When someone's boiler dies or their fuse board trips, they don't scroll social media — they search Google for someone who can come out today. That intent is what makes Google Ads the single best paid channel for most UK trades. You're not creating demand; you're catching it at the exact moment it appears.
But trades budgets are tight and clicks in this space aren't cheap. Get the setup wrong and you'll pay £8–£15 a click to talk to tyre-kickers in the wrong postcode. Get it right and the same budget books out your diary. This playbook covers the setup that actually works.
Use Local Services Ads first
Before standard search ads, check whether Google Local Services Ads (LSAs) are available for your trade and area. These are the "Google Guaranteed" listings that sit right at the very top with your reviews, and crucially you pay per lead, not per click. For plumbers, electricians, locksmiths and similar emergency trades, LSAs often deliver the cheapest, highest-intent enquiries available anywhere.
- You only pay when someone calls or messages — not for clicks that go nowhere.
- The Google Guaranteed badge builds instant trust with first-time customers.
- You can dispute and get refunded for genuinely irrelevant leads.
Run LSAs and standard Search ads together. LSAs capture the trust-and-proximity buyer; Search captures everyone else and lets you target specific high-value services.
Target by service, not just "plumber near me"
Generic terms like "plumber" are expensive and full of low-value clicks. The money is in specific, high-intent service keywords where the job is worth more and the searcher is closer to booking:
- "boiler replacement [town]" — high job value, ready to buy
- "emergency electrician [town]" — urgent, price-insensitive
- "bathroom installation quote" — considered, high ticket
- "consumer unit replacement cost" — commercial intent, qualifies budget
Build tightly themed ad groups around each service so your ad copy and landing page match the search exactly. A search for "boiler replacement" should land on a boiler replacement page — not your homepage.
Lock down geography and schedule
This is where most trades waste money. Two settings save more budget than anything else:
- Radius targeting: Set a tight service radius around your base — the distance you'll actually travel for a job. Exclude areas you don't serve entirely.
- Ad scheduling: If you can only answer the phone 7am–6pm, only run ads then. An unanswered call from a paid click is money set on fire. For emergency trades, run 24/7 but route after-hours calls properly.
Make the phone the conversion
Tradespeople convert on calls, not contact forms. Set your campaigns up accordingly:
- Use call ads and call extensions so people can tap to ring you straight from the results.
- Track calls as conversions so Google's bidding optimises toward what actually books jobs.
- Send everyone else to a fast, mobile-first landing page with a giant click-to-call button, your reviews, and your service area.
That landing page matters more than the ad. A slow or cluttered site kills the expensive click you just paid for — which is exactly why we pair ad campaigns with purpose-built pages (see our guide on web design for tradespeople).
Common mistakes that drain trade budgets
- Sending all traffic to the homepage. Match the page to the search.
- Using broad match with no negative keywords. Add negatives like "jobs", "salary", "courses", "DIY", "free" to cut waste.
- Ignoring the search terms report. Check it weekly and block irrelevant queries.
- No call tracking. If you can't see which keywords drive calls, you're optimising blind.
What good looks like
A well-run trade account focuses spend on a handful of profitable services, in a tight radius, during hours you can answer, with calls tracked as the goal. Most trades we work with don't need a bigger budget — they need the existing budget pointed at the right searches.
That's the whole game: stop paying to be seen by everyone, start paying to be called by the right people.