Google Ads with a break-even you can check
Paid search is the only channel that can produce a call this afternoon. It is also the fastest way to spend four thousand dollars on nothing. The difference is whether the arithmetic was done before the campaign went live.
Most accounts have never had the break-even calculated
Before a campaign launches there is one number that decides whether it can work: the share of leads you have to close for the ads to pay for themselves. It comes from your average ticket, your margin and the cost per click in your category. It takes about ten minutes to work out.
That number varies enormously by service. A repair with a four-hundred-dollar average ticket might break even closing four calls in ten. A low-margin service in the same account, bidding on clicks that cost the same, might need to close nearly all of them. One of those is a business. The other is a donation.
When it has not been calculated, the account gets judged on cost per click and click-through rate, which are the two metrics least connected to whether money was made.
What Google Ads management includes
Break-even model before launch
Built from your ticket sizes and margins, with the cost per click pulled for your actual keywords in your actual city. Services that cannot clear it do not get a campaign.
Conversion tracking that counts calls
Call tracking, form tracking and, where it matters, call duration thresholds so a thirty-second wrong number is not recorded as a lead.
A hard monthly spend cap
Agreed in writing and set in the account. No surprise months.
Negative keyword discipline
Reviewed weekly at the start. Most wasted spend in a new account goes to searches you would never want to appear for.
Landing pages that match the ad
A click on a winter tire ad lands on winter tires, not the homepage. This is usually the cheapest improvement available to an existing account.
Location targeting by performance
Bids adjusted by the areas that actually convert rather than a uniform radius.
What gets reported to you
These are the lines on the monthly report. Anything not on this list is background, not a result.
- Cost per booked job
- Not cost per click, not cost per lead
- Close rate against break-even
- The number that decides whether to continue
- Search terms report
- What people actually typed, reviewed with you
- Spend against cap
- Reported every month whether or not it is asked for
When this is the wrong service: If your category has a cost per click above thirty dollars and a ticket under a hundred, paid search is unlikely to clear break-even. We will show you the maths and recommend against it.
Google Ads management: what clients ask
What should we budget to start?
Enough to gather data inside a month, which in most GTA service categories means the cost of roughly thirty to fifty clicks a week. At a fifteen dollar cost per click that is around two to three thousand a month. Below that the account takes so long to learn that you pay for the education twice.
If that is out of range, local SEO is the better first investment.
Do you charge a percentage of spend?
No. A percentage of spend pays the agency more for spending more, which is the wrong incentive. Management is a flat monthly fee agreed up front.
Can we run ads and SEO at the same time?
Yes, and the ads data makes the SEO better. The search terms report shows you which queries actually convert, months before organic data would. We use it to decide which pages to build.
Local SEO
Get into the three-result map pack for the searches that happen near your shop.
Website design and build
A site that loads fast, says what you do, and puts the phone number where a driver can hit it.
AI voice and chat agents
The calls that arrive at 11pm get answered, qualified and logged.
Find out where you actually rank
A free audit checks your map position from every corner of your service area, your site’s technical health, and what your three closest competitors are doing differently. No obligation, and you keep the report either way.
Usually back within two business days.