Is Google Ads worth it for a small business?

The short answer.

Usually yes, for a local business people already search for, such as a plumber, a dentist or an auto shop, as long as the account pays only for searches that mean someone is ready to buy and every call, form and booking is counted. It is rarely worth it when few people search for what you sell, when calls go unanswered, or when no one can tell you what each customer cost.

The test is simple arithmetic: what a new customer is worth to you, against what the ads spend to bring one in.

Do the math with your own numbers.

Take last month’s ad spend and divide it by the number of new customers the ads brought in. That is your cost per customer. Compare it with what a customer is worth after the cost of doing the job.

An illustrative example: $1,000 in ad spend brings 40 calls, 12 of them book and 8 become paying jobs. That is $125 per customer. If an average job leaves you $300, the ads are paying for themselves. If it leaves you $100, something has to change before the budget grows.

If you can’t fill in those numbers, that is the first thing to fix. Calls and forms from ads should be tracked from day one.

When Google Ads works.

• People search for what you sell, in words like “near me,” “repair” or “emergency”
• You serve a clear area and have room for the work
• Someone answers the phone, or texts back in minutes
• The ads send people to a page about the thing they searched for
• The account is checked and pruned every week

When it doesn’t.

• Few people search for your service on Google at all
• The money runs as banner ads on other websites while everyone thinks it is search
• Broad keywords pay for searches like “jobs” and “free”
• Calls from ads are never counted, so nobody knows what works
• The phone isn’t answered, and the lead calls the next business

Check your account in twenty minutes.

• Open the account and pick the last full month
• Split the spend by where the ads ran: search, display and everything else
• Read the search terms report and mark the searches you would never pay for
• Ask what each conversion counts: a tap, a call, a form or a booking
• Match a handful of leads to real jobs in your own records

If the split surprises you, or the conversions can’t be explained, that is your answer for now, and the fix is usually in the account rather than the budget.

Questions we get.