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Google Ads Management
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Frequently Asked Questions

Google Ads for contractors: straight answers

The questions home-service business owners actually ask us — answered plainly, including the ones where the honest answer is "don't hire an agency."

01

How much does Google Ads management cost for a small business?

Most agencies charge either a percentage of ad spend — commonly 10–20% — or a flat monthly retainer, typically $500 to $2,500 per month for a small local business.

Percentage pricing means your management fee rises every time you increase your budget, which creates an incentive to recommend spending more. We charge a flat monthly retainer instead, so raising or lowering your ad budget doesn't change what you pay. Ad spend is always separate and billed to you by Google directly.

02

Is hiring a Google Ads agency worth it for a contractor?

It depends on how much you're spending and how much waste is in the account. If you're spending $3,000 a month and 30% of it goes to searches that will never call you, an agency that eliminates that waste pays for itself. If you're spending $500 a month, the math usually doesn't work — you're better off managing it yourself with occasional expert review.

The honest test is whether the agency can identify recoverable waste that exceeds their fee. That's what a free audit should tell you before you commit to anything.

03

How do I know if my Google Ads budget is being wasted?

Look at your search terms report, not your keyword report. The search terms report shows the actual queries people typed before clicking your ad. Filter to the last 30 days, sort by cost, and look at everything that spent money and produced zero conversions.

In most home-service accounts, a significant share of that went to competitor names, DIY and how-to searches, jobs outside the service area, and services the business doesn't offer. Broad match keywords and Google's automated close-variant matching are the usual cause. Every irrelevant query there can be blocked with a negative keyword.

04

What is a Google Ads audit, and what should it include?

A proper audit reviews the search terms report for wasted spend, checks match type discipline and broad match exposure, verifies that conversion tracking measures what it claims to measure, reviews impression share lost to budget versus lost to rank, checks ad approval status and landing page URLs for anything blocking ads from serving, and examines the change history — including changes Google applied automatically on your behalf.

It should end with a prioritized list of fixes ordered by risk, not a generic scorecard. A useful audit tells you what the waste costs per month, in dollars.

05

Why am I getting clicks but no calls?

Three common causes. The clicks may be irrelevant — people searching for something adjacent to what you sell, which is a keyword and match type problem. The clicks may be relevant but conversions aren't being recorded, which is a tracking problem and means the account is optimizing toward the wrong signal. Or the leads are arriving and not being answered.

That last one matters more than most owners expect: missed calls after hours or during busy periods are invisible inside Google Ads, and in a home-service business they're often the single largest leak. Telling the three apart means looking at the search terms report and the conversion tracking setup together.

06

How do I know if my conversion tracking is set up correctly?

Check what each conversion action actually measures, not what it's named. Accounts frequently count page views, clicks on a phone-number link, or form loads as conversions — which inflates the numbers and makes performance look better than it is.

Verify the conversion source, the counting method (one per click versus every conversion), and whether calls are counted only after a minimum duration. The most useful check is comparing the conversions Google reports against the jobs you actually booked over the same period. If those two numbers aren't in a stable relationship, your account is being optimized toward a signal that doesn't represent revenue.

07

Should I pay a percentage of ad spend or a flat fee?

A flat fee removes a conflict of interest. Under percentage pricing, your agency earns more when you spend more, which makes it awkward for them to recommend cutting a budget even when cutting is correct — and it means efficiency gains reduce their revenue.

A flat retainer prices the work rather than the budget, so advice about how much to spend isn't influenced by how the agency gets paid. Whichever model you choose, ad spend should be billed to you directly by Google, never routed through the agency.

08

What's the minimum Google Ads budget for a home-service business?

It depends far more on your market and cost per click than on any general rule. In competitive metro markets for HVAC, plumbing or dumpster rental, clicks frequently run $8–$25, and lead aggregators bid aggressively on the same terms — then resell each lead to several of your competitors.

At $500–$1,000 a month you may be buying only a few dozen clicks, which is rarely enough data to optimize and rarely enough volume to move the business. A smaller budget can work, but only if it's concentrated on a narrow set of high-intent searches in a tight geography rather than spread across everything you offer.

09

Who owns the Google Ads account when you hire an agency?

You should. A reputable agency manages your account through delegated access from their manager account, which means the account, its billing, its historical data and its campaign assets stay yours — and you can revoke that access yourself at any time, without their involvement.

Be cautious of any arrangement where the agency creates and owns the account. Leaving means starting over with no performance history, and that history is a real asset in Google's bidding systems. Ask who will own the account before you sign anything.

10

How long does it take for Google Ads to start working?

Ads can serve within hours, but meaningful optimization takes longer. Automated bidding needs conversion volume before it performs well, which in a low-volume local account can take several weeks.

Removing wasted spend produces the fastest visible improvement, because it's subtractive and requires no learning period. Structural changes — rebuilding campaign architecture, for instance — cause temporary dips while the system relearns, which is why they belong outside your busy season. Anyone promising a specific result on a specific date is guessing.

11

Can I just manage Google Ads myself?

Yes, and plenty of contractors do it adequately. The work that matters most is unglamorous and repetitive: reading the search terms report regularly and adding negatives, keeping match types tight, and verifying that conversion tracking reflects real jobs.

If you'll genuinely do that every week, you can run a small account well. The reason most owners don't is that it competes with running the business — and neglected accounts drift toward waste, because Google's defaults favor broader matching. The realistic question isn't whether you can. It's whether you will.

Not sure where your account stands?

The audit is free and read-only. If your account's in good shape, we'll tell you that too.

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