distance. If you'll drive an hour for the right job, the map won't put you in front of people an hour away. Ads will.

You have one specific high-value service to push. Not "plumber": something narrower with an obvious price and an obvious customer. Broad terms in a competitive trade get expensive fast and bring people who aren't ready.

04Three questions before you spend anything

What is a customer worth to you? Not revenue: margin, and honestly. If a job nets you two hundred dollars, and it takes a number of clicks to get one, you can do the arithmetic yourself. Most people who lose money on ads never did it.

Can you tell whether it worked? If you can't tell which enquiries came from the ads, you're not running an experiment, you're making a donation. This matters more than the targeting. It's also why I'd put basic analytics on the site before spending a dollar on traffic, you can't judge what you can't see.

Who's answering the phone? If the answer is "me, when I'm not on a job," you'll buy clicks during the exact hours you can't respond to them. Either fix that first (there are ways to make the first reply automatic) or don't run ads during working hours.

05If you do run them

Keep it small. Start with a budget you'd be relaxed about losing entirely, because the first month is tuition.

Use one narrow service and one geography rather than everything everywhere. Send the click to a page about that specific thing, not to your homepage. Turn it off outside the hours somebody can respond.

And set an end date to review it. "We'll look at this properly in six weeks" is the difference between an experiment and a subscription you forget about.

06What I'd do with a thousand dollars

If a local business handed me a thousand dollars and asked where it should go, ads wouldn't be my first answer and usually wouldn't be my second.

I'd spend an evening finishing the listing, which costs nothing. I'd start asking every customer for a review, which costs nothing. I'd make sure the site is fast and says the right thing in the first line. And I'd make sure every enquiry gets a reply within minutes rather than days, which is the piece of this I'd actually argue for buying.

Then, if the phone still isn't ringing enough, ads: into a business that's ready to convert them.

That order isn't me being cautious. It's that the first three keep working after you stop paying, and ads stop the day you do.