Local PPC Management
By Iuliia EmetsUpdated Local PPC means paid search built around a service area instead of a country: ads that run where your trucks actually go, to people close enough to hire you today.
We run it for owner-run service businesses in the US and Canada, and we measure it by calls and booked jobs. The account is opened in your business name, and everything in it stays yours.
Ads that run where your trucks actually go, to people close enough to hire you today.
How local PPC works for a service business
Your service area defines the campaign
A radius around each location, ZIP codes where the work is worth doing, and explicit exclusions for places you don't want the truck driving to. Most wasted local budget is spent 40 miles outside the area the owner would actually accept a job from.
Different zones are worth different money
A neighborhood twenty minutes away is not worth the same bid as the one next door. Same for the hours when someone actually answers the phone.
Most local searches end in a call, not a form
Call assets, click-to-call on mobile, and ads written for someone who needs the problem solved this week rather than someone comparing vendors for next quarter.
Mobile is the default, not a segment
The person searching "plumber near me" is standing in water. The ad, the landing page and the phone number all have to work on a phone in under ten seconds.
What our local PPC management includes
Campaign structure by service and area
One service per ad group, campaigns split by area where budgets need to be controlled separately. Names follow one convention, so the account stays readable a year later.
Keywords and negative keywords
We start on phrase and exact, bring our own negative list built from years of service accounts, and add what your niche needs. Search terms are reviewed every week, so the budget stops paying for job seekers, DIY searches and people looking for free.
Spam and junk lead filtering
Local campaigns attract bots and sales calls. We filter invalid clicks with our own tool and keep form spam out of your conversion numbers, so what the account learns from is real demand.
Call tracking that names the source
Dynamic numbers tie each call to a campaign and a keyword. You stop guessing which half of the budget produced the phone ringing.
How we set up call trackingClosed jobs sent back to Google
Offline and enhanced conversions tell the account which calls turned into work. Bidding then chases revenue instead of chasing cheap clicks.
Landing pages we check before spending
Does the page name the service area, is the phone number visible without scrolling, does the form work on a phone, does the page load fast enough for someone on mobile data. We flag what needs fixing and Yury can implement it.
Reporting in your language
Calls, leads and booked jobs, with what changed and why, built on data from your own accounts: call tracking, Google Ads, your CRM, Google Business Profile, Search Console.
What local PPC costs
Two different numbers get called "cost", so it's worth separating them.
Your ad budget depends on the cost per click in your service and your city, how wide your service area is, how many competitors bid on the same searches, and the season. The same service can cost three times more per click one city over, and the gap inside a single trade is often larger than the gap between trades.
A practical way to size it: find the real cost per click for the searches your customers actually type, then plan a budget that buys enough clicks per day to learn something. Below roughly 10 to 20 clicks a day the account collects too few conversions to optimize on, and you end up paying for a test that never finishes.
Numbers from keyword tools are a starting point, not your number. They average every search, including people who were only reading, and they don't know your auction. We check your own data first: what you already pay, what the auction looks like in your area, and what a lead is worth once it becomes a job.
Our management fee depends on how many services and areas you advertise, how many channels we run, and how much of your tracking needs fixing before the numbers can be trusted. We don't charge a percentage of your ad spend, and your budget goes straight to Google.
Rule of thumb
10–20
clicks per day
at the real cost per click in your trade and your city. Below that, the account never collects enough conversions to optimize on.
How we workLocal PPC, Local Services Ads and local SEO
These three compete for the same screen, and they are not interchangeable.
Control
Local PPC (Google Ads)
Gives you control: which services you advertise, which areas, what the ad says, what happens after the click. It works for every trade, and it's the only one of the three where you can steer spend the same week.
Pay per lead
Local Services Ads
They sit above everything else, you pay per lead instead of per click, and the business needs to pass Google's verification. Where they are available for your trade, they usually deserve a share of the budget. They also come with real limits: you control far less, and the lead quality has to be watched.
Slower, cheaper
Local SEO and your Google Business Profile
Slower and cheaper per lead once they work. A profile with real reviews and correct service areas also makes the paid clicks convert better, because people check it before calling.
We run local PPC and Local Services Ads, and we do the Google Business Profile side of local SEO. In practice the mix depends on your trade, your area and how fast you need the phone to ring. We'd rather tell you that one of these is enough for now than sell you all three.
Results from accounts we run
Stone countertop manufacturer, Toronto
1,500+
leads
Cost per lead down about 55%, from CAD 91 to CAD 38–42.
Commercial cleaning company
$140 → $70–110
cost per lead
Conversion rate from 2.66% to 6–8.88%.
What we usually fix first in a local account
Problem
Tracking that counts the wrong things
Duplicate conversions, form views counted as leads, three-second calls counted as customers. Until this is fixed, every other decision is based on fiction.
Problem
One campaign for every service
Drain cleaning and full repipes have different values and different competitors. Sharing a budget means the cheap searches eat it.
Problem
A radius wider than the service area
Easy to set, expensive to keep.
Problem
No negative keywords
Local searches pull in jobs, salaries, DIY videos and people in the next state.
Problem
Ads that don't say where you work
If the ad doesn't name the area, the click still costs the same when the person is out of range.
Who this is for
Owner-run service businesses in the US and Canada where a phone call or a quote request is the sale:
Built for
- Home services and trades
- Remodeling and stone fabrication
- Commercial cleaning
- Movers and junk removal
- Law firms
- Healthcare practices
Probably not a fit if
- Most of your sales happen online through a cart.
- You want campaigns live this week without fixing measurement first.
Don't see your business here? Write to us, and we'll tell you honestly whether we can help.
FAQ
Not for the campaign itself. What matters is whether whoever runs it understands how your area buys: which neighborhoods are worth bidding on, when people call, what a job is worth. We ask those questions in the audit.
Calls can start in the first month. Knowing which of those calls became jobs takes longer, because it depends on your sales cycle, and that is the number we optimize toward.
There's no fixed threshold. It depends on the cost per click in your trade and area, which is why we look at your numbers before suggesting one. If the budget is too small to learn from, we'll say so instead of taking it.
Yes, when you tell us the outcome. Call tracking names the campaign and keyword, your CRM or job sheet records what happened, and we send that back to Google so bidding learns from it.
Always. It's opened in your business name with full admin access for you, and if we stop working together, the account, the data and the tracking setup stay with you.
Start with your own numbers.
We'll look at your Google Ads account and your tracking, and show you what's costing you money and in what order to fix it. If the account is already in good shape, we'll say that too.
