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Being found and chosen

Local advertising: reaching potential customers

Put a relevant offer in front of the right people, then judge the enquiries and the work.

Updated Written with AI assistance

Illustrative: one search, several businesses that do the work. Being findable is the first hurdle.

Advertising pays to put your message in front of people. It can introduce a service or catch someone already looking. A campaign needs a real audience, a clear offer, a budget you can afford and an obvious next step. What decides its worth is what happens after the click: are the enquiries suitable, does anyone answer them, is the work worth having? A click means someone tapped an advert. Nothing more.

Search ads and social ads meet different moments

A search advert appears when someone looks for something related. They have shown interest — but the words still need reading. Someone searching for a repair might want instructions, a spare part, or a tradesperson.

Google’s documentation covers campaign goals, targeting, adverts and budgets. Those are settings to review, not a promise that every click is real demand. Google’s guide to creating a Search campaign.

A social advert interrupts someone doing something else. It has to make its relevance obvious, because they were not looking for you. They may save it, show their partner, come back in a month. That does not make every social enquiry early or every search enquiry ready.

Which suits you depends on the service, the audience and the goal. A known service with existing search demand is a different problem from something nobody has heard of. Sometimes tightening your referral route beats both.

Example: an urgent job and a considered one

Fictional examples, not expected results. A locksmith advertising lock repairs runs a search advert naming the service and the area, with honest availability and charges. The page it lands on continues the explanation and has a contact route that works.

A garden designer introducing consultations runs a social advert with a real photo of their work. It explains what a consultation covers and who it suits. The page separates a first consultation from a full design package.

The locksmith needs jobs the team can reach today. The designer needs people thinking about a project. Running the same offer for both, or judging both by cheapest enquiry, ignores that.

Agree the limits before you spend

Pick the service and the area you can actually serve. Check the offer with the people who deliver it: price, what is included, what is not, and when. Never advertise a response time the team cannot meet.

Location targeting needs more than drawing a circle. Google’s options separate people in an area from people interested in it, and Google says geographic targeting relies on signals and cannot be perfectly accurate. See location options and geographic-targeting guidance.

Set a budget you can afford to lose learning. Name who can change it and what you will record. Read the platform’s own spending rules. Your ad budget is not your marketing cost: pages, management and follow-up cost money too.

Test the landing page and the enquiry route before you switch it on. An existing service page is fine if it answers the advert’s questions. Build a separate page when the message or audience needs a different explanation.

Example: follow the money past the click

A hypothetical campaign: £600 spent, 200 clicks, 20 enquiries, 10 suitable, 5 booked assessments. Made-up figures to show the sums — not a benchmark.

  • Per click: £600 ÷ 200 = £3.
  • Per enquiry: £600 ÷ 20 = £30.
  • Per suitable enquiry: £600 ÷ 10 = £60.
  • Per booked assessment: £600 ÷ 5 = £120.

Five assessments are not five sales. Did they happen? Did they turn into work? And if management and page work cost another £400, the real total is £1,000, not £600. Keep the definitions next to the numbers.

Decide what the numbers support

Lots of enquiries for a service you do not offer? Check the targeting and the wording. Suitable enquiries that never book? Look at your replies, your prices and your availability. Appointments that never become work? Look at fit and how you sell. Each pattern points somewhere different.

Small numbers mislead. One extra booking swings a rate, and customers decide weeks later. Do not change five things at once, and do not read three days as a trend.

Job Growth Lab runs local advertising as part of the wider enquiry-to-booking process. You agree the offer and budget, tell us your real capacity, and report what happened to the enquiries. No campaign turns reach into profit on its own.

Before you launch or spend more

  • Is the offer right for a clear audience and a real service area?
  • Does the landing page answer what the advert raised?
  • Who answers the enquiries, and can the team do the work?
  • Will you track suitability and outcomes, not just spend?