Why it matters
With Local Services Ads, you pay for leads, not clicks. That sounds simple, but it means every setting that decides who sees your ad also decides what you pay for.
If your service area stretches into towns your crews never want to drive to, you’ll get calls from those towns. If your profile shows for every job type in your category, you’ll get calls for work you don’t do. A pest control company that doesn’t treat bed bugs, or an HVAC company that doesn’t install new systems, can end up paying for leads it has to turn away.
Hours matter too. LSAs generally show when you’re open to take leads, so hours that don’t match reality either hide you when you could be booking or show you when nobody can pick up.
Getting these settings right is one of the simplest ways to make an LSA budget go further.
How we do it
- Start with your real map. In the free consult, we ask where your best jobs come from, where you’d rather not drive, and where you’re trying to grow. That becomes the starting list of ZIP codes and cities.
- Build service areas around the work, not a radius. We add the areas you serve and leave out the ones that don’t make sense for travel time or job size. You can serve a wide area without paying for leads in every corner of it.
- Go through every job type with you. Google lists job types by category. We review them line by line and turn off anything you don’t do or don’t want, so your ad isn’t shown for work you’d decline.
- Set hours you can actually cover. We match your LSA hours to when someone can answer the phone or reply to a message. If you run an after-hours or emergency line, we set that up only if it’s truly staffed.
- Review what comes in each week. As leads arrive, we look at which areas and job types they come from. If a town keeps producing calls outside your service or a job type brings in low-value requests, we adjust it.
How LSAs and search ads work together
LSAs only cover the job types and areas Google offers for your category. Regular Google search ads fill the gaps: services LSAs don’t list, areas where you want broader reach, or specific high-value jobs you want to push harder. We plan both together, and tracking connects them, so you can see which one brought in each lead instead of guessing.
What you get
- A service area list built from where you want to work, reviewed with you before launch
- A job type review with anything you don’t do or don’t want turned off
- Business hours set to match when someone can actually take leads
- A weekly check on where leads are coming from and what they’re asking for
- A short note on which jobs or areas might be better handled with search ads
- Clear changes in your monthly report when we adjust areas or job types
Common mistakes we fix
- Every job type left on. Default settings can show your ad for services you don’t offer, and you end up paying for calls you can’t use.
- A service area that’s bigger than your crews want. A junk removal company might be willing to drive 45 minutes for a full truckload, but not for a single couch. We shape the area around the work that pays.
- Hours that don’t match the phones. Showing as open when nobody can answer means missed leads and can hurt how Google ranks you.
- Never revisiting settings. Seasons change, crews grow and new services get added. Your areas and job types should change with them.
- Expecting LSAs to cover everything. When a service isn’t available as a job type, search ads are usually the better tool for it.