Plan Google Local Services Ads on a fixed budget

Local Services Ads are worth it when a booked job is worth many times what a lead costs and you can answer most calls when they come in. Kite checks both before recommending the channel.

First, Kite checks whether your business is eligible. Local Services Ads cover a set list of service categories, and the list and the verification steps differ by country and by trade. Kite looks up the current requirements for your category and location from Google's own help pages, then tells you what you'll need to provide, such as your license number, proof of insurance, or background checks for the people who visit customers' homes.

Then Kite estimates what leads will cost. It uses its built-in search data to see how many people in your area search for your services each month and what advertisers pay per click on those same searches. That isn't the price of a Local Services lead, but it shows how competitive your market is. Kite also uses its ad research to see which competitors are advertising on Google for those searches.

Kite then sets that estimate against what a job is worth to you. Say you're an electrician whose average job brings in $400 and you book about one in three leads. If leads in your area run around $40, each booked job costs about $120 in advertising, which leaves plenty of room. If you book only one in eight leads because you can't answer the phone on site, that same job costs $320, and the channel barely pays. Kite shows you this math with your own numbers and says plainly whether it would start now or fix something first.

To hold Local Services Ads to a fixed amount, set your weekly budget from the most you can afford to spend in a month, not from what you'd like to spend in a week. Google treats the weekly budget as an average. A busy week can run well over it, and Google balances that out across the month, so the limit that holds is the monthly total.

Kite works the budget out backward. Suppose you can afford $1,200 a month. Google caps each month at your weekly budget multiplied by 30.4 and divided by 7, or about 4.3 weeks, so Kite would suggest a weekly budget of about $275. In a quiet month you'll spend a little less, and in no month should you spend more than the $1,200 you agreed to. Kite also tells you how many leads that budget is likely to buy at the cost it estimated, so you know what to expect in the first month.

Kite then recommends how to bid. Local Services Ads let Google set your bids automatically to get as many leads as possible within your budget, or let you set the most you'll pay for a single lead. Automatic bidding is the simpler place to start for most small businesses. A maximum per lead makes more sense when some leads are worth much less to you than others, because it keeps Google from paying a high price for them.

The budget Kite proposes is written into the plan you approve, and Kite doesn't change the budget in your account. You set it yourself, so the number in Google always matches the number you agreed to.

On a fixed budget, the job types and the service area you choose matter as much as the budget itself, because they decide which calls you pay for. Every lead outside the work you want uses up money that could have bought a better one.

Local Services Ads let you switch individual job types on or off. A plumber might keep water heater installation and burst pipes but turn off drain cleaning if those jobs are small and the calls are mostly price shoppers. Kite recommends which job types to keep based on what each kind of job is worth and what you've told it about the work you want more of.

The same thinking applies to your area. A wide service area brings in more leads, but a call from 40 minutes away costs you the same as one from down the street and is worth less once you count the drive. Kite proposes the postal codes or towns where a job is worth taking and leaves the rest out.

Kite also sets your ad schedule from the hours you can actually answer. Responsiveness affects how often Google shows your ad, and a missed call is a lead you may still pay for. If you're on job sites all day and return calls at night, Kite might suggest showing the ads in the morning before you start and in the early evening, and turning on message leads so customers can reach you when you can't pick up.

Your Local Services profile and your reviews do most of the selling, because customers choose from the ad itself without visiting your website. Google also uses your rating, your number of reviews, how close you are to the customer, your hours, and how quickly you respond when it decides which businesses to show and in what order.

Kite reviews what customers will see. With your Google Business Profile connected, it reads your reviews across your locations and finds the ones still waiting for a reply. It drafts replies in your voice, thanking happy customers by name and answering complaints calmly with a clear next step, and posts them once you approve. It also checks that the services, hours, and service area on your profile match the plan, because a mismatch can send leads you don't want or hide you from ones you do.

If you have only a handful of reviews, Kite will usually suggest building them up before spending much. It can write the short message you send customers after a job, asking for a review with a link to leave one. A business with 40 reviews averaging 4.8 stars will win more of the same searches than one with 4 reviews, often for the same budget.

Kite turns the first weeks of real leads into a better plan. The estimates got you started, but your own cost per lead and booking rate are what decide where the budget should go next.

Kite can check in on a schedule every week. Share the lead report from your Local Services Ads account, and tell Kite which leads became booked jobs. If your Local Services campaign runs under a connected Google Ads account, Kite can also read its spend from the account's reports. From there, Kite works out what each lead and each booked job actually cost and which job types and areas brought in the work you wanted.

Kite also looks for leads worth disputing. Google credits leads it judges to be invalid or low quality, such as spam, but it no longer credits calls about a job type you don't offer or a location outside your area, which is one more reason to keep your job types and area tight. Kite flags the leads that look like they should be credited so you can rate them in your account or dispute the charge, which puts money back into your budget.

Each weekly review ends with a short recommendation. That might be to turn off a job type that costs a lot and rarely books, to drop a town that sends long-distance calls, or to raise the budget because every booked job is earning back several times its cost. Kite keeps the results in your team's knowledge base, so the next plan builds on what your own leads showed.