Google Ads is built to spend money easily. The default settings, the friendly setup wizard and the recommendations tab all lean towards reaching more people, and for a local service business “more people” usually means people in the wrong town searching for the wrong thing.
Below is a search campaign set up in the order you’ll meet the settings, with what we’d change for a local business and why. Google renames things regularly, so treat the labels as correct at the time of writing (late 2026) and expect the odd one to have moved.
Before you open Google Ads
Two things need to be in place first, or the money is wasted.
A landing page for each service you advertise. Sending every ad to the homepage makes people hunt. Someone searching “blocked drain Ballina” should land on a page about blocked drains that mentions Ballina, with a phone number at the top. If your site has a single Services page, fix that before you advertise, so each group of ads has somewhere specific to point.
A way to count enquiries. If you can’t see which clicks became calls or form submissions, you’re guessing. We’ll cover tracking below, but set it up before the campaign goes live, not after.
If you’re still weighing up whether to run ads at all, start with our comparison of Google Ads and SEO for a small budget.
Campaign type and goal
Choose a Search campaign. These are the text ads that appear above the normal results when someone types a search.
New accounts are often steered towards a simplified “Smart” campaign or towards Performance Max, which spreads your budget across search, YouTube, Gmail, maps and display. These can work in some situations, but they hide a lot of what’s happening. For a local service business starting out, a plain search campaign gives you control over which searches you pay for, and that’s where most of the savings are.
When Google offers to include the Display Network or search partners in a search campaign, we’d switch them off to begin with. You can test them later once you know what a good click looks like.
Location settings
This is the setting that wastes the most money for regional businesses.
First, choose your area. You can target postcodes, suburbs, regions, or a radius around your address. For most tradies a list of the suburbs and towns you actually service is more accurate than a circle, which tends to include places across a river or a range you’d never drive to.
Then open the advanced location options. Google offers two choices:
- Presence or interest: people in, regularly in, or who’ve shown interest in your locations. This is the default, and Google recommends it.
- Presence: people in or regularly in your locations.
For a local service business, we change it to Presence. The default can show your ads to someone in Melbourne who’s searching about the Northern Rivers, which suits a holiday rental but not an electrician. Google’s location options page explains the difference.
There are exceptions. A wedding venue, a tourism operator or a practice that sees people moving to the area might want the wider setting. Make it a decision.
Keywords and match types
Group your keywords by service, with one ad group per service. “Hot water”, “blocked drains” and “gas fitting” each get their own group, their own ads and their own landing page.
Then choose match types. Google’s keyword matching guide describes three:
- Broad match (just the words,
hot water repairs): shows on searches related to your keyword, including ones that don’t contain the words. This is the default for new keywords. - Phrase match (in quotes,
"hot water repairs"): shows on searches that include the meaning of your keyword, including more specific versions. - Exact match (in brackets,
[hot water repairs]): shows on searches with the same meaning or intent.
Google recommends broad match paired with Smart Bidding, and with plenty of data that can work. With a small local budget and a brand-new account, broad match gives the system lots of room to experiment with your money. We usually start with phrase and exact match on high-intent keywords, check the search terms report weekly, and only consider broad match once conversion tracking has a few weeks of real data behind it.
Good keywords for local services include the problem or service, and often the place:
"blocked drain"/[blocked drain ballina]"emergency electrician"/[electrician lennox head]"hot water system replacement"
Avoid broad, research-style keywords like “how to fix a leaking tap” early on. They bring DIYers, not customers.
Negative keywords
Negative keywords stop your ads showing for searches you don’t want. They’re the main way to stop paying for useless clicks, and the list grows every week you run ads.
Start with a list like this before you launch:
- Job seekers: jobs, job, salary, apprenticeship, course, TAFE, training, wages
- DIY: how to, DIY, yourself, tutorial, YouTube
- Wrong intent: free, cheap (if you’re not the cheap option), second hand, wholesale, supplies, parts
- Other places: towns and cities you don’t service
- Other services: things people confuse with yours. A plumber might add “roof plumbing” if they don’t do it
One catch: negative keywords don’t automatically cover close variants, synonyms or misspellings the way normal keywords do, so you may need several versions. Google’s negative keywords page covers how each match type works for negatives.
The real source of negatives is the search terms report. Check it every week for the first couple of months. Every irrelevant search that cost you money becomes a new negative keyword.
Ads and assets
Write ads that say what you do, where you do it, and why someone should call you rather than the next ad. Be specific: “Licensed electricians in Ballina. Same-day callouts. Fixed-price quotes.” beats “Quality electrical services you can trust.”
Then add assets, which are the extra lines and buttons that can appear with your ad:
- Call assets: your phone number, tappable on mobile. For most tradies, this is the most important one. You can set it to show only during business hours.
- Location assets: link your Google Business Profile so your address and distance can show.
- Sitelinks: links to other service pages.
- Callouts: short phrases like “Licensed and insured” or “No callout fee on weekdays” (only if true).
Conversion tracking
Google Ads lets you track calls from your call assets, calls from people who saw your website number after clicking an ad, and clicks on a phone number on your mobile site. For calls from ads, Google counts them under a “Calls from ads” conversion action, which needs call reporting switched on.
You set a minimum call length for a call to count as a conversion. Pick something that filters out wrong numbers and hang-ups. A 30-second accidental call isn’t an enquiry.
Also track form submissions from your website’s thank-you page or form event. Google Analytics 4 can pass these through to Google Ads.
Without this, Smart Bidding has nothing to learn from, and you have no idea which keywords pay for themselves.
Bidding and budget
For a brand-new campaign with no conversion data, start with Maximise clicks with a maximum cost-per-click limit, or manual bidding if you’re comfortable with it. Once you’re getting a steady stream of tracked conversions each month, switch to Maximise conversions or a target cost per acquisition.
For budget, our rule of thumb: look at Keyword Planner’s estimated bid range for your core keywords in your area and set a daily budget that buys at least 10 clicks a day. Less than that and you’ll wait months to learn anything useful. Run it for at least four to six weeks before judging.
Set your ad schedule to the hours you can answer the phone, unless you offer after-hours work. A call that goes to voicemail at 9pm is often a lost job.
The weekly ten-minute check
Once it’s running:
- Search terms report: add negative keywords
- Conversions: which keywords and ads are producing calls and forms?
- Budget: are you running out before the end of the day?
- Recommendations tab: read them, but don’t hit “apply all”. Many recommendations raise budgets or broaden targeting.
- Ring your own tracking number once a month to check it works
If you’re a trade or home service business, also look at Local Services Ads, which work differently and charge per lead. Our guide to Google Local Services Ads in Australia explains how they compare.
We set up and manage Google Ads for local businesses as part of our digital marketing service, and if your landing pages need work first, we’ll fix those through our web design service before we spend a dollar of your budget on clicks.