Two vans, an owner who still pulled wire four days a week, and a Google Ads account someone else had built in 2021 and nobody had touched since.

He was booking work. The problem was which work. Outlet swaps and ceiling fan installs were filling the schedule while panel upgrades and service upgrades, the jobs with real margin, trickled in.

One campaign, one budget, every keyword in the same bucket.

Outlet repair and 200-amp panel upgrades were bidding against each other out of the same pool. Because the cheap searches get far more volume, they ate the budget by mid-afternoon most days. The high-value panel searches, the ones worth thousands, were running out of money before the homeowners searching them were awake.

The Local Services Ads profile compounded it. Two service categories selected out of the eleven that applied, no job types configured, and a lead dispute process nobody had ever used. He was paying full price for wrong-number leads and leads outside his radius because nobody had ever filed a dispute.

Split the account by job value

Separate campaigns for panel and service upgrades, EV charger installs, and general service calls. Each with its own budget, its own bids, and its own landing page. High-value work stopped competing with outlet repair for the same dollars.

Rebuilt Local Services Ads properly

Eleven service categories, job types configured, service radius tightened from 40 miles to 22 based on where jobs were actually profitable after drive time. Set up a weekly lead dispute routine.

Added negative keywords nobody had ever written

417 negatives in the first month. DIY, salary, apprenticeship, parts-only, and every neighboring city he does not serve.

Built a panel upgrade landing page

Financing options, permit and inspection explained, and a straight answer on what a 200-amp upgrade costs in Blount County. The general services page had been trying to sell everything to everyone.

Measured in Google Ads and the LSA dashboard, months three through nine against the six months prior.

• Cost per booked job fell 47% on an identical monthly budget.
• Panel upgrade quote volume rose 3.1x.
• Roughly $2,840 a month in wasted spend was redirected from low-value searches and disputed leads.
• Average ticket rose from about $340 to just over $900.

Caveat worth stating: the average ticket increase is partly a mix shift, not pure growth. He is doing fewer, larger jobs. Total revenue rose, but less dramatically than the cost-per-job number suggests on its own.

If every service you offer shares one ad campaign and one budget, your cheapest, least profitable work is quietly starving your most profitable work. High-volume low-value searches always win a shared budget, because there are simply more of them.

Do this today: open your ad account and sort your search terms report by cost, descending. Look at the top twenty. If the jobs behind those searches are not the jobs you want more of, you have found your problem, and it is a structural one that no amount of additional budget will fix. Split the campaigns first, then decide whether you need to spend more.