Case study · Local Services Ads
54 signups instead of 30, at 37% less per signup.
Three months on one Local Services Ads account before working with us, three months after. Same market, a budget that grew only 13%, and leads that converted more often, because someone was finally rating and marking every one within 24 hours.
Real client account. Figures are exact; the client's name is withheld by request.
37% lower
Cost per signup, from $4,397.83 to $2,768.93.
30 → 54
Signups, up 80%. Leads that became paying customers.
13% lower
Cost per lead, from $496.00 to $429.66, on 13% more budget.
The numbers
What changed, before and after.
One Local Services Ads account, three months before and three months after. Figures are exact; the client's name is withheld by request.
The challenge
Local Services Ads is not Google Ads with a different name.
It is a pay-per-lead product. You are charged when a prospect calls or messages through your ad, not for every impression or click, and Google will credit back leads that are spam, out of your service area or otherwise not relevant, provided you dispute them correctly and on time. Ranking is set by proximity, review volume and rating, business hours and responsiveness, not simply by who bids highest.
Three things go wrong in most accounts:
- Leads go unrated past the 24-hour window. Google expects every lead marked, booked or not, relevant or not, shortly after it arrives. Left unrated, that lead becomes a blind spot, and Google reads the silence as a weak signal about the account.
- Whoever answers the phone was never trained on this. Google's own documentation does not spell out what properly rating a lead means or why it matters to future lead volume and cost, so most sales and intake teams mark leads inconsistently or not at all.
- Bid settings are left on the defaults. Budget caps, bid strategy and service-area settings all shape how much you spend per lead and how many you get, and most accounts are still running on whatever was set up on day one.
The work
The same three levers, run properly.
- A dashboard that flags every unrated lead. We build a live view into every lead in the account that still needs to be rated or marked, so the team always knows what is open before the 24-hour window closes, instead of finding out weeks later from a Google performance dip.
- We train the people answering the phone. Directly, not through a PDF. The sales or intake team learns exactly how Google expects leads rated and marked, and why it matters.
- Bid settings and budget, rebuilt around the business. We audit and reset the account's bid strategy, budget and service-area configuration so they match what the business can actually handle and what a lead is actually worth.
Outcome
The results.
Across three months either side of the change, in the same market: monthly ad spend rose 13.3%, from $131,934.95 to $149,522.12. Leads rose 30.8%, from 266 to 348, and cost per lead fell 13.4%, from $496.00 to $429.66.
The bigger movement was further down the funnel. Signups rose 80.0%, from 30 to 54, and cost per signup fell 37.0%, from $4,397.83 to $2,768.93.
Why it worked
A wasted click costs you nothing on Local Services Ads. A mishandled lead costs you the next one Google would have sent.
Next step
Different business, same question.
What is your search and paid spend actually producing? We will look, then tell you plainly what we would change first.