−58%cost per booked lead
Same monthly budget. Cutting the junk keywords and fixing the landing page more than doubled the calls it produced.
SEO is the long game. Google Ads is the switch you flip when you want the phone ringing this week. The catch: most contractors light money on fire doing it. They bid on the wrong words, send clicks to a slow website, and let Google spend the budget however Google likes. We run the ads so every dollar chases a homeowner who's ready to book, not a tire-kicker who's just looking. You show up at the top the second someone needs you, and the math still works.
Almost every contractor who says "I tried Google Ads, they don't work" was set up to lose. The ads ran, the budget drained, and a handful of junk calls trickled in. That's not the platform failing. That's a wide-open account with no one steering it. Here's where the money actually leaks out.
Leave the settings loose and Google spends your budget on "how to fix a leak myself" and "roofing jobs hiring." Those clicks cost the same as a ready buyer and book nothing. You paid to teach a stranger, not to win a job.
You paid for the visit. Then it hits a homepage that takes six seconds to load and buries your phone number. The homeowner is gone before it finishes. A great ad pointed at a bad page is just an expensive bounce.
Left on autopilot, the platform optimizes for what's good for Google: more clicks, more spend, "broad" everything. It'll burn a month's budget in ten days and call it a win. Nobody in that loop is watching your cost per job.
The dashboard brags about clicks and impressions. None of that pays a crew. If you can't tell which keyword turned into a booked job and which one just ate $40, you're not running ads. You're donating to Google.
Paid search only works when someone actually manages it. We build the account around buyer intent, send the click to a page built to convert, and track it all the way to a booked job so we can cut what doesn't pay. Here's what's running behind your ads.
"Emergency plumber near me." "Roof replacement [your city]." The searches a homeowner types when they have their card out, not when they're browsing. We chase those and skip the window-shoppers.
Just as important as what we bid on is what we block. "Free," "DIY," "jobs," "salary," "cheap," and hundreds more get shut off so your budget never pays for a click that was never going to book.
The click lands on a fast page that matches the search, leads with your phone number, and has one job: get them to call or fill the form. No maze, no dead homepage. The ad and the page work as one.
For many trades, Google's pay-per-lead Local Services Ads sit above everything with a "Google Guaranteed" badge. Where they make sense, we set them up and manage them so you only pay for real leads, not clicks.
We track which keyword, ad, and page produced each call, and whether that call became a job. So we know your real cost per booked job, keyword by keyword, and can pour more into what pays and kill what doesn't.
An ad click is expensive; a missed one is a waste. Every lead an ad produces trips your instant reply, so the homeowner you just paid for gets answered in seconds instead of dialing the next result down the page.
Ad management is one flat fee on top of your ad budget, with no long contract holding you in. The budget is yours and goes straight to Google. Our job is to make it come back as booked work. Here's the shape of it from day one.
We build the account from scratch (or clean up the one you have), set the keywords and negatives, stand up the landing page, and wire call tracking so nothing runs blind. Measurement is on before a dollar spends.
Real search data comes in and we cut the waste, add negatives, shift budget to the keywords that book, and tighten the bids. This is the part the "set it and forget it" crowd skips, and it's where the profit lives.
We watch spend so a bad day doesn't blow the month, adjust bids by what's actually converting, and match the ads to your capacity. Slammed this week? We ease off. Slow? We push. Your spend follows your calendar.
Not clicks and impressions. What you spent, how many calls came in, how many became jobs, and what each one cost you. If a campaign isn't paying for itself, we tell you straight and change it or turn it off.
These are results from individual clients, not a promise every contractor hits the same. Your trade, your market, your budget and your close rate all shape what's realistic, and we'll tell you straight on the call.
Same monthly budget. Cutting the junk keywords and fixing the landing page more than doubled the calls it produced.
Local Services Ads put him above the map with a Google Guaranteed badge, paying only for real leads that turned into jobs.
Found the budget bleeding on out-of-area and DIY searches. Blocked them, moved the money to buyer terms, same total spend.
Results shown are from specific ES Studios clients and reflect their individual outcomes. They're examples of what's possible, not a guarantee of the same results for every business.
The same answers we give on the phone every week.
Different jobs. SEO builds free traffic that takes months to arrive and then keeps paying. Ads buy you the top spot today. Most contractors run both: ads for cash flow now, SEO so you eventually need the ads less. We'll tell you which to lean on for your market.
It depends on your trade, your market, and what a job is worth to you. We'd rather start you lean and profitable and scale up as the numbers prove out than talk you into a big budget on day one. We'll suggest a real starting number on the call.
Yes, and that's the honest way to do it. Your ad budget goes straight to Google from your own account. We charge a flat management fee to run it. Anyone bundling the two into one number is usually hiding how little is actually reaching the ads.
That's what happens when nobody manages the account. We bid on buyer-intent searches and block the junk with a long negative-keyword list, so the calls that come in are people ready to hire. No filter is perfect, but this is the difference between a phone that rings and a phone worth answering.
They're Google's pay-per-lead ads that sit at the very top with a "Google Guaranteed" badge, and you only pay for actual leads, not clicks. For a lot of home-service trades they're the best-value spot on the page. Where they fit your trade, we set them up and run them alongside your search ads.
Ads can start showing the day they go live, so calls can come in the first week. But the first few weeks are also when we're cutting waste and dialing in the keywords, so it usually gets cheaper and better as it runs, not worse. Give it a month to find its stride.
You do, always. We build and run it, but it lives under your account and your billing, and the history stays with you. If you ever leave, you keep the account, the data and the landing page. No holding your ads hostage.
A flat monthly management fee, far less than a traditional agency, and no contract. Month to month, cancel any time. If the ads aren't paying for themselves, you shouldn't be locked in, and you're not. We'll give you the exact number on the call.
Book a 15-minute call. We'll look at what you're spending now (or what it'd take to start), where the budget is leaking, and what a booked job would realistically cost you in your market. Then we'll show you exactly how we'd run it. No pitch deck, no pressure, no obligation.
Book a call