Been running local service ads for a few clients over the past 2 years and I've had mixed results. Some clients were getting three to five leads a day, while others in the same niche would get one lead a month. I couldn't for the life of me figure it out until I ran some experiments the last few months. Here's what I found: Location Matters Most: before you agree to run LSA's for a client, do a little research about the area they are in and what competition they face. If it's a densely populated area with hundreds of competitors, many of which have over a thousand Google reviews, then it doesn't matter how high you set your budget, you will not be seen by anyone. You're better off running PPC ads which is way more fair in terms of who shows up at the top. I have two HVAC clients running LSAs in a similar area. One of them gets a steady flow of leads everyday, the other one had one lead in 3 months. Budget was the same, services were the same, they both have a similar amount of Google reviews. The difference is one of them had a 60 mile service radius and the other 20 miles. The one that was getting the leads was getting them mainly from smaller less populated towns further away and the One that wasn't getting any leads didn't want to travel and was stuck in a very densely populated city. As a test I expanded his service area and wouldn't you know, he started getting out of town leads. 2. Make sure the business name has the service in it. For example if your client does landscaping, you want to make sure their business name has the word landscaping in it. Same thing with plumbing and HVAC. One of my landscaping clients was getting a lot of impressions but not a lot of calls. His business name didn't have the word landscaping or lawn care in it and so when people were searching for those services, they would click the other business that did have those. When I added it to the business name, the leads came in more frequently. 3. Adding photos of people doing work is a difference maker. Don't use AI generated or stock images, and don't only post pictures of the jobs. Post pictures of people actually doing the jobs. Those listings tend to get ranked higher.

The results dont make any sense. One of them has less frequent Google reviews, no pictures of their team working, misses 50% of their calls yet is getting a steady amount of impressions and leads. The other one that's getting regular 5 star reviews, has multiple photos of team members working, is barely getting any impressions and 0 leads in the last 30 days. Anyone know what might be happening here?