I shoot competitively. And one thing you learn fast is that accuracy is not about how many rounds you fire. It is about where you aim.
You know what that looks like in marketing? A Google Ads account with no targeting, no negative keywords, and a prayer that some of those clicks turn into phone calls.
I have been in local digital marketing for over 15 years. My team manages Google Ads for dental practices, roofing contractors, chimney sweeps, and other local businesses. And the most common thing I hear from a new client is some version of this: "I tried Google Ads. It didn't work. I just threw money away." It almost always turns out that the problem wasn't Google Ads. It was how the campaign was set up.
Here is how it usually goes. A business owner hears that Google Ads can get the phone ringing. They set up a campaign themselves, or they let a Google rep build it for them, which I never recommend. Google's reps are there to get you to spend more, not to protect your budget. They spend $500 to $1,000 a month for a few months, see some clicks on a dashboard, but the phone doesn't ring any more than it did before. So they shut it off and write the whole thing off as a waste.
Almost every time, the issue comes back to how the campaign was set up.
And sometimes I have to be upfront about something else entirely. If your budget is $300 a month and clicks in your market are running $8 to $10 each, the math just does not work. That gives you maybe 30 to 37 clicks in a month, and that's not enough to run an effective test or to move the needle. Part of my job is telling a business owner that upfront rather than taking their money and hoping for the best. That is the honest conversation a lot of agencies skip.
But most of the time? The budget is not the problem. The aim is.
When we take over a Google Ads account for a local business, the same three problems show up over and over.
Someone searches "emergency electrician New London" and clicks your ad. Where do they land? If the answer is your homepage, you have a problem. Your homepage talks about everything you do. It has your company history, your service list, maybe a photo of your team. What it probably does not have is a clear answer to the question that person was searching, a phone number right at the top, and a reason to call you right now.
A dedicated landing page built for the specific thing someone searched makes a huge difference. It does not have to be fancy. It needs to match the search, make it obvious how to contact you, and get out of the way. We have seen this single change double the number of calls from the same budget.
We have taken over accounts where the previous ads were showing to people two or three counties away. The business owner had no idea. They had been paying for clicks from homeowners who were never going to hire them.
The flip side is also true. We work with dental practices throughout the Northeast, and their service radius is very different from a contractor's. Most people will drive 15 to 20 minutes to see their dentist. A plumber or roofing contractor might serve clients 45 minutes to an hour away. Your geographic targeting should match your actual service area, not Google's defaults.
Google's default settings are designed to spend your budget, not protect it. If you have not carefully set your geographic targeting, you are almost certainly paying for clicks from people who will never become customers.
This is the single biggest waste of money we see. A plumber sets up an ad targeting "plumbing" and ends up paying for clicks from people searching "plumbing school near me," "plumbing supply store," "DIY plumbing repair," and "plumber salary." None of those people are going to hire a plumber. Every one of those clicks costs money.
The fix is a negative keyword list, which is just a list of search terms you tell Google not to show your ads for. It sounds simple because it is. But most local business owners running their own ads have never set one up. The way you find the terms to add? The search terms report, which I will get to below.
If you are running Google Ads and you have never looked at your search terms report, you do not actually know what you are paying for.
Here is what it is in plain English. Google Ads shows you the keywords you are bidding on. The search terms report shows you the actual words people typed into Google before they clicked your ad. Those are two very different things. You might be bidding on "dentist near me," but the search terms report might show that you are also paying for clicks from people who searched "dentist salary," "free dental clinic," or "dental school admissions."
We have cleaned up accounts where a significant chunk of the ad spend was going to completely irrelevant searches. Once the targeting is fixed and negative keywords are in place, the same budget starts producing real calls. It is one of the fastest wins we can deliver for a new client.
The search terms report is free. It is built into Google Ads. And most local business owners have never seen theirs. If you do nothing else after reading this article, log into your Google Ads account and pull that report.
I tell every client the same thing: I do not care how many clicks your ads got. I care how many times your phone rang and whether you are generating a return on what you are spending. Clicks look good on a dashboard, but a click is just someone tapping a link. For most local businesses, the phone call is the conversion that matters. Form fills count too, but the phone call is still the action business owners care about most, and it tends to be the highest-quality lead.
When we set up or take over a Google Ads account, call tracking is one of the first things we put in place. If we cannot tie the ad spend to actual calls, we are guessing. And we do not guess. That is how you end up spraying rounds downrange and hoping something hits.
There is an initial learning period with any Google Ads campaign, and it can take a few months of experimentation to dial things in. But at the end of the day, Google Ads should pay for itself. If you are a few months in and cannot point to real calls and real return on your ad spend, something needs to change.
Back to the range. The difference between a competitive shooter and someone who just picked up a handgun is not the equipment. It is the fundamentals. The basics, done right, consistently.
Google Ads is the same. The businesses that get results are not the ones spending the most money. They are the ones with clean targeting, proper negative keywords, geographic boundaries that match their service area, and landing pages that convert clicks into calls.
The budget is not always the problem. Sometimes it is, and a good ads manager will tell you that before you spend a dime. But most of the time, the aim is the problem, not the bullets.
It depends on your industry and how competitive your market is. A dental practice in a suburb might do well at $1,000 to $1,500 a month. A contractor in a competitive trade like roofing might need more. The key is making sure the budget is large enough to generate meaningful data. If clicks in your market cost $8 to $10 each and your budget only allows 30 clicks a month, you are not giving the campaign enough room to work.
Look at calls and form fills, not clicks or impressions. If your phone is ringing more and you can tie those calls back to the ads, it is working. If you are getting clicks but no calls, pull your search terms report. That is usually where the problem shows up.
You can, and some business owners do it well. But it takes ongoing attention. Negative keywords need updating, bids need adjusting, and the search terms report needs regular review. Most local business owners I talk to tried running ads themselves first, spent money without results, and then brought in help.
In almost every case we have seen, the issue is targeting, not the platform. The most common problems are keywords that are too broad, no negative keyword list, too wide a geographic area, and sending traffic to the homepage instead of a relevant landing page. These are all fixable, and most of them can be improved in the first week of a proper account audit.
There is usually a learning period in the first few weeks as we test keywords, adjust bids, and build out the negative keyword list. Most businesses start seeing real calls within the first one to three months, depending on the market and how much cleanup the account needs. The goal is for your ads to pay for themselves, and we track that closely from day one. For businesses that also want long-term visibility that does not depend on ad spend, we recommend pairing Google Ads with an ongoing SEO strategy.
Want to know if your Google Ads budget is actually working for you?
Give me a call at 860-317-2347 or send me an email at robert@letitbe-local.com. My team will pull your search terms report, check your targeting, and give you an honest read on what is working and what is not. No pressure, no sales pitch.