Almost every trade owner I talk to asks some version of this: should I pay for ads, or work on showing up in Google for free? The honest answer is both, in the right order. Here's the order and the reasoning.
What Local Services Ads are good at
Local Services Ads are the sponsored listings at the very top of Google for searches like "electrician near me." The big difference from regular ads is that you pay per lead, not per click. Someone browsing your listing costs you nothing. You pay when they actually call or message.
Leads that aren't real jobs, like a vendor pitching you or someone looking for work, can be disputed with Google for a credit. And the ad budget is paid straight to Google on your own card, so you always see exactly what you spent.
The upside is speed. Once you're approved (Google runs its own screening, and that part is on Google's clock), calls can start coming in quickly.
What local SEO is good at
Local SEO is how you show up in the map results and regular results without paying per call. It covers your Google Business Profile, your website's service pages, your listings across the web, and your reviews. It builds over weeks to months rather than days, but it keeps working after you stop paying for it.
It also helps with AI search now. People are starting to ask ChatGPT and other assistants for a local electrician, and those tools lean on the same things: clear service pages, consistent listings and real reviews.
The order we set them up in
- Get the basics right first. An active Google Business Profile with real photos, a website with a page for each service you actually want to sell, and a business name that doesn't get lost among five other shops with nearly the same one.
- Make sure calls get answered and followed up. Paying for leads that ring out to voicemail is the fastest way to waste an ad budget. See what missed calls cost your trade.
- Add tracking. A tracked phone number and a visitor pixel on the site tell you which calls came from where. Without that, nobody can tell you what your marketing is actually producing, including us.
- Then turn on Local Services Ads, starting with a small test budget, once the profile and site are ready to catch what the ads send.
- Keep building SEO the whole time: new service pages, listings, review requests after every job, and checking what competitors are doing.
One rule on reviews
Ask every customer for a review, not just the happy ones. Only sending your best customers to Google is called review gating, Google doesn't allow it, and it can cost you your reviews. Asking everyone and answering every review, good or bad, is what builds trust.
Not sure which of these you're missing? That's what the free diagnostic call is for.