Industries / Home services
Online marketing for home services.
Local Services Ads, the map pack, and speed to lead, wired together so the phone rings and someone answers.
Online marketing for a home services company is the work of showing up in the first three results a homeowner sees when something breaks, and then responding faster than the competitor who shows up next to you. That means Local Services Ads with verified license and insurance, a Google Business Profile that ranks in the map pack for each service and each city you cover, paid search on emergency and replacement terms, service pages that rank for the work you want more of, continuous review generation, and call tracking that shows which channel produced a booked job. CurrentAds runs the whole set as one program, including the website and the tracking, and you own every account.
The discovery path
How customers actually find you in this industry
01
Something breaks and the search happens immediately
Nobody researches a water heater for a week. The homeowner searches on a phone, often from the room with the problem, and the decision window is minutes. Presence beats persuasion at this stage.
02
Local Services Ads sit at the very top
In most home services categories the first thing on screen is a set of Local Services Ads with a Google Guaranteed badge, then the map pack, then paid search, then organic. Being strong in only one of those layers means most of the screen belongs to someone else.
03
The map pack is a ranking problem, not a listing problem
Map results are driven by proximity, relevance, and prominence. Categories, service areas, service lists, photos, and review velocity all feed it. A profile that was filled in once and never touched again quietly slides down.
04
They call two or three companies at once
Homeowners hedge. They call the top few and book whoever answers, sounds competent, and can come today. Speed to lead is not a nice to have in this industry, it is the conversion event.
05
After the job, the review either helps or hurts the next search
Every completed job is an input to the next month of map rankings. Companies that ask consistently pull ahead of better companies that never ask.
Priority order
The pillars that matter most here
We run the same ten services for every client. What changes by industry is the order they are built in and where the budget goes. For home services, this is the sequence we argue for.
01
Local and Maps
Local Services Ads, the Google Business Profile, service area and category configuration, and map pack ranking per city. This is the highest leverage surface in the industry and the one most companies leave half configured.
02
Paid Media
Search campaigns split by emergency work, replacement work, and maintenance, with schedules and bids that reflect when you can actually take the call, plus retargeting for the higher ticket jobs that get considered overnight.
03
Analytics and Tracking
Call tracking with dynamic number insertion, form tracking, and speed to lead reporting. Without it you cannot tell an expensive channel from an unanswered phone.
04
Reputation
A review request that goes out after every job, responses to every review, and monitoring across the profiles homeowners actually read. Review velocity feeds map ranking as well as trust.
05
SEO
Service pages and city pages that are genuinely different from each other, plus the technical hygiene that lets a small local site outrank a national aggregator on the terms that matter to you.
06
Web Design and Speed
A site that loads on a weak mobile connection and puts the phone number where a thumb already is. Home services traffic is overwhelmingly mobile and overwhelmingly impatient.
07
Email and SMS
Maintenance reminders, seasonal tune ups, and membership renewals. The cheapest job you will book this year is one from a customer you already served.
See all ten services and how they compound, or what it costs.
Why that order, in full
Two of the three surfaces a home services buyer sees are decided by things that happen off the screen. Local Services Ads charge per lead and rank on answered calls, review recency and complaint history, which is set out in full in the Local Services Ads playbook, and the map pack underneath is earned rather than bought, as what actually moves the three map slots explains. Both run inside local and Maps work.
The third thing is the phone, and a missed or untracked call is the most expensive line item in this industry, which is why why leads arrive with no source is worth an hour before any budget moves. What lands in your portal once it is wired is on how we report and how you verify it, and the terms you would start under are in the trial and money-back terms.
What we report
The metrics that actually matter
Live in your portal, not a monthly PDF. These are the numbers we commit to reporting for home services, whether they moved in the right direction or not.
- Cost per booked job, separated from cost per call
- Call answer rate and average speed to answer, by hour and by day
- Booking rate on answered calls, which is a dispatch problem, not a marketing one
- Cost per lead by service line, since drain cleaning and system replacement are different businesses
- Local Services Ads lead volume, dispute outcomes, and effective cost per usable lead
- Map pack position by city and by service category
- Review count and review velocity over the last 90 days
- Revenue per booked job where your field service software can share it
Where it goes wrong
Three ways this gets broken
01
Ads that run when nobody is there to answer
Campaigns scheduled around the clock with an office that closes at five produce calls that go to voicemail and never call back. The report shows leads. The dispatch board shows nothing.
02
One campaign for every service you offer
Bundling emergency plumbing with system installation in one campaign means the cheap clicks eat the budget and the profitable jobs never get funded. The blended cost per lead looks fine and the job mix gets worse every month.
03
A Google Business Profile treated as a directory listing
Wrong primary category, service areas drawn far too wide, no service list, stale photos, and unanswered reviews. This is usually the single cheapest fix available and it is almost always sitting untouched.
Compliance and practical notes
What we work around in home services
Licence and insurance verification
Local Services Ads require verification of license and insurance in most home services categories before the Google Guaranteed badge appears, and some states require license numbers to be displayed in advertising. We collect that in onboarding rather than discovering it at launch.
Text messaging consent
Appointment texts and marketing texts are treated differently. Marketing messages need prior express written consent, clear sender identification, and a working opt out. We build consent capture into the forms and keep the two message types separate.
Call recording announcements
Recording consent requirements vary by state. Where recording is enabled we configure the announcement you approve, and you decide which lines are recorded.
General information, not legal advice. Rules change and vary by state. Your business stays responsible for the legality of its own offers, claims, and disclosures, and nothing goes live without your approval.
FAQ
Home services questions
Which channel produces jobs fastest for home services?
Local Services Ads and paid search usually produce calls first because they can be live within days. Map pack ranking and organic take longer but lower your blended cost over time. We normally start with the fast channels while the local and organic work is built underneath.
Do you handle the Google Business Profile as well as the ads?
Yes. Profile optimization, categories, services, service areas, photos, posts, questions, and review responses are part of the local and Maps pillar. Splitting ads and profile management between two vendors is how the two ends up neglected.
How do you measure whether a lead turned into a job?
Call tracking captures the call, and where your field service software supports it we connect booked job and revenue data back to the source. Where it does not, we tag call outcomes with your office team so bidding still optimizes toward booked work rather than call volume.
Can you help with seasonal swings?
Yes. Budget pacing shifts with demand, campaigns for shoulder season work such as maintenance agreements get funded when emergency demand drops, and email and SMS to your existing customer list carry the slow weeks. We plan this at kickoff rather than reacting in July.
We cover several cities. Does that change the plan?
It changes the local work most. Each city needs its own ranking strategy, and profiles only rank where you have a real presence. We are direct about which cities are realistic to win in the map pack and which ones need paid coverage instead.
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Or see every industry we work with.
Get the plan for your market
Thirty minutes, a senior operator, and a written plan you keep either way. Month to month, and you own every account we touch.