The Short Version
TL;DR
→$1,100+ wasted per month is the home-services average, and 29% of audited accounts logged zero conversions in 90 days because tracking was broken.
→Week 1: define a booked-job conversion, install and test tracking, set a 90-day budget. Week 2: Search plus LSA, negatives before launch, match ad/keyword/page, geo and schedule to reality.
→Weeks 3–4: read the Search Terms Report daily. At ~30 booked-job conversions, switch to value-based bidding and review cost per booked job every week.
$1,100+ wasted per month. 29% of accounts logged zero conversions in 90 days.
WordStream 2026, Google Ads Performance Study
The 30-Day Google Ads Launch Playbook.
Sources: WordStream 2026, Google Ads Performance Study · Optmyzr 2026, Negative Keywords & Wasted Spend
Phase 1 — Before You Spend a Dollar (Week 1)
1Make the conversion a booked job, not a click. Decide up front what Google should optimize toward. Not a click, not a page view, not an undefined “conversion.” A booked job, or at minimum a qualified call. Everything downstream bids toward whatever you pick here, so pick the thing that pays you.
2Install conversion and call tracking, then test it. This is the step 29% of accounts skip, which is why they log zero conversions. Add call tracking (the dashboard from last week), fire one real test lead, and confirm it shows up in Google Ads. Do not spend a dollar until it does.
3Set a budget you can hold for 90 days. Smart Bidding needs data and time to learn. A budget you yank after three slow weeks teaches the algorithm nothing and wastes the learning period you already paid for. Pick a number you can commit to for a full quarter, then leave it alone.
Phase 2 — Build the Campaign (Week 2)
4Keep the structure simple. Search plus LSA. Start with Search on your top three to five money services, one theme per ad group, plus Local Services Ads if you are eligible. Skip Performance Max until you have real conversion data. Early on it optimizes toward noise, and noise is expensive.
5Build the negative keyword list before launch. Without one, Google’s own Search Terms Report shows 30 to 60% of triggered searches are irrelevant. A maintained negative list saves 15 to 30% of spend. Start day one with the obvious drains: jobs, salary, DIY, free, cheap, parts, how to, and your own team’s job-title searches.
6Match the ad, the keyword, and the landing page. The keyword promises a service, the ad names that service, and the landing page delivers that exact service with a click-to-call number and a three-field form. Sending “AC repair” clicks to a generic homepage is where good clicks go to die.
7Set geography and set your actual schedule. Target your true service radius, not the whole metro, and set location targeting to “presence,” not “presence or interest.” If nobody answers the phone at 2am, either add after-hours coverage or do not pay for 2am clicks you will miss.
Phase 3 — Launch and Optimize (Weeks 3 and 4)
8Launch, then read the Search Terms Report daily. For the first two weeks, open the Search Terms Report every day and add a negative every time you see a search you would never pay for. This one habit is the highest-return 10 minutes in all of paid search, and almost nobody does it.
9At ~30 conversions, switch to booked-revenue bidding. Once the account has roughly 30 booked-job conversions, feed Google the booked-job value through an offline conversion import (the closed loop from last week’s dashboard) and move to value-based bidding. Then review cost per booked job by campaign every week and shift budget to the winners.
From the team at DUO
This is the launch we run for clients, and the whole difference between ads that make the phone ring and ads that book revenue lives in the setup. We don’t count leads. We count booked jobs, so we build the campaign to bid on them from day one, wired to the dashboard from last week. If you would rather not learn Google Ads the expensive way, we will run the launch for you.
Have DUO run the ad launch →Your checklist
- ☐Week 1: booked-job conversion defined, conversion and call tracking installed and tested, 90-day budget set.
- ☐Week 2: Search plus LSA structure built, negative list loaded, ad and keyword and landing page matched, geo and schedule set to reality.
- ☐Weeks 3 and 4: Search Terms Report read daily, negatives added, value-based bidding on at ~30 conversions, weekly cost-per-booked-job review.
