When a contractor says “we tried Google ads,” they usually mean classic Google Ads — the pay-per-click auction where you bid on keywords and pay whether or not the click becomes anything. There’s a second product most trades know less well: Local Services Ads (LSAs) — the results at the very top with the green checkmark, where you pay only when someone actually calls or messages you.
They look similar on the results page. As businesses, they could hardly be more different.
The structural difference
Google Ads charges per click. A click might be a customer, a competitor, a bot, or a misclick — you pay identically for each. In the trades, clicks commonly run $15–25 in Canada for electrical, plumbing, and HVAC terms, and the product demands continuous management: keywords, negative keywords, ad copy, bids, schedules. Unmanaged, it decays into pure waste — we’ve published the autopsy of a campaign that ran nine years unmanaged: half the site’s traffic, 3.6-second visits, zero leads.
LSAs charge per lead — a real call or message from a real person in your area. Ranking isn’t won by outbidding: it’s driven by profile completeness, reviews, and how fast you answer. There are no keywords to manage. And junk leads — spam, wrong numbers, out-of-area — can be disputed for credit, if you know the process exists (most contractors don’t).
Which trades fit which
LSAs shine for urgent, licensed, high-frequency trades: plumbing, electrical, HVAC, garage doors, locksmith-adjacent work. The customer needs someone now, trusts the Google-screened badge, and calls from the top of the page. The licensing screen that LSAs require is actually your friend here — it filters out the unlicensed competition that undercuts you everywhere else.
Google Ads can fit long-cycle, high-ticket work — renovations, additions, custom builds — where the searcher researches rather than dials, and a well-built landing page can capture the inquiry. But note the conditions: active weekly management, real conversion tracking, and a purpose-built landing page. Without all three, you’re funding the autopsy article’s sequel.
Neither replaces organic. Both stop the moment you stop paying. Rankings you’ve earned keep answering the phone — which is why our standing advice is organic first, LSAs as the paid layer for urgent trades, and classic Ads only as a managed, temporary bridge or a deliberate scaling tool.
The honest math to run before spending anything
Write three numbers down. Your average job profit. Your close rate on inquiries. And the channel’s cost per lead — for LSAs, your trade’s going rate in your market; for Google Ads, cost-per-click divided by your landing page’s conversion rate (be honest: 5% is decent). If cost-per-booked-job is comfortably under your job profit, the channel can work. If you can’t fill in the numbers, that itself is the answer: you’re not ready to buy traffic, because you won’t be able to tell whether it’s working — and unmeasured ad spend is how nine-year leaks happen.
Where we stand, for transparency
We don’t sell monthly ads management — percentage-of-spend pricing pays the manager more when you spend more, and we think that conflict is where zombie campaigns come from. What we do offer is one-time and flat: an Ads Autopsy if something’s already running, and a proper LSA setup if your trade fits the profile. Both end with you owning and understanding the account — not renting our attention forever.
Ready to put this to work?
New site or fixing the one you have — start the conversation. If you already have a website, I’ll include a free, plain-English audit with my reply: rankings, local search, and whether AI can find you.
Start your project →Already have a site? Ask for the free plain-English audit — or just email jamie@foundwork.ca.