PPC Management for Trades and Practices: Setup, Local Services Ads, a Minimum Budget
Paid search is the fastest way to get the phone ringing and the easiest way to waste money. We run Google Ads and Local Services Ads for trades and practices, with one rule that most agencies do not state: there is a minimum budget below which the ads cannot be measured, and we tell you what it is before you spend a dollar.
What the service covers
Setup. The account, the campaigns, the keywords and the negatives, the service area, the call tracking, and the conversion tracking, so that every call and form can be traced to the ad that produced it. Without the tracking, nobody can say whether the ads work, so we do not run ads without it.
Local Services Ads. For the trades Google covers, the ads that show above the regular results with the Google Guaranteed or Google Screened badge, paid per lead rather than per click. We handle the screening paperwork, the profile, the budget, and the disputes for leads that were not real jobs.
The landing page. An ad that sends a click to the home page wastes half of it. Every campaign gets a page built for the call: the service, the area, the licence number where the law wants it, the phone number, the form, nothing else.
Monthly management. Bids, budgets, search terms, negatives, ad copy, and the pause of anything that does not produce calls. A monthly report in plain words: spend, calls, cost per call, and what we changed.
The decision. After the first ninety days we tell you whether the ads pay for a business like yours in your market, with the numbers. Sometimes the answer is to stop, and we say so.
The minimum budget
A campaign that spends too little never leaves the learning phase and never produces enough calls to judge. For most trades in Southern California that means a test of several hundred dollars a month in ad spend for three months, before the management fee. If that is more than the business can put at risk, we say so at the consultation and point you at Optimization instead, which is slower and does not stop when the spending stops.
What we do not do
We do not run ads to a site we cannot measure, we do not bid on competitors’ names, and we do not keep a campaign running that the numbers say should stop.
What it costs
A setup fee and a monthly management fee, on a sliding scale in writing after the free consultation, plus the ad spend, which goes to Google directly from your own card. We never hold your ad money. How we work explains what moves the price.