Paid advertising buys you visibility today instead of next quarter. For a trades company that usually means Google search ads for high-intent searches, Local Services Ads where Google offers them, and social or video ads to remind recent visitors who you are. It works quickly and stops the moment you stop paying, so the discipline is in spending only where it brings booked work.
What paid advertising covers
Three kinds of campaigns, used in different proportions depending on your trade:
- Search ads for people actively looking: "emergency electrician," "roof leak repair," "drain cleaning near me."
- Local Services Ads, the screened listings Google shows above regular ads for many home-service trades, where available.
- Social and video ads on Meta and YouTube, mostly for retargeting people who visited your site, and for seasonal offers in trades like landscaping or roofing.
Who it is for
Companies that need work soon and already have a website that converts. If your site is slow or vague, ads will mostly pay for bounces; we'll recommend fixing the website first. Ads also suit companies entering a new town, where local search will take months to build.
What is included
- Budget maths before any spend: your target cost per booked job, worked out from your numbers.
- Account setup in your company's name, with call and text tracking.
- Campaign build: services, towns, ad copy, negative keywords to block junk searches.
- Weekly management: search-term reviews, bid changes, pausing what doesn't book.
- Monthly report on calls, booked jobs and cost per booked job.
The maths we use to set a budget
Here is a worked example you can redo with your own figures. Your average job is $650. You can afford to spend 15% of revenue on marketing for new customers, so $97.50 per booked job. You book half of the qualified calls you get, so you can pay up to about $49 per qualified call. If clicks in your town cost $8 and one in six clicks becomes a qualified call, each call costs $48. That works, just. If clicks cost $14, it doesn't, unless conversion improves or the job value is higher.
This is why we ask for your numbers on the first call. Without them, any ad budget is a guess.
Timeline
Search campaigns can start producing calls within days of launch. The first month is partly learning: we gather real search terms, cut waste and adjust bids. Most campaigns settle into a stable cost per booked job after a couple of months of steady management.
How results are measured
We track every call and text back to the campaign that produced it, and we ask you, or your booking system, which calls became jobs. The headline number in every report is cost per booked job. Clicks and impressions appear only as supporting detail. In our HVAC work, this discipline let HVACDeal.ca generate 500+ leads at a 12:1 ROI.
Seasonality and budget pacing
Ad budgets shouldn't be flat all year. A furnace company in Saskatchewan, a landscaper in Ontario and a roofer in Nova Scotia all have busy and quiet months, and clicks get more expensive when everyone advertises at once. We plan budgets month by month around your calendar: more spend ahead of your busy season, less when your schedule is already full, and targeted pushes for the weeks you want to fill. The areas pages describe how seasons shift across Canada.
Mistakes to avoid
- Broad match without negatives, which pays for "plumber salary" and "DIY drain cleaning."
- Sending every ad to the home page instead of the matching service page.
- Judging on clicks rather than booked jobs.
- Running ads while calls go to voicemail. Fix call handling first.
- Agency-owned accounts that you lose access to when you leave.
Paid ads work best alongside local search, which lowers your long-term cost per job. Plan prices are on the pricing page.
Frequently asked questions
Is the ad spend included in the plan price?
No. Ad spend is paid directly to Google or Meta from your own account, so you see every dollar. Our plan fee covers the management work.
What's the minimum ad budget that makes sense?
It depends on how much clicks cost for your trade and town. We work it out from your job value and close rate during the consultation, and we'll say plainly if the numbers don't support ads yet.
Do you run Local Services Ads?
Where Google offers them for your trade and area, yes. They require Google's own screening, and we help you through that process.
What happens to the ad accounts if we part ways?
They stay with you. Accounts are created in your company's name and we're added as managers, so leaving means simply removing our access.