Google Local Service Ads (LSAs) are great for local advertising for real estate agents, attorneys, and many home services businesses. By identifying potential customers and using data to increase visibility and web traffic, LSAs make it easy for your ads to show up in local searches at the right time.
LSAs can be a superstar outlet for local brands looking to generate more cost-effective leads. While they are uncomplicated to sustain, there are a small number of details that can have a large impact on how your ads perform. In this blog, we’ll review eight tips to help your ads attain the most targeted reach, highest rank, and greatest return on your investment. But first, let’s review what Google LSAs are.
What Are Google Local Service Ads (LSAs)
Google Local Services Ads (also known as LSAs) help you connect with people who search on Google for the services you offer. Your ads will show up for customers in your area, and you only pay if a customer contacts you directly through the ad. With LSAs, you can advertise your business on Google and receive leads directly from potential customers. These leads come in as phone calls and messages sent through your Local Services ad.
LSAs are pay-per-lead ads that appear at the top of the search results, above organic results and traditional Google Ads. To be included, a business must first pass a screening process that involves background checks, license checks, and insurance checks. The specific checks will vary depending on the business type and where they are located.
Here’s how Local Services Ads might look in desktop search results:
LSAs show up at the top of the search results, above organic results and traditional Google Ads. The searcher is shown three ads on both desktop and mobile. At the bottom, the user can click or tap to view additional ads for businesses. The number of ads in a market and within specific categories can vary quite a bit. Depending on how many businesses are in that particular category in your market you might see only a few or you might see dozens.
Now, let’s move on to the tips we promised you.
1. Keep On Top of Your Google Reviews
Reviews on your regular Google Business Profile will show up on your LSA profile and influence your ad ranking, but not the other way around. If you stop advertising, any reviews you get from your LSAs will vanish from your organic Google Business Profile and you won’t be able to respond to reviews that come through your review link.
You also need to know that LSAs need your business to maintain a minimum of a 3.0 average review rating to continue running. If your profile falls below 3.0, your ads will stop serving till your review score is restored.
2. Clearly Tell Google What You’re Looking For
Make sure you clearly tell Google what kind of job types you’re looking to obtain. When a lead converts into business, denote that it has successfully closed – and, if a lead isn’t a good fit for your business, archive it. Some lead quality issues can be because of services you said you were open to taking. Mostly it’ll be due to the prospect just wasn’t the correct fit for your offer. By archiving the lead you’re telling Google where not to spend your budget.
3. Set Accurate Business Hours
Conversion rates for LSAs are sharply connected with response times. So the quicker you react to leads, the higher the probability you’ll get the business. LSAs do not factor response times into your ranking, but they do learn what kind of users lead to successful calls and forms being filled in. Be sure your LSAs are scheduled to only run when you have the team to respond. If you aren’t able to support leads 24/7, do not let the campaign run 24/7. This will also assist Google in allocating your budget efficiently.
4. Don’t Target More Than 3 Major Markets
If your business services more than one location, it’s best to create multiple Google Business Profiles. That way you’ll only have one LSA profile for every 1 to 3 major markets you serve, and you won’t water down your budget focus and ad spend by negatively impacting your proximity ranking factor.
In essence, you want to view every LSAs profile as its own campaign. Because in the same way you wouldn’t ask a Google Search ad campaign to serve more than one major market, it’s impractical to demand an LSA to be intended for more than three major markets.
5. Set Higher Budgets and Bids
It’s understandable that you could be cautious about setting aggressive bids and budgets, but LSAs, due to their reputation for low-cost leads, invite the mistake of underbudgeting.
When you set up your campaigns, you’re given the choice between automated bidding and choosing a manual bid per lead. If you choose auto bidding and have a low budget, it’s common for ads to underperform. To prevent this from happening, you should set a budget 2-3 times higher than what you really plan on spending. This is important because Google regularly struggles to spend the budget. If your goal is to spend $3,000 per month, you’d want to set a budget of $9,000. If you’re laboring to gain traction with auto bidding, it could mean that you might be encountering competitors who set aggressive manual bids.
6. Avoid Ad Disapproval
The most frequent reason for LSAs to stop serving is due to disapprovals. Two common disapprovals are for the image to get flagged or the certifications to expire.
To avoid expired certifications: When setting up your profile you’ll be asked to input the expiration date of your certifications. Make sure to set the expiration date far enough ahead so you won’t need to think about it for 5-10 years.
To avoid flagged headshots: For your headshot, it’s important that your picture is of more than just your face. Images should cover down to the elbows and include a background that isn’t empty
7. If You Have multiple LSA profiles, Choose an MCC
If you serve more than one major market or are a franchise or agency, you’ll probably end up coordinating multiple Google Business Profiles. It would be wise to set up your LSA profiles as an MCC (manager account). This lets you effortlessly navigate between them without logging in and out of your account. You’ll also receive the added benefit of MCC-level billing, reporting, and shared assets. As a franchise/agency, this is particularly significant since you only can share login access for an LSA profile with one other email.
8. If You Have Only One LSA Profile, Secure Your Service Areas
If you can only have one Google Business Profile and serve multiple locations, be sure the locations you elect to target are in close proximity to your main prospect, where you’ll have a better chance of reaping the benefits from the proximity ranking factor. Targeting a county, or DMA, counts as a single target. You can exclude zip codes or towns to narrow your focus and bypass competitive auctions.
In Conclusion
With Local Services Ads, you can advertise your business on Google and receive leads directly from potential customers. These leads come in as phone calls and messages sent through your Local Services ad. You can reply to messages, track bookings, and manage all your leads.
Companies that benefit the most from this ad format will most likely be those that are able to maintain a high relative review rating combined with strong brand awareness in their local markets. This makes LSAs a valuable tool for local advertising for real estate agencies, law firms, and other service-oriented businesses.
Hopefully, you found the maintaining LSA tips helpful to understanding and utilizing Google LSAs. Let’s connect if you want to learn more about Local Services Ads or want to run these types of campaigns but don’t want to tackle it yourself. Schedule a free consult today to meet with our team of marketing experts to get you started!
