PPC Services : Small businesses are often at an obstacle when it involves advertising in commission verticals. They simply don’t have pockets deep enough to both hold off big-name brands and continually pay exorbitant click costs for high-volume, highly-competitive keywords. Counting on what service vertical you would like to advertise in, you’ll often expect to pay $5, $10, $15, or more on the average per click for such sought-after search terms. Those costs are, too often, not feasible for therefore many small businesses unless they’re somehow ready to maintain a unprecedented conversion rate.
Google recognized this reality, and in 2018 began offering an answer for little businesses to undertake and level the playing field: Local Services Ads. Local Services Ads are sponsored business listings that are eligible to point out for service-oriented search queries.
Unlike regular PPC Services text ads or search campaigns, Local Services Ads generate impressions supported service categories the advertiser opts into (there are not any keywords used) and may only show during a particular geographic market. Furthermore, you set a desired weekly budget you’d wish to pay on the average, and you’re charged a flat fee per call generated from these listings, which vary by service category and geographic market. If there’s something wrong with the contents of the call—for example, if the caller hung up immediately or asked for something completely irrelevant to your businesses—you can identify it in your Local Services Ads dashboard and not be charged for that decision.
To paint a clearer picture: If you run a mover specializing in short-distance local moves within the Los Angeles market, you’ll create an area Services Ads account within the Moving & Relocation category and choose only local moves because the service type you offer. Then, you’ll narrow down where your ads are eligible to point out by postcode within that market. Google would then show your ads only to users within the zip codes you specify that submit search queries associated with local moving companies. If a user generated a call from your ad and therefore the contents of the decision fit Google’s criteria for a lead, you’d be charged a flat fee determined by Google for Moving & Relocation services in Los Angeles.
At Netleaf Software, we’ve helped a number of our clients opt into Local Services Ads by our PPC Services. During this post, I’ll review our experience using these ads for 2 of our larger-scale service clients and their results to answer the question: are Google Local Services Ads worth using?
Onboarding and Setup
We’ve onboarded two large-scale service clients with Local Services Ads in several different geographic locations. We’ll call them Client 1 and Client 2. Client 1 is within the Moving & Relocation vertical, and Client 2 is within the HVAC vertical. In our experience, the entire onboarding process for both clients was extraordinarily cumbersome and took multiple months to finish.
For Client 1, the insurance and license verification process contained extra layers due to the Moving & Relocation vertical. For one small business with one location, this might not are as big of a deal. For a business with multiple locations, it had been more strenuous on the part of our client. Furthermore, completing the background check process for every field worker took time as we were hooked in to each individual to input their own information.
For Client 2, we followed Google’s instructions to bypass their regular background check process for field workers as this client performs their own background checks that seemed to meet Google’s standards. After the client spent the higher a part of three months ensuring all field employee background checks were accounted for, Google initially denied our client’s request to bypass their regular background check process—despite a completed questionnaire that met Google’s standards—because of a technicality with geographic markets. After another month of back-and-forth and getting legal counsels involved, their request to bypass was finally accepted.
Once onboarding was finally complete for every client, we need to see the Google Local Services interface (UI) and dashboard. The UI is straightforward to navigate, and there are only a couple of pages (call reporting, profile settings, etc.).
The amount of actual control you’ve got as an advertiser is restricted to selecting which specific services you would like to opt your ads into (pre-set by Google) and which specific locations within a given geographic market you would like your ads eligible to point out in (towns, cities, and/or zip codes). Furthermore, you set a desired weekly budget that Google aims to satisfy along side the eligibility for hours of the day and days of the week you would like your ads to point out .
Results
After 1 / 4 of running Local Services Ads for Client 1 (Moving & Relocation), we evaluated the cost-effectiveness of those ads versus our standard paid search text ads. While call quality was excellent and their assigned lead rate was over 90% from Local Services Ads, the specified ratio of long-distance move requests (of significantly higher value) to local move requests fell well short expectations. Paying a flat fee between $30 – $40 for every call (depending on geographic market) proved to be too expensive because the eventual cost per booked move (final sale) ended up being 2x – 3x above our standard paid search campaigns PPC Services in Google Ads.
For Client 2 (HVAC), we saw better results. While the quantity of incoming calls was less than our regular text ads, and therefore the opportunity rate didn’t significantly differ, the conversion rate to confirmed sales proved to be higher. As a result, with the flat fees paid per call, the typical cost per sale ended up being half what it had been for our regular text ads.
Conclusion: worthwhile or Not?
Based on the results we’ve witnessed, the solution isn’t as clear cut as we had hoped for.
From a call quality perspective, Local Services Ads are definitely worthwhile. The speed of qualified leads per call exceeded that of our standard paid search campaigns which of several other digital channels.
From a price perspective, it depends. Paying a better flat fee per call than what we typically see from our other paid search campaigns PPC Services are often made up for within the end with better call quality and an eventual lower cost per sale. However, if you depend upon a selected sort of service within your vertical to remain profitable, you’ll find that the typical cost per call finishes up being too expensive even with better conversion rates or that the incoming call volume is less than you would like to ascertain any given week.
If you’re alittle business advertiser during a industry with a limited budget, we recommend you give Google Local Services Ads PPC Services an attempt. Likelihood is that your onboarding process are going to be less strenuous than the examples during this post. there’s also more upside than downside given the results we’ve seen, and therefore the potential for better lead quality via phone calls. Be wary, though, that it’s going to not be the miracle answer you’re trying to find to form up for all the specified lead volume you would like. There’ll be a limit to what percentage phone calls you’ll likely be ready to acquire during any given week. That’s why, if you are doing plan to test these ads, don’t neglect your other digital channels, including paid search campaigns in Google Ads PPC Services.