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Most advice on splitting ad budget was written for ecommerce. 70/30. 60/40. Funnel stages. None of it accounts for the one thing that decides where a local service business should put its money.

Is your service a want or a need?

A need is moving, restoration, emergency plumbing, HVAC in July. Something breaks or a deadline hits and people go straight to Google. A want is landscaping, turf, pools, epoxy floors. Nobody wakes up at 2am needing a new patio.

If you sell a need, at least 60% of your budget goes to Google. Nobody is scrolling Facebook waiting for your ad when their basement is flooding. If you sell a want, flip it. You have to create the demand before you can capture it, and Meta is where that happens. Either way, hold back 10 to 15% for Local Service Ads.

That's the budget. Here's the structure underneath it.

Google Ads: four campaigns, in this order

Branded search comes first. Go Google your own company name right now. You'll probably see a competitor sitting above your organic listing. A branded campaign on exact match at 100% target impression share fixes that, and it costs almost nothing because your own name is cheap to win. We break down the math in our post on bidding on your own brand name.

Non-brand search is the main event, and where most of your Google budget lives.

Competitor is next. You bid on their name the way they're bidding on yours. One warning: someone will call asking for XYZ Moving, and your rep needs to say "we're not them, but happy to give you a second quote" without missing a beat. If your team can't handle that, skip it.

Performance Max comes last, and only after you're hitting 30 conversions in 30 days. Launching it cold gives Google a blank slate and a big budget, which never ends well. Read our take on Performance Max for service businesses before you turn it on. Demand Gen is optional after that.

Inside your non-brand campaign

Build an ad group per service. A moving company gets local moving, long distance, packing, storage, near me, emergency, and commercial as separate ad groups, each with its own keywords and headlines that match those keywords.

We start on phrase match, not exact. Exact stopped meaning exact a long time ago, and phrase gives you a wider net you can trim. Audit search terms weekly and cut the junk.

Then build an account level negative keyword list covering jobs, careers, DIY, free, cheap, training, and how to. Account level matters because Performance Max needs it too. Our negative keywords guide has the starter list.

The granularity has a purpose. Tight ad groups produce relevant ads, relevant ads produce a strong Quality Score, and Quality Score is how you beat competitors who outspend you. More on that in how the Google Ads auction works.

Meta: one campaign, ad sets by location

One leads campaign. Three to five ad sets with ad set budget optimization, not campaign budget optimization, because you want control over what each city gets. One ad set per location. Single city operator, split by neighbourhood if you want to get sharp about it.

No lookalikes. No manual retargeting. Broad targeting with location only. Andromeda reads your creative to decide who sees the ad, so your creative is your targeting now. Do define your existing customers, engaged customers, and cold audience in your advertiser settings, because that's how you see where budget is actually going.

UGC video wins right now because it looks native, so people stop on it. Customer testimonials, job walkthroughs, carousels of review screenshots. Call out the neighbourhood by name. "Homeowners in Barrhaven, here's a move we finished down the street from you" beats anything that looks like an ad. More on the tradeoffs in Meta Ads vs Google Ads.

LSA is set and monitor

You upload insurance, licensing, and background checks. Google writes the headlines. You pick services from checkboxes and upload photos. That's it.

What you control is reviews, service area, bidding, and whether your documents are current. Let one expire and you're re-verifying, which is a nightmare. Our LSA setup guide walks the process.

The landing page has to finish the sentence

Someone searches long distance movers Ottawa. Your ad says long distance movers Ottawa. Then they land on a page about long distance moving in Ottawa. Not your homepage.

Service and city insertion. Form and call button above the fold. Trust badges, reviews, licensing, guarantees. We've tested multi step forms against classic forms and the classic form holds up just as well. The landing page rules apply to any vertical, not just movers.

Tracking is what makes the rest of it work

Everything above generates leads. Tracking is what turns leads into customers.

Leads come off your landing page with UTMs and click IDs attached and land in WhatConverts. That's the attribution layer, and its only job is telling you which keyword, ad, and campaign produced each lead and each call. Those same leads go into your CRM, where revenue lives.

Then you close the loop. Pull the sale values out of your CRM, push them into WhatConverts, and let it send that signal back to Google and Meta. Now the platforms optimize for booked jobs instead of form fills. That's offline conversion tracking, and skipping it is why most accounts plateau.

Without it, every lead on your thank you page looks identical to Google. A $15,000 long distance move and a tire kicker asking about a studio apartment are the same event. Google will happily go find you more tire kickers.

Give it time to learn

A new ad account is an AI with no data. It can't tell your good customers from your bad ones because you haven't shown it any yet. You buy the data before you buy customers. Three months minimum before you judge it.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I know if my service is a want or a need?

Check search volume for your core service terms in your market. Strong, steady volume means people are actively looking, so it's a need and Google carries the budget. Thin or seasonal volume means you have to create demand first, so Meta carries more.

Should I run all four Google campaigns from day one?

No. Start with branded and non-brand. Add competitor once your sales team can handle those calls. Add Performance Max once you're consistently hitting 30 conversions in 30 days.

Do I need Local Service Ads if I'm already running Google Ads?

Yes, if you qualify. LSAs sit above search ads and charge per lead instead of per click. It's a different inventory position, not a replacement.

Why use WhatConverts if my CRM already tracks lead sources?

Your CRM tells you what a customer is worth. WhatConverts tells you which ad and keyword produced them, including across multi visit journeys. You need both, connected.

How much budget do I need to run this properly?

Enough to get meaningful data on each platform inside 30 days. Fewer campaigns funded properly beats the full structure funded thinly.

Build the Whole System, Not Just the Campaigns

Take your service business to new heights with our performance marketing team. Reach out to Encipher today to start turning ad spend into booked jobs with our proven Google Ads, Meta Ads, and tracking strategies.

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