Are Your Google Ads Bringing Leads
or Burning Cash?

Plumbing Google Ads average $10.49 per click (perfoads.com, 2026). Non-branded plumbing leads cost $167 each with a 41.5% book rate and $2,208 average ticket (frontrangemomentum.com, Q1 2026). HVAC runs $104 blended cost per lead, with non-branded at $149 and branded at $34. These numbers come from tracked multi-location accounts, not Google's Keyword Planner estimates. Your actual costs depend on your city, competition level, and which services you target. Vancouver tends to run higher than national averages due to density and competition.

Yes, when tracking is set up correctly. Non-branded plumbing leads produce a 2.72x return on ad spend (frontrangemomentum.com, Q1 2026). The key phrase is "when tracking is set up correctly." If your account cannot tell you which clicks become booked jobs, you have no way to optimize toward profitable outcomes. We audit tracking first for this reason. If the math does not work for your specific services and ticket size, we tell you before you spend.

It depends on your average job ticket. A $167 cost per lead is expensive if your average job is $300. It is very profitable if your average ticket is $2,208 with a 41.5% book rate. The metric that matters is cost per booked job compared to the revenue from that job. For plumbing, the Q1 2026 benchmark is a 2.72x return on ad spend. For HVAC, blended CPL runs $104. Compare against your own ticket size to know if it works for you.

Google Ads charges per click. Local Service Ads (LSAs) charge per lead. LSAs show at the top of search results with the Google Guaranteed badge and require a background check and insurance verification in BC. Plumbing LSA leads average $69/lead and HVAC averages $80/lead (homeservicedirect.net). LSA adoption among contractors is approaching 70% in 2026 (niagarastandsout.ca). Most successful service businesses run both: LSAs for ready-to-book leads and Google Ads for targeting specific high-value services and neighborhoods.

You need three things in place: call tracking that ties each phone call to the specific ad and keyword that prompted it, conversion events in Google Ads that fire on form submissions and calls, and a CRM or tracking system that connects those leads to booked jobs. If you can answer "how much did I spend, how many jobs did it produce, and what was my return," your ads are being tracked correctly. If you can only see clicks and impressions, you are guessing. Our tracking audit checks all three.

Five common causes: (1) broad match keywords pulling irrelevant traffic like "plumber salary" or "plumbing school," (2) ads pointing to your homepage instead of a landing page built for that service, (3) service area targeting set too wide or too narrow, (4) no call extension or click-to-call on mobile ads, (5) landing page loads slowly on mobile, so the visitor leaves before it finishes. We see at least two of these in almost every account we audit. The tracking audit identifies which ones apply to your account.

You need to create conversion actions in Google Ads for phone calls, form submissions, and (if applicable) booking confirmations. Install the Google Ads tag on your website via Google Tag Manager. Set up call tracking that passes the gclid (Google click ID) from the ad click through to the call event. Connect Google Ads to Google Analytics 4 to share conversion data. Then verify that conversions are actually firing by testing each form and call path. If any step is misconfigured, Google optimizes toward the wrong signals. We set this up as part of every ads engagement, or you can start with our standalone tracking audit.