I started as a fire technician. Then I ran my own security business from about 2007, for 14 to 15 years. For the last 5 years I have been in solar. I have only spent about two years learning websites and SEO properly, so I will not pretend to be a marketing veteran. I am a business owner who made some costly mistakes and then paid attention.
One of those mistakes was Google Ads.
I ran Google Ads for myself, more than once
I tried it two or three times. I must be honest: I was not very successful. I got leads, but they were the wrong kind of leads.
I found it very confusing back then. I had no AI to ask and not much knowledge. People from Google helped me set the account up. Looking back, I felt it was in their interest for me to spend as much as possible. That is how it felt to me, and I can only speak for myself.
What I do know is this. My campaigns did not work. I wasted a lot of time and money, even on the setup.
With what I know now, I would do much better. I would do it very differently.
What I understand now
Ads do one job. They bring people to you. That is all.
After the click, everything else is on you. The person lands on your website. They decide if you look right for them. They call, or fill in a form, or leave. If they call, someone has to answer. If they send a message, someone has to reply. If you send a quote, someone has to follow it up.
Each of those steps can leak. Ads pay for the first step only. If the steps after it are weak, you are paying to send people into a bucket with holes in it.
Where the money leaks
Here are the places I would look first. This part is general advice, not my own story.
The website. Does it say in plain words what you do, where you work and how to reach you? Can someone on a phone find the number and the button without hunting? If the page says very little, everyone who clicks looks the same to you. Some of them wanted something you do not even offer.
The phone. You are under a sink or up a ladder. The phone rings and you cannot get to it. The caller does not leave a message. They ring the next business.
The inbox. A message from your website lands somewhere you check twice a week. By then the person has booked someone else.
The quote. You send a price and hear nothing. Nobody follows up, so the job just fades away.
None of this has anything to do with the ad itself. But all of it decides whether the ad was worth paying for.
The wrong kind of leads
I said I got the wrong kind of leads. I will not claim I know the exact reason in my own case, because I did not understand it then.
What I can tell you is that wrong leads can come from more than one place. The ad can attract people who want a job you do not do. It can attract people who want a price you will not offer. And the website can be so vague that it does not help the wrong people leave and the right people stay.
That last one is the part you control without paying Google anything. A page that says who it is for and who it is not for helps both sides.
Set up to spend is not set up to book
This is the lesson I took from it. An account that is set up to spend is not the same as an account that is set up to book the right jobs.
Spending is easy. You put in a card and the money goes out. Booking the right jobs takes a website that is ready, a phone that gets answered, and a follow-up that does not forget people.
If someone helps you set up ads, it is fair to ask them plain questions. Why is this setting on? What will it cost me? What kind of customer will this bring? If the answers are vague, slow down. It is your money.
A checklist before you pay for ads
Go through this first. It costs nothing.
- Open your website on your phone. Can you find your phone number and a way to ask for a quote within a few seconds?
- Read the first screen out loud. Does it say what you do and where you work?
- Write down the jobs you want and the jobs you do not want. Does your page say so?
- Call your own business number from a different phone while you pretend to be busy. What happens? Who answers? Does the caller get a reply?
- Send a message through your own website form. How long until you see it? How long until you answer it?
- Look at your last five quotes. Did every one get a follow-up?
- Pick one person who owns the replies. If it is you, pick a set time each day.
- Only then think about ads. Start with a small budget and keep asking what each setting is for.
If you cannot tick most of these, more clicks will not help yet. You will just find the holes faster, and at your own cost.
Where we come in
This is why I put the weight of AI SEO Local on the website and the follow-up, and not on ads.
We build what we call a Smart Website. We can add AI to the site you already have, or build you a new one. We never force a rebuild.
We also offer a Follow-Up System. It texts back missed calls, answers texts and website chat, sends reminders, and keeps every message in one shared inbox so you can see who is waiting. It works with the site you have now.
We cannot promise it will get you more jobs. No honest person can. What we can do is make sure the people who reach out get an answer.
If you want to talk it through, we run a 30-minute Help me choose call. You can book it on the contact page. No pressure. If the checklist above shows you only need a better phone number on your page, that is a fine place to start.