“We’re spending every month and I genuinely can’t tell you if it works.”
Service
Google Ads Management Calgary
Paid search, set up and run so you are paying for phone calls and booked work rather than for clicks.
- Put the tracking in first — before any spend
- Find the searches that end in a phone call
- Cut the searches that never will
- Send the click somewhere built to receive it
Sound familiar?
You’re probably here because…
“Somebody manages it and I’ve never seen a number I understand.”
“We tried it, it burned through the budget in a fortnight, and we stopped.”
What’s actually going on
Google Ads puts you at the top of the page for a search you choose, and charges you when somebody clicks. That is the whole mechanism, and it is genuinely useful: it is the only channel that can produce work this week rather than next quarter.
It is also the easiest channel to waste money on, for a specific and boring reason. The platform optimises towards whatever you tell it success looks like. If the only thing it can see is clicks, it will get you clicks — efficiently, tirelessly, and with no reference to whether any of them phoned you. Most underperforming accounts are not badly built. They are accurately optimising towards the wrong target because nobody ever connected the spend to the jobs.
That is why the tracking goes in before the budget does. It is unglamorous, it produces nothing to look at in week one, and it is the difference between an account you can make decisions about and an account you can only have opinions about.
The second thing worth understanding: paid search and local search are not competitors, they are different instruments. Ads are rented attention — the moment you stop paying, it stops. Local search is earned and compounds, but it moves slowly. Most businesses that use both well start with ads to get work in the door now, and use local search to bring the ad budget down over time. If somebody tells you that you need both, permanently, ask them what the plan is for the ads to matter less.
The work
What we’d do, in order.
- 01
Put the tracking in first — before any spend
Calls, form submissions and bookings, connected back to the click that produced them. This is not the exciting part and it is not optional: without it, every later decision about what to cut is a guess, and the account optimises towards whatever is easiest to count rather than what earns.
- 02
Find the searches that end in a phone call
Not the ones with the biggest volume — the ones with buying intent behind them. “Emergency plumber near me” and “how does a water heater work” cost similar amounts per click and are worth wildly different things.
- 03
Cut the searches that never will
A negative keyword list built from what the account actually matched, not from a template. This is usually where the first meaningful saving comes from, and it is ongoing work rather than a one-off.
- 04
Send the click somewhere built to receive it
An ad promising one thing and a homepage about nine others is the most common reason paid search underperforms. The page has to answer the search, and it has to make contact take one tap.
- 05
Run it against jobs, not against clicks
Cost per click is a vanity number. What matters is cost per call that turned into work, which means the reporting has to reach past the ad platform into what actually happened.
What you actually get
Every deliverable, and how often.
No bundles, no “strategy” line item you can’t inspect. If it isn’t on this list, we didn’t promise it.
- Conversion tracking Calls, form submissions and bookings connected back to the click that produced them. This goes in before any spend. One-time, verified monthly
- Account build or rebuild Campaign structure, ad groups and match types built around buying intent rather than search volume. One-time
- Negative keyword list Built from what your account actually matched, not from a template. This is usually where the first real saving comes from. Ongoing
- Ad copy & extensions Ads that answer the search rather than describe the company, with the extensions that make the ad bigger. One-time, then tested
- Landing page review Whether the page the click lands on answers the search and makes contact take one tap. One-time
- Search term review What people actually typed, what it cost, and what it produced. Waste cut, winners expanded. Monthly
- Plain-language report Cost per call, which terms produced work, what we stopped spending on and what that saved. Five minutes to read. Monthly
The difference
How this usually gets done, and how we run it.
How it usually goes
How we run it
The account is judged on clicks and impressions, because that is what the platform reports by default.
Tracking goes in first, so the account is judged on calls that turned into work. Without it every decision about what to cut is a guess.
Broad match left on to "let the algorithm learn", and the budget goes with it.
Match types chosen deliberately, and a negative list built from real search terms rather than a starter template.
Every ad points at the homepage.
The click lands somewhere that answers the search it came from, or we say so before you spend.
A dashboard with twenty metrics and no recommendation.
One page: what it cost, what it produced, what we changed and why.
What this doesn’t fix
Worth saying plainly, because paying for the wrong thing is the most expensive mistake on this list.
Ads buy attention; they do not fix what happens when that attention arrives. If the phone rings and nobody picks up, or a quote takes three days, paid search just raises the cost of the same leak — you are now paying for every missed call.
Find out where the leak is firstIf your Google listing has never been set up, ads will work but they will cost more than they should — you will be renting attention you could partly be earning, and you will keep renting it for as long as you run.
Local SEOHow you’ll know it’s working
Agreed before any money is spent, so there is something to hold us to.
- Cost per call, and cost per call that turned into actual work — the two are not the same number and only the second one matters.
- Which search terms produced booked jobs, reported in plain language rather than as a platform export.
- What the account stopped spending on, and what that saved.
- A monthly report you can read in five minutes without a glossary. If you cannot understand it, it is not doing its job.
What you won’t get from us is a promised ranking, a promised number of leads or a promised date. Nobody controls those, and quoting them before the work starts is guessing with your money.
What it costs, and who does it
A fixed number before anything starts, agreed with you first — not an hourly rate that drifts. What the number is depends on what we find, and we would rather look before quoting than quote and revise.
10+ years of digital marketing experience. How we work, in full →
Before you ask
The questions we actually get.
What should I be spending?
It depends on what a job is worth to you and what the clicks cost in your trade — the two numbers together set the floor. We would rather work that out with you than name a figure that sounds good and does nothing.
How fast does it work?
Paid search is the one channel that can produce enquiries the same week. What it cannot do is produce them cheaply on day one — the first few weeks are as much about cutting waste as adding reach.
We tried ads before and stopped. Why would this be different?
Most accounts that fail were not badly built; they were accurately optimising towards the wrong target because nobody connected spend to jobs. That is the first thing we fix, and if it turns out the economics do not work we will tell you.
Do I need SEO as well?
Not necessarily, and not at the same time. Ads are rented attention and local search is earned. Plenty of businesses start with ads to get work in now and use local search to bring the ad budget down later.
Who owns the account?
You do. It is set up under your ownership, and if we stop working together it stays with you, including the history.
Will you manage the ads and the landing page?
We will review the page and tell you what is costing you conversions. Rebuilding it is a separate piece of work with its own number, and we will say plainly if it is not worth doing.