Google Ads puts your business at the top of search results for the phrases and places you choose, and you pay when someone clicks. In Toronto, many of your competitors are bidding on the same phrases, so the price of a click is set by the most aggressive bidder in your trade. Our job is to make sure you only buy the clicks that pay.
Start with the ceiling, not the budget
Every account we run begins with one written number: the most you can afford to pay for a lead. It comes from three inputs you already know.
Worked example (your numbers will differ):
- Average job value: $650
- Gross margin: 45%, so $292.50 per job
- Close rate on phone leads: 35%
- Break-even cost per lead: $292.50 × 0.35 = about $102
If a keyword group or postal area is producing leads at $140, it is losing money on every job unless those customers come back. If it's at $60, it deserves more budget. We publish this ceiling in the first report and judge every campaign against it. The full method, including how repeat customers and service agreements change the maths, is in our ad budget guide.
What's included
- Account in your name. Built or audited, with conversion tracking for calls, texts and email clicks, set up before any spend increases.
- Keyword structure by job type. Emergency, repair, replacement and maintenance phrases kept separate, because they convert and pay differently.
- Geographic targeting by postal area. Toronto forward sortation areas let us bid up where you're profitable and down where travel eats the margin.
- Negative keyword discipline. Job seekers, DIY searches, parts buyers and wrong services filtered out weekly at first, then monthly.
- Ad schedule matched to your phone. If nobody answers after 7 p.m., ads that invite emergency calls after 7 p.m. waste money.
- Local Services Ads where eligible. Google states you pay only for leads related to your business, and that the format is available only for certain service categories. We check eligibility for your trade before recommending it.
- Monthly report. Spend, leads, cost per lead against your ceiling, and what changed and why.
Timeline
| Period | What happens |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | Ceiling agreed; tracking installed and tested with real calls |
| Weeks 2–3 | Campaigns launched on a modest budget in your core area |
| Weeks 4–8 | Search-term clean-up; postal-area bids adjusted; ads rewritten from real queries |
| Month 3 onward | Budget moved toward the areas and job types beating the ceiling |
How results are measured
We measure qualified calls and texts, not clicks. A call under 30 seconds or from a job seeker is not a lead. Where you can tell us which leads became jobs, we report cost per booked job, which is the number that matters at the bank.
We also report the share of calls answered. Unanswered calls are an easy cost to overlook in paid search, because you pay for the click whether anyone picks up or not. If your team can't pick up on the job site, look at automatic text replies to missed calls, which our sister site CallText.chat specialises in, before spending another dollar on clicks.
Mistakes that drain Toronto ad budgets
- Targeting "Toronto" as one area. Travel time across the city varies enormously; bid by postal area.
- Broad match with no negatives. You will pay for "plumber salary" and "how to fix a toilet".
- Sending ads to the home page. Each job type needs a page that answers that exact search.
- Judging by cost per click. A $25 click that books a $2,000 job is cheap. A $4 click from the wrong person is expensive.
- Letting an agency own the account. If you can't log in, you don't own your history.
How it fits
Paid search covers areas and job types where local SEO is still building strength, and it works far better when the landing page is fast and specific; see websites built for conversion. For results context, HVACDeal.ca produced 500+ leads at a 12:1 ROI; these are results from our HVAC work, explained on the results page.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a Toronto trade spend on ads?
Work backwards from your break-even cost per lead and how many extra jobs you can handle each month. A budget that brings more calls than you can answer just raises your cost per job.
Is the ad spend included in your plan fee?
No. Ad spend is paid directly to Google from your own account. Our fee covers strategy, management and reporting.
Who owns the ad account?
You do. We work inside an account in your name with your billing, so if you ever leave, the history and data stay with you.
Should I use Local Services Ads or regular search ads?
Often both. Local Services Ads charge for leads rather than clicks, but are available only for certain service categories. Regular search ads give more control over keywords and areas.
What if a neighbourhood keeps losing money?
We cut it back or pause it. The point of a written ceiling is that nobody argues about it later.