Google Ads for Trades: Local Visibility Without the Waste

A plumbing business starts running Google Ads, the budget is gone after two weeks, and the phone has barely rung more often. The search terms report then shows queries from a city no technician would ever drive to, people looking for an apprenticeship, and DIY videos.

That is rarely Google Ads itself. It is settings that suit an online shop but not a business that works within a fixed radius. These are the levers that make the biggest difference for local trades.

Location: presence, not interest

The area. Set the service area the way you actually travel: as a radius around the business or as a list of towns. An area that is too large is the most common reason for clicks that can never turn into a job.

The location option. Google Ads distinguishes between "Presence" and "Presence or interest" in location targeting. With "Presence or interest", people who are only interested in your area, for example because they search for it without being there, can also see the ad. For a business that drives to the customer, "Presence" is almost always the right choice. Check what your campaign settings say, because the default is not necessarily the one you need.

Search terms with local intent

Someone searching "repair boiler" might be a homeowner with a broken boiler or someone who wants to know how it is done. Someone searching "emergency heating engineer" plus a town name most likely wants someone to come round.

So put the weight on terms that describe a job: the service plus a place, the service plus "company", "firm" or "emergency". General terms are not forbidden; they just need a closer look in the search terms report.

One ad group per service. Bathroom renovation, boiler servicing and drain cleaning are three different needs with three different ad texts. In one shared ad group the ad fits none of them properly.

Negative keywords: the underrated lever

Negative keywords stop your ad from showing for searches that will certainly not lead to a job. Typical candidates in the trades:

• Jobs and training: "apprenticeship", "salary", "vacancy", "job"
• Doing it yourself: "DIY", "how to", "tutorial", "video"
• Parts without fitting: searches for spare parts or DIY-store products

A borderline case is price-only searches such as "bathroom renovation cost". Some of these people are genuinely planning, others are just comparing. Whether you exclude them is a judgement call you will make better after a few weeks of search terms data than on day one.

Schedule and calls

Advertise only when someone answers. If the ad triggers a call at ten in the evening and nobody picks up, you have paid for a click that ends with an annoyed customer. Align the ad schedule with the hours when someone in the business is actually reachable. If you offer an emergency service, it can get its own campaign with its own hours.

Call assets. A call asset shows your phone number directly in the ad. For many trades businesses the call is the most important type of inquiry. Check in your account which scheduling and call reporting options are available to you there.

The landing page. Someone who clicks on "bathroom renovation" and lands on a homepage with ten services first has to search. A dedicated page per service, where the promise from the ad shows up again, is usually the next step. How to check whether ad and page match is covered in message match: from ad to landing page.

What stays with people

Which services you want to advertise at all, because they carry margin and you have capacity. Which search terms fit you and which do not. Whether an inquiry from the next town is worth the drive. The business makes those decisions. Automated bidding helps distribute the budget, but it does not know that you have no free slot left next week.

Frequently asked questions

How much budget do I need?

That depends on how many inquiries you want and what an inquiry costs in your region. Worked example with assumed values: if you want 20 inquiries a month and expect €40 per inquiry, you arrive at €800 of ad spend per month. Whether €40 is realistic only your own data will show after a few weeks.

Should I advertise in neighbouring towns too?

Only where you actually go and where the job is still worth it after travel time. A larger area brings more clicks, not necessarily more jobs.

Isn't a Google Business Profile enough?

The Business Profile is the foundation of local visibility and should be kept up to date. Ads complement it where you want to be visible for specific services.

What you can do today

1. Open the location settings of your campaigns and check the area and the location option.
2. Read the search terms report for recent weeks and note every term that can never become a job.
3. Turn those into a negative keyword list.
4. Compare the ad schedule with the hours when someone picks up the phone.
5. Work out your budget in the ad budget calculator from the inquiries you want per month and the expected cost per inquiry. The table at minus and plus twenty percent shows how sensitive the result is to a wrong assumption.

If you want your campaigns checked from the outside: how we set up Google Ads for local businesses is described under Google Ads, or directly in a first call.